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'Fear Is the Point': Alarm as Republicans Launch Probe of 200+ Immigrant Charity Groups
"An attack on civil society is an attack on us all," said Democratic Rep. Delia Ramirez. "We must dissent."
Jun 13, 2025
Congressional Republicans this week launched an investigation into more than 200 immigrant charity organizations, a move that Democratic lawmakers and the targeted groups condemned as an egregious effort to intimidate opponents of the Trump administration's mass deportation agenda.
"Terror is the point. Cruelty is the point. Fear is the point," Rep. Delia Ramirez (D-Ill.) said Friday in response to the probe, which was announced earlier this week by top Republicans on the House Committee on Homeland Security (CHS).
"The actions of Republicans on CHS unlawfully target organizations standing against their authoritarian power grab," said Ramirez. "An attack on civil society is an attack on us all. We must dissent."
On Tuesday, Reps. Mark Green (R-Tenn.) and Josh Brecheen (R-Okla.) sent letters to at least 215 organizations in a purported effort to "determine whether these NGOs used taxpayer dollars to facilitate illegal activity."
The Coalition for Humane Immigrant Rights (CHIRLA), Make the Road New York, Catholic Charities USA, the Council on American-Islamic Relations, Haitian Bridge Alliance, and Global Refuge were among the organizations that received investigatory letters from the House Republicans.
"Republicans mistakenly believe they have a mandate to inflict cruelty on migrants with their anti-immigrant agenda, but Americans want migrants treated fairly. This sham investigation is the opposite of that."
The letters give the targeted groups two weeks to respond to a survey that, according to the House Republicans, includes questions on "government grants, contracts, and disbursements they have received" and "any legal service, translation service, transportation, housing, sheltering, or any other form of assistance" they have provided to undocumented immigrants since January 2021.
A link to the survey is redacted in the GOP's letter to CHIRLA, an organization that was also targeted this week by Sen. Josh Hawley (R-Mo.), who accused the group of providing "logistical support and financial resources to individuals engaged" in Los Angeles protests against Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) raids.
In a statement Wednesday, CHIRLA said that "we categorically reject any allegation that our work as an organization now and during the past 39 years providing services to immigrants and their families violates the law."
"Our mission is rooted in non-violent advocacy, community safety, and democratic values," the group continued. "We will not be intimidated for standing with immigrant communities and documenting the inhumane manner that our community is being targeted with the assault by the raids, the unconstitutional and illegal arrests, detentions, and the assault on our First Amendment rights."
A CHIRLA representative told the New York Post, a right-wing tabloid that first reported the House GOP investigation into the 215 charity groups, that the organization has "not participated, coordinated, or been part of the protests being registered in Los Angeles," apart from holding a rally last Thursday before the protests exploded.
Rep. Bennie Thompson (D-Miss.), the top Democrat on the House Committee on Homeland Security, issued a joint statement with Rep. Shri Thanedar (D-Mich.) on Thursday condemning their Republican colleagues' investigation as "little more than a campaign to intimidate these groups so they'll stop the good work that our communities rely on."
"The fact that they sent demand letters to groups that have never received federal funding, and others that received money specifically provided by Congress to assist immigrants, shows how unserious their investigation is," Thompson and Thanedar said, adding that "most of the information they have requested is publicly available."
"More detailed records on the funding—including receipts—are owned by DHS, which their party controls. It raises the question—are they too lazy to pull this information themselves, or is the intent simply to bully groups they hate?" the Democrats continued. "Republicans mistakenly believe they have a mandate to inflict cruelty on migrants with their anti-immigrant agenda, but Americans want migrants treated fairly. This sham investigation is the opposite of that."
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To Defeat Trump's Fascism, We Must Confront Militarism
While most Americans instinctively understand the threat U.S. militarism poses to democracy, the times call for more explicit links between militarism and rising fascism and a blueprint for reversing this threat.
Jun 12, 2025
President Trump’s deployment of 4,000 National Guard troops and 700 Marines to Los Angeles to quash peaceful demonstrations against brutal ICE raids is a wake up call. Now is the time to push back against this administration’s use of military violence against its own citizens to consolidate authoritarian power. As Trump threatens to arrest California Governor Newsom and unleash “troops everywhere,” the people of this country must reject militarization as a tool of authoritarianism and stand firm to defend and expand democracy.
As tanks and troops descend upon Los Angeles to silence dissent, on Saturday, they will roll through Washington in a display of power, revealing the undercurrents of an administration that wields militarization not for defense, but for domination.
On his 79th birthday, President Trump will finally get his “big, beautiful” military parade, brandishing unrivaled U.S. military might on the streets of the nation’s capital. Marking the 250th anniversary of the U.S. Army, the $45 million parade will feature nearly 7,000 soldiers marching down Constitution Avenue, flanked by hundreds of B-17 bombers, Strykers and Apache helicopters. Washington will look like Nazi Germany, and unless we tackle militarism in our fight to defend democracy, we, too, may soon live under authoritarian rule.
As longtime peace activists, we have opposed U.S. wars against Korea, Vietnam, Afghanistan, Iraq and Libya, and raised the alarm over militarized U.S. foreign policies like war drills against China and North Korea which provoke a dangerous counter-reaction and fuels an arms race that could trigger nuclear war.
The Trump administration isn't trimming fat from the federal budget, they're cutting the heart out of communities to further enrich billionaires, war profiteers, and techno-fascists.
Deluged daily with domestic crises, it is challenging to draw attention to the dangers of U.S. militarism, especially when most view it as a problem “over there.”
But now we are in an era where masked ICE agents are raiding schools, workplaces, churches and homes, tearing apart families by abducting and deporting legal residents and rounding up students for protesting U.S. support of Israel’s genocide of Palestinians.
The U.S. public can no longer afford to ignore the lethal consequences of militarism on our democracy at a time when our Commander-in-Chief has pardoned January 6th vigilantes, defied the Constitution and judicial rulings, threatened to invoke the 1807 Insurrection Act, and has already deployed the National Guard and active-duty Marines in an attempt to quash dissent at home.
While most Americans instinctively understand the threat U.S. militarism poses to democracy, the times call for more explicit links between militarism and rising fascism and a blueprint for reversing this threat.
Contrary to Trump’s campaign promises to end U.S. involvement in Ukraine and Gaza, he is calling for an unprecedented $1.1 trillion Pentagon budget for more war and militarism, including modernizing nuclear weapons, further entrenching the U.S.’ permanent war footing across the Pacific and Asia in preparation for war with China, and massively increasing policing, detention and deportation.
In 2026 alone, Trump and Republicans want to spend an additional $43.8 billion on mass detentions and deportations, funding more ICE raids like those in LA. This militarized budget accounts for 75 percent of the entire discretionary budget, which explains why on top of massive tax cuts for billionaires, there is no money for social programs and federal agencies that actually help our communities feel safe – clean air and water, healthcare, child nutrition, education, and housing assistance.
U.S. taxpayers are told this historic increase in more militarism is a “generational investment” in defending our country, or that it’s to honor the sacrifices of U.S. service women and men.
But the truth is that half of the Pentagon budget goes to defense contractors that sell weapons of mass destruction to authoritarian states and human rights abusers, like Saudi Arabia and Israel. Instead of financing Israel’s genocidal assault on Gaza with $17.9 billion in 2024, U.S. taxpayer dollars could have provided more than one million U.S. veterans with VA healthcare.
Our taxpayer dollars also enrich tech billionaires like Elon Musk, whose $277 million dollar donation to Trump’s campaign landed him a $5.2 billion dollar Pentagon deal in April, and a free pass to wage an administrative coup. Billions of our taxpayer dollars also go to venture capitalist Peter Thiel, co-founder of Paypal and Palantir, which Bloomberg describes as an “intelligence platform designed for the global War on Terror [that] was weaponized against ordinary Americans at home.” Thiel, who doesn’t “believe that freedom and democracy are compatible,” just received another contract to carry out ICE deportations, and is, along with Musk, Meta’s Zuckerberg and other techno-fascists, seeking to build a dystopian future of unregulated “network states” and surveil us all.
At a time when most Americans want an end to war, Trump is using our tax dollars to celebrate militarism as a cornerstone of consolidating authoritarian power...
The Trump administration isn't trimming fat from the federal budget, they're cutting the heart out of communities to further enrich billionaires, war profiteers, and techno-fascists. In the report Trading Life for Death, the National Priorities Project and Public Citizen found that militarized spending increases in the reconciliation proposals total $163 billion for FY 2026. That's more than enough to fund Medicaid for the 13.7 million people at risk of losing health care, and the 11 million people at risk of losing food stamps.
As Trump uses the parade as a spectacle to exalt his unchecked power, people around the country will join over 1,800 organized protests under the banners of “No Kings Day” and “Kick Out the Clowns.” This day of action offers an opportunity to shine a light on the threat of a highly militarized society to our democracy, from the bloated Pentagon budget that leaches funding from investments that make us secure, to state capture by techno-fascists on our taxpayer dime. We need to do the hard work to redefine our paradigm of national security. The Feminist Peace Playbook: A Guide for Transforming U.S. Foreign Policy provides one such guide for moving our country from one defined by war and violence to one built on care, compassion and cooperation.
Let’s heed the prescient words of President Eisenhower, a five-star general who led the Allied Forces in WWII to defeat fascism, when he warned Americans to “guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence… by the military-industrial complex. The potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced power exists, and will persist."
At a time when most Americans want an end to war, Trump is using our tax dollars to celebrate militarism as a cornerstone of consolidating authoritarian power at home.
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Measuring Corporate Power by the Number of Marines in Los Angeles
Trump's authoritarianism didn't come from nowhere. It came from decades of corporate power building a system of exploitation, then using their media and political influence to blame the exploited for everyone's problems.
Jun 11, 2025
So, Matthew Yglesias posted this challenge on Twitter earlier this week: "This is my challenge for people who want to make reducing corporate power the lodestar of their politics — how do you measure this?"
Well, there's a couple of ways. But first, let me tell you what's happening right now: There are 700 Marines in Los Angeles. Marines. In an American city. Four thousand National Guard troops deployed. A union president arrested and facing six years in prison for observing ICE raids. Families torn apart at Home Depot, at restaurants, in the garment district.
This is America, June 2025. Trump's back, and he's moving fast. Marines—actual Marines—carrying out immigration raids in an American city. It's unprecedented, it's shocking, but here's the thing: it's tragically predictable.
This isn't just Trump being Trump. This is the inevitable result of decades of corporate power combining with an authoritarian president. It's been a journey, and we need to understand how we got here.
The system that corporations captured needed a desperate, vulnerable workforce so they could extract more profits.
For 50 years, corporations and the financial elite have been running the greatest theft in human history. The RAND Corporation—the RAND Corporation!—showed that the bottom 90% got paid $79 trillion less than they should have based on economic growth from 1975 to today. By their calculations, median income should be $102,000.
But here's the genius part: they needed someone to blame for this theft. So they pointed fingers at everyone except themselves. Black women on welfare. People getting food stamps. And especially immigrants—documented and undocumented alike.
The system that corporations captured needed a desperate, vulnerable workforce so they could extract more profits. So they made it possible—hell, they made it easy—to hire people who were undocumented. They created an entire infrastructure for exploitation.
Last night, my wife was asking how it is that undocumented people are able to work all these jobs? How is it possible? Well, they have what's called an ITIN—Individual Taxpayer Identification Number. That's something set up by the government to allow people who are undocumented to still pay taxes. They pay payroll taxes, Medicare, Medicaid, and Social Security.
Now, does it give them the ability to obtain any benefits from those things? No, it does not. They'll never get Social Security. Even if they get a path to citizenship, even if they become citizens after being here undocumented for 20 years, paying taxes for 20 years, they still don't get access to that money. They only get the past two years.
You see, you've got this system that's set up that has been utilizing the labor, utilizing the hope, utilizing the desire for a better life. Our system of banking was set up for their money. Our system of car sales, home sales, taxes—everything was set up to make sure they could participate in capitalism.
Rules and regulations were changed to welcome and accommodate them economically. Not politically, not socially. No, no, no. That's when the same corporations would fund politicians and media to vilify these workers.
You've got an entire media ecosystem one in the hands of an ever-shrinking number of corporate owners that for decades has been blaming immigrants for our problems. Fox News talking about invasions and hordes. And it's not like we have an alternative media that is actually naming the real people that are taking all our shit, that are putting us in poverty, that are putting their boots on our throats—which of course is the wealthy, the top 1%, their corporations and their lobbyists and their lawyers.
You don't see that $79 trillion theft on TV every day with the faces of the villains and B-roll of corporate boardrooms showing where the money was sucked up, do you? No, you don't. Because the corporations own the media.
It's been a very Machiavellian corporate play. You bring in this thing that helps your bottom line—more desperate labor, more hopeful, more excited people ready to participate in your system. And then you use them as political pawns to maintain your power and prevent people from organizing together. You stoke hatred and class division through racial identity and racism while you keep taking and taking... and taking. Money. Power. Our democracy. They take it all.
This isn't just Trump being Trump. This is the inevitable result of decades of corporate power combining with an authoritarian president.
Here's what enrages me. Democrats thought they could play this game, too. People like Barack Obama, Bill Clinton, and Joe Biden would say, "Oh, we've got a problem at the border. We've got to do this, we've got to do that." They deported millions, but more quietly. They increased ICE funding. They stoked the flames of fear and jealousy.
Democrats thought they could use this hateful rhetoric for political gain, but keep it contained. They thought they could control people’s frustration with immigrants, whom they blamed for our collapsing lifestyles and shrinking safety nets. They'd validate the "crisis" narrative instead of naming the real villains—the corporations and extractors in our economy. They did that because they didn't want to have the fights.
The Democratic establishment would say, "We have to say, whoa, it's time to move to the center, guys. We'll protect you better than these people will. We won't call out the National Guard. We'll just use the LAPD. We won't go nuts with ICE. We'll just do a kinder, gentler deportation scheme."
And what it ends up being is a party that doesn't really seem to stand for much. You're going to be labeled as a party of open borders anyway. But instead of trying to embrace it and make the case for it, you push back against it.
They say, "Oh, we've got to be the alpha dogs. We've got to show alpha energy." But they really don't understand alpha energy, because by and large, they're bitches. They're little scared bitches that don't know how to stand up and fight for something they believe in. Or they just don't fundamentally believe in much of anything.
Meanwhile, the corporate capture of government continued. You can see how many people from corporations like Goldman Sachs, JP Morgan, and Citigroup end up running our economy. Tim Geithner went from the New York Fed straight to Treasury Secretary after helping bail out his Wall Street buddies. Jerome Powell? Private equity guy. Steve Mnuchin? Goldman Sachs partner turned Trump's Treasury Secretary.
Look at Scott Gottlieb, who served as FDA Commissioner, then joined Pfizer's board just 85 days after leaving the agency. Look at Ajit Pai, who worked as a Verizon lawyer before becoming FCC Chairman, where he repealed net neutrality rules that constrained his former employer.
Billy Tauzin chaired the House committee that passed Medicare Part D—which explicitly prohibited Medicare from negotiating drug prices. Upon leaving Congress, he immediately became president of PhRMA at $2 million annually, eventually earning $11.6 million in his final year.
You can look at the number of bills written by ALEC that show up in state legislatures. You can look at all the laws that block unionization. Mandatory arbitration. Right-to-work laws. Guess who pushed for those? Corporations.
How else can you tell corporate power is near absolute? We're seeing cities, towns, and states sell off their assets, sell off their services, privatize all the things that government used to do for people. Everything from trash collection to water to sewer to power.
Chicago sold its parking meters to Morgan Stanley for $1.15 billion in a 75-year lease. Parking rates immediately quadrupled. The private operators recouped their entire investment plus $500 million in profit by 2019, with 60 years remaining on the lease.
Water privatization? Private water systems charge customers $144 more annually on average. In Illinois, companies have acquired 59 water systems since 2013, with over $402 million in acquisition costs passed directly to ratepayers.
That's how we know corporations are in control.
So when an authoritarian comes to power, what does he find? A system perfectly designed for exploitation. A workforce made vulnerable by design. A media ecosystem that's been blaming immigrants for decades. Democrats who validated the "crisis" narrative. And a population primed to accept military force against the scapegoats.
Noah Smith says "unfortunately, he's right" about mass deportations. Young people are swinging hard for candidates like Zohran in New York because they're getting the squeeze economically and they know this is broken. But it's not really all that surprising that people are calling for mass deportations when you've had decades of both parties blaming immigrants for problems caused by corporate theft.
When an authoritarian comes to power, what does he find? A system perfectly designed for exploitation. A workforce made vulnerable by design. A media ecosystem that's been blaming immigrants for decades. Democrats who validated the "crisis" narrative. And a population primed to accept military force against the scapegoats.
Donald Trump deploys not only the National Guard but also the Marines. To round up undocumented house builders, restaurant workers, nannies, gardeners, baristas, retail workers, and factory workers. People that want to be Americans.
Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass says the city is being used as a "test case" and "an experiment." California Gov. Gavin Newsom calls it "an unmistakable step toward authoritarianism."
But this authoritarianism didn't come from nowhere. It came from decades of corporate power building a system of exploitation, then using their media and political influence to blame the exploited for everyone's problems. It came from Democrats who thought they could moderate their way through fascism.
So when Matthew Yglesias asks how to measure corporate power?
Count the Marines. Count the families torn apart. Count the $79 trillion stolen. Count the privatized water systems and parking meters. Count the pharma executives at the FDA and the Wall Street guys at Treasury. Count the ALEC bills in state legislatures. Count the Democrats who won't fight.
The theft is coming from inside the house. The theft is coming from the people upstairs in the top 10%, top 1%, and they want to blame the people in the economic basement. They have effectively utilized the cheap labor pool that they imported for decades as punching bags for that theft.
And now, when people finally rebel against this system, when they take to the streets to protect their neighbors and coworkers and families - that's when the corporate state shows its true face. Military protection for profits. Combat boots for capital.
You want to know how to measure corporate power? Look to Los Angeles, where decades of corporate exploitation and political cowardice have delivered us to this moment: Marines in American streets, rounding up the workers that corporations brought here to exploit.
That's how you measure it. The question is: what are we going to do about it?
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