"The Trump administration rushed to brand the victim of the latest ICE shooting a domestic terrorist before the public had access to the footage. That response reflects a system so hostile to admitting error that it treats accountability as a threat and reality as something to be managed. That should terrify people. Federal agents killed a man, and the government's first instinct was not to wait, not to clarify, and not to acknowledge uncertainty."
"The speed of that decision matters because it makes clear this was never about learning what happened. It was about controlling the consequences. What's happening here goes beyond narrative control. It is a quiet inversion of due process. By labeling the dead a terrorist before evidence is public, the government is not explaining a killing so much as closing the case."
"The burden shifts instantlyfrom the state justifying lethal force to the victim disproving it. Except the victim is no longer alive to do so. In practice, this tests whether the government can kill first and try the victim later. What we are seeing in the aftermath of the Minneapolis ICE shooting is the natural outcome of a political identity that cannot tolerate error. Once a claim is made, it must be defended."
Federal agents killed a man and the immediate official response branded the victim a domestic terrorist before the public saw the footage. The rapid labeling served to foreclose sympathy, shut down questions, and place the burden of proof on the dead. That approach inverts due process by shifting the burden from the state to justify lethal force to the victim to disprove it, even though the victim cannot. The pattern reflects a political identity that treats revision and admission of error as weakness, producing a predictable hardening of the first version of events and obstruction of facts.
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