The Free Press

It’s Monday, January 12. This is The Front Page, your daily window into the world of The Free Press—and our take on the world at large. Today: Olivia Reingold, Jed Rubenfeld, Dave Kansas, and Elliot Ackerman on the fallout from the ICE shooting in Minneapolis.

But first: A world on fire.

This year is off to a tumultuous start. Just over a week ago, Donald Trump woke everyone from their holiday slumber with the dramatic raid to capture Venezuelan dictator Nicolás Maduro, who now sits in a cell in New York City.

In recent days, protests in Tehran that began two weeks ago have escalated considerably—and been met with a brutal response from the Ayatollah’s regime. Iranian authorities have shut down the internet—and opened fire on their own people. More than 2,000 protesters have reportedly been killed in the last three days.

Meanwhile, Russia has stepped up its strikes on Ukraine, bombarding Kyiv apartment buildings and firing a new hypersonic missile deep into Western Ukraine last week.

What’s not yet clear, though, is how consequential all this will prove to be. Will Maduro’s ouster prove to be the end of that regime—or just a changing of the guard? Could the Ayatollah’s time really be up? And, what, if anything, will end the war in Ukraine?

These are the questions on our minds at the start of this week—and the ones our stories today, in one way or another, seek to address.

We start with Iran. Over the last 72 hours we’ve published must-read analysis of the situation by Roya Hakakian, Michael Doran, and Simon Sebag Montefiore. All of them assess whether these protests are different from the last attempts to oust the regime in Tehran. If you missed their pieces, read them here:

Eli Lake homes in on a more specific question: Will Donald Trump keep his promise to the Iranian people? The U.S. president has pledged that he would attack the regime if it started killing protesters. There is no doubt that is now happening and so, Eli argues, it’s time for Trump to take action. This, says Eli, is a “hinge point in Trump’s presidency.” Read his column:

For the latest news out of Iran, tune in to our livestream at noon ET today. As President Trump weighs his options, Rafaela Siewert will be talking to Michael Doran, Roya Hakakian, and Behnam Ben Taleblu. Tune in here.

From Tehran to Caracas, where, a little over a week after U.S. forces captured Maduro, things are remarkably normal. Writing for The Free Press today, Elliott Abrams, who served as Special Representative for Venezuela from 2019 to 2021, argues that “the regime is functioning internally exactly as it would have had Maduro been removed by a heart attack, and it is making the smallest concessions to Washington that it can.”

If Trump thinks this is the way to put Venezuela on a path to democracy, stability, and prosperity, he is sorely mistaken, says Elliott. And it leaves him wondering: Does the administration have a plan?

Trump’s main focus since the Maduro raid has been on Venezuela’s oil. On Friday, he gathered top oil CEOs at the White House to discuss investing in—and extracting black gold from—Venezuela. Most people are chilly on the immediate prospects for oil production in the country. We asked longtime Venezuela correspondent William Neuman to investigate. Here’s what he found:

Meanwhile, life for ordinary Venezuelans—especially those who dare criticize the regime—is as tough as ever. For a sense of the situation on the ground, read this anonymous account of the crackdown that followed Maduro’s capture:

For more on the Venezuelans resisting the Chavistas in power, tune in to the latest episode of Conversations with Coleman. Coleman talks to Venezuelan human rights leader Thor Halvorssen about the high stakes and uncertain transition now underway in his country. Listen below or wherever you get your podcasts:

The last stop in this tour of the world’s flashpoints is Kyiv. Aidan Stretch reports from the Ukrainian capital, half of which is without heat after the latest Russian barrage. Aidan writes of the damage wrought by the strikes, and describes their grim logic—to break Ukrainian resolve in the middle of the winter, and at a crucial stage in peace talks. Aidan investigates whether that strategy is working:

For all the international tumult of recent days, U.S. politics has been dominated by a singular incident: the killing of Renee Good by an ICE officer in Minneapolis. Soon after video of the shooting was released, we sent Free Press reporter Olivia Reingold to the Twin Cities. She returned with a dispatch from ground zero in the most contentious fight in the country right now: a battle over immigration, law enforcement, and deportations being fought on the streets of Minneapolis. Olivia talks to agents, activists, Good’s neighbor, and ordinary Minnesotans—all of them caught up in the biggest operation in ICE’s history. Read her story:

It feels like the whole country has seen the video of the fatal shooting, with people drawing very different conclusions about what it is they are watching. But what does the law say? We asked our legal columnist, Jed Rubenfeld, to weigh in:

Elliot Ackerman pushes back against one notion that has emerged in the wake of Good’s death: that Jonathan Ross, the ICE agent who shot her, was justified in his decision to use lethal force because of an incident last year where he was dragged by a vehicle. Read his full argument on why trauma is no defense:

And finally, Minnesota native Dave Kansas tackles a question on the minds of many locals: How are we, yet again, at the center of things? It started with George Floyd, then the massive Covid-era fraud that returned to the headlines last year, the assassination of state lawmaker Melissa Hortman and her husband, the shooting at Annunciation Church, and now Good’s death. Why, Dave asks, does his home state keep making international news?

• U.S. prosecutors are investigating Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell over his testimony last year regarding the central bank’s renovation project. Powell said the Justice Department had sent grand jury subpoenas in a statement on Sunday night. “This is about whether the Fed will be able to continue to set interest rates based on evidence and economic conditions—or whether instead monetary policy will be directed by political pressure or intimidation,” said Powell.

• The U.S. carried out large-scale air strikes on ISIS targets in Syria on Saturday, in response to the killing of two U.S. soldiers and one civilian interpreter by an ISIS gunman. Hundreds of American troops remain in Syria as part of a long-standing mission to combat ISIS.

• President Trump called for a one-year 10 percent cap on credit card interest rates, starting January 20. Current interest rates average over 20 percent, and supporters of the move say it will reduce credit card debt. Banks and issuers say it would reduce credit availability for riskier borrowers.

• The National Portrait Gallery swapped out a portrait and removed text that mentioned President Trump’s two impeachments and the January 6, 2021 insurrection. Last year, the White House included the caption in a list of examples of how the gallery director at the time was “highly partisan.”

• The Senate Appropriations Committee released a bipartisan package of funding bills that largely scraps cuts for scientific research President Trump called for last year. The president had proposed a 22 percent cut from $198 billion to $154 billion, but Congress’s current proposal includes only a 4 percent cut.

• New data shows that from January to November last year, about 335,000 federal workers left the government, representing about a 10 percent net reduction in the non-postal federal workforce. The vast majority quit or retired, while only about 11,000 were formally laid off.

• A suspect was arrested after Mississippi’s largest synagogue was damaged by arson early on Saturday. Founded in 1860, the congregation is the first in the state and was bombed by the Ku Klux Klan in 1967.

• Bob Weir, guitarist and founding member of the Grateful Dead rock band, has died at 78. Weir kept the band’s legacy alive for the last three decades as one of the few core members left, and he was responsible for many of the band’s most enduring hits, including “Sugar Magnolia,” “One More Saturday Night,” and “Truckin’. ”

• At the Golden Globe Awards last night, Timothée Chalamet won Best Actor in a Motion Picture—Musical or Comedy for his role in Marty Supreme, and KPop Demon Hunters won Best Animated Motion Picture and Best Song. Hamnet won Best Motion Picture—Drama.

The capture of Venezuelan president Nicolás Maduro opened a rare moment of hope for a people long trapped under a regime that turned what was once South America’s richest country into a failed state. But while the despot is gone, the criminal enterprise that ruled through him remains firmly embedded in the country’s military, intelligence services, and …

MINNEAPOLIS — James said Renee Good, his neighbor, went out the way she lived: taking care of others.

“She was always checking up on everybody, making sure everybody was okay. That’s literally what she was doing that day,” said James, 38. “She was telling her family, ‘Hey, heads up—ICE is down the road.’ ”

Last Wednesday morning, he heard gunshots outside his bedroom window on Portland Avenue in South Minneapolis. Scared, he waited five minutes before running out to find Good’s wife, Rebecca Good, sitting in the snow, screaming.

Rebecca, 40, had “brain matter and blood dripping all over her,” said James. “I went upstairs to get her a towel, and by the time I came back, she was gone.”

Videos show Good blocking traffic in a maroon SUV. Three ICE agents swarm her car. Through her open window, Good looks at one of the agents, Jonathan Ross, 43. “I’m not mad at you dude,” she tells him. Rebecca, who is wearing a whistle around her neck then asks Ross: “You want to come at us?” As Good maneuvers the car—either to flee or to run the agent over, depending on which narrative you believe—Ross fires three times. Good, a 37-year-old mother of three, was later pronounced dead at a local hospital.

The fatal shooting of Renee Good by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) officer Jonathan Ross has rekindled a debate about the use of force in law enforcement. Or perhaps debate is too strong a word—rather, the incident has again polarized the nation, confirming us in our existing beliefs.

The Babylon Bee put it best: “Video of the incident has definitively proven whatever you already wanted to believe about the incident.”

Even though we see what we want to see in that video, it is worth pushing back on one notion that has emerged: that Ross was justified in his decision to use lethal force against Good because of an incident last year where he was dragged by a vehicle.

That incident occurred in Bloomington, Minnesota, a suburb of Minneapolis. According to court records, Ross and other ICE agents had pulled over a man named Roberto Carlos Muñoz, who had been convicted of sexual abuse in Minnesota. Muñoz refused to lower the driver’s side window when Ross asked him to, and Ross then unholstered his Taser and broke the window in an attempt to unlock the door. Muñoz accelerated, dragging Ross for nearly 100 yards. Ross later needed 33 stitches between his forearm and hand, and Muñoz was eventually arrested and convicted in December of assaulting a federal officer with a dangerous or deadly weapon, resulting in injury.

Welcome to the center of the universe. Of course, I mean Minneapolis—or more expansively, Minnesota.

It has felt like that, once again, ever since Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agent Jonathan Ross fatally shot Renee Nicole Good last Wednesday morning. The news and reactions to it immediately went global. None of the videos have changed many minds. Protests that broke out often invoked George Floyd, also killed in Minneapolis, just blocks away.

Just two days before Good was shot, Minnesota governor Tim Walz, beset by a burgeoning fraud scandal, announced that he would no longer seek a third term. Not so long ago, Walz was seen as vice presidential, at least to the Democratic Party.

After the shooting, Minneapolis mayor Jacob Frey said ICE should “get the fuck out” of Minneapolis. Walz had mobilized the National Guard but did not put them into operation. It was a head-scratcher. Would the National Guard be used to stem public unrest, fueled by the governor’s most passionate supporters? It seemed even less likely that he would point the National Guard at ICE.

In a building in downtown Kyiv hit by yet another Russian barrage on Friday, a group of teen volunteers ferried supplies from the courtyard to board up windows and patch walls destroyed by a drone attack. A dental clinic on the first floor was hastily trying to clear debris and patch holes before it became too cold to reopen. Like half of Kyiv, the building had no heat even as temperatures dropped below 14 degrees Fahrenheit. In the parking lot, a Mini Cooper stood scorched and windowless.

Russian air strikes tend to intensify after productive summits between Ukraine and its foreign partners. As its missiles fell on Ukraine, Moscow sent signals both to Ukrainian and international audiences. For Ukrainians, the Friday attack on Kyiv, with 242 drones and 36 missiles that killed four and injured 25 others, was just the latest effort at intimidation that Ukrainians have come to expect from Moscow. For the rest of the world, the attack, which included a strike by a nuclear-capable missile right by Ukraine’s border with Poland, was a reminder of the Kremlin’s ability to threaten NATO’s borders with weapons that Western air defenses struggle to intercept.

From the viewpoint of Ukraine’s allies, the biggest shadow that hangs over the Ukraine war is the threat of escalation to nuclear weapons. The Oreshnik hypersonic missile that Russia launched into Western Ukraine’s Lviv region—only its second use in the war—was not armed with a nuclear warhead, but the message that it could be in the future was unmistakable. President Joe Biden consistently slow-walked weapons to Kyiv for fear of nuclear escalation, according to former administration officials. Now, with Ukraine-Russia negotiations deadlocked and U.S. sanctions on Russia tightening, Moscow is resorting to blunt warnings. Years of successful nuclear saber-rattling now seem to invite more of it.

Ever since the mass demonstrations began in Iran two weeks ago, President Donald Trump has offered more than just moral support. He has promised to attack the regime if it started killing protesters. It’s now time for Trump to make good on his promise.

On January 8, Iran’s regime shut down the internet and has used the occasion to turn the streets of its cities into abattoirs. According to Iran International, a London-based news outlet, an estimated 2,000 protesters have been slain in the past three days by the regime’s security forces. Precise figures are nearly impossible to obtain because of the digital blackout. But Iran International has obtained videos from hospitals that show mounting corpses from the shooting of citizens in the streets.

The good news is that Trump’s advisers are briefing him on military and cyber options to respond. The Wall Street Journal reported on Sunday that Trump will meet Tuesday with senior administration officials to discuss possible actions against Iran. The bad news is that the situation in Iran is getting dire and it’s unclear how much longer Iran’s people can be expected to march in the streets now that the Basij militia, Revolutionary Guard Corps, and regular army apparently have orders to use lethal force against them.

A week after the spectacular raid that captured Nicolás Maduro, little else has changed in Caracas and the action is in Washington.

In Caracas, the regime remains fully in charge. While there are concessions—some real, some merely rhetorical—for the Americans, none of them compromise the plenary power of the gang that has ruled under Chávez and Maduro. The ministers of defense and interior, both indicted drug traffickers, remain in place. Delcy Rodríguez was sworn in as interim president by her brother Jorge, who heads the National Assembly. Chavista gangs are still used to prevent or punish demonstrations. As of Saturday, just 16 of the country’s 800 political prisoners had been released.

In other words, the regime is functioning internally exactly as it would have had Maduro been removed by a heart attack, and it is making the smallest concessions to Washington that it can.

Happily for the gang running the country, the American demands thus far revolve around oil and foreign interference rather than an opening in the political system. The gringos want control of the oil, but may accept the “Chevron Model” for that sector. Chevron now runs its own operations in Venezuela with limited regime interference and pays the regime in oil to cover taxes and fees. The regime sells that oil on the black market (due to U.S. sanctions) for the money it needs to keep the economy afloat and stay in power.

A few years ago, touring Venezuela’s oil belt, I saw ruins. Outside El Tigre, once Venezuela’s booming oil center, a group of storage tanks stood in a sea of crude because no one had bothered to stop up the leaks. Thieves would break into oil field installations and strip the copper wire from electrical components or the engines that drove the oil pumps, in order to sell it for scrap. Hyperinflation and devaluation had made the currency and once substantial oil worker salaries worthless. Company vehicles were broken down and employees had to hire taxis to get to far-flung worksites.

For Venezuela’s oil fields, 2018 and the years just after were rock-bottom, and not helped by Nicolás Maduro’s putting a know-nothing general in charge of PDVSA, the state oil company. Last week I spoke by phone with oil workers in the area, and they told me that conditions have improved—albeit from a very low level, and they remain far from optimal. PDVSA has resumed investing in the area since the pandemic, as China has provided an outlet for sanctions-evading oil shipments.

Workers told me that they drive into the field in new Toyota Hilux pickup trucks. National Guard patrols make rounds of the oil fields to keep out thieves and offer protection to the workers. Salaries, now tied to the dollar, have recuperated some of their value, although many, if not most, workers do odd jobs or have outside employment to make ends meet. Production in some parts of the zone had increased to double or triple what it was in 2018, according to the workers I spoke with, though the total Venezuela is shipping is still less than a third of its 1990s high.

In the aftermath of the U.S. military operation in Caracas that led to the capture of Nicolás Maduro, Venezuelans abroad openly celebrated the fall of a dictator who had cast a shadow over their country for more than a decade. But inside Venezuela, the response was starkly different. Public celebration was swiftly outlawed, movement restricted, and fear reasserted. The Free Press spoke with one Venezuelan, who requested anonymity due to the risk of reprisal, about what life looks like in the country right now—and what, despite it all, he hopes will come next. —Tanya Lukyanova

Last Saturday, in the early hours, I woke up to the sound of unseen helicopters and large explosions. It was alarming but not surprising. We were expecting something like this to happen eventually. We just didn’t know when it would come.

When Venezuelans got the news about the operation, many of us were excited about the prospect of a Venezuela without Nicolás Maduro. But we are a people who have been through many cycles of political unrest, and the first instinct for many is to prepare for the worst.

On January 3, most supermarkets were already closed. A majority of people were still enjoying the Christmas break, which in a normal year runs until the second week of January. The few stores that were open were packed with people panic-buying essentials, afraid of what might come next.

As it became clear that Maduro was in U.S. custody, some did attempt to celebrate. But as soon as the first few started going out, the authorities cracked down on them using powers given by the state of emergency that was declared on January 3.