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Opinion
Team Trump Is Threatening to Aim the Power of the State at His Political Enemies—Yes, That Means You
When a government points its finger at you — when it decides you are the enemy — the entire machinery of the state lines up behind that accusation. That’s not hyperbole; it’s the lesson of history, written in blood and exile and mass graves.
Sep 15, 2025
Every president and most members of Congress have known for the past two centuries that having the ability to wield the power of government is a serious responsibility that carries with it real obligations for self-control.
The reason is simple and obvious, although our media appears to not realize it when they act like Trump’s and Miller’s rhetoric is normal: Government can legally kill you, imprison you, and take everything you own. Fox “News” and other commentators can’t.
When some bigot on Fox or another rightwing outlet goes off on how Democrats are “left wing extremists,” “terrorists,” or “traitors” he doesn’t have the power or ability to do anything about it. They’re just words, which is why they’re protected by the First Amendment. Inflammatory words, certainly, but just words.
But when a government official slaps one of those kinds of labels on you because of things you’ve said or political views you hold, you can lose literally everything.
Just ask Mahmoud Khalil or Rümeysa Öztürk, who were imprisoned for expressing their opinions on the genocide Netanyahu is carrying out in Israel, or Kilmar Abrego Garcia, who had the bad fortune of being brown-skinned when Stephen Miller was on one of his racist jeremiads even though he had legal permission to stay in the US.
This is why even after 9/11 George W. Bush measured his words, going so far as to emphasize that Islam wasn’t our enemy. So did Abraham Lincoln, for that matter, even as the country he led was under attack by actual traitors committed to ending democracy in America. In his first inaugural address, on the verge of the Civil War, he said:
“With malice toward none, with charity for all, with firmness in the right as God gives us to see the right, let us strive on to finish the work we are in to bind up the nation’s wounds…”
Utah’s Republican Governor Spencer Cox understood that, as a government official with the power to kill by firing squad or imprison, it was his obligation to turn down the heat.
“We can return violence with violence; we can return hate with hate. That’s the problem with political violence. It metastasizes,” Cox told the nation when Robinson was arrested. “We can always point the figure at the other side. At some point we have to find an off ramp, or else it’s going to get much worse.”
Trump, Miller, and the GOP more generally haven’t gotten the message.
Trump blamed the “radical left” — as if there actually is any meaningful number of people in America calling for communism — for the killing, and then on Thursday told reporters, “We just have to beat the hell” out of “radical left lunatics.”
When Matthew Dowd notes on MSNBC that Kirk engaged in hate speech, the worst that happens is the network fires him. Ditto for when Fox’s Brian Kilmead called for America to emulate Hitler’s Aktion T4 program, where physicians killed homeless and disabled people by lethal injection, later moving on to mobile vans that used their exhaust to kill. The worst Kilmead can expect is to be fired, although given how shamefully unprincipled Fox management is, that’s probably unlikely.
But when government officials describe people using language that could lead to any of us being investigated, arrested, or even imprisoned or deported because of our politics, it’s an entirely different thing. It’s a genuine threat to our system of government, our rule of law, and to the safety and security of all of the American people.
Because when they start hauling away Americans for their opinions, when they threaten to pull our citizenship or passports — as Trump and other Republicans have recently done — history tells us it’s not a long trek to using those same tactics against people who thought they were on the “right side.”
Indeed, it’s already started to happen: just ask Republicans James Comey, John Brennan, and James Clapper, who are all now facing criminal investigations for speaking out against Trump. All these lifelong Republicans had to lawyer up after Trump publicly called them “criminals.”
When Stephen Miller — who the White House wants you to know definitely does not play with porcelain dolls — says the Democratic Party (which he can’t bring himself to say; he instead uses Joe McCarthy’s “Democrat Party” slur) “is not a political party; it is a domestic, extremist organization,” he’s laying a legal foundation for criminal investigations and arrests per the Patriot Act.
When he vows to “dismantle and take on the radical left organizations in this country that are fomenting violence,” promising under Trump’s leadership to use law enforcement to “strip them of money, power, and freedom” and threatening that members of the left who “spread evil hate” will “live in exile” he’s not just a commentator: he’s a man who wields actual power over life and death, imprisonment or freedom.
This rhetoric is particularly troubling since all of the previous 31 politically-motivated violent attacks in America have been committed by rightwingers.
Or consider Elon Musk, the world‘s richest man who created and ran the DOGE program to dismantle our government. He was in England this weekend and said:
“The violence is going to come to you. You will have no choice. This is a, this is, you're in a fundamental situation here where you, where, whether you choose violence or not. The violence is coming to you. You either fight back or you die. You either the fight back or you die. And that's the truth.”
And he wasn’t talking about Osama bin Laden or anybody like that; he was talking about people like you and me:
“[Y]ou see how much violence there’s on the left with our friend Charlie Kirk getting murdered in cold blood this week and people on the left celebrating it openly; the left is the party of murder and celebrating murder. I mean let that sink in for a minute. That’s who we’re dealing with here. That is who we're dealing with.”
When Trump is asked how to heal the country and says, “I couldn’t care less” and adds that, “The radicals on the left are the problem,” he’s inciting stochastic lone-wolf terror against Democrats and setting up rationalizations for government actions like Hitler’s Reichstag Fire Decree that ended all free speech protections in Germany in 1933.
And now a member of Congress is introduced legislation to strip the passports of anybody who “supports terrorism.“ The bill’s author is a former soldier in the Israeli military: you know what direction this is going.
The few rational people still left in the GOP need to reach out to this administration and convince them to follow the example of every other president since Andrew Jackson to dial back the rhetoric, acknowledge the fundamental humanity of Democrats and others on the “left,” and their absolute right to advocate for their own, different vision of a better America with fewer guns, more unions, and free healthcare and free college (the actual “radical left” positions).
Because when a government points its finger at you — when it decides you are the enemy — the entire machinery of the state lines up behind that accusation. That’s not hyperbole; it’s the lesson of history, written in blood and exile and mass graves.
Every authoritarian regime began not with tanks in the streets but with leaders who used words like weapons and convinced their followers that fellow citizens were traitors. Every one. Trump and his enablers are replaying that script, right here, right now.
The only question left is whether we’ll recognize it for what it is and slam on the brakes, or whether we’ll watch, paralyzed, as the state’s power to cage, exile, or kill is once again turned inward, but this time, against us all.
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Trump Has Now Entered Phase 2, Even More Dangerous Than Phase 1
Phase 2 will entail a more direct attack on all Trump’s political opponents. Will the American people fall for it or will they fight back?
Sep 15, 2025
We are now witnessing the start of what might be seen as Phase 2 of Trump’s efforts to eradicate political opposition.
Phase 1 has centered on silencing criticism. It has featured retribution toward people Trump deemed personal “enemies” — not just Democrats who had led the criticisms and prosecutions of him in his first term but also Republicans and his own first-term appointees who subsequently criticized him, such as John Bolton.
Phase 1 also entailed an assault on universities that utilize so-called “diversity, equity, and inclusion,” harbor faculty members and students who speak out critically against Benjamin Netanyahu’s genocide in Palestine, or offer classes critical of the United States’s history toward Black people and Native Americans.
Finally, Phase 1 has gone after media that criticized Trump by withdrawing funding for public radio and television and relying on the billionaire owners of The Washington Post, ABC, CBS, and X to suppress criticism of Trump on their media platforms.
Phase 2, it appears, will entail a more direct attack on all Trump’s political opponents, including the entire Democratic Party.
Trump has vowed to order troops into cities run by Democrats — Washington, D.C., Chicago, Memphis, and New Orleans.
He posted a video last week assailing Democratic mayors on crime, although crime rates have fallen sharply in recent years. “For far too long, Americans have been forced to put up with Democrat-run cities that set loose savage, bloodthirsty criminals to prey on innocent people,” he says in the video.
Meanwhile, he’s sending disaster relief to states run by Republicans and that he won in 2024, most recently announcing $32 million in aid for North Carolina, “which I WON BIG all six times, including Primaries,” suggesting that states run by Democrats will not receive such relief.
He has taken off the gloves with Democratic states and their representatives in Congress, virtually ordering the governors of Texas, Missouri, Indiana, and Ohio to redistrict in order to come up with more Republican seats.
Another aspect of Phase 2 is his willingness to describe Democrats as “evil.” In a Fox News interview last week in which he complained about so-called “excesses” by the left, he referred to Zohran Mamdani, the democratic socialist and front-runner for mayor of New York, as a “communist.”
In calling the entire Democratic Party the “radical left,” Trump seems eager to use the murder of Charlie Kirk to go after Democrats and liberals. Within hours of the murder, he declared that “we just have to beat the hell” out of “radical left lunatics,” and he has hammered Democrats and liberals as “vicious and … horrible.”
Trump’s Phase 2 thinking can be seen most vividly in the remarks of his deputy chief of staff, Stephen Miller, who is turning Kirk’s murder into a political cause. As Miller wrote on Saturday:
“In recent days we have learned just how many Americans in positions of authority — child services, law clerks, hospital nurses, teachers, gov’t workers, even DOD employees — have been deeply and violently radicalized,” calling them “the consequence of a vast, organized ecosystem of indoctrination.”
Miller continued:
“There is an ideology that has steadily been growing in this country which hates everything that is good, righteous and beautiful and celebrates everything that is warped, twisted and depraved. It is an ideology at war with family and nature. It is envious, malicious, and soulless. It is an ideology that looks upon the perfect family with bitter rage while embracing the serial criminal with tender warmth.
Its adherents organize constantly to tear down and destroy every mark of grace and beauty while lifting up everything monstrous and foul. It is an ideology that leads, always, inevitably and willfully, to violence—violence against those [who] uphold order, who uphold faith, who uphold family, who uphold all that is noble and virtuous in this world. It is an ideology whose one unifying thread is the insatiable thirst for destruction.”
Miller has vowed to use the power of the government against MAGA’s political enemies, calling his political opponents “domestic terrorists” and warning:
“[T]he power of law enforcement under President Trump’s leadership will be used to find you, will be used to take away your money, take away your power, and, if you’ve broken the law, to take away your freedom.”
Phase 2 must be understood against the backdrop of Trump’s rapidly declining popularity. The latest Reuters/Ipsos poll, from September 9, shows that only 32 percent of Americans support Trump’s deploying armed troops to large cities.
His economic policies are similarly unpopular. Only 36 percent approve of Trump’s handling of the economy, 30 percent approve of his handling of cost of living, and 16 percent support Trump’s having the power to set interest rates or tell companies where to manufacture products.
Other polls show similar declines in support for Trump.
Trump’s Phase 2 aims to overcome these declining poll numbers by demonizing the Democratic Party, liberals, and all other political opponents in an effort to divide the nation into those who are with Trump and those who are against him.
The overall goal is to make loyalty to Trump a litmus test of American patriotism.
I believe he will fail. Americans won’t fall for it. To the contrary: Trump’s Phase 2 will reveal the depths of his anti-democratic authoritarianism, from which even more Americans will recoil.
By the way, please plan on demonstrating October 18 in the second and largest No Kings Day protests across the nation. Information can be found here.
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How Will John Roberts Be Remembered? As a Democracy Destroyer
It is unlikely that any Chief Justice in history played more of a role in destroying more of our nation’s democracy rules than this man.
Sep 15, 2025
Chief Justice John Roberts is smart and skilled. He will be remembered, however, as a historic failure.
This is not a claim to make lightly, but his record compels it, because Roberts’ legacy will be defined by two catastrophic roles he played.
First, Roberts has played the lead role in destroying indispensable rules of our democracy.
Second, Roberts has played the lead judicial role in serving as the handmaiden to President Trump’s efforts to turn our democracy into an autocracy. (This historic failure will be detailed next week in Part II).
Roberts’ role in destroying essential rules of our democracy
Chief Justice Roberts has taken the lead in writing a series of opinions that have destroyed essential rules governing our democracy. They deal with:
- The sacred right of every eligible citizen to vote.
- The integrity and honesty of the political system.
- The right of citizens to have an unrigged opportunity to choose their representatives.
- The idea that public officials should not be allowed to sell influence with their office.
- The foundational principle that no person is above the law.
The following opinions, written by Roberts and joined in all but one case only by the Republican-appointed majority on the Court, have done unprecedented harm to our democracy.
Roberts wrote the majority opinion for a 5–4 decision in Shelby County v. Holder (2013). It declared key sections of the landmark Voting Rights Act of 1965, the most consequential voting rights law ever enacted, to be unconstitutional. The Act was reenacted periodically over decades until the Shelby County decision.
The Roberts opinion unleashed a wave of regressive and discriminatory voting changes by states and local jurisdictions that disadvantaged minority voters and impeded their voting rights and their ability to fully participate in the democratic process.
McCutcheon v. Federal Election Commission
Roberts wrote the majority opinion for a 5–4 decision in McCutcheon v. Federal Election Commission (2014) which struck down the aggregate limit on all contributions by a donor in an election cycle, a provision previously held constitutional by the Supreme Court in Buckley v. Valeo in 1976.
In Buckley, the Supreme Court had found that unlimited contributions given to support candidates were inherently corrupt. The McCutcheon decision, however, eviscerated the limits on individual contributions to candidates by unleashing billionaires, millionaires, and other big money donors to give unlimited, often huge, contributions to Super PACs to benefit specific candidates.
Roberts wrote the majority opinion for a 5–4 Court decision in Rucho v. Common Cause (2019), in which the Court decided that it could not act on challenges to partisan redistricting plans. The decision claimed that the Court is incapable of establishing standards for determining when partisan maps become unconstitutional, no matter how extreme.
The Rucho decision means that there are no constitutional restrictions on partisan gerrymandering, no matter how rigged the plans are. The result is that politicians get to choose their voters rather than voters choosing their representatives.
Roberts wrote the unanimous opinion in McDonnell v. United States, (2016), which vacated the conviction of former Virginia Governor Robert McDonnell for honest services fraud and extortion. In his opinion, Roberts said that McDonnell’s actions did not constitute “official acts” under the applicable laws, including the bribery law.
In its decision, the Court adopted a narrow, unrealistic construction of the term “official act” to exclude various acts of an officeholder that should be covered, even when those acts are done in direct exchange for gifts or other benefits. For all practical purposes, the Court has left the country without effective bribery laws to prevent public officials from selling their office for financial benefits.
Roberts wrote the opinion for a 6–3 majority in Trump v. United States (2024), which gave Trump presidential criminal immunity. The decision violated a guiding principle of our Founders that no person is above the law. The Roberts opinion placing Trump above the law and also giving him personal control of the Justice Department and FBI can be seen in such outrageous Trump pronouncements as the statement that he has “The right to do anything I want to. I’m the president of the United States,” and “I run the country and the world.”
It is unlikely that any Chief Justice in history played more of a role in destroying more of our nation’s democracy rules than Roberts. And that is how he will be remembered.
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Step Back and See How All Trump's Madness Fits Together
The list of anti-worker cruelty and anti-democratic attacks increases by the day. Tyrant Trump always says, “This is only the beginning.” Believe him.
Sep 15, 2025
The huge Labor Day banner outside the Labor Department building with Trump’s picture and the words “American Workers First” depicts one of Donald’s most disgusting lies.
With multiple factual examples, Steve Greenhouse, former labor reporter for the New York Times, provides proof that Trump is the most brazenly “anti-worker” president in U.S. history. With his Big Vicious and Ugly Bill, barely passed by his fawning GOP in Congress, and dozens of illegal Executive Orders, he is smashing the American Worker beyond the avarice of the cruelest Plutocrat.
Quoting liberally from his Labor Day article in The Guardian, I urge labor union leaders and rank-and-file union members to absorb its contents. This article could make American labor angry enough to mount an unstoppable movement to tell Trump, “You’re Fired,” and fire up enough convinced or electorally scared lawmakers in Congress to impeach and remove Trump from office.
The aggregated madness from this failed gambling czar, wholly devoid of empathy, compassion, truth, while betraying his own voters and his oath of office, follows:
- Trump put corporate interests first by “often cutting [workers’] pay or making their jobs more dangerous.” This includes gutting regulations that protect miners from a debilitating, often deadly lung disease. He fired the chair of the top labor watchdog – The National Labor Relations Board, whose now stalled mission is to “protect workers from corporations’ illegal anti-union tactics.” Then “Trump stripped one million federal workers of their right to bargain collectively and tore up their union contracts.”
- “Trump has hurt construction workers by shutting down major wind turbine projects and ending Biden-era subsidies that encourage construction of factories that make renewable-energy products.”
- Trump is pressing to end “minimum wage and overtime protections for 3.7 million home-care and domestic workers,” and has already ended a “Biden plan to prevent employers from paying disabled workers less than the $7.25-an-hour federal minimum wage.” Trump adamantly opposes raising this frozen minimum wage for 25 million workers who would benefit from a $15 federal minimum wage. He ended a “requirement that federal contractors pay their workers at least $17.75 an hour.”
- Tariffs and reckless, wholesale deportations are “pushing up prices and slowing economic growth.” His big tax cut for the super-rich is being paid for by “millions of working families by cutting food assistance and causing many to lose health coverage” (from Medicaid). As for deportation, it is “undermining their employers’ businesses,” and I might add closing down some of them and impairing farmers from harvesting their crops.
- “In her annual State of the Unions address, AFL-CIO president [Liz] Schuler said: ‘We want cheaper groceries, and we get tanks on our streets. We want more affordable healthcare, and we get 16 million Americans about to be kicked off their coverage.’”
- Trump is swinging an axe to end worker safety protections, cutting OSHA staff and pushing those still working at OSHA to weaken all kinds of essential safety and health protections, ranging from coal miners to workers under extreme heat, to reducing fines for violating safety rules, and much more. He “froze enforcement of a Biden-era regulation that protects miners from silicosis, a serious lung disease.” “…a major killer among coal miners.”
- The Economic Policy Institute (EPI) “forecasts that Trump’s effort to deport 1 million immigrants a year will result in 5.9 million lost jobs after four years: 3.3 million fewer employed immigrants and 2.6 million fewer employed US-born workers. ‘If you don’t have immigrant roofers and framers, you’re not building houses, and that means electricians and plumbers lose their jobs.’ ‘Plus, you lose the consumer spending from those workers,’” and tens of billions of withheld tax revenues annually, one might add.
The flip side of Trump’s feverish repression of worker rights, remedies, and existing protections is that there is no chance of reforming anti-union laws, such as the notorious Taft-Hartley Law of 1947, with Trump and his congressional cronies in power.
Readers may well ask why all these attacks on workers didn’t lead unions and their allies to launch a COMPACT FOR AMERICAN WORKERS and insist that the feeble, corporate-conflicted Democratic Party adopt it authentically and replace their stagnant leadership with new, vigorous leaders. That is what they should have done right after their disastrous loss to Trump, the serial law violator, abuser of women, corrupter, daily, delusionary falsehood teller, shredder of the Constitution, greedy, egomaniacal, and seriously dangerous personality.
There is still one Labor Day before the 2026 midterm elections. Can Unions and the Democratic Party save our Republic from the rampaging daily Trump outlawry and viciousness (he is now invading American cities while wrecking our country)? It should be easy, just based on his failed record. (See my letter of August 27, 2024, to Liz Shuler).
As the economy worsens amidst the chaos, consumer prices rise, unemployment rises, and Trump behaves more like Captain Queeg (the fictional, cruel, and crazy skipper in the film, The Caine Mutiny), voters for Trump are starting to ask, “Did We Vote for This?” Non-voters, in turn, should resolve to head for the polls and reject what Trump is doing. The people who are the sovereign in our Constitution must start acting like they have power.
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