Donald Trump, Fascist

Our most recent book is The Comeback: The 2024 Elections and American Politics. The second Trump administration has been full of ominous developments.The DHS killing of a disarmed man is among the worst.

Jonathan Rauch at The Atlantic explains why he has abandoned his earlier reluctance to call Trump a fascist:

Ehen the facts change, I change my mind.Over Trump’s past year, what originally looked like an effort to make the government his personal plaything has drifted distinctly toward doctrinal and operational fascism. Trump’s appetite for lebensraum, his claim of unlimited power, his support for the global far right, his politicization of the justice system, his deployment of performative brutality, his ostentatious violation of rights, his creation of a national paramilitary police—all of those developments bespeak something more purposeful and sinister than run-of-the-mill greed or gangsterism.

Recent events have brought Trump’s governing style into sharper focus. Fascist best describes it, and reluctance to use the term has now become perverse. That is not because of any one or two things he and his administration have done but because of the totality. Fascism is not a territory with clearly marked boundaries but a constellation of characteristics. When you view the stars together, the constellation plainly appears.

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Police-state tactics. Trump has turned ICE into a sprawling paramilitary that roves the country at will, searches and detains noncitizens and citizens without warrants, uses force ostentatiously, operates behind masks, receives skimpy training, lies about its activities, and has been told that it enjoys “absolute immunity.” He more than doubled the agency’s size in 2025, and its budget is now larger than those of all other federal law-enforcement agencies combined, and larger than the entire military budgets of all but 15 countries. “This is going to affect every community, every city,” the Cato Institute scholar David Bier recently observed. “Really almost everyone in our country is going to come in contact with this, one way or the other.” In Minneapolis and elsewhere, the agency has behaved provocatively, sometimes brutally, and arguably illegally—behaviors that Trump and his staff have encouraged, shielded, and sent camera crews to publicize, perhaps in the hope of eliciting violent resistance that would justify further crackdowns, a standard fascist stratagem. Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem’s recent appearance with a sign reading ONE OF OURS, ALL OF YOURS seemed to nod toward another fascist standby, collective punishment—as did the administration’s decision to flood Minneapolis with thousands of officers after residents there began protesting federal tactics, a prioritization that was explicitly retributive.

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Territorial and military aggression. One reason I held out against identifying Trumpism with fascism in his first term was Trump’s apparent lack of interest in aggression against other states; if anything, he had seemed shy about using force abroad. Well, that was then. In his second term, he has used military force promiscuously. Of course, many presidents have deployed force, but Trump’s explicitly predatory use of it to grab Venezuela’s oil and his gangster-style threat to take Greenland from Denmark “the easy way” or “the hard way” were 1930s-style authoritarian moves. The same goes for his contempt for international law, binding alliances, and transnational organizations such as the European Union—all of which impede the state’s unconstrained exercise of its will, a central fascist tenet. (Mussolini: “Equally foreign to the spirit of Fascism … are all internationalistic or League superstructures which, as history shows, crumble to the ground whenever the heart of nations is deeply stirred by sentimental, idealistic or practical considerations.”)

Bad Shoot, Bad Politics

Our most recent book is The Comeback: The 2024 Elections and American Politics. The second Trump administration has been full of ominous developments. The DHS killing of a disarmed man is among the worst.

Alexander Rossell Hayes at YouGov:

After federal immigration agents on Saturday shot and killed a Minneapolis resident for the second time this month, more Americans now say they would support abolishing U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) than say they would oppose eliminating the agency. A majority of Americans say ICE's tactics are too forceful and about half say they strongly disapprove of the way the agency is handling its job, according to a YouGov Poll conducted hours after the shooting. More Americans approve than disapprove of protests against ICE. Because the poll was conducted so soon after the shooting in Minneapolis, some respondents who were not aware of the news when they answered the questions might hear about it in subsequent days.

Another poll conducted the day after the shooting found that about half of Americans say the shooting Saturday of Alex Pretti was not justified, while only 20% said it was justified. The gap is even larger among Americans who have seen video of the shooting, nearly two-thirds of whom say it was not justified. While ICE has been the subject of protests since the first killing in Minneapolis — of Renee Good by ICE agent Jonathan Ross — the shooter in this case worked for the Border Patrol, another agency in the Department of Homeland Security that was supporting ICE's operations in the city. Americans' opinions toward the Border Patrol are not as negative as views of ICE, though Americans who have seen video of the killing are more likely to have an unfavorable than a favorable opinion of the Border Patrol.

These latest results show an increase in opposition to ICE compared to two YouGov polls fielded earlier in January after the killing of Good. At that point, support for abolishing ICE was already at the highest level ever observed in YouGov polls.

The issue is splitting the GOP base. Christopher Cann at USA Today:

Several prominent Second Amendment rights groups have blasted federal officials for suggesting it's dangerous – and possibly an indication of mal intent – for lawful gun owners to protest while in possession of their legally obtained firearms.

The controversy came after a Border Patrol agent on Jan. 24 shot and killed Alex Pretti, a U.S. citizen and registered Veterans Affairs nurse, in Minneapolis, Minnesota. Federal officials said Pretti had a gun and intended to "kill law enforcement." But videos and a witness account in federal court show Pretti holding a phone, not brandishing a firearm.

Hours after the fatal shooting, Assistant U.S. Attorney Bill Essayli in Southern California took to X and said, "If you approach law enforcement with a gun, there is a high likelihood they will be legally justified in shooting you. Don’t do it!" Other members of the Trump administration argued peaceful protesters don't show up with guns.

Several prominent gun rights groups took issue with Essayli's statement, including the National Rifle Association.

"This sentiment from the First Assistant U.S. Attorney for the Central District of California is dangerous and wrong," the NRA said on X. "Responsible public voices should be awaiting a full investigation, not making generalizations and demonizing law-abiding citizens."

Gun Owners for America said in a statement that its leaders "condemn the untoward comments" by Essayli.

"Federal agents are not 'highly likely' to be 'legally justified' in 'shooting' concealed carry licensees who approach while lawfully carrying a firearm," the group said. "The Second Amendment protects Americans' right to bear arms while protesting — a right the federal government must not infringe upon."

U.S. Rep. Thomas Massie, R-Kentucky, also blasted Essayli's comments, writing on X: "Carrying a firearm is not a death sentence, it’s a Constitutionally protected God-given right, and if you don’t understand this you have no business in law enforcement or government."

Kill, Lie, and Smear

Our most recent book is The Comeback: The 2024 Elections and American Politics. The second Trump administration has been full of ominous developments. The DHS killing of a disarmed man is among the worst.

This stabilized version is devastating to watch, because you can see the killer watch his colleague pull the firearm off of Alex, then look back him and start shooting. He waited until Alex was unarmed to murder him and should be in cuffs tonight. https://t.co/eDi3dyKJLI

— Ryan Grim (@ryangrim) January 25, 2026

Tapper plays Noem’s words over the video of the shooting and wow, is it damming. https://t.co/hfCtmTFvtR

— Rebecca Katz (@RebeccaKKatz) January 25, 2026

Devon Lum and Haley Willis at NYT:

Videos on social media that were verified by The New York Times appear to contradict the Department of Homeland Security’s account of the fatal shooting of Alex Jeffrey Pretti, 37, by federal agents in Minneapolis on Saturday morning.

The Department of Homeland Security said the episode began after a man “approached US Border Patrol officers with a 9 mm semi-automatic handgun” and they tried to disarm him. The statement did not specify whether the gun was in the man’s hands or merely on his body.

Footage shows Mr. Pretti was clearly holding a phone, not a gun, before the agents took him to the ground and shot him.

 Jonathan V. Last at The Bulwark:

If this were all that had happened it would have been bad enough. But it got worse.

At least some of the DHS agents involved in the killing attempted to leave the scene.

When local law enforcement arrived to begin an investigation, the DHS agents attempted to send them away and deny them access to the crime scene.

Someone—presumably within DHS—leaked to Fox that Pretti had a gun.

DHS put out a statement (repeated by Border Patrol official Greg Bovino in his press conference) claiming that “an individual approached US Border Patrol officers with a 9 mm semi-automatic handgun. . . . The officers attempted to disarm the suspect but the armed suspect violently resisted. . . . Fearing for his life and the lives and safety of fellow officers, an agent fired defensive shots. . . . The suspect also had 2 magazines and no ID—this looks like a situation where an individual wanted to do maximum damage and massacre law enforcement.”

These statements seem to be lies.

According to local law enforcement, Pretti had a concealed-carry permit and so was legally allowed to possess a firearm in public.

There is no evidence to suggest that Pretti brandished—or even touched—his weapon.

Instead, the available video evidence shows him holding his phone in front of him, in his right hand, and his left hand empty before being pepper-sprayed while attempting to help a fellow observer.

The deputy White House chief of staff, Stephen Miller, called Pretti a “domestic terrorist” and an “assassin.” In fact, Pretti was a registered nurse working in intensive care at a Department of Veterans Affairs hospital.

So the government didn’t just use masked, armed, unidentified agents of the state to execute a citizen on the street, in broad daylight and in front of dozens of witnesses—it lied about the victim and what happened in the most brazen manner possible.

The government killed him. Then it smeared him.

And there is one more layer to consider: Less than three weeks ago DHS agents murdered another Minneapolis resident, Renee Nicole Good, in cold blood. And the agency’s response to that killing was not to regroup, retrain, and investigate, but to surge hundreds more of its agents into the city and deploy even more force against the city’s residents.

Which is where our obligation to witness comes in. The murder of Alex Jeffrey Pretti was not a mistake, or a tragedy, or a misunderstanding. It was a choice. The president of the United States and his regime saw what its masked agents had done to Renee Good and decided to do more of it, at a larger scale.

Killing Alex Jeffrey Pretti was the Trump administration’s policy.

Trump's Bad Week

Our most recent book is The Comeback: The 2024 Elections and American Politics. The second Trump administration has been full of ominous developments.

Dahlia Lithwick and Mark Joseph Stern at Slate:

This week, President Donald Trump suffered a string of defeats that exposed the real limits of his power at home and abroad. First, his Justice Department abandoned its efforts to illegally appoint Lindsey Halligan, his former personal lawyer, as U.S. attorney, yielding to a furious judicial rebuke of its dirty tactics. Then the president dropped his threat to seize Greenland through military force or ruinous tariffs in the face of stiff international resistance. At almost the same time, the Supreme Court threw cold water on his bid to fire Lisa Cook from the Federal Reserve. Meanwhile, Minneapolis residents continue to protest, thwart, and document his violent assault on immigrant communities.

At NYT, Nate Cohn says Trump looked fairly strong at the start  of his second term, but...

One year later, the vibe has shifted back. The results from today’s New York Times/Siena University poll would have looked fairly typical during his first term. Only 40 percent of registered voters say they approve of Mr. Trump’s performance, and the familiar patterns of American politics have returned. The second Trump coalition has unraveled.

The major demographic shifts of the last election have snapped back. In today’s poll, Mr. Trump’s approval rating by demographic group looks almost exactly as it did in Times/Siena polling in the run-up to his defeat in the 2020 presidential election. If anything, young and nonwhite voters are even likelier to disapprove of Mr. Trump than they were then, while he retains most of his support among older and white voters.

Myah Ward, Samuel Benson and Erin Doherty report at POLITICO that report of ICE thuggery are scaring congressional Republicans.

A new POLITICO poll underscores those worries: Nearly half of all Americans — 49 percent — say Trump’s mass deportation campaign is too aggressive, including 1 in 5 voters who backed the president in 2024. In a sign of growing discomfort among the president’s base, more than 1 in 3 Trump voters say that while they support the goals of his mass deportation campaign, they disapprove of the way he is implementing it.

Jack Smith: Trump Is a Criminal

Our most recent book is The Comeback: The 2024 Elections and American Politics. Among other things, it discusses the January 6, 2021 insurrection.

From: Statement of Jack Smith Former Special Counsel, U.S. Department of Justice before the Committee on the Judiciary U.S. House of Representatives January 22, 2026

During my tenure as Special Counsel, we followed Justice Department policies, observed legal requirements, and took actions based on the facts and the law.  I made my decisions without regard to President Trump’s political association, activities, beliefs, or candidacy in the 2024 presidential election.  President Trump was charged because the evidence established that he willfully broke the very laws that he took an oath to uphold.  Grand juries in two separate districts reached this conclusion based on his actions, as alleged in the indictments they returned.   

Rather than accept his defeat in the 2020 presidential election, President Trump engaged in a criminal scheme to overturn the results and prevent the lawful transfer of power.  President Trump attempted to induce state officials to ignore true vote counts; to manufacture fraudulent slates of presidential electors in seven states that he had lost; to force his own Vice President to act in contravention of his oath and to instead advance President Trump’s personal interests; and, on January 6, 2021, to direct an angry mob to the United States Capitol to obstruct the 1 congressional certification of the presidential election and then exploit the rioters’ violence to further delay it.  Over 140 heroic law enforcement officers were assaulted that day, a fact we should never forget.   

And, as set forth in the original and superseding indictments issued in the Southern District of Florida, President Trump stored classified documents at his Mar-a-Lago social club after he left office in January 2021 and he repeatedly tried to obstruct justice to conceal his continued retention of those documents.  Highly sensitive information was held in non-secure locations, including a bathroom and a ballroom where events and gatherings took place.  Tens of thousands of people came to the social club during the time period when those classified documents were stored there. 

As I testify before the Committee today, I want to be clear: I stand by my decisions as Special Counsel, including my decision to bring charges against President Trump.  Our investigation developed proof beyond a reasonable doubt that President Trump engaged in criminal activity.  If asked whether to prosecute a former President based on the same facts today, I would do so regardless of whether that President was a Republican or a Democrat.  No one should be above the law in our country and the law required that he be held to account.  So that is what I did.  To have done otherwise on the facts of these cases would have been to shirk my duties as a prosecutor and a public servant, which I had no intention of doing.  This is why I appreciate the opportunity to appear today and to correct the false and misleading narratives advanced about our work.  I am prepared to do so while adhering to the Justice Department’s authorization governing the scope of my testimony and while constrained by Judge Cannon’s order restricting the discussion of Volume II of my report regarding the classified documents case.  To that end, and as a result of Judge Cannon’s order and the Justice Department’s interpretation of that order, I will not be able to discuss the contents of Volume II of my report, and can only discuss matters with respect to that case that are set forth in the indictment or other public filings.  Similarly, I cannot discuss the contents of the documents at issue in the case due to their sensitive nature.imilarly, I cannot discuss the contents of the documents at issue in the case due to their sensitive nature.

Erratic Trump Backs Down

Our most recent book is The Comeback: The 2024 Elections and American Politics. The second Trump administration has been full of ominous developments.  Serious people are now raising serious questions about his sanity.

Stephen Collinson at CNN:

President Donald Trump’s climbdown on Greenland capped one of the most erratic episodes involving a modern president on the world stage.

Within hours Wednesday, Trump flipped from demanding “right, title, and ownership” of the semiautonomous Danish territory to celebrating an “infinite,” “forever” framework deal over its future.

The breakthrough seems to hinge on extra NATO forces to secure the Arctic — something he could have got before his week of mayhem — if only he’d asked.

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Farcical scenes unfolded after Trump flung days of insults at allied leaders, raising fears that NATO was about to implode. His initial refusal to rule out sending troops to take Greenland — which is already alliance territory — seemed torn from a bad futuristic thriller.

Trump further confused the issue with several days of rambling and baffling public appearances in Washington and Switzerland. On Wednesday, he even got Greenland and Iceland confused.

He’s always governed by whim and social media outbursts. But in extricating himself from a crisis that he triggered, Trump laid bare the alternative factual reality that surrounds his increasingly unpopular presidency.

Trump's Corruption: $1.4 Billion

 Our new book is The Comeback: The 2024 Elections and American Politics. The first year of the second Trump administration has been full of ominous developments. Scandals persist. Trump is abusing his power to increase his wealth.

NYT editorial:

A review by the editorial board relying on analyses from news organizations shows that Mr. Trump has used the office of the presidency to make at least $1.4 billion. We know this number to be an underestimate because some of his profits remain hidden from public view. And they continue to grow.

A hotel in Oman. An office tower in western India. A golf course on the outskirts of Riyadh, Saudi Arabia. These are a few of the more than 20 overseas projects the Trump Organization is pursuing, often requiring cooperation with foreign governments. These deals have made millions for the Trumps, according to Reuters. And the administration has sometimes treated those same governments favorably. One example: The administration agreed to lower its threatened tariffs on Vietnam about a month after a Trump Organization project broke ground on a $1.5 billion golf complex outside of Hanoi. Vietnamese officials ignored their own laws to fast-track the project.

Amazon paid far more for the rights to “Melania” than the next highest bidder — and far more than the company has previously paid for similar projects, according to The Wall Street Journal. Jeff Bezos, Amazon’s chairman and one of the world’s richest people, has many reasons to curry favor with the administration, including antitrust regulation, Amazon’s defense contracts and his space company’s federal contracts.

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Mr. Trump’s sale of crypto has been by far his biggest moneymaker, according to Reuters. People who hope to influence federal policy, including foreigners, can buy his family’s coins, effectively transferring money to the Trumps, and the deals are often secret. One that has become public: A United Arab Emirates-backed investment firm announced plans last year to deposit $2 billion into a Trump firm — two weeks before the president gave the country access to advanced chips.