Donna Ganger, the mother of Renée Good, made a devastating admission on Capitol Hill this week: she voted for Donald Trump.
Ganger, a registered Republican, told lawmakers that she believed Trump’s immigration enforcement would protect Americans.
“I voted for President Trump under the impression that these agents were here to protect the citizens of the United States, innocents like our family and the others here, against terrorists. Certainly not to accuse those of us here of being terrorists and take precious lives.”
“This is madness,” she added.
Her daughter Renée was a 37-year-old U.S. citizen and mother of three. An ICE officer shot and killed her in Minneapolis on January 7 during the Trump administration’s immigration enforcement surge. Renée was not the target of the operation. The administration said the officer acted in self-defence and accused Renée of attempting to hit him with her vehicle. Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey and Minnesota Governor Tim Walz publicly disputed that account after reviewing video of the encounter.
But there is something uncomfortable in Ganger’s statement that cannot simply be ignored.
She describes her family as “innocents” whom she believed federal agents would protect from “terrorists.” The obvious question is: who did she think these agents were going to be confronting?
Trump did not hide his plans for mass deportations. Immigration enforcement was one of the defining promises of his campaign. Ganger apparently supported that agenda while believing there would be a clear line separating threatening outsiders from people like her family.
Then her daughter ended up on the other side of that line. That is what makes this story larger than one mother’s unimaginable grief. It exposes the danger of selective empathy, supporting aggressive government power when you imagine it will only be used against someone else.
Related Stories
And Renée’s death was not happening in isolation. ICE arrests reached record levels this summer, with more than half of those arrested in July having no criminal record, according to reporting cited by the Associated Press. Recent ICE shootings and mistaken detentions have also prompted demands for greater oversight.
There is no satisfaction to be found in telling a grieving mother “I told you so.” Renée paid the price here.
But Ganger’s own words offer a sobering lesson. Government power does not come with a guarantee that it will remain neatly confined to the people a voter originally imagined as its targets. Renée Good was somebody’s daughter before January 7. So was everyone else.
Mrs. Donna Ganger, mother of Renee Good: I voted for President Trump under the impression that these agents were here to protect the citizens of the United States, innocents like our family and the others here, against terrorists. Certainly not to accuse those of us here of being… pic.twitter.com/giSUmCQOJF
— Acyn (@Acyn) September 22, 2026
Discover more from Feminegra
Subscribe to get the latest posts sent to your email.
The US generally is in trouble and is always trouble. Its electorate cannot find anyone better than aged Genocide Joe and Bombing Trump as presidents. Sadly, the highest price is actually paid by foreigners.
There are way too many people who can only feel empathy for others after they themselves have suffered the same harm they previously chose to ignore.
I’m sorry for Donna Ganger’s pain, but she chose to vote for the same man who let millions die of Covid while he made money and tried to make political hay out of the pandemic.
If that alone, along with all his vile lies about immigrants, didn’t convince her he was not to be trusted with a second term, then I’m just gonna say it: Donna, you’re a card-carrying member of the Leopards Are Eating MY Face Party.
Maybe next time she’ll turn off Faux “News” and try to make better decisions.
While I am sad for Donna Ganger that her daughter was killed by the government she voted for, I don’t get how a woman can vote for a convicted rapist, how anyone voluntarily votes for a convicted felon, for someone to manage the budget of a nation who has several bankruptcies to his name, among them with casinos.
But most of all I don’t get how someone can vote for a known racist who didn’t want Black tenants and who famously demanded the death penalty for the Black men eventually known as the Exonorated Five.