U.S. President Donald Trump wearing a "happy Trump" pin speaks during a meeting with oil industry executives at the White House in Washington, D.C., U.S., January 9, 2026. REUTERS/Kevin Lamarque
After Minneapolis, Minnesota resident Renee Good — a widow and mother of three — was shot and killed by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agent Jonathan Ross, President Donald Trump's administration has been maligning her as a "domestic terrorist" whose death was "of her own making." One expert insists that rhetoric is intentional.
In a Saturday essay for MS NOW, opinion editor Jarvis DeBerry observed that figures in President Donald Trump's administration have been attempting "to immediately dehumanize Good in the wake of her killing." He argued that their attacks on the slain 37 year-old U.S. citizen "is just another sign of how authoritarian this government is becoming."
DeBerry interviewed author Ashley Howard, who wrote the book "Midwest Unrest: 1960s Urban Rebellions and the Black Freedom Movement." She remarked that the Trump administration's descriptions of American protesters as "rioters" is done strategically to justify ICE's heavy-handed tactics in various U.S. cities.
"It would be comically absurd if it wasn’t so terrifying," Howard said. "People who can use force with impunity need to justify the use of that force, and so they must portray these people, regardless of how they’re engaging, as violent, as rioters."
"They have a vested interest in suppressing this type of protest," she continued, "and so they need to drum up this idea that they are in imminent danger and that the people who are out in the streets pose an immediate and violent threat."
Howard pointed to a federal law from the 1960s that defines a "riot" as no more than three people acting in concert, and argued this made it exceptionally easy for the administration to paint virtually any protest as a "riot" that must be stamped out.
"[T]hat can be a group of high school students tipping over a trash can. That can be people out in the street blocking a car," she said. "They can use that designation of ‘riot’ or ‘riots’ as they see fit. And that’s what makes it so dangerous."
Click here to read DeBerry's full column in MS NOW.