I want to take a step back this week and look at two events nobody wants to compare, to see what we can learn about the state of our country. Those two events are the shootings of Ashli Babbitt, and Renee Good.
I am going to compare and contrast these shootings to see how similar they are, and then I want to go into a five-why analysis (also known as a ‘root cause analysis’) to see why both shootings occurred. It is my belief that doing so will force a societal analysis of some kind, in relation to those root causes and what they tell us about the state of our country.
Nobody wants to admit that the shootings are very similar, but this is a conversation we need to have.
Throughout this essay, I’m going to focus on the actions people have taken and the incentives people face. I cannot assume intent, but I will note both actions and incentives, and will trust the reader to gauge accordingly.
The Shootings
Officer Michael Byrd was positioned behind the barricaded doors of the Speaker’s Lobby with two other officers, when a window was broken and Ashli Babbitt started to climb through. There were dozens of protestors behind her also trying to get in, and whatever other protestors were doing in other parts of the Capitol, Ashli Babbitt and those with her were acting with what appeared to be violent intent.
I don’t know that Officer Byrd shot Ashli Babbitt in self-defense. I’m not sure anyone other than Michael Byrd and the other officers behind the barricade really know the answer to that, but I can see how having a mob of several dozen people storming through a barricade can become self-defense even if none of the people storming through are armed, and I’m willing to concede that this shooting probably did qualify as self-defense.
That does not mean Ashli Babbitt deserved to die. It does, however, mean that she placed herself in a situation she could not possibly have controlled, and placed police officers in a position where they had to make a harrowing decision that ultimately led to her death.
Fast forward five years and you have Renee Good getting shot by a Federal Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) Agent, on January 7, 2026.
We have much more information available to us about Renee Good’s shooting. We know for example that she had been blocking traffic for several hours as a member of an activist group called ‘ICE Watch.’ Ms. Good would back up to let civilians down the street, and would then move forward to block ICE vehicles again. She was obstructing justice, and had been doing so for hours.
Eventually two ICE Agents stopped their vehicle and got out to arrest Ms. Good, while a third ICE Agent, Jonathan Ross, used his cell phone to make a video as he walked around Ms. Good’s SUV.
Officer Ross walked all the way around Ms. Good’s car and was not directly in front of it when the other ICE Agents told Ms. Good to get out of her car so they could arrest her. One of those ICE Agents tried to open Ms. Good’s door, at which time she backed up, turning.
I don’t know that Renee Good was trying to put Officer Ross directly in front of her car – my guess is she was not – but that’s what happened. With this ICE agent directly in front of her SUV, Ms. Good hit her gas hard enough to spin one of her wheels.
It looks to me like Ms. Good was trying to flee the scene to avoid arrest. I don’t think she wanted to hit Officer Ross with her car, but as she accelerated forward and turned her wheel, Officer Ross said, “WHOA!!” while pulling out his service weapon. Ms. Good ran into him hard enough to almost knock him down (the Department of Homeland Security reports that he had internal bleeding), and he fired several shots – one through Ms. Good’s windshield and at least two more through the driver’s side window.
I don’t believe Ms. Good was intentionally trying to harm Officer Ross, but like Ashli Babbitt, Renee Good put a police officer in a position where he had every reason to fear serious injury or death, and that is the standard for self-defense.
Some are still claiming that Renee Good did not hit Officer Ross, but while the first video to come out was from an angle that did not show contact, other videos from other angles show that she did, in fact, hit him with her car.
Mayor Frey initially denied that Officer Ross was hit by Renee Good’s car, but now he says that “I’ve seen people hurt more using their hip to close a refrigerator,” and has suggested that Officer Ross should have waited to see how badly he got hurt before defending himself.
By the same logic, if a criminal pulls a gun on a cop, Mayor Frey should demand that the cop wait to defend himself or herself until after the criminal is done firing. Perhaps the criminal will miss entirely, in which case the officer would be unharmed. Perhaps the criminal will only wing the officer, or hit the officer with a non-life-threatening injury to an arm or leg. Perhaps the criminal will hit the officer’s bullet-proof vest, in which case it might hurt but won’t cause serious injury.
If we apply Mayor Frey’s logic to criminals with guns, officers should only return fire if mortally wounded, which is of course absurd. Mayor Frey incidentally knows his position is absurd, but it is his position just the same.
This kind of dangerous rhetoric, coming from Mayor Frey, Governor Walz, Representative Ilhan Omar, and others, is a big part of the problem, inflaming tensions and encouraging more violence.
We saw similar rhetoric on the right five years ago, both before and after Ashli Babbitt’s shooting.
Both women entered escalating enforcement situations believing the moral narrative protected them, and both were catastrophically wrong. The biggest difference between the two cases is that we have far more information in the Renee Good case, thanks to all the videos available, than we had in the Ashli Babbitt case. That’s not because Ms. Good was more at fault. It’s just that we don’t have anywhere near as much photographic or video evidence with the Ashli Babbitt shooting to provide the same level of context.
It is incumbent upon us to look at the root causes that led to the deaths of these women, and to see what those root causes tell us about our society, as it stands today.
Five-why analysis of Renee Good
We have more evidence available on the Renee Good shooting, so let’s start our five-why analysis there. Note that ‘five’ is a guideline and not a rule – we will ask ‘why’ until we find the root cause, no matter how many times it takes.
First off: Why did Renee Good get shot?
Answer: In fleeing to avoid arrest, her SUV struck a police officer.
Most people on the political right would like to stop here, as if the fact that Officer Ross was hit by Ms. Good’s car answers all relevant questions. That’s lazy, so let’s keep going.
Why did she strike the police officer?
Answer: When she backed up to reposition her car so she could flee, she turned her car, pointing it directly at Officer Ross. She was backing up at that point so she was likely not looking at Officer Ross, and my guess is she was not aware she was suddenly pointing straight at him, but the result is that her car was suddenly pointed straight at a federal police officer.
When she fled forward, she did not have enough room to get around Officer Ross and contacted him somewhere between the edge of her driver’s side headlight and the front of her driver’s side front wheel well.
Why did she flee?
Answer: She was being arrested and obstructing justice can be a felony under federal law. Her wife said, “Drive, baby, drive,” just before Ms. Good took off.
Ms. Good had an incentive to flee.
Most of those obstructing justice against ICE see themselves as the good guys, fighting what they see as a fascist, oppressive force, and this view is supported by comments from Mayor Frey, Governor Walz, Ilhan Omar, and many others on the political left. Frey has called the ICE presence an ‘occupying force,’ and ordered ICE to ‘get the F out of Minneapolis.’ Walz has referred to the ICE presence as ‘a war that’s being waged against Minnesota,’ and referred to their enforcement as ‘organized brutality against the people of Minnesota by our own federal government.’
Walz has gone so far as to compare ICE protesters in Minneapolis to the First Minnesota at the Battle of Gettysburg. The First Minnesota was a famed Civil War unit that played a central, costly role in defending Cemetery Ridge on the second day of the battle. The First Minnesota was ordered to charge into a much larger Confederate force as a stalling action to make time for reinforcements to arrive, and while the First Minnesota was successful, they suffered 80% casualties.
Trump has been portrayed as a fascist tyrant with ICE as his Gestapo. It is reasonable to assume that Ms. Good saw ICE in this light, and if so, she saw herself as a force of good fighting fascist oppression in the same way the First Minnesota fought the Confederacy.
According to her wife, Ms. Good and her wife planned to obstruct justice the next day as well, so Ms. Good was not fleeing so much as retreating so that she could fight another day.
Why is ICE compared to Hitler’s Gestapo?
ICE was created in 2002 to separate border inspection from interior immigration law enforcement, with the current framework of law coming from the Immigration and Nationality Act of 1952, which came into law under President Harry S. Truman.
ICE is enforcing laws put in place while the President who presided over the defeat of fascism was still in office. Needless to say, those laws are not fascist. America in fact is the most open nation in the world with regard to immigration, but while our laws make legal immigration possible on a large scale, they also define laws prospective immigrants must follow, with enforcement mechanisms for those who enter the country illegally.
I wrote an essay just last week on how there is a threshold above which immigrants do not assimilate, and up until just a few years ago, the vast majority of Americans wanted immigration levels below that threshold.
ICE deported 3.1 million illegal aliens under President Barack Obama. Obama was widely praised for these efforts, but the political left’s attitude toward immigration enforcement changed dramatically once Donald Trump became President.
President Joe Biden funnelled $195 billion a year through USAID into NGOs that spent the money illegally migrating people into the United States. Biden used ICE as a travel agency to move migrants into the interior of the country, in violation of the immigration laws he swore to uphold. The Biden Administration moved migrants to create safe Congressional seats that would also represent electoral college votes for future Presidential elections.
ICE has every right to enforce immigration laws anywhere in the country it wants to, including Minneapolis. Enforcing immigration laws that have been on the books for 72 years is not fascism, no matter how many protestors say it is.
Those who want to know what fascism actually is can read about it here. I use the definition of ‘fascism’ that Giovanni Gentile used, and since Giovanni Gentile was the philosopher who came up with ‘fascism,’ this is the relevant definition. Any other use is hyperbole.
Nobody knows how many people illegally migrated into the United States during Biden’s four years. Estimates range from 9.3 million (this is the number of documented Customs and Border Protection encounters and known gotaways), to 15 million (based on PEW surveys). Of course some of those people are going to be deported, and particularly those who have committed crimes.
70% of the people ICE is targeting have either been convicted of a crime, or have been charged and are in the process of being prosecuted. ICE is only going after those they have warrants for. These are not random enforcement actions.
In most of the country, state and local police assist ICE in immigration enforcement. Even in Sanctuary Cities where local police do not assist, they at least ensure that ICE is able to carry out its mission safely. Only in a few places, like Minneapolis, do elected officials encourage riots, and these are the people driving comparisons between ICE and Hitler’s Gestapo.
Why was Ms. Good being arrested?
Answer: She’d been obstructing justice for several hours that day, and had obstructed justice in the past. She was known to ICE Agents as someone who regularly obstructed them in doing their jobs. ICE had simply had enough.
Why were she and her wife obstructing justice?
Answer: Most of the protestors were protesting because they did not believe there was any justification for enforcing immigration laws. These people see themselves as agents of good, fighting oppression. It is safe to assume that Ms. Good saw herself in a similar light.
Some of the protestors are paid agitators who enjoy creating anarchy, but there is no evidence to tie Ms. Good to this, so we should assume she was operating out of a sense of moral justification and not for some more nefarious purpose.
Why do protestors believe the laws being enforced are unjust?
Answer: Prominent Democrats in Minnesota and around the country have been arguing that borders are meaningless lines people need not respect, and that anyone who is able to get into our country belongs here just as much as do those born here. ‘Eliminate ICE’ has been a Democratic talking point for almost a decade, and within Minnesota specifically, Representative Ilhan Omar, Governor Tim Walz, and Mayor Jacob Frey have encouraged residents to obstruct ICE.
Also note that the anti-ICE protest is a remnant of the ‘defund the police’ movement. It is likely that should obstructing ICE become normalized, obstructing other federal police will be next, and that should obstructing all federal police become normalized, obstructing state and local police will follow.
The ‘defund the police’ movement is a call for ‘community policing,’ which is one of the mechanisms Mao Zedong used to take power in China. Mao got parts of China to use ‘community policing,’ and the people who took on that role also happened to be members of his Red Army.
The idea actually comes from Trotsky, who believed that the law is not what old men pass in hallowed halls, but is whatever gets enforced on the street. If you control an area, you can enforce whatever laws you want, and those who avoid being killed will figure out what that means.
That does not make the entire protest movement communist, but those funding and leading it are very much anti-policing in a Mao/Trotsky context, and if successful it will not stop with ICE.
Much of the extreme left sees all organized police forces as illegitimate, and within these circles, ICE is considered the worst of the worst.
Why do so many people, including elected officials, see the enforcement of immigration law (and potentially other laws) as unjust?
Answer: There is a growing ‘open borders’ movement that believes all borders are inherently unjust and that people should be able to move wherever they want, irrespective of where they are born. There is also a very strong anti-capitalism movement.
Add to this the ‘oppressor/oppressed’ narrative that has become increasingly popular on the left, that excuses crime when committed by the supposedly oppressed on the grounds that they are acting out against their oppression, and in this narrative the police are not protecting the public, but actively oppressing minorities in support of white supremacy.
These conclusions stem logically from the assumptions the extreme left starts with about the United States being created from the ground up as a white supremacist state. If we are a state built on white supremacy, then our laws – and particularly our immigration laws – are of course designed first and foremost to support white supremacy. This makes the opposition of those laws, and of those who enforce them, morally necessary.
Add in the ‘ICE is Trump’s Gestapo’ argument we discussed earlier, and the potential for conflict explodes.
We on the political right tend to view the left’s arguments here as absurd, but it is once again the assumptions that are false and not the logic. If you accept the extreme left’s assumptions, their conclusions follow logically and should also be accepted. The normalization of these views leads to conflict with police in general, and of immigration enforcement (ICE) in particular.
One need not listen to much of the anti-ICE rhetoric to see that this is exactly what is occurring.
The groups behind the anti-ICE protests have been waiting in the wings for an excuse to start new mass-protests ever since the Hamas encampment on Columbia University, and smaller protests on other universities around the country, ended, and if Renee Good’s death had not kicked them off, something else eventually would have.
Why Minneapolis?
Answer: Most of the Somali migrants in Minnesota are either citizens or legal residents of the United States, so we should ask why Trump used fraud committed by those here legally as an excuse to make an example out of Minneapolis. That’s a fair question, and one the Trump Administration has not adequately answered.
Portland would seem the more obvious location for these kinds of protests, but according to Federal investigators, more than nine billion tax dollars were fraudulently given to Minneapolis residents, primarily to Somali Migrants or those connected to them, currently representing the biggest case of welfare fraud in American history (although investigations in other states, like California, may soon eclipse Minnesota by a wide margin).
One of the primary laws used to commit this fraud was written and sponsored by Ilhan Omar, who is herself a Somali migrant. Governor Walz too has been personally implicated in covering up the Somali welfare fraud, likely because he counts on the Somali vote to stay in office.
Tim Walz, Jacob Frey, Ilhan Omar, and other elected officials were involved in Minnesota’s welfare fraud, and they are likely finding that obstructing ICE is a welcome distraction. Trump’s decision to send thousands of extra ICE agents to Minneapolis fell right into their laps at exactly the right time to save their political careers.
As a reminder, I’m focusing on actions and incentives, both of which can be discussed objectively. I am not assuming intentions.
Why did Somali migrants (primarily) commit so much fraud?
Answer: Somali is a failed state whose economy is primarily driven by fraud, so migrants from Somalia may be naturally disposed, culturally, toward it. The Somali welfare fraud was also organized and systemic. It went on for over a decade and really took off during the Covid-19 years. Ilhan Omar personally writing one of the laws used to commit fraud also seems to point toward systemic organization.
This brings us to root-causes.
The Somali migrants are not a root cause, and nor is the fraud that emerged within that community.
The root-cause is a well funded, pro-Communist and anti-capitalist movement that becomes inflamed whenever they see something they consider unjust, and that explodes onto the national scene as soon as someone dies.
Now let’s do a Five-Why Analysis on Ashli Babbitt. I did not pull any punches on Renee Good’s shooting, and I won’t pull any punches here either.
Five-Why Analysis of Ashli Babbitt’s Shooting
Why was Ashli Babbitt shot?
Answer: She broke through a barricade that existed as the last line of defense outside the House chamber, and there were dozens of people with her.
Why were Ashli Babbitt and dozens of other people breaking through a barricade?
Answer: They felt that the 2020 election was fraudulent and that the vote should not have been certified. They were trying to force entry so they could shut down the certification, and perhaps to commit acts of violence in the process against certain members of Congress, and against Mike Pence.
Other protestors had even erected a gallows to supposedly hang Mike Pence.
Most of the protestors were not violent, but the ones breaking through the barricade with Ashli Babbitt were, and there were other protestors who committed acts of violence or vandalism as well.
The rioters were angry, and they were breaking the law.
Why did Ashli Babbitt and others feel the 2020 election was fraudulent?
Answer: Dinesh D’Susza put out a movie indicating that there were fraudulent votes. Sidney Powell and Rudy Giuliani filed court cases claiming it was fraudulent. Donald Trump claimed it was fraudulent, and so did other prominent Republicans. Those prominent Republicans spent a lot of money trying to prove the election was fraudulent but were shot down consistently in court.
The media was incredibly biased in its reporting leading up to the election, and particularly with regard to the authenticity of the Hunter Biden laptop (and the crimes it implicated). Exit-polling indicated that had the public not been lied to about the Hunter Biden laptop, Trump would have won the election.
A number of battleground states also made illegal election changes due to Covid-19, which were perceived by the same Republicans claiming fraud as having been used to swing the vote toward Joe Biden.
Finally, a Time Magazine article, titled, The Secret History of the Shadow Campaign That Saved the 2020 Election, explicitly claimed that a ‘well funded cabal’ ‘saved Democracy’ by making said changes to help Joe Biden win, on the grounds that re-electing Trump would have ‘undermined democracy.’
There were some very real problems with the 2020 election that had nothing to do with ballot fraud.
Why did those protesting the January 6, 2021 voter certification feel the need to riot, and illegally enter the Capitol Building?
Answer: There are multiple groups, each with its own reasons.
Several members of the Proud Boys were convicted of crimes as serious as ‘Seditious Conspiracy,’ indicating that they really were trying to spark an insurrection. Enrique Tarrio, the head of the Proud Boys, was sentenced to 22 years in prison, with other Proud Boys sentenced to between 15 and 18 years.
Several groups of protestors committed wanton acts of vandalism and violence. Those who could be identified were charged accordingly.
Other groups appeared to opportunistically enter the Capitol peacefully, in some cases with the police escorting them. These people did not appear to want to break the law at all.
All of this was after Donald Trump gave a speech telling the crowd to ‘peacefully and patriotically’ march to the Capitol. Trump did not tell anyone to break the law, but the timing of this speech certainly deserves scrutiny in light of what happened.
Trump and other prominent Republicans were saying inflammatory things regarding the 2020 election in much the same way Democrats are saying inflammatory things about ICE today.
The root cause of Ashli Babbitt’s shooting seems to be related to hatred of ‘the other side’ and distrust in America’s institutions.
Conclusion
The root causes of both shootings relate to hatred of the ‘other side,’ and to distrust of America’s institutions. The two sides distrust different institutions, but both sides are driven by hate and distrust.
Both shootings have the same root causes.
Both sides want to blame the other. Neither side cares about the truth.
I actually have more sympathy for the political left on this than I do for the political right. On the right, we are supposed to believe in the rule of law and are supposed to look at each case based on the merits of that specific case, AND NOTHING ELSE. With Ashli Babbitt, much of the right violated that belief.
At least on the political left, where people want ‘social justice’ rather than actual justice, I can see some consistency. If you accept their assumptions that America is an oppressive land of white supremacy, then their logic that anyone not white, including undocumented migrants, is an oppressed minority deserving protection against the enforcement arms of this white-supremacist state, is sound.
The problem isn’t in their logic – it is in their assumptions. Their assumptions are not just flawed; they are false. America is not a land of white supremacy. Studies consistently show that America is, in fact, one of the least racist nations on Earth. If America were the place the extreme left pretends it is, people would not be so quick to migrate into our country.
The left considers America an oppressive place because they are thinking emotionally rather than logically, and emotional thinking can be harder than logical thinking to overcome. Emotional thinking is largely immune to logic, as it tends to reject evidence that runs contrary to its underlying emotional beliefs.
Faulty assumptions or not though, the left is at least consistent whereas the political right is becoming less about due process and more about identity, which is also emotional thinking, and dangerously similar to that of the left.
The political left runs on identity politics, and identity politics is inherently tribal. Tribalism leads to injustice, and injustice leads to distrust of other tribes and of the institutions that manage them.
The political right under Trump has become a cult of personality, and in doing so, it too has become increasingly tribal in nature.
If both sides become tribal and both sides distrust our institutions, we won’t have to worry about becoming balkanized as we will already be there.
We see this balkanization today, with Tim Walz and Jonathan Frey using civil war imagery and civil war comparisons to the ICE operations, and the obstruction to it, in Minnesota. Would Walz be taking such a strong line against ICE were he not embroiled in a career-ending fraud scandal? I can’t answer that, but he has every incentive to stand up to Trump as a means to distract from this scandal, and the worse the situation gets the tougher of a stance people like Walz and Frey are incentivized to take.
I’d close by suggesting that we demand better from both sides, but I’m afraid that would be too optimistic. The extreme left is too tied into identity politics and its inherent tribalism to get them back. It is hard to moderate an extremist, so we would have to focus on their children. Moderating the extreme left will be a generational fight.
We may, however, still be able to regain some sense of sanity on the political right, and if the political right can withdraw from its increasingly tribal impulses by shunning those who stir them, we can regain our focus on equality under the law.
Returning to the rule of law is how we win over the political center, including those on the left who are not yet extreme, and while Trump has done a number of things any conservative should agree with, the cult of personality around him is doing a tremendous amount of damage to our party, and to our country.
Trump, too, must restrain himself to the rule of law, and not just in practice. His rhetoric needs to follow.
So far, we’ve primarily seen police killings where civilians went too far and forced the police to defend themselves, but if this current rash of tribalism continues, then eventually guns will replace whistles and the proverbial wheels will come off the bus.
We are closer to this than we think.
We are at a collective crossroads on both sides of the political aisle. If we hit the gas or climb through the barricade, whatever comes next may be outside our control, but it will be entirely our fault, and while we know what the left will do, it is incumbent upon the political right to reject tribalism and regain our insistence on the rule of law.
