Stanford political scientist Adam Bonica notes (in “The Supreme Court Is at War With Its Own Judiciary“)that since May, federal district courts have ruled against Trump administration 94% of the time, while the Supreme Court has sided with the Trump administration 94% of the time.
He describes the pattern in which district court judges gather evidence firsthand and rule that the administration has acted illegally, the administration appeals to the Supreme Court, and the high court’s majority sides with the administration in unsigned emergency orders.
Trump’s DOJ, which has repeatedly defied judges, has been contemptuous of the authority of the courts to provide judicial oversight. Trump has defamed judges; his allies have doxed them, issued death threats, and submitted impeachment resolutions.
Bonica concludes:
The conservative majority knows exactly what it’s doing. These same justices would never have allowed a Democratic administration to take similar actions, like abolishing federal agencies by executive order or federalizing national guards without state approval and deploying the military against peaceful protesters. Yet when Trump bulldozes through constitutional limits, the Court waves him on. We are witnessing something without precedent: a Supreme Court that appears to be at war with the federal judiciary’s core constitutional function. It has chosen to bless the administration’s actions, and in doing so, systematically dismantles the authority of any court that stands in its way. The courts can’t protect the Constitution because the Supreme Court won’t let them. The Supreme Court has chosen a side, and it isn’t the rule of law.
Trump’s Attorney General has noticed. When asked by Senator Patty Murray whether the administration ought to follow court orders, Pam Bondi responded:
We will follow court orders, Senator. We will follow court orders. The problem arises in the district courts. All these district courts throughout the country are trying our hands. And here’s how we will follow them — when we get to the United States Supreme Court, we’re winning.
MURRAY: Do you agree that this administration should follow court orders?BONDI: We will follow court orders. The problem arises in the district courts. All these district courts throughout the country are tying our hands. And here's how we will follow them — when we get to SCOTUS, we're winning
This is consistent with the Project 2025 strategy. The Supreme Court, with its Republican supermajority, is prepared to do its part in the MAGA campaign. Success requires the three branches of the federal government to act in concert. The court’s Republican majority has consistently (more than nine times out of ten) sided with the Trump administration. It will continue to do so, above all in the most significant cases.
The Roberts Court is prepared to shrug off constitutional limits on the president, to override well established judicial principles, and to sabotage the rule of law itself on behalf of the wannabe strongman in the White House. It will not stand in the way of the Project 2025 crusade. It will not constrain Donald Trump.
In June 2018, Jeffrey Goldberg described an exchange (which he relayed again in the Atlantic this month) with a senior White House official regarding Trump’s approach to world affairs. Goldberg suggested that it might be too soon to identify a Trump Doctrine; the official disagreed and offered the words in the headline above:
“We’re America, Bitch” is not only a characterologically accurate collective self-appraisal—the gangster fronting, the casual misogyny, the insupportable confidence—but it is also perfectly Rorschachian. To Trump’s followers, “We’re America, Bitch” could be understood as a middle finger directed at a cold and unfair world, one that no longer respects American power and privilege. To much of the world, however, and certainly to most practitioners of foreign and national-security policy, “We’re America, Bitch” would be understood as self-isolating, and self-sabotaging.
I agree with Goldberg’s assessment that
what is mainly interesting about “We’re America, Bitch” is its delusional quality. Donald Trump is pursuing policies that undermine the Western alliance, empower Russia and China, and demoralize freedom-seeking people around the world. The United States could be made weaker—perhaps permanently—by the implementation of the Trump Doctrine.
As abroad, so too in America
But, when I recently read Goldberg’s June 2025 piece, what struck me about the Trump Doctrine is that it captures Trump’s approach to domestic politics as well as foreign policy.
At the center of Trump’s approach to American politics is denigration of his political opponents. Dividing the country into us (his MAGA allies, Trump loyalists) and them (folks who oppose Trump and the MAGA agenda), the president regards only the former as genuine Americans, worthy of respect and deserving a voice in political affairs.
His venom is mostly (though not exclusively) aimed at Democrats, since Democrats comprise the opposition party. “They’re Marxists and communists and fascists, and they’re sick,” as well as ‘radical left lunatics,’ ‘evil,’ and ‘dangerous.’ Not to mention, ‘scum,’ ‘animals,’ ‘evil,’ and ‘enemies of the people.’ It doesn’t matter which demeaning insult you choose: it is no wonder that anyone so characterized would be regarded as unworthy of legitimate political standing in the country.
We hear these insults daily. On Fox News Channel, from Trump and Republicans, posted on Truth Social and Twitter. This is hardly news. But make no mistake, Trump is the only president (perhaps ever, but certainly) in our lifetimes who has never sought to represent America in full. He has consistently catered only to (one faction or another of) his base — the real Americans. Not the blue city or blue state Americans.
Trump makes us weaker as a nation when he writes off half the country. His demolition of the capacity of the federal government, his attacks on civil society (media, law firms, higher education, science), his anti-immigrant crusade — all of this strips away what makes America great. To achieve his ends, Trump has waged war on the liberty the Constitution grants us and on the rule of law itself. The Republican Party, remade in his image, and the folks inside the tent are on board with what they regard as a winning project.
Hence, it was hardly surprising when his Vice President visited Los Angeles and displayed open, gleeful contempt of the Democratic officials elected by Californians. A week after Secretary of Homeland Security Kristi Noem trolled of liberating the city and state (seconds before a man who represents California in the United States Senate was pushed to the floor and handcuffed), JD Vance insulted Alex Padilla by misnaming him.
“I was hoping Jose Padilla would be here to ask a question, but unfortunately I guess he decided not to show up because there wasn’t a theater, and that’s all it is,” Vance said.
That Vance reduced Padilla’s attempted questioning of Noem to a charade shows what a clown he is. Spitting out “José” like a villain in a low-budget western reveals his rank racism. And if you think I’m exaggerating, consider how Vance’s press secretary, Taylor Van Kirk, responded when Politico asked her to elaborate on his José insult: She said her boss “must have mixed up two people who have broken the law.”
Humor? Trolling? Or more purposefully an authoritarian move to denigrate the senator’s views as illegitimate? He doesn’t count. Nor do his constituents. We’re standing up for real Americans. That’s why the National Guard and the Marines are in the streets of L.A.
“We’re America, bitch” in contemporary American politics is the brush off for folks outside the MAGA tent. It’s (in Goldberg’s words) “the middle finger directed” at everyone of us who opposes Trump politically.
In the Trump era, MAGA dominates all three branches of government. Trump dictates. Congress defers. And the Supreme Court paves the way.
In February 2015, Senator Marco Rubio issued a press release, “Fact Check: Donald Trump Used Illegal Immigrants to Build Trump Tower,” relating a story about ‘illegal immigrants’ working 12-hour shifts at $5/hour without overtime to demolish the building that made way for Trump Tower.
After months of silence, President Trump responded on Friday to reports that the Trump Organization has employed dozens of undocumented immigrants by saying that he doesn’t know whether the organization does or not. “I don’t know because I don’t run it,” Mr. Trump said when asked if he was confident that undocumented immigrants were no longer working at his golf courses. “But I would say this: Probably every club in the United States has that because it seems to be, from what I understand, a way that people did business.”
I raise this issue not to harp on hypocrisy, but to illustrate that, no matter how factually-challenged our president is, he understands that immigrants (with or without papers) play a critical role in the nation’s economy. In some instances, the “way that people did business” has been simply a way to cut costs, because undocumented immigrants are often willing to work for less and have fewer options when they are cheated. But that’s not the whole story.
A number of industries, from hospitality to farming to the building trades would experience dire labor shortages without immigrant labor. (More than ten thousand homes burned in the devastating fires in Los Angeles County just months ago — in a state that has failed to provide affordable housing even without this loss.) Federal visa policies and legal avenues for recruiting foreign workers are inadequate.
While Trump has acknowledged (as recently as yesterday) — because he has spoken with rich friends with financial interests in federal policy — the structural challenges in the agricultural and hospitality sectors, he doesn’t seem intent on reforming immigration laws to make them workable. Instead, on the one hand, Trump will carve out exceptions for cronies, allies, and loyalists, while, on the other hand, he’ll go after immigrants working low paying jobs (day laborers, attendants at car washes, sidewalk vendors, garment workers, line cooks, and so on). These are in most instances jobs that few citizens are clamoring for. Yet they’re essential.
Militarized federal policy in Los Angeles
A 37-year-old U.S. citizen who was tackled to the ground and arrested after filming federal agents at Home Depot on Thursday said he was held for more than an hour near Dodger Stadium, where agents boasted about how many immigrants they arrested. “How many bodies did you guys grab today?” he said one agent asked. “Oh, we grabbed 31,“ the other replied. “That was a good day today,” the first agent responded. The two high-fived, as he sat on the asphalt under the sun, Job Garcia said.
Why is this happening? Why the raids by the feds? To instill fear: fear to drive to work or stop at a grocery store or attend a child’s graduation.
To disrupt civic life. To separate families. To empty the streets and shopping malls and public gathering places. To strangle businesses. To outrage citizens offended by the police state tactics. To provoke violence in order to justify and amp up the military occupation. To intimidate critics and would-be critics. To punish blue cities, blue regions, blue states — and their elected representatives. To rehearse ambushes, detentions, arrests, and deportations that will roll out in other blue cities and states.
But most of all: This is a campaign to expand the power of the presidency beyond anything previously experienced in the history of our country. To shrug off legal constraints, shunt aside Congress, and cripple institutions of civil society (media, law firms, universities, and even Democratic governors and mayors). This campaign makes a mockery of the Constitution, of checks and balances, federalism, state sovereignty, and the rule of law.
Trump is conducting a frontal assault on our democratic institutions, on what — I dare say — makes America great.
Project 2025 made a plan for this assault. The Trump 2 administration is carrying it out. They have theories to justify what they’re doing.
Why was the NYC comptroller arrested? The feds announced that he would be charged with “assaulting law enforcement,” but no one witnessed that — and there was a video to substantiate witness accounts. The charges were dropped.
Why aren’t the federal agents in uniform — with badges identifying themselves and their agency? Why — in this case and many others, including agents working outdoors — are agents so often masked up?
Phillip Bump explores the latter question today. In May, the acting director of ICE asserted, “ICE officers have seen a staggering 413 percent increase in assaults against them.” Bump reports that not only is there no evidence for this, there is ample evidence against this claim. ICE reports show assaults on agents have declined from 2024 to 2025. DOJ and ICE have reported only a dozen such assaults in 2025. For context: in April ICE announced that it had conducted 66,463 arrests since Trump’s inauguration.
Furthermore, ICE has failed to provide “any examples of immigration officers being identified, targeted and assaulted outside of the context of an arrest.” The handful of agents purportedly assaulted or threatened with assault — with an elbow to the face (as reported by ICE), for instance — were all injured or threatened as they carried out their duties. None were doxed or targeted away from work. So why the masks?
On April 29, DHS released a report claiming, “Under President Trump, U.S. Immigration Customs and Enforcement (ICE) is targeting the worst of the worst, 75% of their arrests are criminal illegal aliens with convictions or pending charges.” Don’t believe it. A CNN report reveals a different story:
As the Trump administration has ramped up raids in Los Angeles and around the country, top officials have highlighted the capture of immigrants convicted of crimes like murder, assault and rape — describing them as “barbaric” criminals who “reigned terror” on American communities. But internal government documents obtained by CNN show that only a fraction of migrants booked into Immigration and Customs Enforcement custody since October have been convicted of serious violent or sexual crimes. Public ICE data released by the administration shows that most immigrants currently in the agency’s custody do not have a prior criminal conviction. But the internal data reviewed by CNN goes deeper, making clear that even among those convicted of crimes, a substantial percentage faced only relatively minor charges.
Trump’s federal police forces must arrest thousands of “very good, long time workers” to hit Stephen Miller’s goal of 3,000 arrests a week. In spite of Trump’s tweet on farms and hotels, the arrests have continued, at least in blue cities and states. And of course in Home Deport parking lots, carwashes, restaurants, swap meets — wherever immigrants gather to work or shop or go about their business.
American citizens, acting as though their rights will be protected, have been caught up in the confrontations staged by ICE:
20-year-old U.S. citizen Adrian Andrew Martinez was swarmed by ICE in Pico Rivera while defending someone. He never hit back—just struggled—before being slammed into a CBP van. No records. No lawyer. His mom can’t find him. This is abuse of power. Keep recording. Don’t stop.
Eventually, the feds announced that the young man would be charged with punching an agent, but — unless they release evidence that we haven’t yet seen — the video record would seem to contradict this charge. Instead, we see ICE agents acting aggressively, shoving people around, including folks making videos with their smartphones. We see no attacks by anyone in the crowd or any agents getting punched in the face.
The attack on communities in blue cities and states
Contrary to Trump’s campaign promises and the lies his administration continues to spread — his immigration crackdown is aimed overwhelmingly at people who are peaceful, productive members of their communities. It’s not making any of us safer or more secure.
Recall again, that federal forces are targeting blue cities and states, beginning with Los Angeles, California. This policy aims to disrupt life for everyone in this city. To punish Democratic officials duly elected and their constituents — citizens and immigrants alike. And it is succeeding, as the Los Angeles Times reports:
With federal immigration sweeps showing no signs of slowing across Southern California, there is growing concern from top officials, spiritual leaders and business owners that a climate of fear was sending more people underground and changing the rhythm of city life. Once-bustling immigrant hubs, including MacArthur Park, the Garment District, downtown’s produce market and areas of the Eastside have seen a noticeable reduction in foot traffic over the last week, with some businesses forced to close as a result. It comes as social media is rife with videos of people spotting immigration agents at shopping centers, markets and neighborhood streets, and capturing federal agents making arrests at swap meets, car washes and other businesses.
Trump’s aim is to punish his political enemies. He won’t make L.A. or California any safer. He certainly won’t make the city or America great again. Instead, he is wreaking havoc. He is terrorizing the immigrants who make things work in this community. He is with a single vindictive policy damaging the region’s economy.
This is terror inflicted on Americans, though Americans whom he and MAGA Republicans from Fox News to Twitter to the United States Congress have slandered as un-American (via a whole catalogue of demeaning and insulting language).
That’s why … the masked agents who look and act like street thugs — something we’ve witnessed in other less democratic, more authoritarian countries. The headlines right now, as our president pledges “within the next two weeks” to decide whether to drop a bunker-buster on Iran, feature MAGA factions wishing to avoid war. These America Firsters, from Marjorie Taylor Green (“We are sick and tired of foreign wars. All of them”) to Tucker Carlson to Steve Bannon to JD Vance, are fine with creating fear and inflicting pain on vulnerable people in communities dominated by MAGA critics — and on collective punishment on whole regions. The immigration raids aim to do harm to Americans who politically oppose Donald Trump.
This administration and today’s Republican Party are just fine with the divisive, destructive assault on blue cities and states. Unleashing force and generating fear appeal to the wannabe strongman in the White House. ICE, DHS, DOJ, the National Guard, the Marines, and more: the President can unleash the power of the federal government to inflict great harm on his political enemies. Trump is directing a war against half of America.
For my friends, everything; for my enemies, the law.
Trump’s presidency has seen this credo play out with elected officials (and others) of both parties, mostly Republican friends on the one hand and Democratic enemies on the other.
Enemies
Let’s begin with the enemies. “I am your retribution,” Trump pledged during his 2024 campaign.
New York City Comptroller (and candidate for mayor) Brad Lander was arrested at an immigration courthouse yesterday — by men, some masked, without any uniforms or visible badges:
In each case, there was a theatrical show of force. This, for the pleasure of Fox News Channel (and conservative media), Twitter trolls, and the MAGA base. And — of course — to intimidate the ‘enemy’ camp.
Less prominent political enemies who have found themselves targeted by the Trump 2 administration are mostly Democrats, but include Republicans who have displeased Trump.
In April 2025, Trump directed DOJ to investigate Miles Taylor and Chris Krebs., who both served in the first Trump administration, but who have become critics. The next day, the U.S. attorney announced investigations of both the governor and the attorney general of New Jersey. So far, in the first five months of Trump’s second term, more than 100 perceived enemies have been targeted by federal officials doing his bidding.
Trump has grabbed the authority to govern from California Governor Kevin Newsom and Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass, both of whom are in place because they won elections. After Trump’s border czar threatened to arrest Newsom, Trump endorsed the idea. The grounds for arrest? Trump: “I think his primary crime is running for governor because he’s done such a bad job.“
Trump has also targeted law firms and prominent universities, with clients or constituents viewed as enemies of MAGA. And, of course, hundreds of immigrants in Democratic cities and states have been detained and many have already been deported.
Friends
Second, Trump’s friends — who have received pardons and commutations:
More than 1,500 so far in the first half of 2025. That total includes the January 6 crew, including Trump supporters who brutalized police officers, men convicted of seditious conspiracy, and a slew of men with felony convictions in their past.
Seven federal elected officials and nine state and local officials — convicted of corruption, ranging from bribery, fraud, acting as a foreign agent, and insider trading — received pardons or commutations from Trump. Some of these crooks had already served their prison sentences, but eight of them dodged roughly 50 years of prison time collectively. In addition, a couple of miscreants, including Democratic NYC Mayor Eric Adams (who attended Trump’s inauguration), were let off the hook before prosecution. Trump has also let several drug kingpins off.
After Trump pardoned his longtime supporter and former Virginia sheriff, Scott Jenkins, of conspiracy to commit bribery at the end of May, the Department of Justice pardon attorney, Ed Martin, took to X to make clear the administration’s priorities: “No MAGA left behind.”
We’re not quite halfway through Trump’s first year back in the White House. What he is dishing out is hardly justice. It’s exactly what Trump promised: retribution.
The Republicans in the majority of both houses of Congress haven’t moved to put a stop to it, while the Republican majority on the Roberts Court has egged on Trump’s authoritarian binge by siding with him, and against the Constitution, in a string of key decisions.
Welcome to government by and for the contemporary Republican Party. And against the rest of us.
“The Department of Homeland Security and the officers and the agencies and the departments and the military people that are working on this operation will continue to sustain and increase our operations in this city. We are not going away. We are staying here to liberate the city from the socialists and the burdensome leadership that this governor and that this mayor have placed on this country and what they have tried to insert into the city.” — Secretary of Homeland Security Kristi Noem
Governor Gavin Newsom and Mayor Karen Bass are leading the State of California and the City of Los Angeles because they won free and fair elections to do so.
Besmirching these leaders or using cute appeals to liberation to serve political ends hardly justifies — under our Constitution — military rule imposed by a president. The authority of state governments hasn’t vanished because we have a wannabe strongman in the White House. The Constitution places limits on the federal government and on presidents.
Note: I’m not an attorney, much less a legal scholar. It may well be in this instance that this president is acting within the strict rule of law (as authorized by past Congresses, which took for granted that future presidents would act with good faith, respect for our democratic institutions, and a commitment above all else to furthering the national interest for all Americans). But the big picture is clear enough for all who care to see it: this president and the contemporary Republican Party (which dominates all three branches of the federal government) are pushing hard to create an authoritarian regime in the United States of America.
Donald Trump made clear during his campaign in 2024 that he intended to crack down on his political opponents. His immigration crusade in the biggest blue state of all creates fear, disrupts lives, and damages the economy. He is deliberately, with malice aforethought ripping power away from leaders elected by voters who disfavor this president and his agenda.
In 2021, Trump sought to overthrow the results of an election. That was without precedent at the time. Then it became a thing in the MAGA GOP (from Arizona’s Kari Lake to North Carolina’s Jefferson Griffin). Increasingly, when Republicans lose an election they declare it rigged. Americans can no longer rely on both parties to accept election outcomes and peaceful transfers of power.
Trump created the big lie that he won in 2020. MAGA and rightwing media have kept this shameful lie alive in order to generate anger in the GOP base and to justify whatever power grab Republicans can cook up. Project 2025 was a grand scheme to cook up as much as possible, which the Trump 2 administration is intent on implementing.
Now, without bothering to manufacture a big lie about California elections, Trump has simply grabbed power from the undisputed election winners in a blue state and a blue city — and employed the nation’s military in doing so. This too, until this month, was unprecedented in a democratic United States.
Trump’s actions in Los Angeles represent an attack on our democracy. Arbitrary rule without accountability is why Americans fought the Revolutionary War. The United States Constitution exists to secure our freedom from tyranny.
By now it’s abundantly clear that the Trump 2 administration/Project 2025/MAGA GOP’s chief aim is to push presidential power past constitutional and legal limits (as generally accepted, certainly prior to 2016, by constitutional scholars across the political spectrum). From the DOGE wrecking ball, to the attacks on universities and law firms, to masked agents in tactical gear making arrests on the street, to deportations to foreign prisons, to stonewalling the courts, to open self-dealing on a massive scale: almost all of this has been lawless, though facilitated by the Roberts Court’s 2024Trump v. United States, which championed a “bold and unhesitating” chieftain and exempted him and him alone from the rule of law.
Donald Trump has been eager to employ military forces against Americans who oppose him and his policies since at least the summer of 2020. The then first-term president was enraged by the Black Lives Matter protests. He wanted to deploy 10,000 active duty troops to clamp down on the protesters. His then Defense Secretary relates that Trump asked the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Can’t you just shoot them in the legs or something?
More recently, during his 2024 campaign, Trump mused about employing the military to reign in his political enemies. When asked by Maria Bartiromo last October about his concerns about chaos on election day, Trump responded:
I think the bigger problem is the enemy from within, not even the people that have come in and destroying our country and by the way, totally destroying our country. The towns, the villages, they’re being inundated. But I don’t think they have the problem in terms of Election Day. I think the bigger problem are the people from within. We have some very bad people. We have some sick people, radical left lunatics. And I think — and it should be very easily handled by, if necessary, by National Guard or, if really necessary, by the military, because they can’t let that happen.
Let’s recall: On January 6, 2021 Donald Trump declined to call out the national guard when the folks that he had summoned to the Capitol viciously assaulted police officers, injuring 140 of them (while one officer, who rioters had pepper-sprayed, collapsed and died hours later); broke through doors, windows, and barricades to enter the building; trashed and vandalized offices; and threatened the safety of the Vice President, members of both branches of Congress, and their staffs. The second-term president followed up by pardoning the whole lot, including the most violent among them (including the more than 500 convicted of assaulting or interfering with police officers). Five Proud Boys — Enrique Tarrio, Zachary Rehl, Ethan Nordean, Joseph Biggs and Dominic Pezzola, in recognition of the new regime, have filed a $100 million suit against the federal government. Four of these five men were convicted of seditious conspiracy.
The President approves of violence when it serves his interests.
June 6, 2025 — Los Angeles, California
Homeland Security and ICE agents conducting immigration raids arrested a reported 44 people at a Home Depot in Paramount (a small city south of downtown Los Angeles) and a business in the city’s Fashion District. Peaceful protesters gathered, including more than a hundred by early evening at the Metropolitan Detention Center (near the Federal Building) downtown. But by 7:00 p.m. crowds clashed with the LAPD, which declared an unlawful assembly. Violent clashes amid protests ensued in Paramount into Saturday morning and, that evening, in downtown L.A.
The scope of civil unrest, while deplorable, has thus far been minimal. The Los Angeles Police Department and Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department did not reach out to the Governor for additional resources (though he has subsequently sent the California Highway Patrol to assist in keeping open the 101 freeway, which travels through downtown). Local law enforcement was well prepared to handle things.
Trump had other ideas.
On Saturday, Donald Trump issued a presidential memorandum nationalizing 2,000 members of the California National Guard. He did so without even consulting Governor Gavin Newsom. The last time a president federalized a state’s Guard without the consent of a governor was in 1965, when the President Lyndon Johnson did so to protect protesters marching from Selma to Montgomery for voting rights. Alabama Governor George Wallace opposed voting rights for Black folks and refused to ensure the peaceful marchers’ protection.
“Insurrection.” That’s the lie — from the White House’s point man for dispensing cruelty (most especially to people of every color but white), Deputy Chief of Staff Stephen Miller — that serves as the MAGA rationale for the deployment.
ICE’s top 50 field officials were given roughly a week’s notice of an emergency meeting in Washington. ICE’s 25 Enforcement Removal Operations, or ERO, field office directors and 25 Homeland Security Investigations, or HSI, special agents in charge flew into Washington and descended on the agency’s Washington headquarters last Tuesday, May 20. There, they were met by Miller, ICE confirmed to the Washington Examiner. “Miller came in there and eviscerated everyone. ‘You guys aren’t doing a good job. You’re horrible leaders.’ He just ripped into everybody. He had nothing positive to say about anybody, shot morale down,” said the first official, who spoke with those in the room that day. “Stephen Miller wants everybody arrested. ‘Why aren’t you at Home Depot? Why aren’t you at 7-Eleven?’” the official recited.
The actual on the ground tactics belie Homeland Security’s claim to be focusing on “the worst of the worst illegal alien criminals.” This regime is targeting folks — including residents here legally — in a host of peaceful places (neighborhoods, schools, immigration centers, courtrooms, Home Depots …) This brings the arrest and detention count nearer to Miller’s 3,000/day quota — but it’s far, far from the criminals, murderers, and drug smugglers that Trump promised to protect us from.
Kristi Noem, the cosplaying Homeland Security Secretary, defended the decision to federalize the troops by trashing Gavin Newsom: “Governor Newsom has proven that he makes bad decisions. The President knows that he makes bad decisions…,” as if a policy disagreement — absent an emergency or a governor’s defiance of the constitution and the rule of law — could justify federal military force against the authority of a state of the union. (Nothing Noem utters should be taken at face value.)
Donald Trump weighed in repeatedly on Truth Social, inveighing against Governor Newscum and Mayor Bass, who “can’t do their jobs,” while pledging to do so to “solve the problem, RIOTS & LOOTERS.”
The grounds, the actual state of affairs through the weekend, for Trump’s actions were flimsy. The stated rationale and defenses offered are fraudulent; the bad faith is transparent. The thuggish campaign against immigrants that we have seen unfold in all its ugliness over several months instills fear and inflicts pain by design. It creates a spectacle (which celebrity Trump ally, an embedded Dr. Phil, given an ‘exclusive,’ will profit from). Fox News, trumpeting “the Los Angeles riots,” has had a field day boosting Trump’s pretend crisis (before his intervention).
Last Friday and Saturday, when there was inevitable pushback — overwhelmingly with peaceful protest — against the indiscriminate immigration raids, the Trump administration leapt at the modicum of vandalism and violence experienced as a pretext for grasping power from a blue state governor, federalizing the National Guard, and on Monday sending in the Marines.
“If there’s any protester that wants to come out, they will be met with very big force. For those people that want to protest, they’re going to be met with very big force. And I haven’t even heard about a protest, but, you know, this is people that hate our country. But they will be met with very heavy force.”
The First Amendment be damned. Political dissent must be suppressed. Trump disparages Americans who disagree with him and the Project 2025/MAGA GOP agenda. They “are people that hate our country.”
The United Sates of America is experiencing firsthand an authoritarian campaign to diminish our freedom and damage our democracy. Force and fear are Trump’s tools of choice.
For social scientists who study the intersection of protests, politics and law enforcement, the scenes unfolding in California broadly follow a script that has played out many times in many other countries. A strong government response to demonstrations that initially start peacefully, they say, often produce increasingly violent confrontations. In some instances, they add, leaders have used the prospect of civil unrest to use heavy-handed tactics or create pretexts to expand their grip on power.
The Trump White House is eager to grasp another fig leaf of a pretext to go even further in its power grab. It craves a violent confrontation, which city and state authorities are doing their best to ward off. Trump’s actions have escalated the situation, rather than calmed things down. Deliberately. That’s not law and order; this is an authoritarian assault directed at political enemies and at constraints on a rogue White House.
Even if Trump doesn’t get the explosion of violence he is egging on, and the fig leaf of a plausible excuse for violent suppression by the military, he has already damaged the Constitution, federalism, state sovereignty, checks and balances, and the rule of law.
This rampage — even if this round ends peacefully — will continue and won’t be confined to California. The Trump 2 administration has four-years to impose its will on the nation.
1. The White House hosted travel industry executives to a briefing on planning for the 2026 World Cup. VP JD Vance offered a welcome:
“We’ll have visitors from close to 100 countries — we want them to come, we want them to celebrate, we want them to watch the games. But when the time is up, they’ll have to go home. Otherwise, they’ll have to talk to Secretary Noem,” Vance said, referring to the Homeland Security secretary and head of border enforcement.
A British backpacker. A Harvard researcher. A Canadian actress. An Australian mixed martial arts coach. Dozens of international college students. The Trump administration’s sweeping immigration-and-visa crackdown has begun ensnaring a class of people long-accustomed to being welcomed with open arms into the United States.
Canada, Germany, the UK, Ireland, The Netherlands, Denmark, and Finland have all issued travel advisories as a result of the detentions of their citizens.
But, no harm, no foul, right? Vance was just joking after all.
The next day she offered a sarcastic retort on social media, “I would like to take this opportunity to sincerely apologize for a statement that I made yesterday at my town hall.” The Senator explained that at her town hall,
a woman who was extremely distraught screamed out from the back corner of the auditorium, ‘People are going to die.’ I made an incorrect assumption that everyone in the auditorium understood that yes, we are all going to perish from this Earth. So, I apologize. And I’m really, really glad that I did not have to bring up the subject of the tooth fairy as well. But for those that would like to see eternal and everlasting life, I encourage you to embrace my lord and savior, Jesus Christ.
In addition to offering scorn for her constituents, Ernst’s appeal to her “lord and savior, Jesus Christ,” appears to be part and parcel of facetious trolling (following reference to the tooth fairy), not exactly a sincere testimony of her faith. But that’s par for the course, isn’t it? She certainly wouldn’t let the message of the Gospel get in the way of denying medical care to her constituents.
3. ICE and Homeland Security, seeking workers who may have lacked documentation, served warrants at two popular restaurants in the South Park neighborhood of San Diego on Friday. Four people were taken into custody at the worksite.
“This was an unnecessary and alarming show of force deployed by those federal agents at a restaurant in a residential neighborhood,” Councilmember Stephen Whitburn, whose district includes South Park, told The Times. “Setting aside the debate over immigration policy, I would like to know the justification for sending dozens of agents, wearing masks, carrying machine guns and handcuffing all the workers to execute a warrant for somebody who might be undocumented. Are you serious?”
Is there another democratic country in the world where this would take place?
We are living in the age of leftwing domestic terrorism. They are openly encouraging violence against law enforcement to aid and abet the invasion of America.
There was an age — during the height of the LBJ’s and Nixon’s War in Vietnam — of “leftwing domestic terrorism” in the country. But this ain’t the age of the Weather Underground, nor are animal rights or environmental radicals on the left ascendant today.
In the 21st century, white supremacists, anti-Muslims, and anti-government extremists on the right have become far and away the greatest source of domestic terrorist violence in the U.S. And there is ample evidence that it’s not even a close call, not in recent years. The most significant terrorist threats to Americans by other Americans come from the right.
Donald Trump has celebrated violence repeatedly. And he began his second term with pardons for the January 6 rioters, including those convicted of violence against the police (as well as of seditious conspiracy.) That counts as open encouragement of violence against law enforcement. Miller’s “they” doesn’t specify a single Democrat (or any leftwing figure) of prominence who comes close to Trump in either rhetoric or action that encourages violence against the police.
And there is no invasion of the country. That’s another lie.
Finally, the masked agents who refuse to identify themselves, the staged arrests at various venues, militarized assaults on immigrants and Americans alike (as in the restaurant kitchens), the deportations to foreign prisons: these are all contrived to troll, to taunt, to intimidate, to create fear, to punish. And this campaign is directed more at Americans who oppose Trump politically (or may be tempted to oppose), than at any criminal element in the country.
Add the pardons (after those of the January 6 crew) to criminals of various stripes and the picture of authoritarian control becomes clearer. Lawlessness with a sneer.
