Commentary: On Walnut and Kirkwood, Bloomington wrestles with a Minneapolis killing — and a country that won’t agree on what it saw

Staff report

Bloomington, Ind. – January 12, 2026

A large group of protesters returned to the Monroe County Courthouse on Sunday, gathering at the corner of Walnut Street and Kirkwood Avenue to speak out against ICE and to demand accountability for the killing of Renee Nicole Good in Minneapolis.

It’s been the site of multiple protests since Donald Trump took over the United States last year, and began to implement his agenda.

Good, 37, a U.S. citizen and mother of three, was shot and killed by an Immigration and Customs Enforcement officer during a federal immigration operation in south Minneapolis on Jan. 7, 2026.

Federal officials quickly framed the shooting as self-defense, with the Department of Homeland Security alleging Good “weaponized” her vehicle, and Trump administration officials describing the incident as “domestic terrorism.” But multiple videos — including cellphone footage from the ICE officer that was later circulated publicly — fueled immediate skepticism from local and state leaders in Minnesota, who argue the government rushed to a narrative before the evidence was fully reviewed.

In the Reuters account, verified footage shows Good speaking calmly to an officer moments before shots ring out as she attempts to drive away; the recording captures someone muttering “fucking bitch” in the aftermath. Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey has been among the most outspoken critics, disputing the federal account and pressing for a transparent investigation that includes Minnesota authorities — a demand sharpened by reports that federal investigators have limited state access to evidence and witness interviews.

That larger fight over jurisdiction and truth — who investigates, who controls the evidence, who gets to define what the public saw — landed, inevitably, in Bloomington.

On the courthouse steps, anger took its familiar forms: handmade signs, chants, and blunt language aimed at the institutions protesters say use force unconstitutionally, and while thwarting laws that protect all Americans from an oppressive govt. The type of government Americans fought when they began guerrilla war operations against the British King’s Redcoats over 250 years ago.

A passing driver yelled, “Fuck Renee.” Another passerby shouted “ICE ICE baby,” an ugly punchline that briefly drew sarcastic laughter from a couple demonstrators.

One sign singled out ICE. Another broadened the target to policing itself, and read, “Fuck Police.”

Some expressed that perhaps demonstrations like this are useless against what they describe as tyranny — that nothing said on a courthouse corner in southern Indiana can compete with the machinery of federal messaging, federal immunity arguments, and federal control of investigations. That there is no longer any rule of law.

But, people show up anyway, because the alternative is lonely silence in a world of social media, and social isolation, in a country where loneliness is an epidemic, where people talk at each other, but not to each other.

And while a sliver of the Bloomington community was standing in the cold, Washington served up a second reminder of the moment we’re living in: Reuters reported that Friday the Justice Department began probing Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell over cost overruns tied to a Fed building project — a move Powell has described as political pressure connected to President Donald Trump’s demands for steep interest-rate cuts.

Stock markets dropped today as a result of the uncertainty.

Two stories, different stakes — a killing in Minneapolis, a power struggle over monetary policy — but the same underlying question: what happens when the government becomes both narrator and participant, when the institution that wields power is also the institution insisting it deserves the benefit of the doubt?

Meanwhile, the New York Times reported over the weekend, “Trump’s ‘Superstar’ Appellate Judges Have Voted 133 to 12 in His Favor.”

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