There is an episode of Andor — the finest piece of television Star Wars has ever produced — that I cannot stop thinking about. Not because of the lightsabers that never ignite or the Force that is never summoned, but because of what it reveals about empires and the men who operate them. In Season 2, the Galactic Empire does not stumble into the Ghorman Massacre. It engineers it. Dedra Meero, the Empire’s meticulous architect of cruelty, spends years cultivating insurgency on Ghorman — feeding weapons and intelligence to rebels, destabilizing the political landscape, manufacturing the very chaos the Empire would later cite as justification for its iron fist. On the day of the massacre, the citizens of Ghorman are peaceful. They are singing their anthem in the plaza. They have come outside. And that is precisely what the Empire needs them to do. An Imperial sniper fires into the crowd — shooting one of their own — and the undertrained, overeager Imperial troopers open fire on the civilians. The massacre is not a failure of Imperial policy. It is Imperial policy.​

I have watched this sequence three times. Each time, I see Minneapolis.

The 48-Day Soldier

The Empire sent garrison troops to Ghorman who were unprepared for the violence they would unleash. The brass knew this. The generals understood that frightened, poorly trained soldiers confronting a restless population would inevitably lash out. The incompetence was the point. Chaos was the deliverable.

In 2025, ICE more than doubled its workforce — from approximately 10,000 personnel to over 22,000 — in roughly four months. To accomplish this, the administration compressed the traditional five-to-six-month training academy into just six to eight weeks. Roughly 48 training days. Constitutional law instruction — the kind that teaches an officer when they can and cannot put a bullet through a windshield — was reduced to a fraction of what it once was. De-escalation training, the soft skills that prevent a terrified recruit from pulling a trigger on a mother who has just dropped her child at school, was “the first to be sacrificed”. An entire generation of federal officers was deployed onto American streets with firearms, badges, and almost no understanding of the constitutional rights of the citizens they were ostensibly serving.

More than half of all ICE officers in the field today may be inexperienced and undertrained. The Department of Homeland Security has not publicly disclosed how many of the 12,000 new hires received abbreviated training, nor has it answered congressional inquiries about what safeguards exist to ensure these officers meet professional standards. Senator Gary Peters expressed “serious concerns about how ICE was able to appropriately determine suitability, train and onboard 12,000 new front-line personnel in less than a year”. His office requested a briefing months ago. They are still waiting.

This is not incompetence. This is the architecture of the Ghorman Massacre rendered in American bureaucracy.

Minneapolis Burned Before

On the morning of January 7, 2026, Renee Nicole Goode — a 37-year-old mother of three, a U.S. citizen born in Colorado, a poet, an English teacher, a substitute teacher in Minneapolis who had graduated from Old Dominion University — dropped her 6-year-old son off at school and was driving home with her partner. She encountered a group of ICE agents near East 34th Street and Portland Avenue — blocks from where Derek Chauvin murdered George Floyd. Witnesses say agents blocked her Honda Pilot. She reversed. She shifted into drive. ICE agent Jonathan Ross fired three shots.​

Renee Good was not a target for an ICE-related arrest. City leaders confirmed she was a legal observer of federal actions. She was not an immigrant. She was not a criminal. She was a white woman from Colorado who had moved to Minneapolis to restart her life after her second husband died.​

Minneapolis Police Chief Brian O’Hara called it “entirely predictable”.​

Two thousand federal agents had been deployed to the Twin Cities. DHS Secretary Kristi Noem called Good’s death “an act of domestic terrorism.” Vice President Vance said the agent “defended himself”. President Trump posted on Truth Social that Good had “violently, willfully, and viciously ran over the ICE officer.” The video he shared did not show an officer being struck. Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey watched the same video and called the federal narrative “bullshit”.​

The city erupted. Hundreds marched down Lake Street in freezing rain, chanting “ICE out now”. Mothers and grandmothers gathered outside the Whipple Federal Building. Federal agents responded with pepper balls and chemical irritants. Schools closed. Educators demanded ICE stay away from Minnesota schools. A GoFundMe for Good’s family raised over $1.2 million from 32,000 individual donations. Comedian John Mulaney canceled his weekend shows because he could not, in good conscience, ask thousands of people to leave their homes when “the situation is so unsafe”. Governor Walz declared a Day of Unity and readied the National Guard.​

White America saw itself in Renee Good.

The Empire Learned From Ferrix

In Andor, before the Ghorman Massacre, there is the Ferrix Riot — the Season 1 finale where the Empire’s occupation of a small industrial town during a funeral procession spirals into catastrophe. Against the advice of officers on the ground, Dedra Meero refuses to cancel the funeral, refuses to disperse the crowd, deploys snipers and stormtroopers into narrow streets crowded with mourners. The result is an unmitigated disaster for the Empire. Citizens fight back. Cassian Andor infiltrates the Imperial base. Prisoners escape. The garrison is humiliated.​

But the Empire learns from Ferrix. The lesson is not that occupation is wrong. The lesson is that it must be done more deliberately, more cynically, with more planning. By the time Ghorman arrives, the false flag is already in place. The provocation is pre-written. The massacre is scheduled.

Trump learned from Minneapolis, too. Not the Minneapolis of 2026 — the Minneapolis of 2020, when federal agents occupied Portland, Oregon, and the backlash from white suburban voters nearly cost him the election. Agents from Border Patrol and other federal agencies — “not well-trained for handling mass demonstrations” — shot protesters with less-lethal munitions, launched tear gas, and arrested citizens far from federal property after stalking them in unmarked vehicles. Oregon’s Attorney General sued. The ACLU sued. Portland’s mayor called it “a cynical ploy” targeting Democratic cities.​

And then the suburbs turned. Higher-educated white voters, suburban women, the voters who live in the cul-de-sacs and drive the minivans and coach the soccer teams — they recoiled. Republican Congressman Dan Crenshaw admitted the quiet part aloud: “In the suburbs, and especially among women, they’re turned off by Donald Trump”. Biden’s victory in 2020 was built on the votes of those suburban counties — Atlanta, Philadelphia, Milwaukee, Phoenix — where white voters decided that the images of federal agents tear-gassing mothers in Portland did not represent the America they wanted to inhabit.

Trump lost because white people saw themselves in the tear gas. White people saw their neighborhoods occupied. White people — Ms. Good and Mr. Pretti and the unnamed thousands who blew whistles and marched in freezing rain — refused to accept a federal army in their streets.

And the Empire took notes.

The Epstein Calculation

Before I tell you what Trump is going to do, I need to tell you what he has already learned from the Epstein files — or rather, what the absence of outrage over those files has taught him about white indifference.

The Department of Justice released approximately 3.5 million documents related to Jeffrey Epstein, with another 2.5 million unaccounted for. The release was delayed, then delivered as a deluge — what legal scholars have called “malicious compliance,” an attempt to bury damaging information under sheer volume. Reading rooms were created where lawmakers could review unredacted documents without staff, taking only handwritten notes — a task so absurd it was clearly designed to prevent comprehension. Victims’ identities were disclosed alongside graphic images while the names of powerful men were redacted.​

And the country shrugged.

The muted reaction has been well documented. Media outlets noted the “seemingly subdued public reaction” in the United States compared to audiences in the U.K. and elsewhere. Commentators attributed the apathy to “perma-crisis” — the idea that Americans are so overwhelmed by the daily assault of crises that nothing penetrates. Health insurance premiums were rising. ICE raids were escalating. There was always something else to consume the national attention.​

But I want to name what no one else will name: the men in those files are overwhelmingly white. Wealthy, powerful, politically connected white men. And the victims — the girls who were groomed and trafficked and assaulted on that island — were overwhelmingly white girls.​​

White men abusing white girls.

If it were learned that 200 Black men had traveled to an island to systematically abuse white girls, this would be the biggest scandal in the history of the American republic. There would be no “perma-crisis” excuse. There would be no 3.5-million-document dump designed to obscure. Every name would be a household name. Every mugshot would be on every cable news chyron for months. Congress would not need reading rooms — they would hold public hearings with stadium seating. The National Guard would not be “staged and ready.” They would be deployed.

As one commentator noted: “If the world insists on stereotyping black people because of the actions of a few, then it exposes a double standard when that same logic is never applied in reverse, even when the scale of harm is exponentially greater”. You cannot argue that race is irrelevant only when it becomes uncomfortable for you.​

The Epstein files are proof that white indifference is selective. That sympathy is rationed along racial lines. That the bodies of white girls, violated by white men with white money, can be buried under paperwork and partisan noise. Trump watched that indifference and understood something fundamental about the country he governs: white people will forgive white people for almost anything. The outrage machine only activates at full capacity when the perpetrator is Black.

And this is why the bodies that march must matter. This is why the color of the bodies determines the response. This is why Trump has to change his strategy.

The Provocation

On February 5, 2026 — during Black History Month — Donald Trump posted an AI-generated video on Truth Social depicting Barack and Michelle Obama as apes in the jungle. The video remained on his account for approximately twelve hours before it was deleted. The White House initially dismissed criticism as “fake outrage,” then blamed an unnamed staffer for the post. When asked if he would apologize, Trump said: “No, I didn’t make a mistake”.

Senator Tim Scott, the only Black Republican in the Senate, called it “the most racist thing I’ve seen out of this White House”. Republican Congressman Mike Lawler called it “wrong and incredibly offensive”. The Congressional Black Caucus chair, Representative Yvette Clarke, said plainly: “We’re dealing with a bigoted and racist regime” with “intent to harm people, to hurt people”. The NAACP’s Derrick Johnson said the video was “obviously to distract” from the Epstein files and Trump’s “failing economy”.

And what did we do?

We updated our Spotify playlists. We added another bottle of champagne to the collection we are curating for the celebration that will one day arrive. We did not march. We did not write think pieces. We did not flood the streets with our bodies, because we understood — in the marrow of our bones, in the cellular memory passed down from generations who survived the Middle Passage and Jim Crow and COINTELPRO and the War on Drugs — that this is what he wants.

The Obamas understood it, too. They stayed silent. “When they go low, we go high”. They cheered on the U.S. Olympic team and let the video rot in the digital gutter where it was born.​

Some Black Republicans shrugged it off as Trump being Trump — a “poor judgment call,” they said, but not a deal breaker. They are concerned about policy, not rhetoric, they explained, as if rhetoric has never preceded policy in the long bloody history of this republic.​

But here is what I know: the apes video was not the final provocation. It was a test. A calibration. The Empire is adjusting its aim.

He Is Going to Say It

Trump is going to say the N-word. The hard R. In public. On camera. With the full weight of the presidency behind the moment.

His goons will blanket the airwaves within minutes. They will say: We say it. It is in every rap song. It is in every movie. It is a term of endearment among Black people, and the President was merely using the vernacular of the culture. They will cite Quentin Tarantino. They will cite Jay-Z. They will cite every Black comedian who has used the word on a Netflix special, as if context has never mattered, as if the word carries the same weight in the mouth of a man who controls ICE as it does in the mouth of a man rapping over a beat.

Fox News will run segments. The Wall Street Journal editorial board will write something measured and disingenuous about free speech. JD Vance will call it “authentic.” Elon Musk will post a meme. And for seventy-two hours, every news cycle in America will be consumed by the question of whether it is acceptable for the President of the United States to say the N-word, and the answer will split so cleanly along racial lines that it will feel like the country has cracked in half.

But we will not go outside.

The Massacre He Cannot Have

This is the part Trump has not yet understood, though every indication suggests he is inching closer to the realization: he only gets the Ghorman Massacre if Black people come outside.

He saw what happened in Minneapolis. He saw Renee Good’s name trend for a week. He saw the GoFundMe cross a million dollars in twenty-four hours. He saw John Mulaney cancel his shows and the mayor of a major American city tell his federal agents to “get the fuck out.” He saw white mothers in parkas holding candles in the freezing rain, and he understood that when white people are the victims of state-sponsored violence, the machinery of American sympathy operates at full capacity.

He cannot afford another Minneapolis. He cannot afford Ms. Good. He cannot afford the white neighborhoods turning against him again, the suburban women recoiling, the cul-de-sac voters remembering that they do not want to live in a country where federal agents shoot mothers on their way home from school drop-off.

But if the victims were Black?

If the marching bodies were Black? If the faces on the GoFundMe were Black? If the candlelight vigils were in Inglewood instead of Uptown, in the South Side instead of Lake Street? The calculus changes. The sympathy rationing kicks in. The attention economy moves on. The “perma-crisis” excuse suddenly works again. The 48-day officers, untrained and terrified and armed with weapons they barely know how to handle, would fire into crowds of Black bodies with the same panicked incompetence that the Imperial garrison unleashed on Ghorman — and the American public would process it the same way they process every video of Black death: with a 48-hour news cycle, a hashtag, and a return to regularly scheduled programming.

Trump needs us in the streets. He needs our bodies on camera. He needs the images of Black rage — not Black grief, not Black dignity, but Black rage — to justify the deployment, the crackdown, the occupation. He needs us to be the insurgents of Ghorman so his troopers can be the heroes.

And so he escalates. The Obama video was a probe. The N-word will be the detonation.

We Know the Play

But we have read this script before. We have been reading it for four hundred years.

We know that when he posts about Obama being apes, the correct response is not to flood Pennsylvania Avenue. The correct response is to open the liquor store app and add another bottle of Veuve Clicquot to the cart. We know that when he says the N-word — and he will — the correct response is to check our PTO balances and make sure we have sick time banked for the celebration that is coming. Not today. Not tomorrow. But eventually. The actuarial tables are undefeated, and time is the one opponent that even a man with the nuclear codes cannot defeat.

The reason he did not send the United States military to Minnesota is instructive. The Army is trained. The Army has rules of engagement, procedures, a chain of command that includes officers who attended West Point and studied the laws of armed conflict. The Army would not have shot Renee Good. The Army would not have pepper-sprayed students at Roosevelt High School. The Army would not have tackled civilians on school grounds in unmarked SUVs without identifying themselves. Trump needs his 48-day DHS army precisely because they are untrained. He needs officers who will panic, who will escalate, who will shoot first and fabricate the narrative later — officers like Jonathan Ross, who has already been dragged by a car in a previous incident and carries that trauma into every encounter with a vehicle.​

The unprepared troops are not a bug. They are the feature. Just as on Ghorman, the incompetence is the weapon.

But the weapon only works if we give him targets.

Squirrel Away the Champagne

Trump is going to say the N-word. I am telling you this with the same certainty with which I can tell you that the sun will rise tomorrow and that my daughter will ask me for something unreasonable before noon. It is coming. It may come on Truth Social at 2 a.m. It may come at a rally in a swing state. It may come in an interview where he claims he was “just being honest” or “saying what everyone thinks.” The delivery mechanism does not matter. The word will leave his mouth, and the earth will not open to swallow him, because the earth has never opened to swallow men like him.

And when it happens, we will do what we have always done. We will turn to each other in group chats and say, Did you see this man? We will shake our heads. We will laugh — not because it is funny, but because laughter is the sound Black people make when the alternative is too heavy to carry. We will update our playlists. We will check the champagne supply. We will hug our children a little tighter and remind them that they are loved, they are worthy of love, they are beautiful, and they are enough.

We will not go outside.

Not because we are afraid. Not because we lack courage. Not because we have forgotten what our ancestors endured or what our children deserve. But because we understand — with the clarity that only comes from being hunted — that the Empire needs us in the plaza. The Empire needs us singing our anthem in the open air so the sniper can fire and the troopers can charge and the massacre can be blamed on the dead.

We will not give him Ghorman.

We will squirrel away another bottle. We will make sure the PTO is approved. And we will wait.

Because the one thing Donald Trump cannot survive is Black indifference. He can survive our rage. He can survive our protests. He can survive our think pieces and our hashtags and our marches. What he cannot survive is the sound of seventy million Black Americans changing the channel, logging off, and refusing to perform the role he has written for us.

So say it, Mr. President. Say the word. We will be inside, chilling the champagne, checking the actuarial tables, and waiting for the day we dance.