The Skinny: Banality of Evil in Trump’s America

Author’s note: in addition to my work here on NIDC, I also blog about fascism and current affairs on the Fediverse; click here to check it out. Want more? Click here to subscribe to NIDC today.

 

Everything They Do Might Kill You

So it is that we come to the end of a long, and painful month of fascist assimilation in the annals of the second Trump presidency. Noted Christian Nationalist freak and Trump lackey Mike Johnson finally decided to do some work and nobody who isn’t a literal billionaire nazi was better for it; the absurdly-titled “One Big Beautiful Bill Act” passed the House by one vote along party lines because, I kid you not, a seventy-five year old Democrat Congressman, Gerald Connolly, succumbed to cancer and died. This put the GOP’s homicidal class war budget reconciliation bill at the center of the discourse for the past couple of weeks, but it didn’t stop Downmarket Mussolini and his flying monkeys from doing all sorts of other fascist shit at the same time. This week alone saw the Skinny tackle Gestapo migrant traps, a Justice Department investigation into made up reverse-racism, and the GOP’s attempt to end gender affirming care for labor class Americans; the “fun” never ends in Trump’s playhouse of pathetic authoritarianism. As always you can follow the links below to check out these stories on my Fediverse blog, or simply read them in their entirety on page two by using the navigation buttons at the bottom of this article.

 

May 24th – May 31st, 2025

 

GOP Budget Bill Also a Death Sentence for Trans Americans

“Well folks, we’re here in the exact place I always told you would be arrive at; politically empowered transphobe nazis in the Republican Party are attempting to force detransition, or outright eliminate labor class trans people in our society. Short of a SCOTUS decision that would rival Dred Scott v. Sandford in its odiousness, this is the worst case scenario, and my only question for wise centrists and affluent liberals who have insisted Trump’s political opposition should actively avoid taking about the ongoing anti-trans pogrom for electoral purposes, is “what now?”

 

Trump’s Migrant Trap Is Still Fascism

“This combines with an ICE guidance issued in January that allows agents to conduct operations near courthouses “discreetly,” and active complicity by government attorneys, to create a cruel but effective trap. Migrants, even potential asylum seekers, can show up in court for their immigration cases, watch the government dismiss the charges, and then be detained for expedited deportation by masked Gestapo goons lounging around in the courtroom hallways for that purpose. Or, they can choose to skip the hearing, which will allow for immediate ICE detention and an automatic deportation order. Either way, the Trump regime gets to deport migrants without anything even resembling due process.”

 

State Harassment and “Crimes” Against Whiteness

“So, the Trump administration is harassing the Mayor of a majority-minority city winger racists have been demonizing for years, because Johnson hired a staff that looks like the community he serves, demographically. Of course there’s a little more backstory here, because Mayor Johnson has been critical of Trump’s racism and racist policies; to which any rational person should probably respond “well, good for him; at least he got something right.” The reality however is that someone inside the Trump regime heard a Black Mayor brag about hiring Black leaders in his administration at a Black Church and decided that was probably a race crime against whiteness.”

 

Student Visas and the Fascist Panopticon

“The regime has already asserted the power to define anything as terrorism, or material support, and even casual criticism as being a threat to US national security, so why would they stop at anti-genocide protestors or foreign students at all for that matter? A vast digital panopticon relying on “AI-processing” technology to sort through every aspect of a targeted individual or group’s lives can and almost certainly will be repurposed to identify and surveil the regime’s political and ideological opposition in broader American society until such a time as a ghoul like Marco Rubio, or Pam Bondi finds a way to declare that their constitutional rights too, are null and void.”

 

GOP Megabill Is White Nationalist Too

“Through word and deed, Trump has openly indicated that the types of immigrants he wants are whiter and wealthier, than the types of immigrants he considers and invasion. By putting un-waivable and arduous fees on even asylum processes, the regime is actively working to screen out migrants from poorer, browner countries in the global South in a way that won’t immediately be flagged as illegal ethno-nationalist bullshit in the larger discourse; because newsflash, America is kinda racist. Practically speaking however, this is an attempt to enshrine Trump’s project to whiten America into law, by abusing the budget reconciliation process.”

 

Dems Can Block the Budget Bill. Will They?

“What if I told you that in their arrogance and haste to turn the planet to ash, Republicans have made a potentially-fatal mistake that would allow Democrats to run out the clock on this Congress and prevent a floor vote on the “One Big Beautiful Bill Act,” or any other legislation Trump and the GOP wanted to pass into law between now and at least the 2026 US midterms? Is that something you’d want Democratic Party politicians to do, even understanding that the price of admission is fully breaking a US Senate that the GOP just smashed itself? If your answer to that last question is yes, get ready to start phoning Senators, because policy nerd David Dayen says its possible, and the Democrats already know so.”

 

Climate Crisis and the Genocide in Gaza

“As bleak as this report is however, its very existence still inspires a flicker of hope in my weary heart. If climate crisis and the rise of genocidal fascism across the Pig Empire and its client states have done nothing else, they have made it abundantly clear that the fight against climate catastrophe is a struggle against imperialism, capitalism, and fascism all at the same time. The violence and exploitation Pig Empire corpse farmers have wrought abroad, is now returning home to the imperial core at the precise time as the whole monstrous capitalist order is rending the world asunder in very literally ways. All paths lead to the same destinations, all our struggles are now as one.”