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The Death of a Fascist Autocrat: On Pre-Writing Donald Trump's Obituary
The very decision to elect Trump to the presidency, not once, but twice, should be considered the popular equivalent of preparing an obituary not just for him but for this country, this planet, all of us.
Jan 29, 2026
Having reached a certain age and long been fascinated by obituaries, I sometimes think about both Donald Trump’s and my own. At 79, he’s just slightly less than two years younger than me, though of course I wasn’t the 45th president of the United States or the 47th one either. And eight chaotic years (or more?) as president (assuming he makes it that far) guarantee him a monster (and I do indeed use that word advisedly) set of obituaries when he dies, whereas almost a quarter-century at TomDispatch guarantees me nothing at all.
And I wouldn’t argue with that for a second. After all, Donald Trump has been (and continues to be) a truly one-of-a-kind president of the United States — though the word “kind” (as opposed to “king”) doesn’t actually apply to him, does it? Think of him, in fact, as the mad hatter of American presidents. If you remember, that Alice in Wonderland character was accused of “murdering the time.” And that, in its own strange fashion, seems like quite a reasonable description of at least one of the crimes of President Donald Trump.
The man who believes that climate change is a “green new scam” has tried, among other things, to shut down every major East Coast offshore wind power project in sight (though judges, including one he appointed to the bench, have so far denied him that right). Meanwhile, he’s been working to ensure that coal, the dirtiest of all fossil fuels, remains a major source of American energy. He and his crew aren’t even letting major coal-burning power plants whose days are all too literally past close.
Phew, that paragraph left me out of breath — so much for my wind power! — and I didn’t even get everything in. After all, he’s also had the urge to pull every last barrel of oil out of Venezuela (even if, once upon a time, he did all too accurately call that country’s petroleum the “worst oil probably anywhere in the world” and “garbage”). And in the process, he is indeed engaged in murdering time — at least, the time we humans have left to live reasonably decent lives on this planet, which is, it seems, no longer truly ours but, at least for now, significantly his.
At 79, he gives old age new meaning. He’s the anything-goes president on a planet going down, down, down. The only thing, it seems, that doesn’t go down (not yet, at least) is Donald J. Trump.
In some sense, you might say that Donald Trump is hard at work trying to ensure not only that he’ll get a major obituary on his death, but that humanity will, too. In that sense, give him credit. He’s trying to put us all in the paper and give us all the experience he’s had of being “the news.”
And I wonder if someday, if not your obituary and mine, perhaps those of our children or grandchildren will start out something like this: “He/she died in his/her home in the midst of a blinding heat wave/a devastating storm/a historically unprecedented flood [or you name it] on a planet still growing hotter and more uncomfortable by the decade, if not the year.”
The U.S. Is an Increasingly Violent Petro State
When it comes to obituaries, don’t think it’s just the climate that’s the problem. We are living in a distinctly mad world of the living (and the dead). And OMG, it’s increasingly apparent that, on a planet where wars are still proliferating from Ukraine to Gaza to Sudan (and the burning of fossil fuels to fight them is already adding significantly to the devastation of the planet), things are unlikely to get better any time soon. As the Costs of War project reminds us: “The U.S. Department of Defense is the world’s single largest institutional consumer of oil — and as a result, one of the world’s top greenhouse gas emitters.”
And just to take one grim example, “my” president wants to take our tax dollars and apply them even more strikingly — in fact, in a blindingly record fashion — to the Pentagon budget, the thing that, once upon a time, was called, however inaccurately, the “defense budget.” It’s already at somewhere close to a trillion dollars a year and, give him credit, he only wants to raise it by another half-trillion dollars to $1.5 trillion.
And no, that is not a typo! Believe me, there’s no misprint there! That’s what he thinks he needs to do to create a “dream military,” which (at least in his mind) would undoubtedly ensure that Greenland will become the 51st state, Canada the 52nd, Cuba the 53rd, and Colombia the 54th. The 55th, then, could well be China. (Or so he might dream anyway. Or perhaps the phrase should be: so he might nightmare anyway.) And don’t fret. That increase in the military budget is only likely to mean a $6 trillion increase in our taxes over the next decade (or roughly $45,000 per family).
Oh, wait, this is already the nation with by far the largest military budget on Earth that, over all the endless decades since it emerged globally victorious from World War II, couldn’t win a single significant war — not in Korea, nor in Vietnam, nor Afghanistan, nor Iraq, nor even, possibly, in the weeks to come on the streets of Minneapolis. Nowhere. And count on this, another half-trillion dollars a year will ensure only one thing: that the United States won’t win yet more wars ever more extravagantly, whether in Greenland or somewhere else entirely, while never learning even the most obvious lessons from such a grim reality.
And no, for some reason, Donald Trump has never actually used the word “nightmare” either in relation to himself or his presidency, though he certainly did accuse the Democrats of being the party of “the socialist nightmare.” Nor did he use it in his recent interview with the New York Times when he was asked about whether there were any limits whatsoever on his own global power. Instead, he responded this way: “Yeah, there is one thing. My own morality. My own mind. It’s the only thing that can stop me.”
So now, you can breathe a giant sigh of relief, right? Who could possibly worry about his mind? If Donald Trump’s “morality” is the only thing that stands between us and him doing more or less anything he wants, however destructively, on this planet of ours, then what could possibly go wrong?
And speaking of nightmares (or even obituaries), oil is Donald Trump’s dream liquid — and oil is hell. In the long run on this already overheating planet of ours, oil means war, not on this country’s potential enemies, or even Donald Trump’s, but on all of us. (And the U.S. is indeed an increasingly violent petro state, as Mark Hertsgaard has recently reminded us at the Nation magazine.)
The very decision to elect Trump to the presidency, not once, but twice, should be considered the popular equivalent of preparing an obituary not just for him but for this country, this planet, all of us. And it might read something like this. Or rather, let me just start it for you, since I know that you won’t have the slightest problem filling in the rest:
“Donald Trump, the 45th president of the United States, died yesterday. Born in New York City on June 14, 1946, he would come to be known for many things from the TV show The Apprentice to pussy-grabbing. (“I don’t even wait. And when you’re a star, they let you do it. You can do anything… Grab ’em by the pussy. You can do anything.”) And that admission, which came just before his first presidential election contest against Hillary Clinton, didn’t do the trick. He still won, which certainly tells you something about the United States (if, that is, we were writing an obituary not of a president but of a country).
But perhaps his presidency was most significant not for grabbing this country’s pussy, but for murdering time. He was America’s first green-new-scam president, the “drill, baby, drill” candidate who proved all too ready to devastate not just a few women, or a pile of American voters, but the planet itself. Hey, if you happen to want to close down wind farms, but keep coal plants open, you know just the man to vote for (yet again).”
The Anything-Goes President
We don’t know yet what our future holds. Donald Trump could have a heart attack tomorrow and kiss this planet and the rest of us goodbye. But if he lasts the next three years, having already figured out how to largely ignore Congress — really, who needs Congress to blow up ships in the Caribbean and the Eastern Pacific Ocean, or invade Venezuela, or take Greenland? — and do whatever the hell he wants to do, the Constitution be damned, there’s always the distinct possibility that he’ll deal with the 22nd Amendment, which prevents any president from having a third term in office, in a similar fashion. When it comes to running for president yet again, he’s already said: “I would love to do it.” And perhaps the key line in any future obituary of Donald Trump could prove to be that he broke new ground by becoming the first president since Franklin D. Roosevelt to win (or do I mean seize?) a third term in office and so become the first true American autocrat.
There’s no question, he’s the man, and if he can’t do it, nobody can. And believe me, if he succeeds, he won’t be forgotten, not on a planet he’s lent such a hand to sending down, down, down. In some fashion, you might say, he’s put a tariff on all of us when it comes to life on Earth and that’s no small… well, I hesitate to say it… accomplishment.
If only we could put a tariff on him — call it the autocrat tariff — and make him pay us for the suffering he’s caused and will undoubtedly continue to cause. I mean, when you think about his “accomplishments,” it’s no small thing the second time around to have left Congress largely in the lurch and done whatever pleased him most, with only his “own morality” to stop him.
At 79, he gives old age new meaning. He’s the anything-goes president on a planet going down, down, down. The only thing, it seems, that doesn’t go down (not yet, at least) is Donald J. Trump.
Having reached this point, I now wonder if my task in this piece shouldn’t have been writing obituaries for Donald Trump and me but writing one for humanity and Planet Earth (at least as we’ve known it all these millennia). In some sense, here’s the extraordinary thing: in November 2024, a near majority of American voters, 49.8% of us, to be exact, voted yet again for him as president. Anybody can understand and even excuse making a mistake once in this strange world of ours. But twice? Really? When it comes not just to a president of the United States but to the very fate of this planet?
I have a feeling that, if Trump makes it to a third term, he — not Congress — would have to change the preamble to the Constitution of these (dis)United States of America to read this way:
“I, the Only Person Who Matters in the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Autocracy, establish Injustice, ensure domestic and global Chaos, provide for a common offensiveness, promote the general Poorfare, and secure the Blessings of Autocrcacy to myself and my Posterity (if they even make it), do ordain and establish this Constitution for the (Dis)United States of America and a world going to hell in a handbasket.”
And having done that, I suspect that we would then have to start preparing an obituary (which might be headlined “Murdering Time in the Age of Donald Trump”) for this planet of ours, at least as we humans have known it all these endless centuries.
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5-Year-Old Abducted by ICE in Minneapolis Now Sick in ‘Abysmal’ Texas Detention Facility
"Liam is getting sick because the food they receive is not of good quality. He has stomach pain, he’s vomiting, he has a fever, and he no longer wants to eat," his mother said.
Jan 29, 2026
Liam Conejo Ramos, a 5-year-old boy abducted by immigration agents in Minneapolis last week, is now in poor health after being sent to languish in a Texas facility with “absolutely abysmal" conditions, according to his family.
HuffPost reports that "Ramos and his father, Adrian Alexander Conejo Arias, are being held at the South Texas Family Residential Center in Dilley, Texas. This is despite Arias entering the country legally and having no criminal record, according to [the family's lawyer]. Late Tuesday, a federal judge temporarily blocked federal immigration officials from deporting Ramos and Arias, for now."
Reporters got in contact with Zena Stenvik, the superintendent at the Columbia Heights public school district, where Ramos attends preschool, who said she spoke with Ramos' mother.
Just visited with Liam and his father at Dilley detention center. I demanded his release and told him how much his family, his school, and our country loves him and is praying for him.
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— Joaquin Castro (@joaquincastrotx.bsky.social) January 28, 2026 at 3:45 PM
“Unfortunately, Liam’s health is not doing great right now,” said Stenvik. “He’s been ill. I’ve been told he has a fever. So I’m very, very concerned about his well-being in that facility.”
Earlier this week, Ramos’ mother told Minnesota Public Radio (MPR) that “Liam is getting sick because the food they receive is not of good quality. He has stomach pain, he’s vomiting, he has a fever, and he no longer wants to eat.”
A lawyer for the family, Eric Lee, told MPR that the conditions at the Texas facility are “absolutely abysmal."
“They mix baby formula with water that is putrid. The food has bugs in it. The guards are often verbally abusive,” he said.
Marc Prokosch, another of the family's lawyers, emphasized that although US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) officials describe them as a "family unit" that crossed the border illegally, they entered the US lawfully and had no order of deportation against them or criminal record.
He said the tactics ICE has used in Minneapolis seem designed to evade the law and separate detainees from legal representation.
“Since [Operation] Metro Surge came, they’ve been moving them all out to Texas… within 24 hours," he said. "That’s one of the core elements of being able to help somebody in the legal sphere, is to be able to communicate with them… It’s really hard to talk to them.”
Democratic US Reps. Joaquin Castro and Jasmine Crockett of Texas went to visit Ramos and his father in the detention facility in Dilley on Wednesday. In a video posted to his social media, Castro said the facility is holding 1,100 other people.
"We spoke to many parents throughout our visit," Castro said. "There were a lot of parents there who talked about their kids experiencing deep depression, anxiety, people losing weight, both because of the bad food but also because of their mental state."
Castro said he "very bluntly told" the ICE officials there and officials for Core Civic, the private prison company that runs Dilley, "the country is against what's going on, that Liam needs to be released, that the country demands his release, and that no child that's five years old should be in detention like that."
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Trump’s Imperial Proto-Fascism Can Only Be Defeated Through a United Front
More and more people are recognizing Trump’s government for what it really is, an abomination. But without organized resistance, there is little hope for defeating him or forging the better future we deserve.
Jan 29, 2026
The United States is on a very dark path under President Donald Trump, argues political scientist, political economist, author, and journalist C. J. Polychroniou in the interview that follows with the independent French-Greek journalist Alexandra Boutri. Democratic rules and norms have virtually collapsed, and cruelty is the name of the game. Trump has used the military and federal law enforcement to build a paramilitary force that carries out pogroms against immigrant communities, assaults the constitutional rights of citizens and even murders people if they protest against its Nazi-like tactics. Under Trump, the US is acting at home in the same lawless manner that it acts abroad. How to fight Trump’s fascism is the million-dollar question.
Alexandra Boutri: I want to start by asking you to elaborate a bit on the concept of “imperial proto-fascism” that you referred to in the last interview we did together. I don’t think I have encountered this term before.C. J. Polychroniou: It’s really a pretty basic and straightforward term. It seeks to capture the type of political order that is unfolding in the United States under Trump 2.0. The United States is and has been an imperialist power at least since the late 1890’s, although imperialism has changed its pattern over time and surely since the time of the writings of Hobson, Lenin, Luxembourg, and Hilferding. Yet, in a very surreal way, the Trump administration is reviving the Monroe Doctrine and seeks to take over foreign territories through whatever means necessary while making a mockery of international law. Whether you want to call it “Old Imperialism” or “New Imperialism” is a rather academic matter. The point is that the Trump administration envisions a new role for the US in today’s word in which might is right. No tricks or deception about pursuing US interests in the name of democracy, human rights, and freedom, which has been the rhetorical approach to US foreign policy by all previous administrations since the end of the Second World War. There is no point talking about international niceties because as Trump’s Waffen-SS chief Stephen Miller recently put it, “the iron laws of the world” are strength, force, and power.
On the domestic front, you have the emergence of a regime that relies on the same tactics that it uses on the international arena. Cruelty and brute force are its main traits. Under Trump, the US is acting at home in the same lawless manner that it acts abroad. But Americans are rebelling against Trump’s imperial proto-fascist political order, so interesting times do lie ahead.
Alexandra Boutri: The Trump administration has brazenly lied in order to justify the deaths of the two people in Minneapolis. What sort of government people can justify the murders of their own citizens?
C. J. Polychroniou: Renee Good and Alex Pretti were killed by Trump’s own fascist paramilitary squad. The mission of ICE is to capture undocumented immigrants and instill fear across communities. In shooting and killing two harmless protesters, ICE thugs did not violate any protocol. They followed the protocol. When pressed about ICE’s tactics and the murder of Alex Pretti, Kristi Noem and Stephen Miller turned against each other. But they are both complicit in Trump’s lawless police state actions. They work for a criminal government and are carrying out its leader's orders. Miller is in fact the architect of Trump’s inhumane anti-immigration policies.
The current administration in Washington DC does not pretend to be a national government looking after the interests and the well-being of all Americans. So let’s put aside political niceties. It is an administration of hateful, racist, ruthless thugs who have embarked on an open war against democracy and the rule of law, against the “other,” and against human decency. It is fascism with US characteristics.
Alexandra Boutri: It appears that Trump has switched tactics and is now trying to turn attention back to the economy. Will it work?
C. J. Polychroniou: It depends on what he decides to do with his inhumane immigration crackdown. I don’t see anti-ICE protests going away as long as the paramilitary squad's barbaric tactics continue unabated. Most Americans are clearly fed up with Trump and his policies. He has nothing to point to that would make the public feel good about his administration. He had made life much less affordable in just one year. He has added trillions to the debt and the US dollar is collapsing. Only those supporting Trump like sheep, either because they are wearing blinders or because they have vested interests in him being in office, like the tech oligarchs, can find something positive with his administration. But he has three more years left in the White House and there is no doubt that his wrecking ball will keep swinging. And Trump will continue with his distraction tactics during damaging stories for his administration. And that includes embarking on new military adventures abroad, more bombings and killings, and even pursuing regime change.
Alexandra Boutri: How do people push back against Trump’s imperial proto-fascist order?
C. J. Polychroniou: The anti-ICE protests are very important because they signify resistance against one of the administration’s cruelest and most dangerous policies. The US is indeed on a very dangerous trajectory under Trump. The situation is so critical and overwhelming that only a united front, I believe, could defeat Trump’s imperial proto-fascist order. In this context, what is needed is full-fledged resistance against the Trump regime and all its collaborators, especially including its corporate collaborators. A united front against fascism is an alliance of working-class organizations with all progressive forces whether they are reformist or even attached to liberal institutionalism. And I am not necessarily referring to the united front strategy of Leon Trotsky against Hitlerism. The united-front formulation predates Trotsky, and it was a united front strategy in France that defeated the far right in the legislative elections of 2024. The primary goal here is to resist and ultimately defeat Trump’s plan for an imperial proto-fascist order. Nationwide general strikes which are a very powerful tool against unpopular and repressive regimes, but are exceptionally rare in the US, have a much better chance of happening if there is a movement of mass resistance based on a united-front formulation. Hopefully, with each passing day, more and more people will come to recognize Trump’s government for what it really is, an abomination, and realize that “you can’t be neutral on a moving train,” as Howard Zinn aptly put it.
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120+ Groups Call on EU to Resist Trump's 'Fossil-Fueled Imperialism' and Cancel US Trade Deal
"The EU is at a fork in the road: It can follow the US down a volatile, destructive path or it can forge its own course toward stability."
Jan 29, 2026
As the European Parliament debates the trade agreement reached last year by President Donald Trump and European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen, more than 120 civil society groups from across Europe and the globe on Thursday warned that the demands Trump has made on the bloc and his "contempt for international law" have made clear that the US is currently "no longer a good-faith partner."
In solidarity with countries that have been directly threatened with Trump's "fossil-fueled imperialism"—Venezuela and Greenland—the EU must reduce its reliance on US fossil fuels and cancel the negotiation and implementation of the trade deal, said Oil Change International, one of the signatories of the open letter that was sent to von der Leyen and other top EU officials.
The letter notes that Trump has already shown that in a deal with the US, the EU will be pressured to "dilute its own climate commitments" and "enrich US fossil fuel companies" at the bloc's expense.
"His administration has attacked the EU's methane regulation and its Corporate Sustainability Due Diligence Directive, seeking to weaken Europe's ability to hold corporations accountable for climate and human rights harms," reads the letter, which was also signed by Coal Action Network in the UK, Urgewald in Germany, and a number of US-based groups including Public Citizen.
Von der Leyen agreed to the deal last July after Trump threatened the bloc with "economically devastating tariffs," the groups wrote, ensuring the EU would import $750 billion in US energy products including liquefied natural gas (LNG).
Those imports will "contaminate the air and water of nearby communities, increasing their risk of cancers, asthma, and other serious health harms," warns the letter, while also being projected to raise energy costs for households across Europe.
Up to 1 in 4 homes in the EU already struggle to adequately heat, cool, or light their homes, wrote the groups.
James Hiatt, executive director of the US group For a Better Bayou, called on EU leaders to "side with communities like mine, not the fossil fuel executives bankrolling Trump, by ending its reliance on US gas.”
“There’s nothing clean about US LNG," said Hiatt. "This industry has destroyed wetlands, damaged fishermen’s livelihoods, and condemned Gulf South communities like mine to higher rates of heart conditions, asthma, and cancer. We’re also on the frontlines of hurricanes and flooding made worse by continued fossil-fuel dependency Europe keeps importing."
The groups wrote that "every euro spent on US non-renewable energy, and every fossil fuel investment made by European companies and banks in the United States, fuels Trump's authoritarian agenda at home and his imperial ambitions abroad."
"The only way Europe can reach energy independence and free itself from outside pressures is by implementing a just transition away from fossil fuels and relying on energy sufficiency/efficiency and homegrown renewable energy," reads the letter. "Done well, this can support decent jobs and sound local economies."
By ratifying the deal with the US, the groups added, the EU will only be "switching one dangerous dependency for another," following its phase-out of oil imports from Russia.
The bloc will also be "giving up its sovereignty bit by bit, losing the competitiveness battle, deepening the climate crisis which will be putting its own people's lives at even higher risk from extreme weather, and jeopardizing its ambitions to be seen as a global climate leader," reads the letter.
Trump's threat to seize Greenland from the Danish kingdom and his illegal strikes on Venezuela—aimed, his administration has admitted, at taking control of its oil—have shown how willing the president is to violate international law if it serves his own interests, the groups suggested.
The groups made specific demands of EU leaders, calling on them to:
- Stand in solidarity with Latin American nations threatened by the US, including Venezuela, and with Greenland, affirming that "it is up to its people, and only them, to decide on their future";
- Put forward a motion at the United Nations condemning the Trump administration's "blatant violations of international law";
- Immediately cancel negotiations and implementation of the US-EU trade deal;
- Engage with EU member states to renew the European Green Deal and establish a binding roadmap for the phase-out of fossil gas, in particular US LNG;
- Defend the existing EU Methane Regulation and ensure it is applied to imports; and
- Support the First International Conference on the Just Transition Away from Fossil Fuels, organized by the governments of Colombia and the Netherlands.
“Under Trump, the US has become a rogue state that violates international law and bullies sovereign nations into submitting to its ‘energy dominance’ agenda," said Myriam Douo, false solutions senior campaigner for Oil Change International. "The EU must stop wasting money on risky, expensive US fossil fuels, which threaten climate goals, put people at greater risk of climate disasters, and harm communities with toxic pollution."
"The EU is at a fork in the road: It can follow the US down a volatile, destructive path or it can forge its own course toward stability," said Douo. "It can save billions, build a resilient economy, and ensure its long-term energy security and independence through a just transition to renewable energy."
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