As you may have heard, one of the more infamous minions in Trump's new deep state, Edward Coristine, a walking teen cybersecurity threat known as "Big Balls," was recently assaulted in Washington, DC; I guess it can't rain all the time. We'll get into the backstory behind this incident below, but what's important here is that in a move eerily reminiscent of recent DHS propaganda, Trump and billionaire shitlord Elon Musk have both seized on the moment to call for the federal takeover of another Democrat-run city; this time however, the nazis are coming after Washington, DC and some combination of a GOP-controlled Congress and a 6-3 fascist high Supreme Court add some weight to the threat.

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/aug/06/trump-dc-doge-staffer-attack

Trump threatens to ‘federalize’ DC after attack on Doge staffer

"Donald Trump is threatening to strip Washington DC of its local governance and place the US capital under direct federal control, citing what he described as rampant youth crime following an alleged assault on a federal employee who worked for the so-called “department of government efficiency” (Doge).

In a post on his Truth Social platform, the president said he would “federalize” the city if local authorities failed to address crime, specifically calling for minors as young as 14 to be prosecuted as adults.

“Crime in Washington, D.C., is totally out of control,” Trump wrote. “If D.C. doesn’t get its act together, and quickly, we will have no choice but to take Federal control of the City, and run this City how it should be run.”

As I alluded above, I'm honestly having problems with Coristine's story about what happened because it sounds like the kinda cracker dipshit propaganda nazis and Fox News opinion-havers conjure up to describe "crime-invested inner cities" that just happen to have large African American populations. According to Bill Balls here, a group of about ten youths were harassing and threatening to carjack a woman (who it turns out he is romantically involved with, although this article doesn't mention it) and he rushed in to save the day, wherein he was savagely beaten. As someone who grew up in one of the most infamous "crime-ridden urban hellscapes" in America, none of that sounds like a thing that actually happened to me, and it certainly touches all the major white nationalist propaganda points: including roving packs of out of control (presumably minority) teens, threatening "our women," and doing "car-jackings" in our streets. Greg Gutfeld couldn't have written it better, which makes me wonder if Corstine isn't selling a lie. What we do know is that he was beaten up by teens; he filed a police report with some delightful photos, and 2 fifteen year old kids have already been arrested.

More importantly however, we also saw the Trumpenreich, including the Swine Emperor himself, repeat a pattern of seizing on, and exaggerating a random criminal incident, to justify consolidating power over a local government that by and large, opposes his fascist agenda. In New York, it was an off duty ICE pig getting shot in an unrelated robbery, that caused border Czar Tom Homan, and DHS Secretary Kristi Noem to conjure up images of "urban" crime-infested terrorscapes to argue that the Gestapo had a right to take over policing in Democrat-run cities full of visible minorities and people who emphatically did not vote for Donald Trump to be their dictator. As I pointed out, the actual criminal incident, a robbery gone wrong that had virtually nothing to do with immigration enforcement, in no way had any relation to the Trump regime's attempts to further its fascist agenda to transform America in a militarized police state under the absolute rule of Dowmarket Mussolini. Now once again, we see the exact same propaganda line, being deployed in a very similar way and in response to yet another random crime, to prosecute a longstanding goal of the Trumpenreich regime; specifically seizing control of the most politically connected city in America that would absolutely never vote for his nazi political party - Washington DC.

So, can Trump and the Pork Reich actually get away with this? Well, it's complicated. On one hand, it's probably illegal, but on the other hand that didn't stop Trump from invading LA.

"Trump’s threat could theoretically take several forms. The constitution grants Congress broad authority over the federal district, though completely suspending local governance would probably require congressional legislation. Trump could also deploy federal law enforcement officers or national guard troops under executive authority, as he did during 2020 protests when federal forces cleared Lafayette Square outside the White House over local officials’ objections."

So, the question is, if Trump just "does it" - is anyone actually going to stop him? I can't say I'm confident the Robert's Court will be coming to the rescue if so.

#Fascism #Trump #PoliceState #WashingtonDC #BigBalls #ElonMusk #MartialLaw #GOP #Congress #Police

The Trumpenreich's quest to massively expand the US Gestapo really is the "gift" that keeps on giving. Recently I wrote about how ICE was spending the billions of dollars the GOP just gave them, on an objectively fascist recruiting drive to entice more nazis to join ICE with perks and a signing bonus up to $50K. At the time, I theorized that these massive signing bonuses were designed to attract recruits with experience in professional violence because there's no shortage of unqualified racist goons willing to brutalize and terrorize brown people for a paycheck in what has always been, a white supremacist America.

Well, if a couple of recent stories in the news cycle are to be believed, I may have overestimated the attractiveness of hunting down Hispanic people in the streets of "liberal" cities, even for American racists, because the Gestapo appears to be getting increasingly desperate to find a mere 10,000 new fascist thugs.

How desperate? Desperate enough to recruit goons over the ICE age cap of forty, and allowing recruits as young as 18 to join the Gestapo. And in a move that I'm sure is unrelated, washed up TV actor and frothing nazi Dean Cain, who is over forty, immediately signed up for duty.

https://www.commondreams.org/news/ice-lifts-age-limits

'What Could Possibly Go Wrong?': Trump's ICE Is Now Recruiting Teenagers

"Approved applicants will be joining an agency rife with human rights and legal abuses as it scrambles to satisfy alleged ICE arrest quotas and President Donald Trump's desire to carry out the biggest mass deportation campaign in the nation's history—a campaign of kidnapping, unlawful imprisonment and expulsion of innocent people, family separation, concentration camps, terrorization of American communities, alleged torture and sexual crimes, and many other outrages.

Noem told Fox & Friends Wednesday that in addition to lifting the 40-year-old age cap, ICE applicants can now be as young as 18."

Keeping in mind that I don't think the major priority for Americans who don't want to live in a fascist dictatorship run by the dumbest nazis in the country should be "our nazis are unqualified and poorly trained" - turning armed, eighteen year old racists loose inside a secret police force that is conducting an ethnic cleansing operation, while actively violating our Civil Rights and ignoring the law, is categorically one of the dumbest, most dangerous things the Trump regime has ever proposed. Furthermore, I would encourage readers once again not to sleep on the objectively fucking Nazi tone DHS is using to advertise this. Between the artificially aged AI slop mimicking Third Reich recruiting posters, to tying "defending the homeland" with the father son relationship in the same way that was so crucial to early Nazi propaganda, I am pretty sure evoking Nazi Germany during the interwar period was quite intentional.

Still, the point here is that they wouldn't be trying to hire white nationalists right out of high school, or lure their aging fathers to the front lines of a made up war, if better applicants were falling all over themselves to sign up for the Gestapo. Which is why I don't think it's a coincidence that at the exact same time this was going down, noted D-list celebrity Superman actor Dean Cain went on Fox News to talk about the ICE recruiting drive, and then signed up immediately afterwards.

https://www.theguardian.com/tv-and-radio/2025/aug/07/former-superman-actor-dean-cain-reveals-hes-becoming-an-ice-agent-to-support-trumps-mass-deportation-agenda

Former Superman actor Dean Cain reveals he’s becoming an Ice agent to support Trump’s mass deportation agenda

"Speaking on Fox News on Wednesday night, Cain told host Jesse Watters that he decided to join Ice after sharing one of their recruitment videos on his Instagram account on Tuesday, which Watters had spoken about on his show.

“I’m actually a sworn deputy sheriff and a reserve police officer – I wasn’t part of Ice, but once I put that out there and you put a little blurb on your show, it went crazy,” Cain told Watters on Wednesday. “So now I’ve spoken with some officials over at Ice, and I will be sworn in as an Ice agent, ASAP.”

You might be tempted to think that sending Dean Cain on Fox News to leverage his recent return to "relevance" into Gestapo sign ups would be too crude and obvious a propaganda ploy, but let me assure you that this is absolutely what the Trump regime is doing here. Cain's pitch about hunting down brown people being "the right thing to do" is the giveaway. Don't worry however, he also more or less just up and admitted he was doing this to get other aging racists back in the game for the Gestapo.

"Cain, who played Superman opposite Teri Hatcher as Lois Lane in Lois & Clark: The New Adventures of Superman in the 1990s, said he hoped others would join him. “I’m stepping up,” he said. “Hopefully, a whole bunch of other former officers, former Ice agents, will step up and we’ll meet those recruitment goals immediately, and we’ll help protect this country.”

Is America great again yet?

#Fascism #Trump #ICE #Gestapo #DeanCain #NaziParty #Propaganda #PoliceState

In this edition of Picture Show, I want to use a recent video essay by John the Duncan to highlight a sort of bird's eye view of how the neoliberal, or capitalist police state represents a ready-made repression machine for emerging fascist strongmen in the Pig Empire. I've talked a lot about the ways in which militarized policing, anti-migrant policies, and the creation of an all-encompassing counterterrorism apparatus after 9/11 have effectively handed Donald Trump a turnkey dictatorship in the United States, so I thought you might like to watch a video specifically about how that happens in a capitalist "democracy" even if and when, the (further) right isn't in power.

The catch here is that JtD isn't actually talking about America; his video explores the way in which the UK's counterterrorism laws are being exploited to violently and ruthlessly suppress British anti-genocide and climate crisis activists, even while a nominally "liberal" Labour Party has full control of the UK government. Back when the American President wasn't speed-running Hitler's march to creating the Third Reich, I used to write a little bit about the emerging British police state, so this may be a welcome divergence from American politics for longtime readers, particularly those residing in the UK.

I would however caution both American readers, and folks throughout the so-called "West," to keep in mind that "we all live in a country called capitalism" and odds are pretty good that cop-humping neoliberal authoritarians in your country are laying the same kind of groundwork to protect power and capital, that the UK's police state repression is exposing right now. In fact, if you're an American, you're already learning about what happens when shit tier capitalists build the torment nexus and it falls into the hands of actual fucking nazis.

On a personal level, I always appreciate JtD's essays because of the meticulous, cited research that goes into them, and I'm delighted to discover that he's created a video that happens to align with something I've been trying to explain to my (primarily) American readers for a while. Even for grizzled veteran abolitionists, there are lessons to be learned from the unarguable reality that the UK is operating like a fascist police state to protect oil companies and a genocidal MENA ally, despite the fact that the UK fascist movement hasn't even won back power yet.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F_s6lLHyLyU

This is Repression: Bob Vylan, Terrorism, and Fascist Police Power

"Police power is only growing. Palestine solidarity, and environmental demonstrations are the sharp end of a long trend of police repression. In this video we talk about the history and theory of police power."

#Fascism #PoliceState #Counterterrorism #Capitalism #ClimateCrisis #Genocide #Gaza #Israel #Imperialism #UK #KeirStarmer #UKPol #neoliberalism

Quite frankly, I think anyone arguing that Israel's ongoing genocide of Palestinians in Gaza, isn't also America's ongoing genocide of Palestinians in Gaza, is probably being willfully obtuse at this point. There remains however a disconnect between the horrifying scenes of engineered starvation in Gaza, and American policy decisions that have directly contributed to that starvation, above and beyond American material aid for the IOF and "defensive" weapons systems like the Iron Dome. The fact is that not only are we funding Israel's "blockade" keeping food and vital medicines out of Gaza, but we've also helped engineer the food insecurity for Palestinians on the ground there, that is fueling Israel's successful attempts to engineer a famine.

I am speaking of course of the bipartisan US attacks on U.N. Relief and Works Agency for Palestinian Refugees, or UNRWA. As you may recall, the vast majority of American politicians responded to what we now know are false, or at least wholly unproven accusations that UNRWA was somehow working with Hamas on October 7th or in the ensuing fall out, by voting to cut off all funding to UNRWA. Furthermore, then president Joe Biden actively encouraged the rest of the Pig Empire to do the same; despite the fact that everyone involved was universally warned by human rights and refugee aid organizations that UNRWA was literally the only organization in the world capable of preventing hunger and deprivation in Gaza. Or perhaps you don't remember, because it's very clear that a pro-genocide US corporate media has no interest in linking bipartisan attacks on UNWRA, to the engineered famine we're watching Israel enforce in Gaza right now.

Naturally of course, because the Trumpenreich exists to make everything terrible about America even worse, a GOP-dominated appropriations committee has recently decided that even as other Pig Empire nations have restored funding to UNWRA and the world is watching Israel's engineered famine starve literal children to death on livestream in Gaza, it would be a good idea to make funding cuts and bans on working with UNWRA permanent.

https://theintercept.com/2025/07/29/gaza-unrwa-aid-congress-republicans/ (archived: https://archive.ph/ctBWL)

"The GOP-dominated House Appropriations Committee last week voted to bar financial support for the U.N. Relief and Works Agency for Palestinian Refugees in the Near East, long the main hub of aid distribution in Gaza.

If passed by Congress, the ban would reinforce a financial blockade on UNRWA that began last year as Israel subjected the agency to an intense pressure campaign.

The latest move, however, comes amid an increasingly dire situation, as U.N. experts decried a full-fledged famine, and other Western countries are holding emergency meetings to address the crisis."

Given that I think pretending a Palestinian refugee aid organization is a terrorist cell based on disproven accusations by Israel, and making a political point of denying funding to that organization in the middle of a purposely engineered famine kinda speak for themselves, I'll keep this brief. This shit is evil, the GOP is making the starvation worse, and no matter how much Trump cries about it on TV, that means that we're directly starving babies in Gaza, in addition to all the other ways we enable the genocide. This is America's famine, and the tracks to this point were laid down before Trump was even elected; even though he bears all responsibility for continuing and indeed expediting the genocide since then.

"Congress first banned funding for UNRWA in March 2024 as Israel pushed allegations that the agency’s employees were involved in the October 7, 2023, attacks. Democratic President Joe Biden had already paused funding for the agency.

The House and Senate are working to replace that appropriations package with a new one for the next financial year. On July 23, the House Appropriations Committee passed a bill focusing on funding for national security and State Department programs.

The $46 billion bill would slash funding for many foreign aid programs and ban funding for UNRWA, while handing Israel $3.3 billion to buy more American arms."

All of which brings us to the reality that the US corporate media has no interest in linking our attacks on UNWRA and its funding, with the famine advocates predicted would be inevitable when the entire government agreed to do so under the guise of "stopping Hamas."

"The link between the pressure campaign against UNRWA and the scenes playing out in Gaza now is clear, Asi said, even if Israeli and U.S. officials don’t want to admit it.

“Those lines have not really been connected, between defunding the largest humanitarian response agency in Gaza with obvious humanitarian disaster after. They were warned,” she said."

Folks, whether they want to report it on the 6 o'clock news or not, this is America's genocide; Israel is just the US client state conducting it.

#Fascism #USPol #Trump #Israel #Gaza #Genocide #Famine #GOP #UNWRA #Imperialism

Over the past three months, I've written about a couple of alarming mass surveillance stories that pushed into the mainstream discourse for a day and vanished under the howling gale of a modern Pig Empire 12 hour news cycle. First we learned that pigs were sharing data from private AI-powered license plate reading cameras nationally, and then we found out those same local law enforcement agencies were conducting searches for the ICE Gestapo using that data, despite neither ICE nor DHS have a contract with the company that produces those cameras, Flock. We then went on to further discuss all the ways these relationships between the Gestapo and local law enforcement were enabling an ethnic cleansing operation, and Trump's agenda to install a fascist dictatorship in America; an agenda which is powered by an AI-enhanced mass surveillance panopticon that companies like Palantir are helping Trump build out further.

Although a discourse may have moved on from the Flock surveillance network, the Electronic Frontier Foundation and 404 media have stayed on the story and recently turned up something both fascinating, and deeply disturbing. It turns out, that two large US home improvement chains in particular appear to have developed an ad-hoc data sharing arrangement with the police, who are then sharing license plater reader data with ICE. The story gets even wilder however when you realize that the stores sharing Flock data with the cops, who then share it with ICE, are Lowe's and The Home Depot, whose locations have been some of the most heavily, and intentionally targeted spots for Gestapo kidnapping raids to snatch random brown people ICE thinks might be an "illegal" for "reasons."

https://archive.ph/6XPWV

Home Depot and Lowe's Share Data From Hundreds of AI Cameras With Cops

“What we're learning is that two of the country's most popular home improvement stores are contributing to the massive surveillance dragnet coordinated by Flock Safety,” Dave Maass, director of investigations at the Electronic Frontier Foundation, told 404 Media. “Do customers know that these stores are collecting their data and sharing indiscriminately? Probably not. Have these companies given thought about how this data might put their customers in danger, whether it's cops stalking their exes or aggressive ICE agents targeting yard workers? Probably not. If these companies want customers to feel safe in their homes, then they should make sure they're also safe where they buy their supplies."

Flock’s automated license plate reader (ALPR) cameras are stationed along roads or at entrances to parking lots around the United States, and constantly scan the license plates of cars that drive by. Because there are Flock cameras around the country, Flock often has a snapshot of people’s movements which police can search, typically without a warrant."

So, this is kind of a "holy shit" moment. For various reasons of legality, neither 404 Media, nor the EFF are willing to directly accuse two major American brands and an AI-surveillance company of collaborating with a fascist regime to conduct an ethnic cleansing operation, but boy does it sure look like that's what's going on here. It turns out we were wrong about Stephen Miller's hate on for Home Depot parking lots, and the Gestapo was probably just going where the easy arrests would be because those companies were sharing private data with ICE, through a national network of cop surveillance data the private sector gleefully helps compile on the regular to "fight crime" and "keep us safer."

So, why is there even a national network of cop surveillance data for private companies to feed into, and pigs to share with the Gestapo? Because in extremely rare instances, like perhaps the kidnapping of a child, or when an escaped mass shooter is on the loose, it can be very useful for the authorities to have access to a network of license plate readers. No privacy advocate has ever disputed that, but the reality is when you give murderpigs the right to surveil society openly, the vast majority of the time it doesn't lead to rescuing abducted children; it leads to shit like this - a national panopticon dragnet whereby fascist pigs who hate minorities can help fascist pigs who're being paid to brutalize and deport minorities, find their targets.

Finally, as with every story about the Trumpenreich's burgeoning fascist panopticon, it must be pointed out that even if you don't fucking care about this because you're a racist who doesn't think migrants and apparently legal immigrants who happen to be Hispanic matter to you at all, the reality is that companies like Lowe's and Home Depot are sharing your data with the Gestapo all the same. The fash might not care right now, but sooner or later they're gonna run out of people to deport and have lots of spare time to look into you and your life.

#Fascism #Trump #ICE #Gestapo #Panopticon #MassSurveillance #Police #PoliceState #EthnicCleansing #Lowes #HomeDepot

Like most observers of the second Trump presidency, I've found myself at a disadvantage in the face of the regime's open strategy to dominate the news cycle with a never-ending torrent of lies, propaganda, and horrifying nazi policy announcements that leave little time for any analyst to work out what the Trumpenreich might be planning to do next; a strategy noted slimeball fascist propagandist Steve Bannon once described as "flooding the zone with shit." Despite this however, over the past few months I've noticed an increasing focus in the regime's propaganda on religion, Christian nationalist ideology, and obliterating the traditional US separation between church and state, under the guise of protecting the "religious liberty" of cracker fundie fascists who worship at the altar of Trump. As I've stressed before, analysis isn't actually prophecy, but to my mind it sure does look like the Trumpenreich is gearing up for a war to install Christian Nationalism as a quasi-state religion, while using the fig leaf of "religious liberty" to further entrench and enforce policies that are ultimately designed to create a fascist dictatorship under the Swine Emperor.

At this stage of our investigation, we're more or less collecting breadcrumbs; the kind of stories that don't directly prove the Trumpenreich is about to start a Christian nationalist crusade to target "enemies within" and create a fascist dictatorship, but still point to a regime looking to align church and state to increase its own power to do fascist bullshit. Take for example the IRS's recent announcement that engaging in political activity or campaigning, will no longer threaten the tax-exempt status of churches and pastors - including of course, powerful nazi fundamentalist megapastors in increasingly-gerrymandered "red" states like Texas.

https://www.propublica.org/article/irs-churches-endorse-candidates-texas

The IRS Says Churches Can Now Endorse Candidates. That Could Give Texas Pastors More Power Than Ever.

"For more than 70 years, churches and other religious institutions in the United States were told to steer clear of “any political activity” or risk losing their tax-exempt status. That federal measure, the Johnson Amendment, was added into IRS tax law in 1954 and named after its author, Lyndon B. Johnson, then a Texas congressman.

In August 2024, during the last months of the Biden administration, an association of religious broadcasters and two East Texas churches sued the IRS, arguing that the Johnson Amendment infringed upon their freedom of speech and religion.

Nearly a year later, the IRS, now under Trump, and the plaintiffs filed a proposed joint settlement outlining in the agreement that when a house of worship speaks to its congregation about “electoral politics viewed through the lens of religious faith,” it neither participates nor intervenes in a political campaign and so doesn’t violate the amendment. The court must now consider their proposal."

While I often applaud Pro Publica's commitment to fairness in its analysis, this article is an absolute tire fire of bothsides-ism and false equivalency; all of which I'm just going to ignore because ain't nobody got time for that fascist-enabling, "enlightened centrist" nonsense anymore. The reality is that in an American oligarchy barely clinging to even the appearance of democracy, there is no practical equivalency between Black churches telling marginalized people to vote against the modern US nazi party, and millionaire right wing fundamentalist megapastors working with a fascist president, and a theocratic Supreme Court, to install a dictatorship - full fucking stop.

While we're on the subject of bullshit, I think we can also dispense with fundie fascist arguments that the government was "silencing" pastors and suppressing free speech rights by linking their tax-exemptions to staying out of electoral politics. There is after all a reason why political action committees are tightly regulated by the government and dipshit nazi pastors are not; what Trump's IRS is making a matter of facts on the ground here is the creation of an entire new lobbying and electioneering engine that is not only wholly unregulated, but likely to be protected in doing so under the guise of religious liberty by a US Supreme Court with between 5 and 6 sitting fundie fascists on it. These folks, including Christian Zionist evangelical nazis like John Haggee, who claims to represent over 11 million members of CUFI, have a lot of money and a lot of influence to throw around in American politics and the IRS just gave them the green light to do so.

Finally as the article indicates, we don't really have the theorize that this is what the (again, fascist) religious right is going to do because due to lax IRS enforcement of the Johnson Amendment, Trump-loyal fascist megapastors are already building that political apparatus.

#Fascism #Trump #IRS #Churches #Politics #ChristianNationalism #Elections #SuperPACs #GOP #CUFI #Hagge #Texas #Megapastors

Does the neofeudalistic reactionary hellworld got you on the unemployment line? Don't worry, Trump's fascist Gestapo is hiring. Now you too can join the only growing job market for labor class workers; hunting down and brutalizing brown people as part of a fascist takeover disguised as a fake war! Recently I wrote about the massive (over $200 billion in total) "immigration enforcement" funding increase in the now-passed GOP budget, and why that probably meant ICE and CPB would grow from Trump's secret police force, into his own private army - a Schutzstaffel, if you will. This of course included provisions to hire 10,000 new ICE enforcement agents to do the regime's fascist dirty work in our streets.

Well, it looks like the Department of Homeland Security isn't wasting time assembling Trump's new white nationalist goon squad, because ICE is now running an openly fascist advertisement campaign to recruit "deportation officers," while offering lucrative bonuses and perks for aspiring nazis who want to bust heads for the Swine Emperor. Furthermore, the language used to promote this Gestapo hiring campaign makes it abundantly clear that the regime knows what kind of people they want for the job, and folks who aren't prepared to go all the way for the Trumpenreich need not apply.

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/jul/30/ice-hiring-incentives-signing-bonuses

Ice entices new recruits with patriotism pitch and pledge of $50,000 signing bonuses

"In addition to appealing to prospective applicants’ patriotic fervor, homeland security is making a pocketbook pitch. The agency is promising up to $50,000 in signing bonuses, the potential for lots of overtime for deportation officers and other benefits such as loan repayment or forgiveness options."

First let me start by saying this article is terrible, and despite being critical of the Trump regime's plans here, still goes way too far to pretend the Pork Reich has legitimate reasons to be offering thousands more nazis a signing bonus to join up for, at a minimum, a white nationalist ethnic cleansing project in progress. With that having been noted, I think there are three major issues at play here; the signing bonus, the fascist nature of the advertising campaign, and the ominous hints about what Trump is really hiring these new goons for.

Obviously you don't need me to tell you it's disgusting to be promising $50K bonuses to would be Gestapo pigs, while you're simultaneously throwing millions of Americans off Medicaid. I think however its also important to understand that in offering such a lucrative signing bonus, it is clear that the regime intends to entice nazis with experience in professional or institutional violence. You don't offer a 22 year old unemployed Proud Boy a $50K signing bonus because you don't need that kind of money to recruit that kind of guy; what Trump wants here are cops, mercenaries, and folks with military training.

Which then brings us to the fact that DHS Secretary Kristi Noem isn't even trying to hide that they're also purposely recruiting fascists who are prepared to go along with Trump's narrative of an America under existential threat from enemies within.

"The US Immigration and Customs Enforcement campaign, which rolled out late Tuesday, recalls recruiting posters from the second world war with images of Uncle Sam and the words “AMERICA NEEDS YOU.” There also are photos of the US president and top homeland security officials with the words “DEFEND THE HOMELAND” across the images.

“Your country is calling you to serve at ICE,” said homeland security secretary Kristi Noem in a news release. “This is a defining moment in our nation’s history. Your skills, your experience, and your courage have never been more essential. Together, we must defend the homeland.”

Noem's statement and the advertising campaign that goes with it naturally bring up the obvious, but still alarming question - who exactly are you and the Gestapo defending "the homeland" from Kristi? To anyone watching the news, it sure looks like the answer to that question is "day laborers, grandmothers, legal immigrants, students, protestors, journalists, and opposition party elected officials." I see no reason to believe that's going to change for the better when we massively increase the size of Trump's nazi goon squad. As the article makes clear, ICE isn't really trying to hide that part either.

"On the recruitment webpage, the link to learn more about applying to be a deportation officer shows a photo of an armored vehicle rolling down a street with officers in military gear hanging onto the sides of the vehicle."

The rest of this piece wastes ink pretending there's a *good* way to hire 10,000 new Gestapo thugs; which says a lot about how we got here. In a society too racist to admit that creating ICE in the first place was a mistake, the best criticism the system can offer when Trump starts hiring his own SS is apparently that we're probably not going to train the nazis well enough. Taste the freedom.

#Fascism #ICE

After dinner last night, I had some extended thoughts on Columbia Professor Emeritus of Modern Arab Studies Rashid Khalidi's decision to cancel his scheduled course this fall at Columbia (anti) University, so I wrote up a journal/opinion piece.

Needless to say, I agreed with his decision and think more professors at compromised collaborator universities around the country should be joining him. But this episode also says a lot about the way Swine Emperor Trump is conducting his war to seize control of American cultural institutions in both the public and private sectors, and repurpose them as organs of fascist propaganda devoted to the cult of Trump/cracker ethnonationalism.

https://www.ninaillingworth.com/2025/08/03/journal-courage-cowardice-and-collaboration/

Journal: Courage, Cowardice, and Collaboration

"Still, if educators in America had either half a brain, or half a heart, a great many more university professors would be refusing to teach at institutions collaborating with a fascist regime to subvert truth, journalism, and scientific reality this fall. Professor Khalidi isn’t wrong when he points out that the suits running Columbia have allowed their university to be transformed into a militarized security zone, and a fascist propaganda machine that fundamentally inverts the role of educators in our society – an “anti-university” as the professor noted. Not only is it impossible for a genuine educator to function under those conditions, but even attempting to do so will likely result in open fascist collaboration with an increasingly Third Reich-esque Trump regime. Society has a term for people who only collaborated with the Third Reich to spread racist, eliminationist, antidemocratic propaganda for a paycheck; that term is “Nazi propagandists” and history doesn’t speak of them kindly."

#Fascism #Trump #Education #Columbia #Censorship #Propaganda #RashidKhalidi #Collaboration #Antifascism

If the truth be told, I meant to share this video sometime last week, but I kinda hit a wall of exhaustion and had to book a few days off before I got around to it. As you may have heard, "Mayo" Pete Buttigieg, a likely candidate for the 2028 US Democratic Party presidential nomination and perhaps the most high-profile, openly gay politician in America, became the latest shit tier neoliberal minion to toss trans people to the wolves, amid an ongoing fascist anti-trans pogrom in America.

On the surface, it may seem odd for a gay man to find points of agreement with bigoted and invariably anti-gay fascists, on the subject of human rights for other members of the LGBTQ community, but anyone who has studied "Mayo" Pete's long career arc from intelligence minion to former US Transportation Secretary knows that tossing marginalized people under the bus for rich and often quite reactionary neoliberals is literally how Buttigieg clawed his way to a position of modest prominence in the first place. This time however, Buttigieg is looking for the biggest promotion of his entire life, and to get it, he's willing to push fascist anti-trans propaganda as an electoral strategy, and thereby aid what many educated observers say looks like the early stages of an anti-trans genocide.

Look, I think it goes without saying that Mayo Pete, and the rest of the neoliberal wingers in positions of prominence in the Democratic Party can sincerely go fuck themselves if they think helping the nazis persecute trans people is how they're going to stop Trump and his nazi regime. That's not only batshit crazy, but profoundly fascist in its own right. I don't vote for fascists willing to let other fascists kill me, and I don't imagine very many other queer people in America feel differently. What folks like Buttigieg, Gavin Newsom, and the desiccating political corpse of Rahm Emanuel are doing right now, goes far beyond the already cowardly and unacceptable shitlib strategy of refusing to talk about trans rights while a fascist regime is busy stripping them, and enters directly into a type of open collaboration with a fascist anti-trans pogrom in progress; a pogrom which may well end in the mass institutionalization, or murder, of trans Americans. Quite frankly, I don't think the LGBTQ TikTokers in the video go far enough in torching Buttigieg for his betrayal of not just trans people, but antifascists in general, given the potential cost (in lives) of his cynical political maneuvers here.

Crucially however, I would like to highlight host Mike Figueredo's discussion about the increasingly open, and virulent straight of anti-trans ideas and talking points, growing out of the "centrist" (right wing) leadership of the Democratic Party. The reality is that folks like Buttigieg, Newsom, and US Senator Elissa Slotkin aren't just spouting their own bigotry here. Due to various leaks and public statements, we already know that this "shift" in strategy on trans rights is an intentional policy platform plank for a neoliberal wing that still controls the Democratic Party, and are actively purging left wing and labor class influences from the internal party committees to give their objectively right-wing candidates, home field advantage in the upcoming primary cycles for 2028; including of course, the Democratic Party's next presidential nominee.

If you want my opinion, I don't really think it's an accident that all the centrist "Blue Dog" Democrats are talking about a need to throw trans people, particularly young trans girl athletes, to the fascist wolves. This faction inside the party has already unrolled their economic agenda, pitched under the idea of creating "Abundance" and their promise of *checks notes* Reaganite deregulation and trickle-down economics landed like a lead brick going through a glass window with voters who know those very same policies have created the nightmare hellworld we're living in now. They can't win on policy, so they intend to try and bribe voters with literal fucking transphobia. If that doesn't say "we have nothing to offer the labor class, not even an alternative to fascism" then I don't know what will.

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

LGBTQ+ TikTokers DRAG Pete Buttigieg for Throwing Trans People Under a Bus

"Pete Buttigieg is the latest Democratic politician to throw trans people under a bus to further his political ambitions. It’s particularly egregious for the fact that Buttigieg is the most prominent openly gay politician in America, which makes his normalization of anti-trans talking points uniquely dangerous. Fellow members of the LGBTQ+ community, however, responded to Pete’s cynical pivot… and they were not happy. In this video we’ll talk about Buttigieg’s dangerous rhetoric, the blowback he got from queer TikTokers, and address the growing anti-trans trend emerging in the Democratic Party among 2028 presidential hopefuls."

#Fascism #LGBTQ #TransRights #PeteButtigied #DemocraticParty #2028Election #Politics