Just 17 days after the shooting death of Renée Good, masked Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents in Minneapolis have again shot dead a US citizen, this time 37-year-old Alex Pretti. Again, there's video evidence to contradict official narrative that the victims were acting as domestic terrorists, along with a race to gather evidence before it can be tainted or destroyed, media echo chambers and a US president who watches from on high.

Why these shows of force? Will they discourage dissent or trigger a backlash? Do these hurriedly recruited federal agents armed with military-grade weapons answer to courts and lawmakers, or solely to the US president?

And while passions reach boiling point in specific opposition strongholds, will the rest of the United States continue to go about its business? At what point is the rest of the population affected by the breaking of norms and the pushing of boundaries?

More broadly, has the veneer come off a superpower that claimed a certain exceptionalism in its values; values on which it arguably won the Cold War? What's changed? Is that change permanent?

Produced by François Picard, Rebecca Gnignati, Juliette Laffont, Piera Rocco, Charles Wente.