Gov. Phil Scott has belatedly rediscovered some of the political courage he occasionally displayed during Donald Trump’s first term but has kept well-hidden through Trump II: The Empire Strikes Back.

And all it took was two cold-blooded killings on the streets of Minneapolis by Trump’s masked and heavily armed thugs. Well, it also took critical statements from a number of other Republicans, up to and including Texas’ archconservative Gov. Greg Abbott. Scott was far from the first to tiptoe out on that limb.

Note that Scott didn’t say a word about the first killing, that of Renee Good more than two weeks ago. A second senseless murder, that of Alex Pretti, had to happen before the governor’s moral gag reflex was triggered.

So… congratulations?

For the past year-plus, Scott has minimized any public criticism of Trump’s many excesses. And in his budget address, he sent a not-terribly-subtle message to the rest of us to Please Shut the Hell Up About Trump:

…today, even the traditional funding we’ve come to expect from Washington is uncertain. And from what I’ve seen, no amount of political posturing or strongly worded statements will change that.

By “political posturing” I guess he means standing up for your Constitutional rights, but whatever. His more recent statement was much more like his response to Trump I — as far as it went:

“Enough…it’s not acceptable for American citizens to be killed by federal agents for exercising their God-given and constitutional rights to protest their government.  

“At best, these federal immigration operations are a complete failure of coordination of acceptable public safety and law enforcement practices, training, and leadership.  

“At worst, it’s a deliberate federal intimidation and incitement of American citizens that’s resulting in the murder of Americans.  Again, enough is enough.

“The President should pause these operations, de-escalate the situation, and reset the federal government’s focus on truly criminal illegal immigrants. In the absence of Presidential action, Congress and the Courts must step up to restore constitutionality.”

Nice of Scott to give our wannabe dictator the benefit of the doubt. Maybe it’s deliberate intimidation, maybe it’s just a mistake or two, it’s not for Scott to say. And apparently it’s okay to yank people off the streets and into extrajudicial custody if they are “truly criminal,” which the Trump administration defines extremely broadly. And is more than happy to lie through its teeth about.

But as direct as that statement was by Scott’s standards, it could have been much stronger. As Bill Schubart noted in a Substack post, the governor’s brief statement (quoted in full above) failed to name the names of those responsible — Trump, J.D. Vance, Kristi Noem, and “the architects of ICE and U.S. Border Patrol’s murderous onslaught against Minneapolis citizens.” Nor did he take his own Republican Party to task for failing to impose any guardrails against Trump’s assault on democracy and human decency.

But I guess we can only expect so much from Scott. It’s not as though caution in the face of extremity is anything new from our chief executive.

One could argue that Scott is taking a responsible course by trying to avoid the randomly selective ire of That Manbaby in the White House. But we are well on the way to an authoritarian state willing to throw the Bill of Rights into a bonfire in the name of addressing a cooked-up security crisis. Scott’s timorousness can be read as complicity, not prudence.

And will it protect us from Trump in the end? That’s a real stretch.

Seven Days’ article on Scott’s statement closed with a quote from a participant in an anti-ICE rally in Waterbury: “I live in a relatively safe state, and this is the least I can do to be in solidarity with the people of Minnesota.”

Yeah, about that “relatively safe state” thing. Until this month, Minnesota was a “relatively safe state” and Minneapolis a relatively safe city. Not any more. We should not be at all surprised if there’s an armed federal presence at the next rally outside the Statehouse or on the Burlington waterfront or on a streetcorner in your own community. Don’t count on your “relatively safe” status to protect you. And don’t let our political leaders get away with indulging in that potentially fatal bit of Vermont exceptionalism.

Not to mention that this state is already far from “relatively safe” for immigrants and those who look like immigrants and transgender folk. Scott has let a number of people be rounded up and detained without a peep of protest. Indeed, he wants to install one of the legal spear-carriers of Trump’s regime on the Vermont Supreme Court. Wouldn’t it be a hell of a response to the Minnesota murders if he withdrew his nomination of Michael Drescher? One can dream.

Note: I have sought the approval of Vermont’s own cartoonist Jeff Danziger for the use of the above image. He has yet to reply, but in the past he has signaled general approval — in fact, he once chided me for using a cartoon by one of his fellows instead of his own. But if he should object, I will replace the image with another.