Commentary: The present crises and opportunities for radical change generated by the rogue policies of Donald Trump

Chicago, IL – Now more than ever it’s important for our movement to talk about what the Trump administration is doing and what we need to do to stop it. Right now, he doesn’t have the entire ruling class behind him, but right now he has the MAGA people of the Republican Party, which operates like a racist cult. The difference being that they have state power, and this is the difference that makes a difference.
What we should be looking at is what they’re actually doing with that state power vis a vis Kristi Noem with the Department of Homeland Security and Pam Bondi with the Justice Department, and how both these agencies of government have gone rogue and show no intention, much less a desire, to abide by the Constitution, or to respect the balance of powers.
So, all we’ve had since the election is one act of defiance after another, and the most blatant one before engaging us in the war against Iran and the peoples of the Middle East, was clearly the refusal to obey the mandate from Congress to release the Epstein files.
Although it’s been a back and forth with the federal courts because the Supreme Court has time and time again taken the side of Donald Trump, there’s a trend that can’t be ignored where Trump has also been in defiance of federal district courts with regard to ICE and lately the Supreme Court itself on the question of the tariffs. The thing to be noted here is that the basic trend has been to vilify the courts and refuse to obey their rulings if they are against Trump’s policies.
What Trump has done through all these measures is to turn the federal government into the enemy of the people and actively engage in setting up a regime of racist and political repression.
This administration has been actively engaged in weakening the federal government in areas that have to do with workers’ rights. It’s active in weakening if not abolishing the Voting Rights Act with new ID requirements which have become a new poll tax. This regime has told people that the gains made by the LGBTQ community do not have to be respected. They’ve done several broadsides against women and the women’s movement, and one of the headline things is what they did in the Winter Olympics, so much so that the athletes who participated in those games, both men and women, have come out and denounced the administration, and refused to go along with it.
There are so many instances of blatant, open, racist expressions on the part of Trump and his administration. We can take what happened with Bad Bunny at the Super Bowl, or the instance where Trump portrayed the Obamas as apes. All of these incidents spell one thing: that already this administration is in open defiance of Congress, the Constitution, and the people of the United States who have been demonstrating en masse against them, manifested by what happened in Minneapolis.
As of this moment, they are illegally holding people, despite court orders, in detention centers. They are illegally going about the business of trying to set up concentration camps throughout the United States. What has put a hold on it is that these jurisdictions where they’re trying to set these up are saying “no, we don’t want that here.” Why would people be saying no? Because people know what it is. They know that these detention camps are really the prelude to concentration camps, a place where they can send those of us who are engaged in resistance as well as immigrants. If they get these detention camps set up all over the country, they’re not going to make a distinction.
Also, they have entered into hidden and open agreements with other countries. We know about the agreement they’ve entered into with El Salvador, but they’re not just talking about sending immigrants to El Salvador. They’re talking about sending American citizens to El Salvador, including people who are in prison on felony charges having absolutely nothing to do with immigration. Again, it is obvious that in fact, we have a regime of repression that is openly and flagrantly carrying out its illegal actions with the power of the state. They have taken over the government to make the government an instrument of their illegal actions.
All the major news networks talk about what they’re doing. The reporting on Fox News now and the reporting on MSNBC and CNN are not fundamentally different. What’s different is Fox News is openly supporting Trump and the other ones are being critical of him and taking advantage of the mass protests and whatnot to express that criticism. But also making him popular at the same time, giving him a lot of airtime.
Right now, he’s using his authority as president to make wars, and to do all of these things that he’s not supposed to be able to do, except through Congress, he is in fact doing them.
What the war on Iran and the peoples of the Middle East has revealed is more than the prerogatives of an imperial presidency. It has revealed that defending and perpetrating the crimes of U.S. imperialism remains a significant point of unity for the U.S. ruling class. Is there any doubt that the war that is presently being waged against Iran has the support of the U.S. ruling class, even though some of them raise issues of legality? At the same time, they praise Trump for having murdered the leaders of the Iranian people and ruthlessly prosecuting a war for regime change.
This brings us down to this here. There are no big differences in the understanding of what’s going on between the different networks, between the masses of the people and the politicians. Millions of people see where this is going.
A word about the Texas elections. The Texas elections are again a clear demonstration of the willingness of the Democratic Party to still pursue the bankrupt policy of reaching across the aisles in search of mythical unity with the Republican Party that will stop the movement that they’re engaged in to destroy every semblance of democracy in the United States.
So where is the real opposition? It’s the spontaneous uprising of the people in the streets and the growing organized engagement of the people on the part of Freedom Road and our allies.
We have to make up our minds going forward to really give a program to our slogan “make the country ungovernable.” Now is the time to do that because in these momentous times, our movement and our people are engaged in an existential struggle to bring about an end of the Trump administration, which is using every enforcement mechanism the government has to protect the rights of the people to destroy the rights of the people. And finally, choosing world war over peace.
This is not so much an analysis as a factual depiction. These are the facts. This is the reality created by the Trump administration that we must change.
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