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What happened in Minneapolis was not an accident. It was not confusion. And it sure as hell was not "domestic terrorism." It was the predictable outcome of a federal law-enforcement apparatus that has been unleashed without restraint, without accountability, and without regard for the people it is sworn to protect, sanctioned by the President of the United States and enabled by an incompetent puppet of a Department of Homeland Security (DHS) secretary.
I don’t say that lightly. I say it as someone who worked inside the White House, inside DHS, inside the national security system—when words like terrorism, threat, and use of force actually meant something. I sat in rooms where those determinations carried life-and-death consequences, and where we were expected to meet a legal and factual threshold before pulling a trigger or deploying power.
What we saw in Minneapolis does not come anywhere close to that threshold.
Labeling this woman’s actions "domestic terrorism" is not just wrong, it is dangerous propaganda. Terrorism has a definition. It involves intent, ideology, and organized violence designed to coerce a population or a government. Blocking a street. Being trapped in a car. Trying to leave a chaotic scene created by a militarized federal operation, none of that meets the standard. Pretending it does is how authorities justify the unjustifiable. And that lie matters.
Because once federal agencies start redefining terrorism to excuse their own behavior, the guardrails are gone. Everything becomes a threat. Everyone becomes a suspect. Every use of force becomes "defensive," no matter what the video shows, no matter what witnesses say, no matter what common sense tells us.
I’ve seen the footage. So have Minnesota’s leaders. And both Governor Tim Walz and Mayor Jacob Frey have been unequivocal: the federal narrative does not match reality. Walz called this "predictable and avoidable." Frey called the self-defense claim what it is: garbage.
They are right.
ICE is no longer operating like a normal law-enforcement agency. It is operating like a federal occupying force. Showing up in armored vehicles, refusing coordination with local authorities, flooding cities with agents, escalating confrontations, and then acting shocked when chaos follows.
This is not how public safety works. This is how trust collapses. And it’s not just civilians who are being put at risk. These tactics endanger local law enforcement as well—officers forced to operate amid chaos they didn’t create, unclear authority, and escalating federal operations imposed on their communities. When federal agents drop into cities unilaterally and escalate encounters, they undermine the very partnerships that keep everyone safer.
As a former White House Homeland Security and Counterterrorism advisor, I warned for years that blurring the line between immigration enforcement and national security would have consequences. This is one of them. When you tell armed federal personnel that they are fighting "terrorists" instead of enforcing civil immigration law, you prime them to see lethal threats everywhere. You lower the bar for pulling the trigger. You create a culture where escalation is expected, not avoided.
And then someone dies.
What makes this even more dangerous is the broader context. DHS announced "the largest operation ever" in Minnesota. 2,000 federal agents [ [link removed] ]dropped into communities already on edge. No transparency. No coordination. No accountability. Just muscle, messaging, and menace. Secretary Kristi Noem’s rush to brand this an act of terrorism before investigations even began tells you everything you need to know about how politicized, and reckless this department has become.
This isn’t about safety. It’s about optics. It’s about provoking confrontation and then using it to justify more force, more fear, more federal overreach.
Here’s another hard truth from someone who has worked these systems from the inside: when federal law enforcement loses the confidence of state leaders, city officials, and the public, you don’t get order, you get instability. You get communities that stop cooperating. You get witnesses who won’t come forward. You get fear replacing legitimacy.
That is a national security problem.
And make no mistake, this behavior doesn’t stay contained. ICE has already acted with impunity toward immigrants; it is now normalizing abuse of power against citizens. When “terrorism” becomes a catch-all excuse, constitutional protections become optional. History shows us exactly where that road leads.
I need people to remember this: I was in the room in the summer of 2020 when Donald Trump talked about shooting people in the streets [ [link removed] ]. That wasn’t bravado. It wasn’t a metaphor. It was a mindset. One that treated public dissent as something to be crushed with force. Today, ICE is operating in that same mindset. Armed federal agents are escalating encounters in American cities, pulling triggers first and justifying later. What was once said out loud behind closed doors is now being carried out in public, with government authority as cover. That should alarm every American, because when leadership signals that lethal force is acceptable against civilians, agencies absorb it. And people die.
This woman should be alive today. Her death was foreseeable. And it sits squarely at the feet of leadership that chose escalation over restraint, propaganda over truth, and power over responsibility.
Her name was Renee Nicole Macklin Good [ [link removed] ]. She was a mother. She was shot in the head and killed by a federal law enforcement officer. There is no justification for this. There is no explaining it away.
So let me be explicit about what must happen now.
This cannot be treated as a passing moment. This cannot be allowed to slide off the front page once the next crisis hits. That is how accountability dies—quietly, incrementally, on cue.
Because if this stands, if a woman can be killed by a federal agent in broad daylight, in her car, in an American city, and the country simply moves on, then this will not be the last time. There will be more of these incidents. More confrontations. More escalation. More innocent people caught in the crosshairs of an ICE operation that has lost all restraint.
That is not speculation. That is pattern recognition.
We are watching an agency operate with expanded authority and political cover, redefining “terrorism” to justify force after the fact. When that combination exists, the outcome is predictable. Legitimacy erodes. Violence begets more violence.
So no, this does not get a pass. This does not get buried. And this cannot get normalized.
And one more thing must be said plainly: protest matters, but it must be peaceful. Do not give this administration what it wants. They are eager to exploit the First Amendment as a pretext for more force, more federal overreach, more crackdowns in American cities. This circle of people has been waiting for an excuse. Chaos is not a byproduct to them; it’s a strategy. Show up. Be visible. Be relentless. But do not hand them the justification they are looking for.
This must stay in the headlines. The footage must keep airing. The lies must keep being challenged. The investigations must be real, public, and relentless to make clear that federal power does not operate above the law.
If we allow this moment to fade, the next tragedy won’t shock anyone. And that should terrify all of us.
See you out there,
Olivia

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