American Police State

Masha Gessen, author of “The Future is History: How Totalitarianism Reclaimed Russia”, wrote an op-ed for the NYT April 2, 2025 titled “Unmarked Vans. Secret Lists. Public Denunciations. Our Police State Has Arrived.”

Gessen writes “Those of us who have lived in countries terrorized by a secret police force can’t shake a feeling of dreadful familiarity”, then quotes a friend Marianne Hirsch: “I never realized until this moment how much fear I carried with me from my childhood in Communist Romania. Arrests were arbitrary and every time the doorbell rang, I started to shiver.”

The police state has arrived in the United States of America in 2025.

The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) which oversees the Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) was created in 2001 following the 9/11 terrorist attacks. It was designed as a secret police force. One of its first uses was in July 2020 to arrest Black Lives Matter protestors in Portland Oregon. The officers were dressed in black, masked, and drove unmarked vans.

This year under the Trump regime they have been rounding up and disappearing (that’s a verb) people suspected of being undocumented criminal immigrants. And they don’t much care if they are a criminal and don’t even care if they have documents. There are plenty examples in the news of both.

The most chilling aspect of the current arrests is the lack of due process. The Riley Laken Act was signed by President Trump on January 29, 2025. It requires the DHS to detain undocumented immigrants for: “admitting to, charged with, or convicted of”, crimes as minor as shoplifting. In practice DHS is expanding the list to include “suspected of”. There is no hearing, no legal representation, and no chance to defend themselves. People arrested under this act can be held indefinitely without a formal charge.

Then there is the use of foreign prisons to “detain” these people. Hundreds of Venezuelan immigrants were sent to a prison in El Salvador. This is against the law prohibiting the US government from housing prisoners in other countries. There is a reason for that. DHS admitted in court on Monday April 1 that one of the men was sent to El Salvador due to a “clerical error”. Kilmar Abrego Garcia had a 2019 court order protecting him from being deported to El Salvador because he had sought asylum in the US from gang violence in that country. Now however the Trump administration says that there is nothing they can do about it because he is no longer in their jurisdiction. That is a lie, they just don’t want to bother. But this is the reason for the law requiring American prisoners to stay in America.

The Venezuelan deportation is an example of stretching the Riley Laken Act to include mere suspicion. Many of those deported were arrested on suspicion of belonging to a gang for no other reason than they had a tattoo. Some are no doubt not guilty of committing any crime and had tattoos for some other benign reason. (Somebody should tip ICE about a criminal gang member with tattoos named Pete Hegseth, and have him sent to El Salvador).

Here is a partial list compiled by Mary Trump, published in her The Good in Us Morning Dispatch, April 3, and titled “Disappeared”.

Here's an incomplete list of some of the men who have been wrongfully detained and illegally transported to the notorious CECOT mega-prison:

·         Franco Tiapa, 26, from Venezuela who was simply deported for having the wrong kind of tattoo.

·         Daniel Camargo, a 20 year old asylum seeker deported for a tattoo of his daughter’s name and praying hands.

·         Neri Borges, a Dallas man, who was arrested and deported because of an autism awareness tattoo he got in honor of his brother.

·         Luis Carlos Jose Marcano Silva, a 26-year-old barber who was detained at an immigration hearing in Miami last month because he has a tattoo of Jesus of Nazareth and one of his daughters name.

·         Jerse Reyes Barrios, a former professional footballer who was deported based on a tattoo of a soccer ball with a crown on top of it, in honor of his favorite soccer team, Real Madrid.

·         Francisco Casique, who was deported for having tattoos that say “Live in the Moment” and “Family” in Spanish. Casique’s family has published evidence that he has no criminal background whatsoever.

The reasons for arresting them keep changing. First it was undocumented immigrants who committed a crime. Then immigrants with work or student visas who protested the slaughter of civilians in Gaza (suddenly the “Party of Nazis” is concerned about anti-Semitism?). Visiting scientists detained or turned back at the border for anti-Trump comments. Then anyone who made a social media post critical of the Trump regime (that could fill a lot of prisons).

Thom Hartmann wrote in his April 4 substack post: “the Trump regime is now claiming that they can arrest, detain, and even deport anybody they want, any time they want, regardless of the law or the courts.”

Hartmann quotes from the first ten Constitutional Amendments, sometimes called the Bill of Rights, that applies to every person in the United States, whether good or bad, whether a citizen or not, whether in the country legally or not. And there is no clause giving the President the ability to override these rights.

·        Police can’t break into your home to arrest you without a warrant. “The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated…” (4^th Amendment)

·        You cannot be charged with a serious crime without an indictment of a Grand Jury… “nor be deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law…” (5^th Amendment)

·        The accused has the right to a speedy public trial by an impartial jury. They must “be informed of nature and cause of the accusation; to be confronted with the witnesses against him, to have compulsory process for obtaining witnesses in his favor, and to have the Assistance of Counsel for his defense.” (6^th Amendment)

·        They have the right to trial by jury (7^th Amendment)

·        Bail and punishment must be reasonable. “Excessive bail shall not be required, nor excessive fines imposed, nor cruel and unusual punishments inflicted.” (8^th Amendment)

These rights have been wilfully ignored by the Trump regime in the “detaining” (they can’t call them “arrests”) of these people. ICE officers are not above these laws; ignoring them is itself a crime.

American citizens may not care much about the arrests of these “criminal immigrants”, thinking it doesn’t affect them. But it does in many ways. One commenter to this article said that his MAGA neighbor, whose gardener was abducted by ICE, is “beyond upset”. (Now he’ll have to mow his own lawn! Awww!!!)

Another commenter contributed this quote from German Lutheran pastor Martin Niemöller speaking about the rise of Nazism:

"First they came for the Communists, and I did not speak out-

Because I was not a Communist.

Then they came for the Socialists, and I did not speak out—

Because I was not a Socialist.

Then they came for the trade unionists, and I did not speak out—

Because I was not a trade unionist.

Then they came for the Jews, and I did not speak out—

Because I was not a Jew.

Then they came for me—and there was no one left to speak for me.”

And don’t think the secret police will stop at immigrants. If they get away with what they are doing now, they will come after citizens next, still with no due process. And it won’t take much to get your name on the secret list.

The ultimate goal of this is to create fear. Fear to say anything to anyone because you don’t know who might be an informer – your neighbor, a co-worker, a relative.  Even your children could repeat something to their friends who tell their parents. This is how authoritarian regimes maintain control. Fear.

The police state has arrived in America. They are coming for you next.

Sources:

https://www.nytimes.com/2025/04/02/opinion/trump-ice-immigrants.html

https://www.cnn.com/2025/04/01/politics/maryland-father-mistakenly-deported-el-salvador-prison/index.html

https://hartmannreport.com/p/criminals-always-gonna-crime-but-bd4

Disappeared – Mary L Trump from the Good in Us, April 3, 2025

America’s Cultural Revolution

Is Donald Trump putting America through what Mao Zedong did to China in his “Cultural Revolution”? From 1966 to 1976 Mao had the scientists and bureaucrats – anyone with an education – in China imprisoned or killed. He suspected them of opposing his plans; they were Mao’s "elite" or “deep state”.

The result of Mao’s Cultural Revolution was the destruction of the Chinese economy.

When Thomas L. Friedman was in China recently he was asked by several people that he met if President Trump was executing a cultural revolution in America. A retired Chinese official emailed Friedman, warning him that Mao had sent his young followers to attack

 “… anyone who could think — ruling elites such as Deng Xiaoping, college professors, engineers, writers and journalists, doctors, etc. He wanted to dumb down the entire population so that he could rule easily and forever. Sounds a bit similar with what is going on in the U.S.? I hope not.”

 

Friedman then quoted Stephen Roach, an economist with considerable experience with China. Roach said that the effects of the Chinese revolution was felt mainly within the country because China’s economy was isolated at that time, while a similar revolution in the United States today would have a profound impact on the entire world.” 

Mao’s Cultural Revolution set Chinese economy back for decades; Trump’s will set America’s and the world’s economy back for generations.

Source:

https://www.nytimes.com/2025/04/03/opinion/trump-tariffs-us-security-stability.html

Trump Tariffs

Donald Trump loves tariffs. He’s been talking about them for 10 years and still does not understand how they work. He also doesn’t understand trade deficits and believes that any country that sells more goods to the USA than buys from them is somehow ripping off America. If services are included the trade balance often reverses but he isn’t interested in that.

It’s one thing for the President to be ignorant about economic statistics. But it’s quite another when he refuses to consult economists or ignores their advice. He thinks he’s such a genius that he knows better than anyone else about everything. Some people just can’t be taught and Donald Trump is the poster boy for such people.

The tariffs Trump announced today covers every country and all products, excepting only Russia, North Korea, and one or two other countries, and their products. This includes many products that America cannot make or grow- like diamonds and coffee - which makes no economic sense.

The stock market which used to be the only economic marker that Trump cared about has tanked even more today. Indexes like the Dow Jones dropped between 4-5% today, losing more than $2t in investors’ wealth (in addition to the $5t lost since inauguration day).

So what is Trump’s motive? Is it simply wilful ignorance and complete indifference to the consequences? Does he really believe that they will promote more manufacturing jobs in America despite evidence to the contrary? Or is something else going on.

Heather Cox Richardson in her substack post this morning quoted Senator Chris Murphy who explained that the reason Trump’s tariffs make no economic sense is because they are not an economic tool. Instead Murphy argues the tariffs “are simply a new, super dangerous political tool” designed to control private industry the way he is controlling law firms, universities and media corporations. Corporations “will need to pledge loyalty to Trump in order to get sanctions relief. The tariffs are designed to create economic hardship so that Trump has a straight face rationale for releasing them, business by business or industry by industry. As he adjusts or grants relief it’s a win-win: the economy improves and dissent disappears.”

Similarly Robert Reich in his morning substack post argues that the real reason for Trump’s tariffs is not to reciprocation for other countries’ unfair trade practices, but intimidation. His goal in this as in everything is to get other countries to capitulate to his demands. “Surrender is the whole point. Domination is his goal”. Each capitulation feeds his power and “encourages him and his goons to engage in even more bullying…”

Whether aimed at other countries or American industries and corporations, what Trump is doing is extortion. He's like the mob boss taking over a town who first sends his thugs to rough up the local businessmen, then offers them protection - for a price.

These theories make at least some sense. But I don’t know which is worse –a wilfully ignorant leader ruining his country's (and the world’s) economy in a misguided attempt to make it great again, or a tyrant seeking world domination.

Sources

https://heathercoxrichardson.substack.com/p/april-2-2025-wednesday

https://robertreich.substack.com/p/how-to-deal-with-trumps-demands-for

"Illegal" Immigrants

In an opinion piece for The Guardian this morning Mehdi Hasan argues that it is inaccurate and just plain wrong to call undocumented people “illegal” criminals.

Hasan makes three points: 

·        There is no such thing as an illegal immigrant

·        Being an undocumented immigrant is not a crime

·        Higher immigration does not lead to higher crime

In response to a question about how many of the 3,500 people arrested by ICE were criminals, White House secretary Karoline Leavitt answered “All of them, because they illegally broke our nation’s laws, and, therefore, they are criminals, as far as this administration goes.”

“Leavitt’s answer delighted Maga media and went viral in conservative circles", Hasan wrote. “It was also completely, utterly, totally, wrong. Factually inaccurate. A brazen lie.”

First, people cannot be illegal. They may commit illegal acts but they themselves can not be illegal. Elie Wiesel, an Auschwitz survivor and winner of the 1986 Nobel Peace Prize, once said:

“know that no human being is illegal. That is a contradiction in terms. Human beings can be beautiful or more beautiful, they can be fat or skinny, they can be right or wrong, but illegal? How can a human being be illegal?”

Second, American law states that illegal entry is a misdemeanor not a felony and is subject to civil, not criminal, penalties. So being present in the United States without proper documentation is not a crime and does not make anyone a criminal. A 2012 Supreme Court ruling, Arizona v United States, confirmed “as a general rule, it is not a crime for a removable alien to remain in the United States.”

Reentry of removed aliens however is a felony (so is falsification of business records in New York of which Donald Trump was convicted on 34 counts, making him a criminal). If an immigrant has been forced to leave the United States and then comes back in, they have committed a crime and, if caught and convicted, could be accurately called a criminal.

Nearly half of undocumented immigrants in the United States did not enter the country illegally – they entered legally then overstayed their visa.

Third the American Right is trying very hard to equate immigrants with crime in the minds of American voters. They repeatedly use rhetoric like “criminal alien murderers, rapists, child predators and gangsters” when referring to undocumented immigrants. That too doesn’t’ hold up to the facts. Study after study supports the truth that immigrants commit crimes at lower rates than native-born Americans. I saw a meme that said “More American women have been sexually assaulted by the president and his cabinet than by immigrants”. That may be an exaggeration but the principle is sound.

As immigration expert Aaron Reichlin-Melnick observed: “you’re measurably safer living in a town filled with average undocumented immigrants than a town filled with average native-born citizens.”

Source:

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2025/apr/02/undocumented-people-no-such-thing-as-illegal-immigrant

Trump’s War on Science

Much of the cuts to funding done by the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) has directly affected health and science research. The cuts include firing of scientists and support staff, cuts to research grants, and reduced graduate student enrollment.

A 75 page open letter published Monday March 31 and signed by over 1,900 members of the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering and Medicine, criticizes these cuts as a “wholesale assault on U.S. science” that will set back American research for decades and threaten the health and safety of American people.

Federal government funding has supported research both within government agencies and at universities across the country.

“For over 80 years, wise investments by the U.S. government have built up the nation’s research enterprise, making it the envy of the world. This is all being destroyed by the Trump regime.  Astoundingly, the Trump administration is destabilizing this enterprise by gutting funding for research, firing thousands of scientists, removing public access to scientific data and pressuring researchers to alter or abandon their work on ideological grounds.”

As one example, the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality, “responsible for protecting the quality of health care in the United States, just got demolished. These changes … are going to translate into harms to everyday Americans.” Life expectancy, mortality rates, and the mental health crisis will all worsen.

The letter accuses the Trump administration of censorship by blocking research on subjects that it doesn’t like including climate change, trans-gender health, and vaccine safety. Any studies focusing on the specific health needs of Blacks or other ethnic minorities were shut down.

The letter was addressed “To The American People” and called on them to pressure their members of Congress to protect and restore scientific funding.

Economists are also protesting the cuts to science which they say will make America less competitive and the people poorer, less healthy and less productive in the coming decades. They argue that fundamental research is among the most efficient uses of taxpayer dollars, returning 500% on investment. The discoveries made by fundamental research fueled the rise in economic growth and standard of living in America’s 20^th century.

Immigrants are a critical component of scientific innovation, accounting for 36% of patents since 1990, and are more likely to create new businesses than native born Americans. Trump’s immigration policies are not helping.

Canada went through something like this with the Harper Conservative government (2006-2015). He cut scientific research in many areas but particularly anything that threatened the oil industry in his home province of Alberta. All government scientists had to have their reports vetted by his office before publication. He even had his men shadow scientists – reminiscent of Stalin era USSR – when they attended international conventions, to prevent them reporting anything linking climate change to fossil fuels. Chris Turner published a book documenting this called “The War on Science: Muzzled Scientists and Wilful Blindness in Stephen Harper’s Canada” (2014).

But from what I’ve seen, Trump has done far more damage to American science in 8 weeks than Harper did in 8 years.

European and other countries are now actively recruiting American scientists. In a weird reversal of history, American scientists are now finding refuge in Germany.

Sources

https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2025/03/31/health/scientists-letter.html

https://www.nytimes.com/2025/03/31/science/trump-science-nas-letter.html

https://www.nytimes.com/2025/03/31/business/economy/trump-research-cutbacks-economy.html

https://www.amazon.ca/War-Science-Muzzled-Scientists-Blindness/dp/1771004312

Buyers Remorse

The term “buyer’s remorse” is being used to refer to people who voted for Trump for whatever reason (e.g. to fix the economy) and are now regretting it when they see him destroying the government and the economy.

One of these voters is Jennifer Piggott from West Virginia. She described herself as a “MAGA junkie”, flying a Trump flag outside her home and voting for Trump three times. Then in February she was laid off from her job with the Treasury Department’s Bureau of Fiscal Service as part of DOGE’s downsizing of the federal government. The reason given for her dismissal was “poor performance” despite getting the highest rating on a performance review less than three weeks earlier. DOGE apparently either ignored her performance review or more likely made no attempt to read it.

Her community voted overwhelmingly for Trump, giving him 70% of the votes. Piggott said “Nobody that I’ve talked to understood the devastation that having this administration in office would do to our lives. I don’t understand this at all. Trump is creating a disaster and I don’t know what America is going to look like if this continues.”

Not all Trump voters in her community have been converted, though. Since speaking out Piggott has received death threats and had her property vandalized.

The latest polls show Trump’s approval rating dropping but still remarkably high. A Harvard CAPS/Harris poll found 49% of registered voters approved of Trump’s job performance in late March, down slightly from 52% in February. By now I would expect it to be in the 20-25% range with just his MAGA cultists still onboard. What is it going to take to wake up the rest of these people? Missed Social Security checks? Martial law crackdown on peaceful protests? Defying the Supreme Court? I honestly don’t know.

People who do not work for government have a (small) excuse for assuming some truth to Trump and Musk’s repeated assertions about “fraud, waste and abuse” in the federal government. But as a public servant working in a government agency, Jennifer Piggott knew that she and her co-workers were honest hard-working people who were providing an important service for American people. She should have known, but apparently didn’t, that this was true for all or nearly all public servants and government agencies. Perhaps she thought there was fraud and waste in other departments?

There is a meme circulating the internet that goes like this: “I never thought leopards would eat MY face”, sobs the woman who voted for the Leopards Eating People’s Faces Party.

So, it’s hard to feel sorry for people like Jennifer Piggott. It’s tempting to feel she got what she deserved, that her misfortune is the result of Karma. And tempting to vent our anger on her: “You idiot, that’s what we’ve been trying to tell you for the last 10 years. It’s because of morons like you that we are in this mess.”

No, if we want to get out of this mess and salvage as much of our democracy as possible, we must embrace people like Jennifer. Welcome them to reality and invite them to become part of the resistance. The Democratic Party (or a new progressive party) needs to offer them a strong viable alternative. Bernie Sanders and AOC are doing that with their Fighting Oligarchy Tour.

America needs more Jennifer Piggotts. The sooner the better.

Sources:

https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/us-politics/trump-maga-voter-regret-fiscal-service-b2723454.html

https://thehill.com/homenews/administration/5224062-trump-approval-rating-dip-poll/

The Fentanyl Crisis

To hear Donald Trump tell it, the fentanyl crisis is caused by illegal immigrants coming across the border and he’s going to fix it with stricter border and immigration controls. Josh Levs in a March 27 article for The Contrarian claims both those statements are a lie.

The Biden administration had made progress on fentanyl and it got worse under Trump, but you would not know that listening to most media reports.

Trump’s penchant for exaggeration comes in to play too. “We lose 300,000 people a year to fentanyl” he’s fond of claiming. In 2023 drug overdose was responsible for 107,000 deaths with nearly 70% of those from fentanyl. So closer to 74,000. Significantly less than 300,000 but still, a lot of unnecessary deaths.

The vast majority of drugs seized at the border are at regular border crossings, not in between, so not from illegal immigrants and not because of an “open border”. About 80% of convicted fentanyl traffickers are American citizens; 20% are visitors or recent immigrants, legal or otherwise.

Fentanyl use went up during Trump’s first term. From 52,900 deaths in the last 12 months of Obama’s administration to 94,788 for the last 12 months of Trump’s first term. It continued to rise during Biden’s first two years to 107,000 and 109,745, then dropped to 105,480 in his third year and to 82,000 by October of 2024 (the last month data was available for the study quoted).

The CDC reported that the 12 months ending in September 2024 was a nearly 24% drop in overdose deaths. Allison Arwady, Director of CDC’s National Center for Injury Prevention and Control, commented:

“It is unprecedented to see predicted overdose deaths drop by more than 27,000 over a single year. That’s more than 70 lives saved per day. CDC’s public health investments, our improved data and laboratory systems for overdose response … mean that we are more rapidly identifying emerging drug threats and supporting public health prevention and response activities in communities across America.”

The Biden administration was working on cutting demand as well as supply through things like addiction treatments, mental health support, research and education programs. Things that the Trump administration are likely to cut as “wasteful”, if they haven’t already. I have no doubt that the trend will reverse and overdose deaths will start increasing again under this regime.

Trump isn’t interested in facts such as these. He doesn’t’ even really care about the people dying from a drug overdose. For Donald Trump the fentanyl crisis is just a talking point with which to attack immigrants, Mexico and Canada. And also his predecessor, Sleepy Joe Biden, and his “open border”.

 

Sources:

https://contrarian.substack.com/p/red-america-needs-the-truth-on-trumps

https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/nvss/vsrr/drug-overdose-data.htm

https://www.cdc.gov/media/releases/2025/2025-cdc-reports-decline-in-us-drug-overdose-deaths.html