Usually when a government agency is caught up in a major public scandal, its employees and officials lay low, show some contrition as they carry out damage control, and stay on their best behavior until it blows over. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and other federal deportation forces are not acting like a typical government agency.

Few government agencies have faced the kind of public relations crisis that ICE plunged itself into last week, after an agent killed an unarmed mother in Minneapolis, Renee Good, who was driving away from him, in what polling shows most Americans view as an unjustified shooting. ICE and other deportation forces were already embroiled in nationwide outrage over a year’s worth of shockingly lawless, heavy-handed, and often violent behavior, which had seen them illegally detain countless US citizens, shoot a US citizen woman five times and brag about it, and take the life of an immigrant man for injuries the agent himself admitted were “nothing major.”

But shooting an unarmed US citizen who posed no threat in cold blood — before calling her a “f—ing b—” and blocking medical aid from reaching her as she died — is on a level beyond even this.

If the past week is anything to go by, though, being responsible for what a majority of Americans view as an unjustified murder of a US citizen that should be criminally prosecuted has not moderated federal agents’ behavior. Instead, if anything, they have responded with more aggression, by being more willing to threaten deadly force, and have even repeatedly used their killing of Good to intimidate protesters.

We are excited to announce our first double issue of Catalyst, which is packed full of incredible new writing.

One half of this issue tackles dimensions of what could be called the crisis of liberalism — the political economy of the Supreme Court, literature and the ecological crisis, Germany and the Palestinian genocide, and the British Labour left.

Stemming from this diagnosis, we outline possible routes out of neoliberalism by defining key constraints on social democracy, weighing the possibility of a new popular front to help transform the Left back into a genuine mass movement, and exploring and clarifying key dynamics of market socialism.

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The kidnapping of Nicolás Maduro on January 3 was a shocking escalation in the United States’ ongoing strangulation of Venezuela. This has immediately provoked questions about the domestic Venezuelan power struggle and the demise of the Bolivarian Revolution.

In this episode of Confronting Capitalism, Vivek Chibber is joined by Gabriel Hetland, author of the Catalyst essay titled “From Chávez to Maduro.” Together, they analyze the US’s imperial meddling, Delcy Rodríguez’s shaky interim leadership, and Maduro’s legacy in the context of the Pink Tide.

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