Trump Is Creating An Authoritarian Police State

Robert Reich reminds us that Trump is using our military to create a POLICE STATE:

He’s now saying it out loud — blurring the line between his so-called “war” on alleged foreign drug smugglers and his war on the “enemy within” the United States. Both now involve the deployment of the U.S. military. Neither requires proof of wrongdoing.

That was his message yesterday when Trump told American troops in Japan that he would send “more than the National Guard” into cities to enforce his crackdowns on crime and immigration:

“We have cities that are troubled, we can’t have cities that are troubled. And we’re sending in our National Guard, and if we need more than the National Guard, we’ll send more than the National Guard, because we’re going to have safe cities … . We’re not going to have people killed in our cities. And whether people like that or not, that’s what we’re doing.”

In the same speech, Trump defended U.S. military strikes against suspected drug smugglers — more than a dozen on vessels from South America that have killed 57 people so far, without evidence they were actually smuggling drugs. (Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth announced yesterday that the military had carried out three more strikes on Monday.)

He repeatedly condemned Joe Biden. He told the troops that the 2020 election had been rigged. He savaged Democratic governors who have resisted the military in their cities.

 “People don’t care if we send in our military, our National Guard,” Trump told the troops. “They just want to be safe.” Trump also called out the “fake news media,” and encouraged the troops to deride journalists.

This was the third politically-charged speech Trump has made to members of the U.S. armed forces within the month — following his late-September address to the military’s top brass and his self-described “rally” of U.S. Navy sailors in Virginia the following week. 

Trump’s speech yesterday to American troops — seeking to justify the use of lethal force against anyone suspected of acting illegally, domestic or foreign — is his clearest statement yet about what’s really motivating him and his lapdogs.

 

He’s not seeking to stop drug smuggling, nor to overthrow Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro, nor to display the military might of America to world leaders, nor to extrude undocumented immigrants from the United States, nor rid the U.S. of alleged criminals.

 

These are all pretexts. His real goal is quite different.

In the short term, it is to intimidate Democratic mayors and governors and potential Democratic voters in order to suppress Democratic turnout in next fall’s midterm elections.

 

His long-term goal — shared by his sycophants Hegseth, Stephen Miller, Russell Vought, JD Vance, Kristi Noem, and Pam Bondi — is to turn America into a police state. 

I don’t think it an exaggeration to say that Trump envisions himself as commander-in-chief of a domestic military force that would target alleged criminals (but not the white-collar sort), rid the nation of undocumented people, and remake America into a white, straight, male, Christian nation.

The good news is he’s now starting to say some of this in the open — directly to active-duty troops. He’s openly readying them for the role he wants them to play. 

Essentially, he’s daring the top brass of the military to stop him. For now, they won’t. They’re worried and bewildered. He’s their commander-in-chief but they have an overriding responsibility to the nation to uphold democratic institutions, including the Constitution. 

He’s also daring the rest of us to stop him — in the courts, in the now-defunct Congress, in the now-shuttered government. Also to stop him with our votes, our unwavering determination, and our nonviolent resistance.

 

Every American who shares the values for which American troops have been fighting and dying for almost 250 years, should join us on the side of democracy and against Trump’s emerging police state.

The GOP Bill Will Help Trump Establish His New Police State

The following is most of a post by former Labor Secretary Robert Reich:

Trump’s Big Ugly Bill delivers $170 billion for border and immigration enforcement. 

This is on the scale of supplemental budgets passed by the United States when we enter war. 

ICE will add 10,000 agents to the 20,000 already on the streets. 

Its annual budget for detentions will skyrocket from $3.4 billion in the current fiscal year to $45 billion until the end of the 2029 fiscal year. That’s a 365 percent increase.

Funding for ICE detentions will exceed funding for the entire federal prison system.

 

When government capacity is built out this way, there’s always political and bureaucratic pressure to utilize such capacity. Supply creates its own demand. 

“They pass that bill, we’re gonna have more money than we ever had to do immigration enforcement,” Trump’s border czar, Tom Homan, said recently, adding, “You think we’re arresting people now? You wait till we get the funding to do what we got to do.”

Which means that the number of people detained in ICE facilities — numbering 56,397 as of June 15 — will likely grow dramatically. A four-fold increase in the detention budget could mean a quarter of a million people locked up.

 

Don’t fall for the Trump regime’s lie that these people are criminals. As of now, 71.7 percent of ICE detainees have no criminal record. Some have been hardworking members of their communities for decades.

 

Even before the huge increase in funding, Trump aide Stephen Miller and Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem demanded that immigration agents arrest 3,000 people a day.

That’s triple the number of daily arrests that agents were making between February and April. 

Given that border-crossing numbers have plummeted, just meeting this 3,000-per-day target will require far more aggressive enforcement in non-border communities nationwide.

Big Democratic cities will be hit hardest. In a recent social media post, Trump calledon ICE officials to “expand efforts to detain and deport Illegal Aliens in America’s largest Cities, such as Los Angeles, Chicago, and New York, where Millions upon Millions of Illegal Aliens reside.”

How will ICE agents know whom to round up and detain? The crude reality is that they’ll focus on anyone looking Latino or with surnames ending in “z.”

There are 65.2 million Latinos in the United States, the vast majority of whom are citizens. Inevitably, some American citizens will be swept up, arrested, and detained. 

As the number of raids on workers and families escalates, ICE agents will engage in more warrantless knocks on doors, searches, and arrests. 

And more of these agents will mask themselves to avoid being held responsible for their actions — an abuse of power commonly associated with Eastern Bloc police states.

 

This giant federal police effort will be supported by a supercharged surveillance system, also financed by Trump’s Big Ugly Bill. The Department of Homeland Security is joining with the Department of Government Efficiency to create the federal government’s first national citizenship data bank. 

According to The New York Times, Palantir corporation’s software will be used to combine data gleaned from the Department of Homeland Security, the Department of Defense, the Department of Health and Human Services, the Social Security Administration, and the Internal Revenue Service. Meanwhile, the administration wants access to citizens’ and others’ bank account numbers and medical claims.

The regime will not limit the purpose of its growing internal police apparatus to deporting undocumented people. 

Trump is already attacking the citizenship of people born in the United States to parents who may or may not have been citizens at the time of their birth — so-called “birthright citizenship.”

The regime is also going after naturalized citizens (born outside the United States), using a McCarthy-era law that the Justice Department then used to sniff out former Nazis who lied their way into becoming American citizens — a law that allows the Department to “denaturalize,” or strip, someone’s citizenship. 

According to a memo issued to Department lawyers last month by Attorney General Pam Bondi, denaturalization should be aimed at anyone who may “pose a potential danger to national security” — a standard so vague as to allow the Department to expel people from the country based on unsubstantiated claims or even on their negative opinions about Trump. 

Trump has already publicly called for deporting “bad people … many of them [who] were born in our country.” 

Last week, Andy Ogles, a Republican congressman, asked Bondi to investigate whether New York City mayoral candidate Zohran Mamdani — who was born in Uganda and naturalized in 2018 — should be subject to denaturalization proceedings because he “publicly glorifies” people connected to Hamas in a rap song.

Bondi has not publicly responded to the letter.

The coming expansion of Trump’s police state under the Big Ugly Bill — featuring total surveillance, 10,000 ICE agents, and a network of detention facilities — will mark an escalation of Trump’s authoritarianism — using the pretext of an immigrant crime wave that does not exist.

"We Are Witnessing The First Stages Of Trump's Police State"

The following is part of a post by former Labor Secretary Robert Reich:

We are witnessing the first stages of Trump’s police state.

 

Last week, raids in San Diego and Massachusetts — in Martha’s Vineyard and the Berkshires — led to standoffs as bystanders angrily confronted federal agents who were taking workers into custody.

Trump’s dragnet also includes federal courthouses. ICE officers are mobilizing outside courtrooms across America and are immediately arresting people — even migrants whose cases have been dismissed by judges. 

History shows that once an authoritarian ruler establishes the infrastructure of a police state, that same infrastructure can be turned on anyone.

 

Trump is rapidly creating such an infrastructure:

 

(1) declaring an emergency on the basis of a so-called “rebellion,” “insurrection,” or “invasion,”

 

(2) using that “emergency” to justify bringing in federal agents with a monopoly of force (ICE, DHS, FBI, DEA, and National Guard) against civilians inside the nation, 

(3) allowing those militarized agents to make dragnet abductions and warrantless arrests and detain people without due process,

(4) creating additional prison space and detention camps for those detained, and

(5) eventually, as the situation escalates, declaring martial law.

 

We are not at martial law yet, thankfully. But once in place, the infrastructure of a police state can build on itself. Those who are given authority over aspects of it — the internal militia, dragnets, detention camps, and martial law — seek other opportunities to invoke their authority. 

As civilian control gives way to military control, the nation splits into those who are most vulnerable to it and those who support it. The dictatorship entrenches itself by fomenting fear and anger on both sides. 

Right now, our major bulwarks against Trump’s police state are the federal courts and broad-based peaceful protests — such as the one that many of us will engage in this coming Saturday, June 14, on the No Kings Day of Action (information here).

If you are in the National Guard or active-duty military and you believe you are being ordered to violate the constitutional rights of U.S. citizens, I urge you to call the GI Rights Hotline for advice and support, at 877-447-4487. 

It is imperative that we remain peaceful, that we demonstrate our resolve to combat this tyranny but do so nonviolently, and that we let America know about the emerging infrastructure of Trump’s police state and the importance of resisting it.

 

These are frightening and depressing times. But remember: Although it takes one authoritarian to establish a police state, it takes just 3.5 percent of a population to topple him and end it.

Rand Paul Is Right About The Militarization Of Our Police

(These images of police are from Washington's Blog.)

Regular readers of this blog will know that I don't care much for Rand Paul. I think he's a despicable person, and most of his policies would be disastrous for this country and its citizens. But as the old saying goes -- even a blind horse finds an acorn sometimes. Paul recently wrote an article for Time magazine decrying the militarization of America's police forces. He thinks that was a mistake, and as much as it pains me to say so, I agree with him. Here is some of what he wrote in that article:

There is a systemic problem with today’s law enforcement.

Not surprisingly, big government has been at the heart of the problem. Washington has incentivized the militarization of local police precincts by using federal dollars to help municipal governments build what are essentially small armies—where police departments compete to acquire military gear that goes far beyond what most of Americans think of as law enforcement.

This is usually done in the name of fighting the war on drugs or terrorism. The Heritage Foundation’s Evan Bernick wrote in 2013 that, “the Department of Homeland Security has handed out anti-terrorism grants to cities and towns across the country, enabling them to buy armored vehicles, guns, armor, aircraft, and other equipment.”

Bernick continued, “federal agencies of all stripes, as well as local police departments in towns with populations less than 14,000, come equipped with SWAT teams and heavy artillery.”

Bernick noted the cartoonish imbalance between the equipment some police departments possess and the constituents they serve, “today, Bossier Parish, Louisiana, has a .50 caliber gun mounted on an armored vehicle. The Pentagon gives away millions of pieces of military equipment to police departments across the country—tanks included.”

When you couple this militarization of law enforcement with an erosion of civil liberties and due process that allows the police to become judge and jury—national security letters, no-knock searches, broad general warrants, pre-conviction forfeiture—we begin to have a very serious problem on our hands.

Given these developments, it is almost impossible for many Americans not to feel like their government is targeting them. Given the racial disparities in our criminal justice system, it is impossible for African-Americans not to feel like their government is particularly targeting them.

This is part of the anguish we are seeing in the tragic events outside of St. Louis, Missouri. It is what the citizens of Ferguson feel when there is an unfortunate and heartbreaking shooting like the incident with Michael Brown.

Anyone who thinks that race does not still, even if inadvertently, skew the application of criminal justice in this country is just not paying close enough attention. Our prisons are full of black and brown men and women who are serving inappropriately long and harsh sentences for non-violent mistakes in their youth.

The militarization of our law enforcement is due to an unprecedented expansion of government power in this realm. It is one thing for federal officials to work in conjunction with local authorities to reduce or solve crime. It is quite another for them to subsidize it.

The Militarization Of Our Police

(This image is from the website stopmakingsense.org.)

The following is from the blog of progressive activist Jim Hightower:

Let's check our weaponry: 93,000 machine guns, 533 planes and helicopters, 180,000 magazine cartridges, and 432 mine-resistant ambush protected vehicles. Okay, let's roll!

Only, this is not the US military. It's your and my local police departments patrolling our cities. Remember "Officer Friendly," the beat cops who were known as "peace officers"? The friendlies have largely been transformed into militarized forces, literally armed with and garbed in war gear and indoctrinated in military psychology, rather than the ethic of community policing.

Twenty years ago, Congress created the military transfer program, providing federal grants so chiefs of police and sheriffs could buy surplus firepower from the Pentagon. In a stunningly short time, our local police forces have become macho-military units, possessing an armory of Pentagon freebies ranging from 30-ton tanks to rifle silencers. They've gone from peacekeeping beats to over-the-top SWAT team aggression, unleashed on the citizenry tens of thousands of times a year, mainly for ordinary police work. For example, a gung-ho Florida SWAT team raided area barbershops in 2010 to stop the horror of "barbering without a license." And masked police in Louisiana launched a military raid on a nightclub in order to perform a liquor law inspection.

Militarization is a dangerous and ultimately deadly perversion of the honorable purpose of policing – and it is literally out of control. The New York Times notes that 38 states have received silencers to use in surreptitious raids. 

A sheriff in a North Dakota rural county with only 11,000 people told a Times reporter that he saw no need for silencers. When it was pointed out that his department had received 40 of them from the Pentagon, he was baffled, saying: "I don't recall approving them."

Mr. Hightower is exactly right. We are in the process of militarizing the police in the United States -- and it is not in just a few large communities. It is happening across the nation in both small and large communities.

As someone who has worked in various aspects of law enforcement most of my adult life, I am not opposed to keeping our police as safe as possible. Sometimes a SWAT team is necessary. But we have gone overboard in militarizing our police departments -- and when you provide this military hardware you can be sure it will be used. Unfortunately, many times it is misused -- used against innocent civilians, or criminals that really don't pose much danger to the police. We are turning our police into small armies, and then turning them loose on our citizenry, when we really should be going more to neighborhood policing.

It is time for American citizens to ask themselves if they want this. We already know that we have more people in prison (both as a whole and per capita) than any other nation, and now we are turning our police into military units (using weapons meant for war). Do you want to live in a police state (with a democratic facade)? Because that is what's happening in the United States.