Can we all join in standing for what we know is right?

During his first term, Donald Trump’s ravenous crusade to bend the world to his will was at least partially restrained by people holding key elective and appointive posts. Not so this time around, and it’s already leaving a trail of death and destruction in its wake — not to mention chaos and turmoil — just one year in.

We may finally be reaching at least a domestic reckoning point, though, in the deaths of Renee Good and Alex Pretti in separate bursts of ICE gunfire on the streets of Minneapolis. Repulsed by the seemingly unchecked violence, and the callously judgmental official reaction to it from the top, even some elements at the conservative end of the spectrum are being moved to break ranks.

Good and Pretti were both white, native-born Americans with strong family ties and clean records. A former Boy Scout and avid outdoorsman, Pretti carried a legal, licensed firearm, but video shows it remained holstered until removed by an ICE agent before the gunfire erupted.

Both were, by all reasonable accounts, principled, well-meaning protesters. By no stretch could they be counted among the invading rapists, murderers, druglords and gang kingpins ICE claims to be targeting — people Trump has repeatedly characterized as “the worst of the worst.”

Good and Pretti were both shot multiple times, at close range, in street encounters caught in countless videos that raised questions demanding rigorous investigation by impartial third-party professionals.

Unsurprisingly, the Trump administration’s initial response was to circle the wagons, cover the tracks and rush to judgment.

Trump blamed the city’s Democratic leadership for first, failing to cooperate in ICE’s street-cleansing crusade, and second, curb peaceful protests staged by constituents airing grievances in the vein of early American patriot Patrick Henry. And that after having blanket-pardoned the armed mob that invaded the U.S. Capitol on his behalf.

Top Trump advisor Stephen Miller branded Pretti a “would-be assassin” intent on wreaking as much harm as possible. Trump ally Steve Bannon blamed the incident on a “violent terrorist mob” and urged Trump to invoke the Insurrection Act, justifying the dispatch of heavily armed federal troops.

Department of Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem promised an internal investigation, but pre-judged it by alleging Pretti was “brandishing” a gun and had “violently resisted” efforts to disarm him, triggering “defensive” fire in return. She said she didn’t “know of any peaceful protester that shows up with a gun and ammunition rather than a sign” — apparently forgetting about Kyle Rittenhouse, darling of the far-right, who not only brought his high-powered rifle to a protest, but actually shot three people with it.

Border Patrol chief Greg Bovino went even further than Noem, alleging without any known basis that Pretti’s intent was to “massacre law enforcement.”

It reminds us of George Orwell’s chilling warning in “1984,” his celebrated novel imagining how a police state might come into being: “The Party told you to reject the evidence of your eyes and ears. It was their final, most essential command.”

Meanwhile, back on the ground in Minneapolis, efforts to mount any kind of outside investigations were thwarted.

A supervisor in the FBI’s Minneapolis field office resigned in protest after higher-ups forced him to drop an investigation he had initiated into the Good shooting. The Minnesota Bureau of Criminal Apprehension said it had been forced to drop the kind of investigation it has routinely conducted for years into police shootings in the state. And local law enforcement officers complained no effort had been made to preserve evidence at the scene, and they had been barred as well.

That didn’t sit well with many observers, including at least some Republicans.

Former Vice President Mike Pence was joined by a growing contingent of Republican senators in calling for a full and fair investigation into the ICE shootings. That appeared to be motivated both by good-faith desire for justice and well-founded fear of adverse political fallout, as mounting outrage swept the nation.

On the House side, one Republican confided to a Politico reporter, “Many of us wonder if the administration has any clue as to how much this will hurt us legislatively and electorally this year.”

Republican political consultant Preya Samsundar complained to The Wall Street Journal that ICE’s aggressive sweeps had so unnerved her mother, a legal immigrant, that she had begun carrying her passport wherever she goes. Uncharacteristically, Gov. Greg Abbot, a MAGA firebrand from Texas, urged the White House to “recalibrate,” to “maybe work from a different direction.”

The Free Press, a publication normally closely aligned with the administration, took Noem to task editorially, suggesting she was pushing lines that people can see with their own eyes aren’t true. It went on to complain, “The administration’s deportation tactics, as well as the conduct of federal agents in Minneapolis, are driving voters away from the president and his party.”

Even the National Rifle Association weighed in, reacting angrily to statements from Noem, FBI Director Kash Patel and White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt about Pretti having no business being armed in the presence of federal agents, the Second Amendment notwithstanding. The NRA was joined by other gun rights groups, and by the International Association of Police Chiefs, in demanding a credible and thorough investigation.

The need for professional investigation was underscored by national use-of-force expert Seth Stoughton and police research and policy consultant Chuck Wexler. Stoughton said, “Behind the scenes, there is nothing but professional scorn for the way that DHS is handling the aftermath of these incidents,” while Wexler warned, “Every police chief in the country is watching Minneapolis very carefully.”

Joining the fray were federal immigration agents themselves, who allowed reporters from The New York Times and other outlets to chat rooms where they bared grievances. One Border Patrol agent was quoted as saying:

“As much as I support this administration, there needs to be more common sense in situations like this, not a knee-jerk damage-control narrative that does not line up with the evidence on video. This individual (Pretti) was shot eight to nine times while unarmed. We can’t always support what happens just because it’s us.”

Agents said ICE has been relying solely on volunteers for duty in far-off hot spots like Minneapolis. They said that tends to draw younger, greener recruits enticed by overtime pay and per diem benefits, a recipe for missteps.

One leading Minnesota Republican, Chris Madel, did more than just lodge a complaint. He took direct action.

Madel dropped his candidacy for the GOP gubernatorial nomination, saying, “I cannot support the national Republican Party retribution on the citizens of our state, nor can I count myself a member of a party that would do so.”

A lawyer, he accused ICE of conducting raids based on civil warrants alone, saying, “That’s unconstitutional and it’s wrong.” He also accused the Department of Justice with criminally targeting officials in blue states like Minnesota on political grounds, asserting, “Weaponizing criminal investigations against political opponents is unconstitutional regardless of which party is in power.”

Madel concluded, “At the end of the day, I have to look my daughters in the eye and tell them, I believe I did what was right. And I am doing that today.”

That’s a powerful test for all of us sharing space on this nation and this planet with the rest of humankind. At the end of the day, can we look our kids in the eye and truthfully say:

“We didn’t settle for the soft, easy expedient way out. We took a stand for what was right.”

It took all of those revolt elements to make Trump hit a pause button on ICE. Perhaps America, supposedly a land of the free and home of the brave, is starting to act like it.