The New Normal: An American reacts to the murder of Renee Nicole Macklin Good

Meredith ap Robert

Separated by five years and a day, the events of January 6, 2021 and January 7, 2026 will remain stamped in the memories of Americans for a generation.

The first, when we realised that a peaceful transition of power is no longer a given following the attempted insurrection at the US capitol. The second, when the full danger of Trump’s gang of government-backed vigilantes became apparent as they turned their weapons on an American citizen: a woman with no criminal record, a writer, a mother.

After a year of Donald Trump’s second term in office, ICE’s murder of Renee Nicole Macklin Good was as predictable as it was tragic.

Instead of taking the opportunity to tone down the rhetoric and appeal to our common humanity, her murder is being followed by Big Brother’s insistence that this 37-year-old poet was part of some vast left-wing terrorist network—a vague, but compelling threat for the four in ten Americans who remain part of this cult.

JD Vance pinned the blame on Good, lamenting that the real tragedy was that she had become a “brainwashed victim of a left-wing ideology.”

'No More Bullshit?'

The latest in a series of astounding new lows for the United States, even by Donald Trump’s own standards, I was none-the-less amazed by how normal everything seemed when I visited this past summer.

My family lives in a medium-sized city in Michigan, a haven of Democratic support in a state that swings back-and-forth between parties every couple years.

I considered joining a protest while I was home—I had seen photos from friends at earlier No Kings rallies—but I couldn’t find any events nearby.

I had expected Harris signs to dot the city in protest, the way Bernie and Hillary signs stayed out long after Trump’s first inauguration, but Trump signs far outnumbered them, ringing in the city like a wall. More than one contained what is, to me, the most confusing of slogans for an administration that thrives on chaos: No more bullshit.

No more bullshit? What has this past year been?

Here’s a quick list off the top of my head: the detention and deportation of graduate students for peacefully supporting Palestine; a cottage industry built around idol worship of Charlie Kirk while the assassination of a Minnesota lawmaker, Melissa Hortman, has been all but forgotten; the arrest and 37-day detention of a Tennessee man for quoting Donald Trump’s own words in reference to Kirk; endless threats against—oh, let’s see—Argentina, Canada, Colombia, Greenland, Panama, Ukraine, Venezuela, elected Democratic officials, universities, and judges; the murders of Venezuelan fishermen; an economic trade war; the peddling of Trump-branded Bitcoin; the longest government shut-down in history; proposing a sort of American-run riviera theme park on the site of a genocide; cuts from DOGE (Department of Government Efficiency) that haven’t resulted in either efficiency or savings; the deployment of the National Guard to Democratic-controlled cities; and endless redactions and delays on the Epstein files.

Despite the veneer of normalcy on my visit to the United States, there was one oddity tucked, right in plain sight. One day, when I logged onto LinkedIn, I saw an advertisement for ICE, offering $50,000 sign-on bonuses—an astounding number that, on its own, is roughly equivalent to a reasonably middle-class income.

We knew this was coming. The most recent budget included a $170 billion for ICE, increasing the agency’s annual operating budget to $27.7 billion—funding equivalent to what Canada or Türkiye spend on the entirety of their militaries in a year.

And during the shutdown in October and November, Trump promised to keep paying ICE agents even while letting hundreds of thousands of other government workers suffer.

The New Normal

Following the January 6 insurrection, something incredibly rare happened to Donald Trump: he faced consequences for his actions. Not only had Americans decisively voted him out of office, but social media companies like Facebook and Twitter also blocked his access to their platforms.

Some of his remaining cronies even had the decency to resign. Pundits promised us that, with Trump out of the news and our social media feeds, we would be free of him and this would fade from memory.

We all know how that turned out.

Understandably, many Americans are counting on (gestures vaguely) all of this being over at the next presidential cycle. I’m not so sure. Yes, Donald Trump is constitutionally prevented from running for a third term and, even if he were inclined to attempt it, he would be well into his 80s.

But even if Trump goes away quietly, if such a thing is even possible, he has radically reshaped American politics in a lasting way.

If a Democrat wins in 2028 (which seems far from certain), will they have the courage and moral vision to lead America back from this? Will they be willing to stand up to ICE?

Americans are a fickle people. Despite ranking as a top issue in the 2024 election, most folks now think that the United States is too tough on immigration. Anyone who tries to peel back funding from ICE will be seen as weak on crime and a push-over on immigration.

This morning, we woke to the news that border patrol agents shot two people in Portland, Oregon. The Department of Homeland Security’s statement on the matter so far echoes their accusations against Good, insisting that the people involved tried to run the agents over.

As of Friday morning, the details of what happened aren’t yet clear. Unfortunately, Keith Wilson, the mayor of Portland, doesn’t sound like a conspiracy theorist when he says: “We know what the federal government says happened here. There was a time when we could take them at their word. That time is long past.”

Since Donald Trump’s first election in 2016, phases like “This is not who we are” or “This is not normal” have gotten tossed around a lot by exasperated Americans who are fed up with the Trump administration’s cruelty and chaos.

Unfortunately, the more we have to say it, the less truth it holds.