Cold As ICE: The Killing Continues
1861. 1968. 2026. When History Rhymes.
The United States of America is on the cusp of its semiquincentennial. It is also on the cusp of something dark and ominous. The country we love threatens to become unrecognizable in its 251st year. We are ruled by a regime for which homicide is accepted as an instrument of governance.
History’s Rhymes Are Often Written in Blood
A close friend recently asked if America is facing “the biggest threat to our country since 1861.” I suggested 1968 might be a better analogy, given how divided we were. I recall sitting in a barracks at Sheppard Air Force Base the day after Martin Luther King, Jr. was assassinated. Three bunks to my right, the lone black man in our unit sat quietly at the foot of his bed, staring at a future that declined to stare back. A racist airman stomped into the barracks, declaring loudly, “I’m glad they shot his black ass!” I glanced at my black barracks mate and wondered how he remained stoic when he was a cauldron inside. I wondered if America would survive.
I don’t know if the current state of the nation resembles 1968, has gotten or will get worse than that year, or if this is the darkest time since the Civil War. These events are coils in a rope America occasionally uses to try to hang itself. Will our country survive, or die from asphyxiation on a cord of its own fashioning?
We have already become something unrecognizable, thanks to the deployment of masked goons on American streets by an unstable leader and his misguided acolytes. Consider the recent words of The New York Times’ Tom Friedman: “(I)f you placed a photo of an ICE officer next to a Hamas militiaman in a news quiz,” he wrote, “I would defy you to tell them apart.” Hamas wears masks.
The Death Cult
The Trump presidency is a death cult. After only a year, it holds the record for the most people killed by an American administration. The killings of Renee Good and Alex Pretti are recent examples of foreign and domestic policies that regard the sanctity of life as disposable.
In an interview in 2014, Al Carroll, author of President’s Body Counts: The Twelve Worst and Four Best American Presidents Based on How Many Lived or Died Because of Their Actions, identified Richard Nixon as history’s most deadly president.
“Nixon was the worst by far for what he did in Cambodia,” Carroll told Peter Handel of Truthout, “what many argue was outright genocide. He ordered the carpet bombing and invasion of a neutral nation for no other reason than to convince conservatives he was still tough on communism. Half a million were killed, including 50,000 executions.”
If Carroll updates his book he will replace Nixon with Donald Trump as America’s most homicidal president. According to the Impact Counter, an ongoing study by Dr. Brooke Nichols and Eric Moakley, the death toll from Trump’s cuts to USAID and PEPFAR programs have already killed nearly 800,000 people, with another 88 dying every hour. Fourteen million will die by 2030 if trends continue.
Once a government kills that many people, it develops a taste for death. Last summer, Trump and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth began ordering the military to summarily execute suspected drug smugglers in the Caribbean and Eastern Pacific. As of this writing, 126 people are known to have been killed, with no due process, no evidence, and no justification.
The lethal force against suspected drug traffickers in those strikes violated international human rights law, according to Human Rights Watch. “US officials cannot summarily kill people they accuse of smuggling drugs,” noted Washington director Sarah Yager. “The problem of narcotics entering the United States is not an armed conflict, and US officials cannot circumvent their human rights obligations by pretending otherwise.”
The Trump Administration has turned its killing machine toward American cities. The assassinations of Renee Good and Alex Pretti are the logical consequence of an administration for which homicide is an instrument of governance and peaceful resistance gives license to summary executions.
Millions of Eyes Are Watching
The hundreds of thousands killed by Trump’s foreign aid cuts suffered the misfortune of dying off camera. The alleged drug smugglers perished in similar anonymity when their boats disappeared in a blossom of smoke and flame. But we saw Renee Good’s face and heard her voice. That made it personal. Alex Pretti was, by all accounts, a good guy, an ICU nurse who cared for veterans and helped his neighbors. When a Border Patrol agent violently shoved a woman, who fell to the ground, Pretti went to her aid. Then he was attacked and murdered by a mob of federal agents. Both killings were recorded by bystanders.
“The Party told you to reject the evidence of your eyes and ears,” wrote George Orwell in 1984. “It was their final, most essential command.” The Trump administration told Americans not to believe what they saw and heard from the cell phone videos taken of the killings of Renee Good and Alex Pretti. Dace Potas wrote in USA TODAY that “the Trump administration is being particularly grotesque in both their denigration of the victims and their lying to the American public.”
The Trump administration labeled Good and Pretti “domestic terrorists” and told us to reject our eyes and ears. But the American people have witnessed the grotesquerie and will not be quiet.
“Where the people fear the government you have tyranny,” said John Barnhill in 1914. “Where the government fears the people you have liberty.” We Americans have cell phones, Mr. Trump, and we know how to use them.
Fear us.
© 2026 by Mike Tully
THE BOSS SPEAKS OUT
Yesterday, Bruce Springsteen released a new protest song inspired by the killings of Renee Good and Alex Pretti. It’s available on Apple Music®. You can view or listen to it on The Boss’ website by clicking here.