The News From Minneapolis That Makes It Hard To Breathe

Renee Nicole Good was killed by a masked ICE agent who shot her in her car.

Also in today’s Daily, as the Trump Administration freezes billions of dollars in aid for children and families in five Democratic-led states, the City of Detroit has announced the rollout of Rx Kids, a cash program funded by a private-public partnership that benefits new moms and babies. Plus, new research suggests that autism isn’t necessarily one spectrum, but several distinguishable types. 

But first, in case you missed it (and to bring a much needed-smile to your face): Take a moment to delight in the friendship forged between a border collie and a crow.

The shocking news from Minneapolis

Yesterday, ICE agents shot and killed 37-year-old Renee Nicole Macklin Good – described as a loving mom and “amazing human being” – in Minneapolis. Hers is the fifth official death to come out of the second Trump Administration’s aggressive immigration strategy, according to the Associated Press. 

Department of Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem said that the still-anonymous ICE officer fired in self-defense, but witnesses to the incident – along with Minneapolis Police Chief Brian O’Hara – deny that account, with Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey bluntly calling Noem’s description of events “garbage,” adding that video he saw of the shooting showed that it was avoidable. Indeed, there is nothing in the videos that have emerged that suggest the agent’s life was in danger and, as the New York Times reported, “the vehicle appears to be turning away from a federal officer as he opened fire.”

One eyewitness, Caitlin Callenson, told MPR News that ICE agents gave Good conflicting instructions immediately before the fatal shooting. “People in our neighborhood have been terrorized by ICE for six weeks. We want our neighbors safe, and so when we see a group of ICE vehicles, people in the community are showing up and saying, ‘This is not OK,’” Callenson said. “Some of them were leaving, and they just went around her, but ICE gave her orders to leave, while at the same time, another ICE person said, ‘Get out of the car,’ and he reached for her door handle. And then there was an ICE agent in front of her vehicle. So it was difficult for her to leave, as she’d been ordered to do.” The Minnesota Star Tribune identified the ICE agent who shot her as Jonathan Ross.

Protests around the killing and ICE’s ongoing presence continued today, as Minnesota state investigators revealed that the FBI has blocked them from taking part in the investigation. Minnesota Bureau of Criminal Apprehension Superintendent Drew Evans said the agency had been “coordinating investigative work in good faith,” but yesterday the FBI told him that “the investigation would now be led solely by the FBI, and the BCA would no longer have access to the case materials, scene evidence or investigative interviews necessary to complete a thorough and independent investigation.”

Feeling “adrenalized and angry“ is normal 

“I went to bed feeling breathless and woke up the same way,” wrote former Washington Post reporter Kate Woodsome in her Substack Invisible Threads. “Perhaps you feel adrenalized and angry, like you want to break things or scream. Perhaps you feel cloudy or dizzy. For some, the grief may be overwhelming, or the fear may be so palpable that you’re figuring out how to appease anyone who could threaten you. For others, there may be no feeling at all.” 

“This is all normal,” she writes. “For many, the news is registering as a threat — to you personally, to your family and community, to democracy as a whole. 

“It’s important to recognize and honor what you’re feeling and experiencing, particularly when there are aggressive efforts by top leadership to deny and dismiss the terror ICE agents are perpetrating against communities.”

Woodsome points out that we also need to protect our own nervous systems from overwhelming stress and reactivity that can degrade our work, relationships, and lives – after which we can work for change on three levels:

Individual (you!)

Communal (your relationships, family, work, neighbors) 

Systemic (economic reform, health care policy, justice and accountability)

“Start with what you have the most power over: Yourself. 

“Start by noticing your state of stress and whether it’s putting you on a path to burning out, lashing out, or shutting down. The big picture goal we’re working toward is intergenerational wellbeing, not intergenerational trauma. So we need to notice when we’re working from a state of adrenalized, scarcity-driven fear. It’s unsustainable.”

You can read and subscribe to Woodsome’s excellent Substack here.

– MindSite News editors

Trump freezes $10 billion in childcare aid to 5 Democratically-led states, claiming “widespread fraud” 

The Trump Administration has abruptly frozen $10 billion in federal funding for social services, cash assistance for low-income families, and child care subsidies in five states, California, Colorado, Illinois, Minnesota, and New York – all led by Democrats – citing “widespread fraud and misuse of taxpayer dollars in state-administered programs,” The New York Times reports. 

The five states will lose access to $7.3 billion in cash assistance from the Temporary Assistance for Needy Families program, which helps low-income households with children, $2.4 billion in child care assistance from the Child Care and Development Fund, and about $870 million in social services grants reserved for children. While states have had relative freedom to disburse these funds, officials at the Department of Health and Human Services say that the five states must now justify spending with receipts and other documentation before funds are released. Because “the states very likely do not have that data on hand,” and “it is not a quick, easy lift for them to get… they will not be able to access the funds,” according to Ruth Friedman, former head of the DHHS’ Office of Child care, now senior fellow at Century Foundation, a think tank.

“Thousands of parents and children depend on these child care programs to help them make ends meet, and now their livelihoods are being put at risk,” said Illinois Governor JB Pritzker. In addition to homelessness and hunger, childhood poverty is linked to lasting cognitive, emotional, behavioral, and physical health problems, as the American Psychological Association notes – citing research showing that living in poverty is associated with differences in structural and functional brain development in children and teens, particularly in regions critical for learning, communication, social emotional processing, memory, language, and executive functioning. 

Radha Mohan, executive director of the Early Care and Education Consortium, told The Guardian the move will also have a massive impact on childcare workers and parents, especially mothers, as centers will close and – having no place to take their children – parents will have to leave their jobs. 

“Very, very quickly, hundreds of thousands of families across these five states will not get the childcare assistance they need,” Freidman added. “That is going to have reverberating effects on the programs, on the families themselves, create chaos, and really, really could be absolutely catastrophic.”

Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand called the freeze “immoral and indefensible,” adding that it “has nothing to do with fraud and everything to do with political retribution that punishes poor children in need of assistance. I demand that President Trump unfreeze this funding and stop this brazen attack on our children.”

Last week the administration paused $185 million in aid to Minnesota’s day cares, with prosecutors alleging that members of the state’s Somali community had cost the state over $1 billion through welfare fraud schemes. This new move is seen as an extension of that earlier freeze. 

“Democrat-led states and governors have been complicit in allowing massive amounts of fraud to occur under their watch,” said Andrew Nixon, spokesman for the Department of Health and Human Services, in a statement. “Under the Trump administration, we are ensuring that federal taxpayer dollars are being used for legitimate purposes.” But while prosecutors say 59 people have been convicted in the Minnesota scandal, there is no evidence of similar issues in the other four states, despite the Trump administration’s claims. 

Direct, no-strings cash support for new mothers in Detroit

In just a few weeks, Rx Kids, a cash prescription program for pregnant women and new moms, will arrive in Detroit, one of 28 Michigan communities it will serve by the end of this month. Once applications open, the program is expected to run for at least three years in the city through a mix of funding – some public, some private. The City of Detroit will invest $500,000 each year for three years, and the Skillman Foundation, W.K. Kellogg Foundation, Kresge Foundation, Community Foundation of Southeast Michigan, Huntington Bank and General Motors are all also contributing. 

Dr. Mona Hannah, the Flint-based pediatrician who co-founded and leads the program, told BridgeDetroit that about $2.5 million is still needed to fully fund Rx Kids’ first three years in Detroit. 

Research based on RxKids’ program in Flint found that direct cash support was associated with an improvement in mothers’ material security and their mental wellbeing, and notably reduced their risk of postpartum depression. Researchers noted that the US is one of only seven countries in the United Nations not to mandate any paid maternity leave. 

Any parent in an eligible Michigan community can register for Rx Kids up to six months after their baby is born. Parents must be 18 or older, or at least 16 with parental consent, and live in one of the communities enrolled in the program. There are no income or work requirements, and no conditions attached to the funds. Expectant parents can receive one $1,500 payment after 16 weeks of pregnancy, if they enroll before their baby is born, followed by $500 per month for six months after the child is born. Families in Flint and Kalamazoo are eligible for $500 per month for 12 months after birth, and the state of Michigan recently allocated the program $270 million dollars for its work across the state. 

Mayor Mary Sheffield, the first woman to lead Detroit, expressed pride at the program’s launch in its largest city yet, benefiting mothers, babies, and families. “Today, we take a step forward in our fight against poverty,” she said on Monday, her first announcement as the new mayor. “Today we affirm that all children deserve a strong start in life and that the health of a city begins with the health of its children.”

In other news…

Autism may actually have four distinct types, new research suggests: Once thought to be a condition with shared symptoms along a spectrum, advances in brain imaging, genetics, and computational science now point to at least four discrete biological subtypes of autism. Where research has for decades been trying to unscramble one big jigsaw puzzle, study author Natalie Sauerwald told The Washington Post that new analysis shows that there was never just one puzzle, but “several puzzles, shuffled together,” adding, that there is not one autism, but “many autisms.”

Separating those puzzles could mean more accurate diagnoses and better treatments, but the research also prompts the question of if autism should still be studied as something to cure. While previous thinking held that autism develops in utero, that did not seem true for all those diagnosed, and this new research suggests that those are distinct types and that some forms of autism may result from genetic mutations that simply don’t activate until later in life.