Month: January 2026

SURVIVAL IS NOT A THEORY

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IT IS A FACT OF EVERYDAY LIFE

Survival is not a theory (Rev Jen Raffensperger- Unitarian Universalist Church of Roanoke). It is not an abstract concept relegated to think-tank reports or academic debates. It is lived in real time by mothers dropping their kids off at school, by workers juggling multiple jobs to pay rent, and by communities watching federal agents descend into their streets with overwhelming force. In Minneapolis this winter, this basic truth was laid bare with tragic clarity.


When an Immigration and Customs Enforcement agent fatally shot 37-year-old Renée Good during a federal enforcement operation in Minneapolis on January 7, the incident sent shock waves through the city. Good, a U.S. citizen and mother of three, was killed near Portland Avenue South amid a surge of federal agents deployed to carry out immigration actions—part of a larger campaign known locally as “Operation Metro Surge.”


Local leaders and civil rights advocates have raised alarm over the heavy-handed approach. Video and eyewitness accounts contradicted initial federal claims that Good posed an imminent threat, with many describing her as trying to move away from agents when she was shot multiple times. Protests erupted, challenging not just the specific use of force, but the broader role of ICE in communities already burdened by economic insecurity and racial inequity.


This tragedy in Minneapolis illustrates a painful reality: enforcement policies that treat immigration, poverty, and policing as separate challenges ultimately compound trauma for the more vulnerable populations. In neighborhoods where wages lag behind the cost of living and opportunities are scarce, survival is not something people theorize about—it’s something they struggle for every day. Yet when federal and local authorities respond to desperation and informal economies with tactical deployments and steel-toed enforcement, they risk turning survival itself into a criminal act.

ICE’s increased presence in Minneapolis did not happen in a vacuum. Advocates have criticized tactics ranging from expansive surge deployments to controversial detentions of children and parents, raising fears that enforcement has become punitive rather than protective. Another American was killed in Minneapolis, Alex Pretti. ICE agents shot him after wrestling him to the ground.


Policing poverty with force only deepens mistrust. When federal agents operate alongside local police without clear oversight or accountability, the message is chilling: struggle for survival at your own risk. Families scrambling to make ends meet see school attendance drop amid fear of raids. Community members hesitate to seek help, fearful that any interaction with law enforcement could escalate into something worse. And when incidents like Good’s and Pretti’s killing occur, local authorities and residents are left demanding transparency while federal agencies retreat behind outright lies and claims of immunity and jurisdiction.


Survival cannot be secured through deterrence or deterrence by force. Treating migration and poverty as problems to be policed rather than conditions to be addressed only shifts the burden onto people least equipped to bear it. Minneapolis—still scarred by past trauma and divisions—now grapples with the consequences of a system that has chosen militarized enforcement over humane policy.


What Minneapolis needs—and what every community struggling under poverty and immigration stress deserves—is investment in human infrastructure: housing, livable wages, healthcare, schools, and legal pathways that respect dignity. It means disentangling community safety from punitive policing models and rejecting the notion that survival must be negotiated through fear. Courageous cities and countries that have tackled poverty with social programs rather than handcuffs have seen crime and instability decrease, not increase.


Survival is not a theory. It is the most basic affirmation of human dignity. Any society that treats it as optional or negotiable, that responds to hardship with militarized force, has already failed the people it professes to serve. Our response to tragedy—whether in Minneapolis or communities nationwide—must be rooted in justice, accountability, and a recognition that people’s lives are not collateral in a political strategy.


T. Michael Smith
wwwtmichaelsmith.com

ICE Is A Threat To The American Way

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Reform or Abolition Is the Only Path to Preserving Our Democracy

In a healthy democracy, law enforcement exists to serve the public, protect rights, and operate under clear constraints. Immigration and Customs Enforcement—ICE—fails that test. While often defended as a necessary tool of sovereignty and rule of law, ICE as it currently operates undermines core democratic principles: due process, accountability, equal protection, and civilian trust in government.

This is not an argument against immigration law itself. Democracies have the right to regulate borders. But how those laws are enforced matters. ICE has evolved into an agency defined less by lawful administration than by deterrence through fear and violence—and that is fundamentally incompatible with democratic governance.

ICE was created in the aftermath of 9/11, folded into the new Department of Homeland Security during a moment of national trauma. That origin story matters. ICE inherited the logic of emergency powers: expansive discretion, secrecy, and an assumption that certain populations posed inherent threats. Two decades later, those assumptions remain embedded in the agency’s culture, even as the national emergency has long passed.

A Politicized Enforcer: Kristi Noem and ICE

Under the current administration, led by President Trump and Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem, ICE has become even more politicized and aggressive. Noem has publicly defended immigration enforcement actions that resulted in the fatal shooting of a U.S. citizen, framing the incident as justified and even characterizing it in militarized terms without independent investigation. Her department’s posture has shifted toward confronting domestic critics and expanding federal law enforcement deployments in cities like Minneapolis in the face of protests. This combative stance erodes public trust and signals that ICE’s neutral enforcement of law is but a tool of political theater and coercion, weaponized against dissent. The Trump administration is trying hard to project dictatorial strength and power, but the narrative is slipping away from it.

The Human Cost: Remembering Renee Good

The danger of ICE’s current posture is not abstract. On January 7, 2026, an ICE agent in Minneapolis shot and killed Renee Nicole Good, a 37-year-old mother of three, poet, and U.S. citizen, during an enforcement operation. Good was not being arrested or charged with any criminal offense at the time; video and eyewitness accounts indicate she was driving away when an ICE agent opened fire. This killing has sparked national outrage, widespread protests, and calls for independent investigation and accountability from lawmakers, local officials, and civil rights advocates. Good’s family has urged empathy and justice, emphasizing her role as a devoted mother and community member. In the wake of Good’s murder, the administration sent more agents to Minnesota in what appears to be an attempt to gin up protests that change the subject from Good’s murder and appear to justify ICE’s violence.

Her death is a stark reminder that enforcement without accountability can cost innocent lives—and destroy families. It raises urgent questions about the use of force by a domestic agency that should be focused on lawful, proportionate action, not militarized confrontation. Adding flame to the fire, President Donald J. Trump, Vice President J.D. Vance, and Secretary of Homeland Security Kristi Noem all defended her killing by calling Renee Good and her wife “domestic terrorists.”

ICE Undermines Democracy, Does Not Uphold It

Democracy depends on due process. Yet ICE operates in a legal system where civil detention can mean prolonged confinement without the full protection guaranteed in criminal court. People can be detained far from home, denied meaningful access to counsel, and deported through fast-track proceedings that prioritize speed over fairness. Legal residents, asylum seekers, and long-term community members are routinely swept into this system. When liberty can be taken without full constitutional safeguards, democracy is already in retreat.

ICE’s defenders often invoke public safety, but this claim collapses under scrutiny. The majority of ICE arrests are not of violent criminals but of people whose primary offense is a civil immigration violation. Meanwhile, evidence consistently shows that immigrant communities—documented or not—commit crimes at lower rates than native-born citizens. The agency’s most visible actions—workplace raids, courthouse arrests, and neighborhood sweeps—do not make communities safer. They make them quieter, more fearful, and less likely to cooperate with police or civic institutions.

Even more troubling is how easily ICE becomes a political instrument. Enforcement priorities swing wildly from one administration to the next, not because the law changes, but because presidential rhetoric does. This volatility reveals a deeper problem: ICE possesses enormous discretionary power with weak democratic oversight. In practice, that discretion allows immigration enforcement to be weaponized for political signaling—who belongs, who is suspect, who should be afraid.

Reform or Abolition: A Democratic Imperative

The public must confront a crucial question: Can ICE be reformed, or must it be abolished and replaced? Meaningful reform would require stripping the agency of its broad enforcement and detention authority, separating civil immigration administration from criminal investigation, and placing every enforcement action under clear judicial oversight. It would mandate full transparency and independent civilian review of uses of force, along with strict limits on civil detention and guaranteed legal representation in immigration proceedings.

But reform risks being superficial if the underlying culture of impunity remains. Abolition advocates argue that the functions ICE now performs—immigration processing, asylum adjudication, workplace compliance—should be transferred to civil, non-coercive agencies that operate with strict adherence to rights protections. Criminal investigations should remain with law enforcement agencies that are accountable, trained, and constrained by constitutional norms.

A democracy that enforces unjust systems unjustly erodes the legitimacy of law itself. Rule of law is not measured by how harshly a government can punish, but by how faithfully it protects rights while administering policy.

ICE, as it exists today, does not strengthen American democracy. It corrodes it. And until the United States is willing to reckon with that truth—through reform or abolition—tragedies like the killing of Renee Good will continue, and with them, the weakening of democratic ideals we claim to uphold.

T. Michael Smith

wwwtmichaelsmith.com

A DIVERSIONARY WAR

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You Can’t Bomb Your Way Out of Rent: What Really Forces Leaders Back to Domestic Reform

When domestic problems pile up—rising costs, broken institutions, political paralysis—leaders have a familiar escape hatch: look outward. Foreign crises, military posturing, and talk of national security can temporarily drown out questions about wages, housing, healthcare, and democratic accountability. History shows this tactic works just long enough to be tempting—and just long enough to do real damage.

The harder question isn’t why leaders distract. It’s what actually forces them back to governing at home. The answer is uncomfortable for those in power and clarifying for everyone else: leaders return to domestic reform only when avoidance becomes more costly than change.

That pressure does not come from speeches or slogans. It comes from forces that, when activated together, are impossible to ignore—starting with economic reality and electoral accountability.

Domestic economic pain—higher rents, stagnant wages, debt burdens—cannot be spun away. Foreign policy adventures are expensive, and even when wrapped in patriotic language, they rarely deliver quick relief for ordinary people. Eventually, budgets strain, infrastructure decays, and voters notice that the money spent abroad could have fixed things at home.

Elections also matter when they genuinely determine political fate. Voters may rally around flags and crises for a short time, but they care more about grocery bills and job stability. When people believe leadership can change and that their vote counts, domestic issues reassert themselves.

Nowhere is this dynamic clearer than in the Trump administration’s recent actions in Venezuela. The U.S. military operation that captured President Nicolás Maduro in early January, framed as a strike against narco-terrorism, seized global attention and deeply divided Americans along partisan lines. Many Republicans cheered the move as a bold assertion of U.S. strength; many Democrats and independents condemned it as an illegal intervention that bypassed Congress and violated international norms. Early polling shows a stark split: roughly two-thirds of Republicans support the action, while only about one in seven Democrats do—and most Americans believe Congress should have been consulted first.

Critics on both the left and right have accused the White House of using Venezuela as a diversionary tactic—a way to shift public attention away from deep economic anxieties, congressional dysfunction, corruption scandals, and domestic policy failures. Comparisons have been made to historic cases where foreign policy was used to try to deflect from internal problems, with strategists explicitly suggesting that dramatic military moves can serve as a political smoke screen.

Oil makes diversion more effective because it affects everyone’s life. Oil is uniquely useful in this context. Gas prices, heating costs, and inflation are immediately felt by voters. Linking a foreign action to the diversion gives leaders a concrete justification that resonates more than abstract ideology.

The timing and presentation of the Venezuela operation fit a pattern seen in U.S. politics before: rally support with talk of national security, justify extraordinary action with moral language, and hope that media cycles focus on external enemies more than internal failures. When oil reserves—like Venezuela’s vast fields, which are now at the center of strategy and controversy—enter the mix, foreign policy gains an economic gloss that resonates with some voters even as it distracts from domestic debates about inflation and labor conditions.

 The diversion never lasts. What forces leaders back to domestic reform—economic pain that cannot be ignored, elections that matter, elite repudiation, institutional resistance, and public exhaustion—cannot be sidestepped by spectacle alone. People don’t want permanent resistance; they want competence and stability. Housing, healthcare, and wages become paramount. When voters connect foreign spending to domestic neglect, reform becomes unavoidable—or leadership changes.

Elite defection is decisive when it happens: when business leaders, military professionals, and bureaucratic insiders quietly conclude that diversion costs more than accountability. Institutions like courts and legislatures don’t need to “win”—they only need to slow, expose, and delay. Public exhaustion matters too; permanent crisis politics collapses once citizens demand competence over chaos. Oil companies recognize the distractive nature of this action and are not willing to participate at this point.

What doesn’t work alone are moral outrage, hashtags on X, or viral moments. These fade unless they are connected to material consequences and institutional leverage. But the murder of an American citizen by an ICE agent could be that material consequence. Renee Nicole Good, a 37-year-old U.S. citizen and mother of three, was fatally shot by a U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agent Jonathan Ross during a federal immigration enforcement operation in south Minneapolis.  The incident has sparked widespread protests and political debate across the U.S., with thousands demonstrating against ICE’s presence and tactics, and lawmakers calling for independent investigations and greater accountability.

The uncomfortable truth is that domestic reform happens not because leaders “see the light,” but because: the cost of not reforming becomes higher than the cost of trying another diversion. Democracy survives when citizens, institutions, and economic realities make avoidance a non-starter. Change arrives because the country insists on it—and makes every other option impossible.

You can’t bomb your way out of rent or partisan dysfunction. You can’t sanction your way to affordable healthcare. And you can’t distract forever from a system that no longer delivers for working families.

Domestic reform comes when citizens make avoidance more costly than accountability. That’s when leaders are forced back to work on the problems that matter most.

T. Michael Smith

wwwtmichaelsmith.com

Are We Losing the Free Press?

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The question sounds alarmist, until you look closely at what’s happening.

The United States still has newspapers, cable networks, podcasts, newsletters, and social feeds overflowing with information. Journalists still expose corruption and challenge power. And yet something essential is eroding. Not all at once, not by government decree, but through pressure, consolidation, intimidation, and a growing public tolerance for lies.

The greatest threat to the free press today is not outright censorship. It is slow suffocation.

A free press depends on three pillars: independence, economic viability, and public trust. All three are under attack.

Start with economics. Local journalism, the unglamorous backbone of democratic accountability, has been gutted. Thousands of local newspapers have disappeared. Many survivors are “ghost papers,” skeletal operations where a handful of reporters cover entire regions.  The Roanoke Times is a prime example. Hedge funds and private equity firms have treated newsrooms as assets to be stripped rather than civic institutions to be sustained. When school boards, police departments, and city halls go uncovered, corruption doesn’t need to be hidden. It simply goes unnoticed.

At the national level, market pressures take a different form. Ratings, clicks, and virality increasingly drive coverage decisions. Outrage outperforms nuance. Conflict spreads faster than context. Even responsible outlets feel pulled toward spectacle, crowding out the slow, expensive investigative reporting that holds power to account.

Then there is politics—and here the danger becomes explicit. In recent years, journalism itself has been deliberately delegitimized. “Fake news” is no longer a critique of errors; it is a cudgel used to discredit any reporting that threatens those in power. Reporters are labeled “enemies of the people.” Media outlets are targeted for retaliation. Lawsuits are filed not to win, but to intimidate.

This rhetoric has consequences. When journalists are cast as traitors, harassment and threats follow. When lies are rebranded as “alternative facts,” truth itself becomes partisan. The aim is not to persuade the public of a single false narrative, but to exhaust people into cynicism—to convince them that no source is trustworthy, that nothing can be known. In that fog, accountability collapses.

Media consolidation compounds the damage. A shrinking number of corporations control much of what Americans see and hear, narrowing perspectives and increasing vulnerability to political and advertiser pressure. At the same time, social media platforms—now primary news sources for millions—are governed by opaque algorithms that reward engagement over accuracy and amplify misinformation at scale. These companies are not bound by journalistic ethics, yet they function as gatekeepers of public discourse.

The final pillar, public trust, has fractured along partisan lines. Too many Americans now choose news the way they choose teams—seeking affirmation rather than understanding. This breakdown did not happen by accident; it has been cultivated. When trust collapses, the press loses not just credibility, but its democratic function.

So, are we losing the free press? Not yet. But we are testing how much damage it can absorb.

History shows that press freedom rarely vanishes overnight. It erodes gradually—through economic starvation, legal intimidation, consolidation, algorithmic distortion, and the normalization of lies. Democracies do not usually silence journalists first; they teach citizens to stop listening to them.

Defending a free press requires more than ritual praise. It means supporting local journalism, enforcing antitrust laws, protecting reporters from harassment, demanding accountability from social media platforms, and cultivating a public culture that values truth even when it is uncomfortable.

A free press is not a partisan weapon or a cultural luxury. It is democratic infrastructure, as essential as courts or elections. When it weakens, every other institution becomes easier to corrupt.

The real question is not whether we are losing the free press. It is whether we will recognize what is happening—and act—before the loss becomes irreversible.

T. Michael Smith

wwwtmichaelsmith