I decided to expand this one out because I ran out of room to finish my argument here on the blog. I wrote about why a recent OPM memo allowing Christian Nationalists to attempt to convert their federal coworkers is a disturbing sign that may point to what the Trump regime's next excuse for a fascist crusade will be - combatting "anti-Christian bias" (by doing more fascism!)

https://www.ninaillingworth.com/2025/07/30/nina-bytes-dark-omens-of-a-new-crusade/

Nina-Bytes: Dark Omens of a New Crusade

"There will of course be folks who accuse me of overreacting when I say this new guidance is clearly the on ramp for the official adoption of Christian Nationalism as a state ideology, but I think even a cursory reading of what OPM Director Scott Kupor just released here demonstrates that this has nothing to do with workplace tolerance, or freedom of religion. In addition to allowing religious iconography, and public prayer, Kupor also wants government employees to be able to display “posters” with “religious messages” and solicit participation from even non-Christian employees in group expressions of religious sentiment. So what happens when your evangelical nazi co-worker puts up a poster saying “God hates queers?” How about when your Christian Nationalist supervisor calls “the team” together for a group prayer asking Jesus to protect the chosen one, Donald J. Trump? If you have to ask those questions, you’re clearly not understanding the policy; remember, laws, rights, and rules have no dominion over fascists in power, and only serve to bind or oppress their enemies."

#Fascism #OPM #Trump #ScottKupor #ChristianNationalism #FederalWorkforce #Fundamentalism #ChristianZionism #IdeologicalPolicing #MarcoRubio

Over the past couple of months I've written a lot about the rapid expansion of the already-formidable American surveillance state under Trump. Unfortunately, because the regime has cloaked this alarming and extremely dangerous expansion of the police state panopticon primarily inside the machinations of its immigration policies and mass deportation schemes, the vast majority of Very Serious People TM in our discourse are not properly assessing the danger this represents. Some might call that "ubiquitous US white supremacy in action," and those people would be absolutely correct. It is also however, extremely shortsighted because as I've noted many times, a dystopian panopticon police state for migrants, is a dystopian panopticon police state for everyone if the government wants it to be; and I think it's safe to say that Trump indeed desires as much.

To get a better idea of the scope of the problem I've been talking about, let's take a look at this Truthout article from last week.

https://truthout.org/articles/trump-is-rapidly-expanding-the-surveillance-state-as-protests-grow/

Trump Is Rapidly Expanding the Surveillance State as Protests Grow

"While mainstream media has framed the issue in terms of surveillance of immigrants, data on all Americans is being sucked into a growing digital dragnet. Guariglia and other privacy advocates are sounding the alarm over efforts by the Trump administration and its Silicon Alley partners to consolidate personal data on millions of people at the Social Security Administration and other federal agencies. As law enforcement increasingly turns to private companies to buy data instead of asking courts for search warrants, a data broker owned by major airlines has sold customer flight records and personal information to Customs and Border Patrol, according to an investigation by 404 Media.

“You are seeing that federal agents working under this current administration are very openly using surveillance technologies to trump our free speech, to completely violate our privacy, and not even giving personal privacy consideration anymore,” Tse said. “That is the thing that I am seeing that is new.”

I think to a degree it's still very hard for Americans, even cynical Americans raised in a post 9/11, post-Snowden leaks counterterrorism environment, to understand the degree to which technologies like facial recognition software, and so-called "AI" have supercharged a US state panopticon that is now more or less completely under the control of Swine Emperor Trump and his executive branch nazis. Furthermore, agencies like ICE, DHS, and the larger counterterrorism apparatus entwined throughout agencies like the FBI, and NSA, simply do not have the same level of oversight as even notoriously unsupervised local police forces because this entire police state panopticon was installed under the guise of fighting terrorism, which is more or less the President and the executive branch's purview in US government. These factors have always made the War on Terror panopticon a civil rights nightmare that has lead to numerous abuses by the Bush, Obama, and Biden governments over time; which is part of why giving that same panopticon "counterterrorism" police state to a guy like Trump, who thinks disagreeing with him publicly is tantamount to treason, or supporting terrorism, is an existential crisis in its own right.

Look folks, I know it isn't exactly news in the year 2025 that the government is spying on you, and we've even talked about some of the ways its doing so already. But you have to understand the sheer scope of what the Trump regime is doing here, and what AI-enabled oppression is going to look like. We're talking about the ability to integrate literally every aspect of your data and living footprint into one all seeing master computer that makes the punchcards they used to conduct the Holocaust in Germany look quaint. That means DNA, Healthcare data, traffic cameras, tax information, real time tracking technology, full identity theft folders from private data brokers, SSA and tax data, and so on; this is some actual Minority Report shit now. No matter how passé you thinking privacy rights discussions have become after Snowden's leaks, I cannot stress enough that this is a devil many orders of magnitude more dangerous than the police state we were dealing with a mere 6-8 years ago.

Which of course brings us back to a Trump regime arguing, in court, that being anti-genocide and pro-Palestine is a threat to national security, interfering with racialized Gestapo kidnappings is materially supporting terrorists, and nonviolent protests are actually an insurrection. It does not take a genius to look at the regime's ongoing war on both dissent and a broadly defined American left, as exemplified by Project Esther, and realize that the rapidly expanding "migrant" panopticon is also a rapidly expanding "anyone Trump doesn't like" panopticon.

#Fascism #Trump #Panopticon #USPol #ICE #Palantir #DHS #Gestapo #IdeologicalPolicing #MassSurveillance #PoliceState

As we approach the fifth month of the Swine Emperor's second presidency, it is now crystal clear that the Trump regime is committed to discriminating against and reducing the quality of life for, as a matter of policy, anyone the regime regards as its enemies; a ever-growing body of people that includes his actual political opponents, Americans whose life choices Christian fundamentalists don't agree with, and marginalized people the white nationalist regime hates simply for who they are. Furthermore, the policies designed to conduct this discrimination against, and dehumanization of, those Trump considers enemies or the fascist right considers undesirables, usually have elements of both open targeted discrimination, and vague wording that allows for a mind-numbing expansion of who can be targeted for that discrimination at a later date.

For an example of what this looks like in practice, let's take a look at this story about U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs changes to care guidelines that now allow for a broad swathe of discriminatory practices, and were undertaken in response to Trump's anti-trans executive order in which the government officially denied that trans people exist.

https://www.commondreams.org/news/veterans-trump-executive-order-rules

'Disgusting': VA Doctors Can Now Reportedly Refuse to Treat Unmarried People, Democrats

"U.S. Sen. Patty Murray (D-Wash.), who is a senior member and former chair of the Senate Veterans Affairs Committee, issued a sharp statement in response to the news.

"Healthcare isn't just a special privilege Trump gets to dole out to veterans who agree with the president—it's a moral obligation our country owes to every single man and woman who serves in uniform. Anyone who doesn't understand that has no business leading our armed forces in any way," wrote Murray in a statement on Monday.

"It's disgusting that this policy was ever allowed to go into effect, and I will not let it fly under the radar," she added.

"This isn't healthcare. It's political purity tests for people who risked their lives for this country. It's unethical, authoritarian, and every one of us should be outraged," wrote VoteVets, a progressive veterans group, in a Bluesky post on Monday in response to The Guardian's reporting."

To be clear, I could probably live with a little less nationalistic troop-worship from the folks criticizing this bald-faced authoritarian bullshit; this is fundamentally a story about ideological policing, civil rights, and access to healthcare. The fact is the Trump regime has power over the VA, and by extension VA hospitals, and as such they have the power to enforce their foundationally fascist worldview on veteran's care facilities first; their attacks on standards of care (particularly for trans youth) in private medical settings make it clear that they want to take this fascist bullshit national and enforce it by state authority.

Furthermore, while I am certain that the vagueness of these guideline changes is by no means an accident, it's important to understand that they were foundationally instituted to discriminate against trans veterans as part of the fascist right's larger anti-trans pogrom; which nobody in power in the US really seems to have a problem with despite the fact that it's objectively part of an open government scheme to end the existence of trans people in American life.

"The rule change, according to The Guardian, stems from the January 30 executive order called "Defending Women from Gender Ideology Extremism and Restoring Biological Truth to the Federal Government."

The outlet reported that the "primary purpose of the executive order was to strip most government protections from transgender people. The VA has since ceased providing most gender-affirming care and forbidden a long list of words, including 'gender affirming' and 'transgender,' from clinical settings." The VA is currently led by former Republican congressman Doug Collins."

Despite this however, the fact is that the care guideline changes at the VA go far above and beyond what the government would need to discriminate against trans veterans, and would in fact allow the VA to deny medical care to an alarmingly large number of people the Hertigage Foundation considers godless enemies of all that is pure and good in American life. Furthermore, smiling assurances from VA Press Secretary Peter Kasperowicz that while yes the rules do allow for discrimination based on political affiliation, martial status, or any number of other fascist hobby horses, he pinkie swears the VA is just going after trans people, are doing little to beat the nazi ideological policing allegations this change in VA policy brings up. As is the case with the anti-trans pogrom, and Trump's fascist war on immigrants (including legal immigrants), a VA built to discriminate against trans people is a VA that can discriminate against anyone the Swine Emperor wants to punish.

#Fascism #Trump #VA #Healthcare #IdeologicalPolicing #AntiTransPogrom #USPol

In another thread and some recent conversations on my personal account, I talked a little bit about why the Trump regime's actions in court signal that they have no intention of ceasing their ideological policing of anti-genocide, pro-Palestine critics, through the federally-controlled immigration process. As if to demonstrate the point, the US government has deported an Australian blogger returning to the country, expressly for his writings about Israel's genocide in Gaza, and anti-genocide student protests in the United States.

https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2025/jun/15/australian-deported-from-us-says-he-was-targeted-due-to-writing-on-pro-palestine-student-protests

Australian deported from US says he was ‘targeted’ due to writing on pro-Palestine student protests

"The 33-year-old said he was “clearly targeted for politically motivated reasons” and said officials spent more than 30 minutes questioning him about his views on Israel and Palestine including his “thoughts on Hamas”.

Kitchen said officials asked him for his “thoughts about the conflict in a very broad sense”, including about student protesters, what Israel “should have done differently” and “how I would resolve the conflict”.

“It was quite an in-depth probing of my views on the war,” he said.

Kitchen said he was deported and landed back in Melbourne on Saturday morning.

“The CBP explicitly said to me, the reason you have been detained is because of your writing on the Columbia student protests,” he told Guardian Australia on Sunday. The US Department of Homeland Security was contacted for comment."

To be clear, Kitchen is not a resident of the United States and nothing CBP did is strictly illegal; it's not like they kidnapped him and threw him in private prison cage, as they have done to anti-genocide protestors and critics in America where immigration law made it possible (but not legal.) However the blogger's testimony makes it clear that US immigration officials knew who he was in advance, wanted to grill him on his writing about the genocide and anti-genocide protests on college campuses, and denied him entry for the purely ideological reason that he doesn't support Trump's genocide or fascist repression of student protestors. The investigating officials made up some bullshit about there being evidence of drug use on Kitchen's phone, but their laser-like focus on his writing makes it abundantly clear that this was fascist ideological policing.

Folks, let's be clear here; Kitchen is a guy with a conscience who maintains a small blog. He is not a threat to the US government, and there was no valid reason to deny him entry to the United States or deport him whatsoever. Immigration enforcement under the Trump regime is clearly about keeping the kind of people Trump himself doesn't like out of the country, and has nothing to do with the law, national security, or keeping us safe.

This episode brings us back to something I was talking about when immigration pigs harassed and detained Hasan Piker at the Chicago airport, in that it speaks to the scope of the Trump regime's ideological policing. These fascist pigs are tracking Twitch streamers and guys writing blogs with a few thousand regular readers (folks not unlike myself) and the only reason this is all focused on immigrants and foreign visitors to the United States is because that's the part of the government Trump more or less controls completely. The regime thinks opposing the regime itself is a crime, and as soon as they can make this ideological policing an operational program domestically, you can bet that they're coming for American-born critics in the same ways, and for the same reasons.

#Fascism #Trump #CBP #Immigration #AlistairKitchen #IdeologicalPolicing #MassSurveillance #Panopticon #PoliceState #Gaza #Genocide

Recently there has been a certain amount of pushback in our discourse against those of us on the left who call ICE the Gestapo and demand the immediate abolishment of the Department of Homeland Security that runs it; even in the wake of the Trump regime's ongoing, openly ethno-nationalist mass deportation scheme and the flagrant civil rights violations ICE and by extension DHS are brazenly engaging in, to conduct it. While the position is hardly universal, a significant portion of people in our political and media classes seem to feel more sympathy towards DHS officials and ICE agents being called nazis in public for doing nazi shit, than the mostly-brown, mostly-poor, mostly-undocumented victims of their fascist repression.

The reason for this of course, is the latent white supremacy of American discourse and the Very Serious People TM in our society who conduct it. Behind every argument about "securing the border," or the need for "law and order" that emanates from our ruling classes and the media that serves them, lies the same racialized us-and them logic that fuels Trump's white nationalist administration and its fascist agenda; even if many of the folks making those arguments find the open nazification of US society in pursuit of that "order" appalling.

Yet as the Gestapo begins to creep deeper into American civic life, this distinction between the presumed "us" and the othered "them" is already starting to blur. The Trump regime is arresting judges, mayors, and Congressional representatives now, and it is clear that the fascist order behind this vast deportation machine has an entirely different definition of "us" and "them" than the one espoused, covertly or overtly, by polite society. Doesn't abolishing a DHS that has grown into Trump's private police state goon squad seem more reasonable now that DHS murderpigs are marching into Jerry Nadler's office in New York without a warrant to accuse congressional staffers of "harboring rioters?"

https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2025/06/homeland-security-cops-invade-ny-congressmans-office-handcuff-aide/

Homeland Security Cops Invade NY Congressman’s Office, Handcuff Aide

"Last month, after Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents arrested Newark, N.J., Mayor Ras Baraka outside an immigration detention facility, a Department of Homeland Security (DHS) official said on CNN that there would “likely be more arrests coming.”

DHS police came close to delivering on that threat this past week when they invaded the Manhattan offices of Democratic Rep. Jerry Nadler (D-N.Y.) and briefly handcuffed one of his staffers.

“They’re behaving like fascists,” Nadler told the New York Times in an interview about the incident this weekend. On CNN’s State of the Union on Sunday, House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-N.Y.), told host Dana Bash: “I think the administration is clearly trying to intimidate Democrats, in the same way that they’re trying to intimidate the country.”

The incident, first reported by the New York City news site Gothamist, occurred Wednesday after DHS agents accused staffers of “harboring rioters” in their offices, which is located in the same building as a federal immigration courthouse. A partial video of the incident obtained by Gothamist shows one officer handcuffing a crying woman while another Nadler staffer demands that agents provide a warrant before entering."

There will be those who accuse me of overreacting, because as Nadler noted on social media nobody was arrested, and the situation was ultimately deescalated. But an outcome based analysis seems hardly appropriate here given the openly fascist nature of the activities DHS cops were conducting. Storming into a Democrat Congressman's office and roughing up the staff because you think they're harboring dissenters who filmed ICE agents is basically a scene out of a movie about the literal Nazi Party in interwar Germany, and yet it's playing out here in America to little or no broader impact on the social discourse. I'm not exactly the world's biggest Jerry Nadler fan, but the Congressman is absolutely correct when he says this alarming incident is part of a broader pattern playing out across the country.

“If this can happen in a Member of Congress’s office, it can happen to anyone—and it is happening,” Nadler said."

Indeed. Which brings us back to the open question of the hour; how much longer are the American people who aren't open nazis, going to tolerate an expanding fascist police state forcing us all to live out Trump's unhinged vision of a whiter, more violent, and far less free America? This *is* how it happens here my friends; do we intend to let it?

#Fascism #USPol #Trump #DHS #Gestapo #MassDeporations #Protest #CivilRights #JerryNadler #IdeologicalPolicing #PoliceState #USPol

At this point, I think the degree to which bald-faced racial animus and white nationalist ideology helps form the very core of what the Trump regime does on a day to day basis, makes it ridiculously irresponsible not to discuss the open white supremacy underpinning those actions when reporting on them. I think we're all aware that Donald Trump and the vast majority of his administration are committed racists, but when politically-empowered racists start devoting the immense power of the state to prosecuting white grievance, and re-establishing an ethno-nationalist legal, political, and social order, that should be front page news no matter how many times it has already come up before. Take for example the relative lack of media uproar about the news that Trump's Department of Justice is launching what's effectively an "anti-Affirmative Action or DEI" investigation into the Black Democrat Mayor of Chicago, Brandon Johnson for literally hiring Black people, in a minority majority city.

https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/justice-department/chicago-mayor-brandon-johnson-justice-department-investigation-black-rcna207840

Justice Department to investigate Chicago after mayor's remarks about hiring Black officials

"The Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division said Monday that it was opening an investigation into the city of Chicago after Mayor Brandon Johnson's comments Sunday highlighting prominent Black officials in his administration.

Assistant Attorney General Harmeet Dhillon wrote in a letter to Johnson posted on X that she had “authorized an investigation” into whether Chicago is “engaged in a pattern or practice of discrimination” following Johnson’s remarks at a church Sunday.

“If these kind of hiring decisions are being made for top-level positions in your administration, then it begs the question of whether such decisions are also being made for lower-level positions,” Dhillon wrote.

Johnson said in remarks at Apostolic Church of God that the deputy mayor, the chief operations officer, the budget director and others are all Black people. Johnson said some of his detractors criticize him by saying the only thing he talks about "is the hiring of Black people."

“No, what I’m saying is when you hire our people, we always look out for everybody else," he said."

Alright so bear with me for a moment because the amount of racist petulant adult baby shit going on here is significant, and I'm not sure the quoted passage does it justice. The (un)Civil Rights division of Trump's Justice Department is investigating the Mayor of Chicago for crimes against whiteness because he highlighted the effectiveness of hiring Black people in a city that's roughly 65% non-white, and 30% Black, while speaking at a Black majority church. So, what normal people would call "political campaigning."

As the article goes on to note, the announcement of this investigation comes despite the raw demographic data showing only a slim majority of Black employees among the Mayor's Office staff:

"According to the mayor’s office, white and Black employees are a majority of staff members, with 30.5% of employees identifying as white and 34.3% identifying as Black."

So, the Trump administration is harassing the Mayor of a majority-minority city winger racists have been demonizing for years, because Johnson hired a staff that looks more or less like the community he serves, demographically. Of course there's a little more backstory here, because Mayor Johnson has been critical of Trump's racism and racist policies; to which any rational person should probably respond "well, good for him; at least he got something right given how poorly his tenure as Mayor has gone." The reality here however is that someone inside the Trump regime heard a Black Mayor brag about hiring Black leaders in his administration at a Black Church and decided that was probably a race crime against whiteness. Normally, the story would end there, with a note that "crackers believe the weirdest shit" but because this is a white nationalist government prepared to move heaven and earth to prosecute white grievance, here we are.

I sincerely hope the reason media minions are missing the point of this story isn't that Trump sent out the Indian-American lady to announce the threat on Johnson; we're far too late in the game for "but they have a minority friend" to carry water. Maybe folks don't want to talk about Brandon Johnson because he's a bad Mayor, who ran as a progressive, and has more or less let down all the people who brought him to power in Chicago. That's fair, but when the Trump administration is using the Department of Justice to target its political opposition for blatantly racist reasons, Very Serious People TM in the discourse could at least use that story to stop equivocating about whether or not these guys really are cracker nazis, doing cracker nazi shit.

#Fascism #Trump #USPol #IdeologicalPolicing #Racism #WhiateNationalism #Chicago #BrandonJohnson #PoliticalIntimidation #JusticeDepartment #HarmeetDhillon #WhiteGrievance #AffirmativeAction #DEI #Nazis

As I approach four months of analyzing the news in the second Trump era, I'm still frequently alarmed at the way the surreal, "assclown circus" atmosphere of the entire Trump regime, somehow functions to mask and minimize the overt fascist machinations and operations the government and the president himself engage in. Take for example the recent story about Downmarket Mussolini getting into a spat with, and then openly threatening aging American rocker Bruce Springsteen; a consistent critic of the Trump regime, and longtime supporter of the Democratic Party.

https://www.yahoo.com/news/trump-warns-springsteen-ought-keep-151423368.html

‘Trump Warns Springsteen: “He Ought to Keep His Mouth Shut Until He’s Back Into the Country”

"Earlier this week, Bruce Springsteen launched his “Land of Hope and Dreams Tour” in Manchester, England. The opening concert proved to be a decidedly political affair, as the New Jersey rocker repeatedly took aim at the Trump Administration with a series of pointed speeches throughout the night. “In my home, the America I love, the America I’ve written about, and has been a beacon of hope and liberty for 250 years, is currently in the hands of a corrupt, incompetent, and treasonous administration,” Springsteen proclaimed at the top of the concert. Later, he remarked, “A majority of our elected representatives have failed to protect the American people from the abuses of an unfit president and a rogue government.”

It seems Donald Trump has finally got wind of Springsteen’s comments (possibly via Fox News), and on Friday, he responded in a post on Truth Social. “I see that Highly Overrated Bruce Springsteen goes to a Foreign Country to speak badly about the President of the United States. Never liked him, never liked his music, or his Radical Left Politics and, importantly, he’s not a talented guy — Just a pushy, obnoxious JERK,” Trump wrote.

He then issued what some may perceive as a not so subtle threat: “This dried out ‘prune’ of a rocker (his skin is all atrophied!) ought to KEEP HIS MOUTH SHUT until he gets back into the Country, that’s just ‘standard fare.’ Then we’ll all see how it goes for him!”

Okay, so on the surface is this story kind of funny? Yes. One of the most bizarre things about Trump is the way the president mentally lives in a version of reality dominated by fame and public image, and thus his already quite bizarre feuds with variously liberal celebrities are often unhinged and highly-charged emotionally. Freaking out about a rock star's skin when you look like a bag of oatmeal covered in pancake makeup is a bold, but puerile move my dude. The whole thing is pathetic, weird, and makes the President of the United States look like an assclown; which probably really matters to boutique liberal snark media outlets, but isn't actually anything that materially moves the needle.

The thing is, Der Leader didn't stop typing after he mocked Springsteen's skin; the President then proceeded to issue a demand for silence and a thinly-veiled threat to punish the again, famous liberal rockstar, in unclear ways. Whether you want to talk about using the bully pulpit to try and suppress the constitutionally-protected free speech rights of a prominent critic, or the clear if undefined threat towards that same critic, this is fascist dictator shit and it's illegal. Given the regime's weaponization of the Department of Justice against media critical of the government, the abduction and attempted deportation of student anti-genocide protestors including at least one woman who did nothing more than write an op-ed, and even the recent detainment and questioning of anti-Trump, anti-genocide streamer Hasan Piker by CBP in Chicago, it seems to me that we should probably take Trump seriously when he threatens an outspoken rock star he doesn't like too.

So why exactly is the lead story in the vast majority of corporate media outlets "ha ha, Trump is such a pathetic narcissist" and not "the fascist President just threatened Bruce Springsteen?" Yahoo had to pull that analysis from an upscale blog I've never heard of; and I'm not seeing much focus on the important part of this story in The Guardian, NBC, or ABC for example. Given what we already know about what this administration is prepared to do to silence dissent, I don't think chalking it up to Trump being a loser is gonna cut it; and yet that's where we're at across much of the mainstream media environment.

Look, it's not lost on me that Trump, his sycophants, and state media outlet Fox News are all gonna deny what Der Führer said was a threat, but like I've said before, just because lying nazis play disingenuous games of Simon Says doesn't mean we have to pretend they're speaking in good faith. You know it's a threat, and I know it's a threat; so does the media, they're just too scared of Trump to focus on the important part of the story.

#Fascismt #Trump #PoliceState #BruceSpringsteen #FreeSpeech #Authoritarianism #Dictatorship #Media #IdeologicalPolicing #Dissent

The more things change, the more they stay the same apparently. Back when I had a little less gray in my hair, one of the many horrifying scandals to come out of the Bush Administration during the War on Terror/9-11/Iraq War era, involved the suppression of intelligence and intelligence officials who refused to support the Bush-Cheney administration's position that Iraq had, or was on the verge of acquiring, weapons of mass destruction. This mattered because although the Bush government employed a "throw a plate of spaghetti at the wall and see what sticks" method of manufacturing consent to invade Iraq, the central portion of their legal and diplomatic argument, revolved around the admin's repeated assertion that US Intelligence had actionable information that Saddam Hussein had WMD's or was about to finish building them. Of course, the entire thing turned out to be a lie; Iraq didn't have WMDs, the intelligence supporting the lie was nonexistent, and warmongers who supported the war crafted a narrative that "bad intelligence" had lead Bush-Cheney to ruin. The fact that even that was a lie, wouldn't come out until later; as it turns out US Intelligence had actively told the White House that they *didn't* think Iraq had or was capable of producing WMDs, and the administration had ignored, sidelined, and removed anyone in the intel community who told them so. That story was of course small potatoes compared to the original story about "bad intelligence" and to this day many informed observers still believe the spies told lies and the White House was "duped."

I mention this now of course because Trump's Director of National Intelligence, noted fake peacenik, Islamophobe, and cult member Tulsi Gabbard, just fired two high ranking intelligence officials, and moved the National Intelligence Council under her direct supervision. Why? Well it sure does look like it's because a FOIA request turned up a NIC memo confirming that US intelligence disagreed with Trump's fascist propaganda arguing that the gang Tren de Aragua were working for Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro; a central pillar of the Trump regime's argument that they have a right to deploy the Alien Enemies Act to do fascist mass deportations and a bunch of other authoritarian buillshit.

https://www.commondreams.org/news/tulsi-gabbard-trump

Gabbard Fires Intel Officials After Memo Counters Trump Lies About Migrants Sent to El Salvador Prison

"While an ODNI spokesperson told The Hill that "the director is working alongside President Trump to end the weaponization and politicization of the intelligence community," critics framed the firings as "the DEFINITION of politicizing intelligence."

"I am concerned about the apparent removal of senior leadership at the National Intelligence Council without any explanation except vague accusations made in the media," Congressman Jim Himes (D-Conn.), the ranking member on the House Intelligence Committee, told The Washington Post. "Absent evidence to justify the firings, the workforce can only conclude that their jobs are contingent on producing analysis that is aligned with the president's agenda, rather than truthful and apolitical."

The NIC leaders were fired after last week's release of an NIC memo confirming that U.S. intelligence agencies never agreed with Trump's claim that Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro controls the criminal gang Tren de Aragua. The April 7 document states that "while Venezuela's permissive environment enables TDA to operate, the Maduro regime probably does not have a policy of cooperating with TDA and is not directing TDA movement to and operations in the United States."

Look, I'm not going to ask readers to offer up sympathy for creepy American spymasters; this is a country that engages in offensive espionage, political and social subversion, and activities we would call terrorism if someone we didn't like were doing them, so there are no good guys in this story. With that having been said however, we're looking at clear evidence that the Trump regime itself absolutely knows their fascist "invasion" arguments, on which much of their paper-thin legal justification for doing a host of blatantly unconstitutional activities, are complete bullshit; and they're prepared to politically punish Trump's own intelligence agencies for not agreeing to lie for them. This is, or should be, a major scandal on par with Bush's Iraq War lies; and yet curiously the focus in the media seems to be how bad it is to train your intelligence agencies to not tell you bad news the president doesn't want to hear.

Obviously, I knew Trump's invasion was a lie, and you knew Trump's invasion was a lie. But now the whole world knows Trump's invasion is a lie and we have the documents and statements to prove it; so why is anyone pretending this isn't just fascism?

#Fascism #TulsiGabbard #Trump #DNI #USIntelligence #CIA #TrenDeAragua #Invasion #FakeWar #AlienEnemiesAct #Bush #IraqWar #Propaganda #ConspiracyTheories #IdeologicalPolicing

This past weekend, one of the most terrifying episodes of the Trump regime's war on dissent played out in a Chicago airport, and unless you're big into Twitch streams or YouTube culture, there's a pretty good chance you didn't even hear about it. On Sunday, the most popular left wing political streamer on Twitch, Hasan Piker, was stopped at the airport after returning from a speaking engagement in France, detained, and questioned in what was far as I can tell was an exercise in attempted entrapment, for a little over two hours by Customs and Border Protection. Piker is a prominent critic of the Trump regime and Israel's ongoing, US-backed genocide in Gaza and even if you haven't heard of him, I guarantee you that your kids have; he's "a whole big deal" in the political streaming scene.

According to Piker, who I have no reason to disbelieve, the CBP interrogator directly asked him about his political positions, his support for Palestine, and his opinions on Trump himself; none of which is any of the government's goddamn business. The agent also seemed very determined to directly link Piker to organizations the US government has labelled as terrorist (Hamas, Hezbollah, and the Houthis) for the purposes of extending his detention. At one point Piker reports that he was grilled about whether or not he had ever interviewed a member of these organizations; despite the fact that Hasan is effectively a member of the media, interviewing people we're bombing or helping to bomb the shit out of is journalism, and American journalists seek out interviews with "our enemies" all the time. Piker had not actually interviewed any members of those organizations, but objectively it doesn't matter if he had and the government once again has no business asking that question.

All of which brings us to the *really* weird part of this story; the fact that a large number of the CPB agent's questions seemed to be formulated directly from accusations made by a Zionist streamer going through a protracted public mental health episode, or a pro-Trump fascist streamer who hasn't washed his body in years; both of whom do not like Hasan and have based a lot of their content around trying to paint him as a terrorist sympathizer and an enemy of the United States. In other words, the fascist government of the United States has someone watching right wing fucking Twitch streams and YouTube personalities to find targets for state repression and accusations to prosecute against them; no, really, that does appear to be what's happening here.

As absurd as all that is however, I agree very much with Piker when he theorizes that the purpose of stopping him for the regime is to send a message to other small (by industry standards) content creators affecting the discourse and criticizing the Trump regime. These nazis want you to know that the eye is always watching, dissent is at least vaguely criminal, and they can get anyone, anywhere, at any time, for anything they like whether it's actually illegal or not. Piker's high profile in the streaming/Youtuber communities, and the fact that he perpetually lives on camera, likely made him the ideal target to send that message to the rest of his community. Factually speaking, I don't think Trump has the power to march into the head offices of say MSNBC and just start arresting journalists, yet. But the regime certainly can start going after independent creators in the media environment without too much trouble, and as such I think it would be foolish to believe the regime's attempts to suppress the media and quash dissent aren't more likely to start with the "little guys" like Hasan. I can't predict the future, but I'm absolutely certain that the threat is real, and Piker won't be the last independent critic of the regime, or Israel's US-backed genocide in Gaza, to be targeted this way.

Finally, I'm not sure this video offers up anything I didn't talk about here, but I like to source my claims out here as you know, so here's Mike Figeuredo of The Humanist Report discussing the situation, with clips from Hasan Piker:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mUUQQ2NIgYI

The Humanist Report: Leftist Twitch Streamer Hasan Piker Detained & Questioned Over His Anti-Trump Views

"Twitch streamer Hasan Piker announced on Sunday that he was detained and questioned by CBP for approximately two hours at an airport after returning home from an international flight. He explains that a federal agent knew a lot about him and questioned him about his views on Trump and Israel/Palestine. Hasan says he thinks he was detained so the Trump administration could send a message to other content creators like him."

#Fascism #Trump #Gaza #Genocide #Israel #Palestine #HasanPiker #Censorship #IdeologicalPolicing #CBP #PoliceState #Dissent #Media #TheHumanistReport #Twitch #MikeFigueredo #Dictatorship

Cratering in the polls, and losing left right and center in court, the Trump regime spent this week scrambling to install a permanent fascist order before the peasants show up on the National Mall with pitchforks; and we wrote about it all in this week's The Skinny.

https://www.ninaillingworth.com/2025/05/07/the-skinny-may-1st-7th/2/

The Skinny: Building A Patchwork Enabling Act

"I confess that on some level it’s probably amusing to picture Trump sitting in front of a TV and getting big mad when it tells him Black and trans people exist, he shouldn’t bully overweight people, and the abortion bans he facilitated are hurting American women. The reality here however is that in signaling what the president doesn’t want to see in publicly-funded media, he’s effectively articulating a Christian Nationalist agenda. As we’ve discussed numerous times on this blog, the regime is not just fighting a material war to install a fascist dictatorship in our society; they’re also fighting an authoritarian cultural war on our discourse, our history, and who is allowed to matter in our media entertainment complex. The ideological headcage Trump is trying to use state power to enforce here, is just as important to the Trumpenrich project to create a white ethnostate dictatorship under the Kelpto Kaiser, as its material expansion of the American fascist police state is."

#Fascism #Trump #KariLake #LindaMcMahon #TransRights #USPol #StephenMiller #NPR #OAN #WhiteNationalism #BigTech #PBS #TheMindset #Media #Harvard #IdeologicalPolicing #Censorship #VOA #TinaPeters #TheBigLie #Nazis