Good Trouble Lives On

This weekend’s Good Trouble Lives On events are a chance to keep the pressure where it belongs.

This Friday, while most of us were still deciding whether the tomatoes in the backyard could wait one more day before staking, the Justice Department quietly handed Hennepin County something it had spent half a year refusing to give up: The evidence in the killings of Renee Good and Alex Pretti.

Body camera footage. Agent statements. Renee Good’s SUV, the one she was driving on Portland Avenue on January 7th when ICE agent and Chaska citizen Jonathan Ross shot and killed her.

All of it sat in federal hands for more than six months while Hennepin County Attorney Mary Moriarty and Attorney General Keith Ellison sent request after request, then finally sued to get it. Ellison said this week he remains “deeply troubled that the federal government spent more than half a year attempting to conceal this evidence from state investigators.”

He’s right to be troubled. So are we.

Here’s the part your Southwest Metro Republicans hope you missed: Not one of them ever publicly demanded that evidence.

Not Tom Emmer, who holds the second-highest job in the U.S. House. Not Julia Coleman, your state senator in District 48. Not Jim Nash, your state representative in 48A. Six months. Two dead Minnesotans, both U.S. citizens, both killed by federal agents during Operation Metro Surge. And silence from the people whose job is to represent you in Washington and St. Paul.

Coleman did speak up once, back in January, days after Pretti was killed. She proposed a “deal”: a 30 to 60 day pause on ICE’s “ground game” in exchange for the state agreeing to honor ICE detainers.

Not a demand for the evidence. Not a demand for accountability. A capitulation cloathed in compromise, offered to the same federal government that was, at that very moment, refusing to hand over body camera footage of a Minneapolis mother of three getting shot in her own car.

That’s not leadership. That’s triage for a party that knows exactly how bad this looks.

And it looks worse every week. On Wednesday, Donald Trump gave his “complete and total endorsement” to Mike Lindell, Chaska’s own least-favorite-son, the MyPillow salesman, for governor of Minnesota. Trump called Lindell one of “America’s greatest and most hard working Patriots” and said he’d bring the state back “from oblivion and embarrassment.” Even the chair of the Minnesota Republican Party couldn’t stomach it, noting Lindell left the state for Texas when things got hard here and still owes tens of thousands of dollars in delinquent property taxes.

The one complaint the GOP chair didn’t raise was Lindell’s wild-eyed conspiracy theories about Donald Trump’s loss to Joe Biden. A glaring omission.

This is who Trump wants running Minnesota: A man who wants to melt down our voting machines and turn them into prison bars, endorsed by a president whose own DOJ spent six months hiding evidence in the killing of two of our neighbors.

Sit with that for a second.

Then look at what else is happening while Minnesotans pay more at the pump and stretch grocery budgets that don’t stretch anymore. Trump’s White House ballroom, once pitched as a $200 million private-donor project with “zero taxpayer dollars,” is now projected to cost $600 million. Internal contractor estimates show taxpayers are on the hook for roughly half of that: $155 million from the Secret Service, $149 million from the White House Military Office, more from the Executive Residence. So much for the donation.

Meanwhile, Vice President JD Vance’s security detail has reportedly grown “fed up” with last-minute requests to fly his young son around the D.C. area, including a planned trip on Marine Two, the vice president’s military helicopter, to get him to a golf lesson. Operating that helicopter runs taxpayers somewhere between $16,000 and $24,600 an hour. Sources close to the detail say neither Mike Pence nor Kamala Harris ever asked for anything like it.

Vance himself put it plainer than any critic could. Asked recently about how life has changed since he became vice president, he said: “People go to the grocery store for me.” Say that sentence out loud while you contemplate what you paid for eggs and gas this week.

A ballroom nobody asked for. A helicopter for a golf lesson. A murder investigation stonewalled for six months. And a slate of Minnesota Republicans who found time to talk about voting machines but never found time to demand the evidence in Renee Good’s death.

Here’s the thing worth noticing, neighbors: None of this happened because Washington got a conscience. It happened because Minnesotans wouldn’t let go.

Moriarty and Ellison sued. Families kept showing up. Reporters kept asking. Pretti’s family attorney, Steve Schleicher, kept saying out loud what federal officials wouldn’t: “No family should be required to beg federal authorities to do their job.” Six months of pressure, and the evidence finally moved. That’s not an accident. That’s what sustained, vocal opposition does. It works slowly and it works.

Trump is floundering enough that he’s propping up a candidate even his own party chair won’t defend. He started a war he can find no way out of, that has strengthened Iran, weakened America and raised everyone’s cost of living.

His enablers in our own backyard are hoping you’re too busy with summer to notice they never once stood up for two dead Minnesotans. That they haven’t said a peep about this unnecessary and disastrous war. Not a word about the tariffs that are costing us so much.

Don’t give them that. Notice. Make these points the next time you’re at a coffee shop, a parade, chatting with neighbors.

And show up this weekend. Good Trouble Lives On, the national weekend of action honoring the legacy of Congressman John Lewis, runs Friday through Sunday, July 17 to 19, under the banner “Teach! Reach! Preach!” There are protests scheduled for every day this weekend (see below).

Bring a neighbor. This is how we keep the pressure on, the same pressure that just got two Minnesota families a step closer to the truth.

Chaska Protests

Every Friday from 3:00–4:00 p.m. at the corner of Chaska Blvd. and Chestnut Street (Highway 41) [Map]

Every Saturday from 1-2 pm at the corner of Hazeltine Boulevard and Highway 41 (Chestnut) [Map]

Chanhassen Protests

Every Saturday from 10-11 am at 7700 Market Boulevard [Map] Public parking is available behind City Hall.

Norwood Young America

Every Sunday, 11 a.m.–12 p.m. (Line up at the bike path south of Highway 212 and Faxon.)

Victoria

Every Wednesday from 4:30-5:30 pm on the corner of Highway 5 and Victoria Drive/County Rd 11.

Waconia

Every Saturday from 11:30-12:30 pm at Highway 5 and County Road 10 in front of the Starbucks and Jersey Mike’s. [Map]

SW Protectors

Every first and third Tuesday from 6:30 – 8:00 pm. It’s no cost and come and go as you like.

Please do buy something to eat or drink, though, to support our venue, which is The Bellows restaurant and it’s located at 232 Pioneer Trail in Chaska.