A part of the video Jonathan Ross — the ICE agent who shot and killed Renee Good — took of the shooting has gotten little attention.
Before Renee’s wife Becca taunts Ross, “You want to come at us? You want to come at us? I say you go get some lunch, big boy,” and after she notes the plate of the vehicle would still be the same when ICE visits them later that day, Becca identifies herself as a US citizen and a “former fucking veteran, disabled veteran.”
If Becca is, indeed, a veteran, it would mean one veteran shot the spouse of another in a neighborhood of Minneapolis, where both lived.
Ross deployed with the Indiana National Guard to Iraq as a machine gunner.
Deployed to Iraq as a member of the Indiana National Guard from November 2004 to November 2005, Specialist Ross of the 138th Signal Battalion earned the Army Commendation Medal, the Army Good Conduct Medal, the Global War on Terrorism Medal and the Iraq Campaign Medal among others, according to the guard.
During his time in Iraq, Ross was a machine gunner on a combat logistical patrol team, court documents show.
Renee’s second husband and the father of her six year old son, Tim Macklin, was an Air Force veteran.
This not only was a conflict between authoritarianism and tolerance, but it appears to have been a conflict between American veterans.
That’s worthwhile background to this WaPo story, which catalogs which agencies shrunk in the first year of the Trump Administration and which have ballooned. The article shows that the Veterans Administration lost the most employees (the largest number through attrition), over 50,000 people.
That includes around 3,000 nurses (3% of the total) and 2,000 claims examiners (10% of the total).
Meanwhile, DHS ballooned in size, adding more than 6,000 ICE goons (reflecting a 30% increase) and almost 1,000 CBP officers.
Ross is not one of these new hires; he worked at CBP for eight years and has been working at ICE for ten years.
Republicans — and because this was done via Trump management, DOGE, and the Big Ugly Bill, with virtually no input from Democrats — took service away from veterans and instead hired a bunch of people to invade blue states instead.
Republicans — Stephen Miller — decided snatching grannies was more important than providing veterans medical care.
The American Prospect has been closely following the staffing woes at the VA — which is basically a bid to privatize much of it, including this recent story explaining why new staffing cuts will endanger mental heath care not just for veterans, but for the entire country.
In late November, a mental health leader at a major VA medical center learned about a directive issued to the 18 Veterans Health Administration (VHA) regional offices, known as VISNs (Veterans Integrated Service Networks). Department of Veterans Affairs’ leaders in Washington were imposing lower caps on employee positions nationwide. Directors of local VA medical centers and clinics had a month to decide which vacant positions to eliminate, and which job offers to rescind. None of these identified positions would be filled because they would be swept from organizational charts entirely. At his facility, 60 percent of the unfilled positions would be lost, including 23 in mental health.
“The past nine months have been very challenging,” the mental health leader told the Prospect. “But this is really going to impact patient care.” He also worried about the effect of cuts on the VA’s critical teaching mission. “The VA trains 50 percent of psychologists in the country,” he said. “Now, we may not have enough staff to supervise trainees.” In the midst of a national mental health professional shortage, reducing VA training capacity ultimately impacts access to mental health care for both veterans and nonveterans alike.
Again, Donald Trump is taking services away from veterans, and then hiring them to invade blue cities as if they were Fallujah.
The results were all too predictable.