Within a day of an ICE agent fatally shooting a Minneapolis motorist, members of the Trump administration and Republicans in Congress had almost uniformly concluded that the shooting was legitimate and probably the fault of the deceased victim. Hardly any Republican officials said, “I have no comment until an investigation has taken place” or hedged bets about the facts and their meaning. As journalists and average social-media users pored over grainy images of the shooting and began to question the official account, Trumpworld’s solidarity with the shooter showed no signs of weakening. Whatever private misgivings Republicans have about Kristi Noem’s immediate and repeated claims that Renee Nicole Good’s death was the result of her own complicity in “domestic terrorism,” they’re closing ranks for the time being, with Vice-President J.D. Vance leading cheers for ICE.

This “rush to judgment” (as a former ICE director, John Sandweg, called it) suggests a highly politicized reaction to the shooting. Yes, some........

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