Good and Evil

The Inevitable Happens in Minneapolis (and DC)

The party told you to reject the evidence of your eyes and ears. It was their final, most essential command. George Orwell, 1984

Just remember: What you’re seeing and what you’re reading is not what’s happening. Donald Trump, 2018

With entitled, violent, masked thugs turning America’s cities into war zones, the killing of an American citizen was less of an aberration than an inevitability. The only thing more inevitable than the killing of Renee Nicole Good by federal immigration agents in Minneapolis was the lying from the administration and its enablers, which began almost before the bullets’ reverberation had fully dissipated. You can read the analyses from the NYTand WaPo that contradict the White House lies, suggesting that the ICE officer who shot Good did so in self-defense. But no such forensic analysis is necessary. You can just do what this administration has admonished you to avoid for years: Believe your own eyes. It’s really not a close call. Of course, the lies shouldn’t surprise you. The whole plan to flood blue city streets with ICE agents, there to instill fear and provoke reactions that can be used to justify further militarization, is based on the lie that there was some imminent threat to Americans and our way of life. More broadly, this administration lies nonstop about everything, from elections, to insurrections, to the economy, to war and peace, to the price of eggs. Why would that strategy stop when it comes to a killing?

+ Renee Nicole Good was victimized twice. First by the bullets. Then by the most powerful people in American politics smearing her good name. As Adam Serwer explains in The Atlantic (Gift Article): “Taking Good’s life wasn’t enough. The moment she died, it became imperative for the administration to also destroy her memory.” First the Shooting. Then the Lies.

+ How can the administration perpetuate the lies when the evidence so obviously contradicts their version of events? Well, it helps when you’ve corrupted previously independent government agencies. Minnesota officials say they can’t access evidence after fatal ICE shooting and that the FBI won’t work jointly on investigation.

+ What do we know about similar shootings that haven’t been clearly documented on video? NYT (Gift Article): “In the last four months alone, immigration officers have fired on at least nine people in five states and Washington, D.C. All of the individuals targeted in those shootings were, like the woman killed on Wednesday, fired on while in their vehicles. In each case, officials have claimed that the agents fired in self-defense, fearing they would be struck by the vehicle. At least one other person died as a result of those shootings.”

+ Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey: “I have a message for ICE: Get the f-ck out of Minneapolis. We do not want you here. Your stated reason for being in this city is to create some kind of safety, and you are doing exactly the opposite. People are being hurt. Families are being ripped apart … and now somebody is dead.” Here’s the latest from The Minnesota Star Tribune and CNN.

2

Highway to Hellenic

How crazy has the war on woke become at some universities? Actually, don’t answer that Socratic form of news delivery. Even Socrates won’t be on safe ground for long. NYT (Gift Article): Texas A&M, Under New Curriculum Limits, Warns Professor Not to Teach Plato. “Martin Peterson, a philosophy professor at Texas A&M University, was thunderstruck when he was told on Tuesday that he needed to excise some teachings of Plato from his syllabus. It was one way, his department head wrote in an email, that Dr. Peterson’s philosophy class could comply with new policies limiting discussion of race and gender.” I’ll let Plato himself provide the pithy kicker to this story. “We can easily forgive a child who is afraid of the dark; the real tragedy of life is when men are afraid of the light.” (There’s some dispute as to whether this quote is accurately cited, which is the only reason I feel safe sharing it.)

3

What to Expect When You’re Electing

The report “urges President Donald Trump and lawmakers ‘to save and restore the American family’ through massive tax credits for families with more children while capping alimony payments, enacting strict work requirements on social benefit programs, discouraging online dating, creating marriage ‘bootcamp’ classes and more ... It calls for a 16-year-old age limit on social media and certain AI chatbots, and further age restrictions on access to pornography, and it argues that ‘climate change alarmism’ demoralizes young people and dissuades them from having children.” (Think this sounds a bit too extreme even for this administration? Well, it comes from the same group that brought you Project 2025.) WaPo (Gift Article): Heritage paper on families calls for ‘marriage bootcamp,’ more babies.

4

This Is Where It’s @

Ready for the great AI email takeover? Well, ready or not, here it comes. “Google is announcing a new AI Inbox view for Gmail that, instead of presenting your emails in a traditional list, uses AI to offer personalized to-dos and summaries of topics you might want to follow from your emails.” Google is taking over your Gmail inbox with AI. (From news summaries to the inbox takeover, big tech is doing everything it can to compete with NextDraft. Sadly for them, I Am the Algorithm.)

+ OpenAI launches ChatGPT Health, encouraging users to connect their medical records. But it’s ‘not intended for diagnosis or treatment.’ (Yeah, right. We’ve all been using the internet for diagnosis and treatment since Alta Vista launched...)

5

Extra, Extra

Body Checks: “The US Senate on Thursday advanced a bipartisan war powers resolution to prevent Donald Trump from taking further military actions against Venezuela, after he ordered a weekend raid to capture that country’s president, Nicolás Maduro, without giving Congress advance notice.” (Wait, we have a Senate?)

+ DNIght Night: As I suggested on Monday, the decision-making process when it came to the Maduro arrest was limited to a small number of insiders. Even the Director of National Intelligence wasn’t included. “The move to cut Gabbard out of the meetings was so well-known that some White House aides joked that the acronym of her title, DNI, stood for ‘Do Not Invite.’”

+ Hot Off the Press: Trump pulled out of some climate treaties today. Like, a lot of them. “Trump released a presidential memorandum Wednesday ordering the withdrawal from 66 global organizations and treaties -- roughly half affiliated with the United Nations -- for being ‘contrary to the interests of the United States.’”

+ Invasion of the Booty Snatchers: “Online prediction market Polymarket is drawing criticism after ruling that the U.S. capture of the Venezuelan authoritarian leader Nicolás Maduro does not count as an invasion of the country, a decision that leaves millions of dollars in bets unresolved.” (Obviously, the broader story here is that we are betting on everything these days.)

+ Weight Weight ... Don’t Tell Me: “The rate at which weight was regained after stopping these medications was almost four times faster compared with behavioral programs, which may include a specific diet or physical activity plan, regardless of the amount of weight that was lost during treatment.” People who stop taking weight-loss jabs regain weight in under two years. (Two years is plenty of time for me to update my Tinder profile pics...)

+ After The Fire: Photos: One Year After the Los Angeles Wildfires.

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Bottom of the News

“If you were serious about your career and wanted to be a head coach one day, you took great notes or great mental notes. I felt like after one year with Coach Saban, I had learned more about how to run a program than I maybe did the previous 27 as an assistant coach.” All four of the coaches in the college football playoff were assistants under Nick Saban.