By Russ Bellant
Trumpworld has begun its plans to invade “big blue cities” with his takeover of Washington, D.C.’s. government and placing troops with armored vehicles on their streets. His targets are cities with large Black populations. He is conjuring up images to his MAGA base of rampant, out-of-control crime, despite well- known data showing dramatic drops in crime in D.C. And he is targeting homeless encampment occupants with jail if they do not decamp as ordered. He said on X that they must move out “IMMEDIATELY.”
Trump will be at the top of the chain of command and his DEA administrator will be over the police. The City is suing. The Mayor, Muriel Bowser, said that Trump’s takeover is an “authoritarian push” and “an intrusion in our autonomy.” Clinique Chapman, director of the DC Justice Lab, told the New York Times that “young black boys will bear the brunt of this.”
Trump did this in 2020, “flooding the streets of Washington with federal agents…to crack down on racial justice demonstrations.” per the Times. They added “some agents violently cleared protesters from Lafayette Park…” Military helicopters and ground formations were used against protesters.
Trump’s current plans call for 800 troops and 500 agents. Now West Virginia, Ohio and South Carolina governors have sent a combined total of nearly one thousand more national guard troops to D.C. One report, days ago, said that they harassed a driver of an illegally parked vehicle and released the driver after doing a complete search of the car. Trump plans to get extensions for keeping the occupation force in D.C. for an indefinite future. This federal invasion is actually the first step in Trump’s Executive Order 14288 (see below).
Beyond D.C.
Before our eyes the structural changes of ending a representative constitutional government and ending programs intended to counter historic racism and sexism are happening. There have always been limitations on the impact of such programs. But now we are seeing implementation of agendas of white male supremacy of decades ago. Today we are living under one-man-rule at the federal level with a Jim Crow agenda for the 50 states and localities. Checks and balances have disappeared. Let’s bullet-point some steps in Trump’s hate agenda:
- Restoration of Confederate statues and names of Confederate generals at major U.S. Army bases;
- Ending federal investigations of white supremacist and neo-nazi groups, including those with a history of violence;
- Creation of a massive ICE police force directly under Trump’s control that seizes people of color and imprisons them without warrants or court proceedings. He has deported thousands of people to prisons in other countries on his own orders. Trump is a one-man police/judge/executioner for destroying countless lives based on skin color.
- Plans to spend $45 Billion more to create what they call detention centers but will be concentration camps for ICE’s huge, openly racist arrest and imprisonment plans.
- Openly denouncing diversity, equity and inclusion plans that modestly seek to address racism and sexism. And firing federal employees based on their race or gender.
Building the Police-State Structure
This subject is illuminated by two key documents. First, Executive Order (E.O.) #14288, signed by Trump on April 28th. It orders creation of plans to “unleash the police” and to create U.S. military forces on the streets. The second document is an article in The New Republic (TNR) based on a leaked high-level secret document that discusses the strategy for militarizing our streets.
The E.O. calls for “unleashing” police and calls for pressing changes that allow police to perform official actions without any limitations on their conduct. It provides for Department of Justice funding for any cases where police are sued for abuses of any sort. Including deadly force. And for training in more aggressive police norms.
Trumpworld wants to replace police-community relations with their control. They even offer pay raises to try to buy police loyalty. The E.O. also says that they will seek abolition of all the hundreds of consent agreements that limited abusive conduct of police departments that were intended to limit systemic problems.
The TNR report tells of a recent very high-level secret document created by Trump appointees in the Department of Homeland Security and the Pentagon to press the top military officers (who are resisting) to support putting troops in the streets on a long-term basis. They plan (as some suspected) to indoctrinate the public that we are all in mortal danger from the drug cartels. The plan is to scare the public into believing immigrants are really agents of the drug cartels. They then hope we will support extreme measures taken by Trump.
Right after the Pentagon meetings where this was discussed, Trump said that he was going to deploy U.S. military forces in other (unnamed) countries to go after the cartels. This would presumably garner public support for Trump’s larger plan. In the E.O. Trump says that he wants troops in the streets to “fight crime,” which violates the 1878 Posse Comitatus Act, which specifically bans using troops to fight crime. But Trump says those who protest his policies and politics are “insurrectionists” trying to overthrow the government. Hence, he concludes he can suppress those rallies, ending First Amendment free speech that he does not like. But local officials won’t do the suppression. That is a major reason for him trying to use all armed forces, from local police, federal agents to the Army and Marines, to control the streets. He knows big rallies are planned against his major cuts to life-sustaining services, hateful conduct and tearing up union contracts for a million federal workers. Trump’s huge buildup of an agency (ICE+) that disregards all laws and Constitutional rights is his instrument for fighting to control all realms of power. How bad can this get?
Crushing “UNHUMANS”
This has been reported to but ignored by elected officials, the commercial press and activists. In July 2024 Trumpworld published a book titled UNHUMANS that says that anyone who advocates for fairness and equality is an UNHUMAN that must be “crushed.” They then have four chapters praising dictators that brutally crushed “unhumans” by mass murder.
One of the authors is a friend of Trump and a known neo-nazi. Only the New York Times ever commented on this book. But the book is endorsed by J.D. Vance, Steve Bannon (who co-published it), Michael Flynn and Donald Trump Jr. Summarized briefly, Trump inner core leaders have endorsed a book calling for mass murder of opposition to Trumpworld. How bad can this get? As ICE goes after Latinos, African immigrants and Caribbean peoples, Trump is moving troops into Black cities long term. He said publicly in 2023 that as president he can use the military to kill his opposition. He stated that he could even order the Delta Force to kill opponents.
In 2020 Trump ordered the Secretary of Defense to put the Army into the streets to shoot George Floyd protesters. The Secretary refused to carry out the order. This year Trump selected Peter Hegseth to be Secretary of Defense. Hegseth is part of a neo-confederate cult whose leader has praised historic slavery and sees himself as still fighting the cause of the Confederacy’s Civil War. Hegseth, on several podcasts, said last year that he was organizing an “underground army” for insurrection. If Trump tells him to have the military shoot citizens, he will almost certainly comply.
Trump’s biggest asset to date is the indifference of activists, elected officials and the media to the public record of speeches, E.O.s, podcasts and books that tell us their real thoughts and intentions.
Trump organized a huge paramilitary force to attack a sitting session of Congress and was OK with threats to kill his Vice-President, Pence, in order to hold on to power on January 6, 2021. Do you think that he cares about any of us?
Published by Anti-Fascist Organizing Coalition. Contact us by email at AFOCmail@proton.me or leave a message at (313) 368-2148
Russ Bellant is a freelance writer who has studied extreme right forces for decades. His work has appeared in the New York Times, Texas Observer, Toronto Star and The National Catholic Reporter. He is retired and lives in Detroit. He served in the Army as a Sergeant in Airborne Artillery. All of his work is self-funded.
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