The Skinny: Friends and Enemies
Marshalling Forces and Defining Threats: July 21st – July 31st
Dehumanization and the Process of Genocide
I think I’ve been clear about the vital importance of describing the ethnonationalist migrant cages at the odiously-named “Alligator Alcatraz” facility in Florida, what they are: a concentration camp. By that same measure however, the presence of one purpose-built concentration camp in the Florida Everglades doesn’t preclude the transformation of pre-existing migrant cages into more concentration camps. In fact, while the Trump regime and DHS are working to restrict access to ICE detention centers, reports are leaking out about the horrifying conditions and human rights violations going on inside these facilities all the time. The fact that these stories don’t penetrate the national discourse the way the new DeSantis Dachau facility in the swamp does, probably comes down a US society that has totally normalized the Gestapo, its migrant carceral complex, and the idea that it’s okay to criminalize and brutalize people for the mere accident of their birth on the wrong side of an imaginary line. In this sense “Alligator Alcatraz” is “special” because the Trumpenreich is practically screaming “we’ve intentionally built a concentration camp” out loud, while the horrifying concentration-camp like conditions found in “normal” migrant gulags across Texas, Louisiana, or Florida for example, are just “business as usual.”
As a recent human rights report about three other migrant detention facilities in Florida proves however, there is nothing “normal” about the way the Trumpenreich and its Gestapo are treating detainees inside these facilities. Gathering reports from former prisoners, immigration lawyers, and families of folks inside the cages, a coalition of human rights organizations finds evidence of overcrowding, intentional cruelty, and institutionalized dehumanization that are creating all the same conditions and dangers for the Gestapo’s victims, that lead folks to confidently call “Alligator Alcatraz” a concentration camp with the full weight of history behind them.
Migrants at Ice jail in Miami made to kneel to eat ‘like dogs’, report alleges
“Migrants at a Miami immigration jail were shackled with their hands tied behind their backs and made to kneel to eat food from styrofoam plates “like dogs”, according to a report published on Monday into conditions at three overcrowded south Florida facilities.
The incident at the downtown federal detention center is one of a succession of alleged abuses at Immigration and Customs Enforcement Agency (Ice) operated jails in the state since January, chronicled by advocacy groups Human Rights Watch, Americans for Immigrant Justice, and Sanctuary of the South from interviews with detainees.”
This article an organizational mess, but what Human Rights Watch and the other watchdog organizations are reporting on is massive overcrowding in the three identified facilities, unsanitary holding conditions, dehumanizing treatment of prisoners (72% of whom have no criminal record) paired with violent reprisals by Gestapo guards, and denial of access to necessary medical or psychological care. For example, the testimony above, about shackled prisoners being forced to eat like dogs, is part of a larger body of evidence that Florida Gestapo minions are cramming far too many people into these gulags and don’t seem to care about the dangerous conditions or human rights violations that result.
“The jail was so far beyond capacity, some transferring detainees reported, that they were held for more than 24 hours in a bus in the parking lot. Men and women were confined together, and unshackled only when they needed to use the single toilet, which quickly became clogged.
“The bus became disgusting. It was the type of toilet in which normally people only urinate but because we were on the bus for so long, and we were not permitted to leave it, others defecated in the toilet,” one man said.”
Of course, nobody should be making any excuses for the Gestapo here because not only could they simply jail less people for being brown, but the human rights violations, violence, and dehumanization going on inside of these actual facilities, doesn’t appear materially different from the abuses going on in “temporary” holding areas, described above. As the article notes:
“Some suffered delayed treatment for injuries and chronic conditions, and dismissive or hostile responses from staff, the report said.
In one alleged incident in April at the downtown Miami jail, staff turned off a surveillance camera and a “disturbance control team” brutalized detainees who were protesting a lack of medical attention to one of their number who was coughing up blood. One detainee suffered a broken finger.”
I don’t know how anyone in the United States can read this report, and ignore the reality that the Trump regime and its Gestapo are conducting an ethnic cleansing operation. At this point, it’s just not good enough to say “the cruelty is the point” while refusing act. The dehumanization and endangerment of brown prisoners inside ICE gulags is an intentional part of a larger fascist ethnic cleansing process; a process that history tells us is very likely to end in mass killings and genocide. Once you start treating people like animals, they stop being human, and that’s a necessary precondition for the kind of racialized mass murders that live in historical infamy. This isn’t a question of politics, it’s a question of bedrock moral values and our collective humanity as a society.
This Is Already a Constitutional Crisis
Back in March of this year, I started a thread on my Fediverse blog to articulate, and verify, a then-controversial argument about the American establishment’s response to Trump’s fascist agenda. My position was (and remains) that sitting by quietly and relying on American courts to stop Downmarket Mussolini’s dictatorial ambitions was not only cowardly, but would ultimately be wholly ineffective. Quite frankly the entire Trumpenreich regards the law as useful only when it can be used to prosecute a fascist agenda, and every enforcement agency that could potentially hold Trump accountable for violating court orders, ultimately works for the Swine Emperor himself.
None of this was, or is, any sort of secret. The courts have no army or police force to compel a wayward nazi president to obey their rulings; which means waiting for federal judges to reign in a would-be dictator is less like naivety, and more like making excuses to do nothing as the fascist creep rolls across American society. This was not a particularly popular opinion outside the antifascist radical left at the time, but I think the light of history has reflected well on my take. As it turns out, so does the Washington Post who recently published the results of an extensive investigation into every court order issued against the Trump administration, to find that the regime or its minions are violating over a third of all such orders in some way or another, and by a variety of clearly intentional methods.
Trump officials accused of defying 1 in 3 judges who ruled against him
“President Donald Trump and his appointees have been accused of flouting courts in a third of the more than 160 lawsuits against the administration in which a judge has issued a substantive ruling, a Washington Post analysis has found, suggesting widespread noncompliance with America’s legal system.
Plaintiffs say Justice Department lawyers and the agencies they represent are snubbing rulings, providing false information, failing to turn over evidence, quietly working around court orders and inventing pretexts to carry out actions that have been blocked.”
This is a very granular study of a hundred and sixty-five lawsuits against the Trump administration where courts have ruled against the regime’s (often illegal) actions, and the results of those court orders. Across that set of data the paper found that in a staggering fifty-seven of those cases, the US government had taken steps to subvert, ignore, or openly violate those court orders. This comes from a larger pool of three hundred and thirty-seven cases against the Trump regime that actually came before a judge; which means you’ve got about a fifty percent change of beating the fascists in court, and at best a two thirds chance of that actually meaning anything even if you do. Does that sound like a legal system capable of protecting Americans and their civil rights from a fascist administration to you? Yeah, me neither.
It is of course deeply ironic that this analysis is coming from The Washington Post; an outlet which by my reckoning has played a prominent role in pushing the idea that actively resisting the Trump regime in the streets is unacceptable lawlessness, and it is a far better strategy to wait for court decisions (that may be entirely meaningless) to stop the fascist creep in our society. Even Jeff Bezo’s pet media company however was willing to note that this alarming situation has grown out of an American judiciary unwilling, or perhaps unable, to hold the Trump administration to account for openly violating the law and the orders of our courts.
“Outside legal analysts say courts typically are slow to begin contempt proceedings for noncompliance, especially while their rulings are under appeal. Judges also are likely to be concerned, analysts say, that the U.S. Marshals Service — whose director is appointed by the president — might not serve subpoenas or take recalcitrant government officials into custody if ordered to by the courts.”
I should note that the rest of this article focuses on diving into the myriad of ways the Trump administration has found to openly violate, undermine, or ignore court orders as a matter of foundational policy; efforts which expose the regime’s belief that the Swine Emperor has absolute power over immigration law, national security, federal funding, and the government workforce as a whole. Overall, this is an extremely thorough investigation, that also clearly demonstrates that none of this is an accident, and the Trumpenreich is intentionally usurping the power of the American judiciary.
All of which leads me ask the “Very Serious People TM” in our society who insisted on allowing the Trump regime to openly do illegal fascism while waiting for the courts to swoop in and save the day, one simple question – what now? After all, we are now sitting in the same position we were when I told you months ago that only massive society-wide resistance would end Trump’s fascism, and that expecting judges with no armies to stop him was a fool’s errand; only now, even the bloody Washington Post is admitting the courts know they can’t stop him, and Trump’s agenda is a half year closer to becoming our reality. The question is of course rhetorical; if I’d told my audience to hold tight and wait for a 6-3 “conservative” Roberts Court to save the day while a fascist regime took a sledgehammer to the US Constriction, I’d probably be too scared to answer that question too.
Force Multipliers and Gestapo Threats
As I’ve noted in multiple articles here on NIDC, a significant portion of the Trump regime’s fascist police state maneuvers basically amount to the Swine Emperor’s attempts to recruit and control an army: particularly inside what the regime sees as “enemy controlled territory” in blue states, and especially Democrat-run sanctuary cities. While Trump has been partially successful on that front by deploying National Guard units, and passing a budget bill that will vastly increase the size of the Gestapo, the Trumpenreich’s attempts to recruit and subvert localized American police forces to the President’s will, remain the centerpiece of these efforts. As we learned during the fascist Trumpenreich invasion of Los Angeles, these police forces serve a vital role as a “force multiplier” for militarized Gestapo operations inside cities and neighborhoods deemed hostile to the Trump agenda, and a regime clearly rocketing towards a perpetual state of (fake) emergency-fueled martial law, probably can’t get where it wants to go without that local police buy-in.
In that vein then, I’d like to take a look at this July 10th, 2025 article by Dell Cameron about some threat bulletins issued by Kristi Noem’s Department of Homeland Security, to local law enforcement agencies around the country. These DHS threat reports were issued in response to mainstream liberal organization of the popular “No Kings” protests; which as it turns out, were (predictably) entirely peaceful. I’ll be honest with you however, I don’t think Noem gives a damn how peaceful opposition to the regime and its mass deportation operation is, because the contents of the bulletins themselves make it clear that the Gestapo wants to use local law enforcement to persecute protestors, journalists, and even folks simply speaking out online against a fascist ethnic cleansing project in process.
DHS Tells Police That Common Protest Activities Are ‘Violent Tactics’
“At the same time, the guidance urges officers to consider a range of nonviolent behavior and common protest gear—like masks, flashlights, and cameras—as potential precursors to violence, telling officers to prepare “from the point of view of an adversary.”
Protesters on bicycles, skateboards, or even “on foot” are framed as potential “scouts” conducting reconnaissance or searching for “items to be used as weapons.” Livestreaming is listed alongside “doxxing” as a “tactic” for “threatening” police. Online posters are cast as ideological recruiters—or as participants in “surveillance sharing.”
One list of “violent tactics” shared by the Los Angeles–based Joint Regional Intelligence Center—part of a post-9/11 fusion network—includes both protesters’ attempts to avoid identification and efforts to identify police. The memo also alleges that face recognition, normally a tool of law enforcement, was used against officers.
Vera Eidelman, a senior staff attorney with the American Civil Liberties Union, says the government has no business treating constitutionally protected activities—like observing or documenting police—as threats.”
If you’ve been reading my analysis for the last little while, you should recognize some familiar patterns in the regime’s propaganda here. Painting resistance to the mass deportation program as inherently criminal, the DHS threat warning conjures up a picture of a coordinated, media-driven conspiracy to turn Americans against the agency; rather than resistance being an obvious consequence of the Gestpo’s blatantly fascist, and often entirely illegal activities on the streets of America. The real purpose of the threat memo becomes clear however when you realize what the Gestapo is advising police to look out for and protect them from, which very obviously includes protestors, observers filming Gestapo activities, and literally people posting online about this fascist bullshit.
“The DHS report repeatedly conflates basic protest, organizing, and journalism with terroristic violence, thereby justifying ever more authoritarian measures by law enforcement,” says Ryan Shapiro, executive director of Property of the People. “It should be sobering, if unsurprising, that the Trump regime’s response to mass criticism of its police state tactics is to escalate those tactics.”
Naturally, a sensible person who’d been in a coma for the past quarter century might be tempted to think trying to recruit local law enforcement to brutalize anti-ethnic cleansing protestors would be illegal, or at least beyond the scope of Homeland Security’s powers. Sadly, as the article notes, you would be wrong – thanks primarily to the absurd amount of authority the entire counterterrorism apparatus of the American state was granted after 9/11. Which is why it should probably concern you when DHS, the centerpiece of that apparatus, starts telling cops that protestors, journalists, and social media users are basically terrorists, and an active threat to the survival of the state. Particularly when we know Trump is trying to transform those same police forces into a fascist army under his control.
Medicaid Data Now Feeds the Panopticon
If there is one message I’ve tried to consistently center in all of my writing about the migrant surveillance state our government is constructing, it’s that once this panopticon is constructed, there’s nothing stopping the Trumpenreich from turning it on anyone, including American citizens, they regard as an enemy. To that point, I’d like to revisit an important story from last week, because I think it directly exemplifies both the vast expansion of the fascist panopticon occurring under Trump and his Gestapo, as well as the way this project is being washed through a still frightfully racist public consciousness, under the guise of “immigration policy” amid the ongoing ethnic cleansing project in America.
As originally reported by the Associated Press, the Trump-controlled Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services are now sharing the personal data of every single person enrolled on Medicaid, with ICE. This decision thus gives a fascist secret police force, loyal only to Trump and his executive branch, access to a trove of highly-personal data from a staggering seventy-nine million Americans. The word “Americans” is important here too, because while the Trumpenreich is insisting the purpose of this data sharing is to help the Gestapo root out migrants all over the country, the reality is that undocumented people in the US don’t have access to Medicaid.
Let’s look at this Common Dreams post from July 17th, and then talk about why I don’t think this is any sort of “mistake” on the fascist Trumpenreich’s part at all.
‘Weaponization of Data’: Trump Admin Gives ICE Personal Info of 79 Million Medicaid Recipients
“But under Monday’s agreement, the AP says, the Department of Homeland Security “will use the data to identify, for deportation purposes, people who [are] in the country illegally.”
However, nearly everyone enrolled in Medicaid is either an American citizen or other legal resident.
Given that the president has made very clear his intent to begin denaturalizing and deporting American citizens, the handing of tens of millions of people’s sensitive information to ICE is causing widespread alarm.
“Trump is letting ICE track Americans using their personal and private Medicaid health data. Undocumented immigrants aren’t eligible to receive Medicaid, but other people they want to target and track are,” said Melanie D’Arrigo, the executive director of the the Campaign for New York Health. “They’re not going to stop at immigrants.”
It doesn’t take a genius to figure out a fascist government collecting personally-identifying data from healthcare program only American citizens are eligible for, isn’t doing so for the purpose of targeting undocumented migrants. Despite nativist conspiracies about “illegal aliens stealing our healthcare” (a laughable concept given the state of American “healthcare”), Medicaid fraud by undocumented migrants its virtually nonexistent; and six months into Trump’s second term in the White House, I’m quite certain the President and all of his nazi minions in the executive branch know that. So the logical conclusion then is that Trump is giving the Gestapo this data, including “names, addresses, birth dates, ethnic and racial information, as well as Social Security numbers” to target Americans.
What type of Americans? Given that the regime and its fascist propaganda minions in the discourse are now arguing for their right to denaturalize American citizens born in other countries, I think you can bet on the nazis starting with naturalized immigrants and foreign-born people who have legal status in general. Furthermore, these efforts will almost certainly focus on nonwhite immigrants; this is after all an ethnonationalist project to whiten US demographics by force, even if nobody wants to admit it.
As I’ve discussed in a recent article however, the methods by which the Trump regime is weaponizing America’s vague and robust anti-terrorism laws to persecute anyone who opposes the fascist agenda, points towards a much broader program of creating stateless people out of the regime’s enemies, regardless of where they happen to have been born. In other words, whatever the Gestapo is doing with the data Trump gave them today, does not preclude the Trumpenreich’s secret police from using that data to target anyone the nazis want to find at a later date. Medicaid is now officially spying on you for the nazis, whether they have an official reason to want your data, or not.
I cannot stress enough the degree to which this really isn’t a discussion about privacy rights and potential authoritarian outcomes anymore. The Trumpenreich is an openly fascist regime, that through its allies at the top of the American judiciary, is rapidly transforming the United States into an executive branch dictatorship with theocratic characteristics. We don’t have to ask hypotheticals about whether or not this government and its Gestapo will use our data to target Trump’s political enemies; both Project 2025 and the regime’s actions make it clear they are already doing so. The integration of the panopticon with the Swine Emperor’s loyal federal Gestapo, is a necessary precursor to ruling as a fascist dictator under a perpetual state of martial law. It would be foolish to pretend at this late an hour, the regime has any other purposes for the actions they’re undertaking now.
CBS News, Skydance, and Trump’s Kulture War
Recently I wrote about Paramount’s decision not to renew Stephen Colbert’s contract, after the longtime Trump critic targeted his employers in a pointed monologue about corruption and collaboration with a fascist regime. That story revolved around an eight billion dollar merger between Paramount, and Skydance Media; a merger that Trump’s ideologically focused FCC had the ability to block. As folks following the story know, Paramount responded to this situation by agreeing to settle a baseless lawsuit by Trump against CBS News, which Paramount owns; the short version of what happened next is that Colbert called the settlement “a big fat bribe” on his popular late night show, three days later Paramount announced it was ending that entire show after this season was finished, and the Swine Emperor took a victory lap on social media.
So far, the majority of the discourse around this situation has focused on Paramount’s willingness to grovel before a fascist dictator and silence dissent on his behalf, but what about the company that’s taking over the Paramount media enterprise now that the FCC has approved this shitshow, Skydance? Well, the early signals are not good, and it’s starting to look like this merger might represent the beginning of a new crusade to establish fascist cultural dominance in America. If recent media reports are to be believed, Paramount has fallen to Trumpenreich allies, who may be acquiring themselves a mainstream media company to spread the gospel of the cult of Trump.
One obvious sign of trouble came up when the Swine Emperor more or less blurted out that he knew the settlement of his lawsuit was tied to the merger on social media, while bragging that the “new owner” of CBS had agreed to give him 20 million dollars worth of airtime for, among other things – public service announcements “for causes the president cares about.”
Trump claims new CBS owner will gift him $20m worth of airtime after $16m settlement
“In a post on his Truth Social platform, Trump claimed the settlement had been paid – and that he was expecting much more from the new owners of Paramount.
“Paramount/CBS/60 Minutes have today paid $16 Million Dollars in settlement, and we also anticipate receiving $20 Million Dollars more from the new Owners, in Advertising, PSAs [public service announcements], or similar Programming, for a total of over $36 Million Dollars,” he wrote.”
When he talks about CBS’s new owners, Trump means Skydance; which is a venture-capital fueled media company of little accomplishment, that happens to be founded and run by David Ellison, son of Trump-ally billionaire Oracle co-founder, Larry Ellison. Already, we’re not off to a great start here, are we? I should also mention that the funding for this merger is coming in large part from the private equity investment firm RedBird Capital Partners, who are also about to buy British fascist propaganda rag The Telegraph. Given this, and the fact that we know “causes that interest the President” pretty much means “nazi cult of Trump shit,” one does have to wonder, just how hard the Swine Emperor had to twist the arms of Paramount Global’s new controllers to get that twenty million dollars worth of promised airtime?
From out here, it sure looks like Trump has strong armed his way into not only removing Colbert, but tilting the ideological playing field at CBS directly in his favor. This idea looks particularly plausible when you examine the reported promises the new owners of Paramount made to Trump’s Federal Communications Commission about how CBS News will be run under Skydance’s management, and the newly merged firm’s intention to cancel DEI policies.
Skydance Tells FCC It Will Create CBS News Ombudsman, Eliminate DEI at Paramount
“Skydance has told the Federal Communications Commission that once its acquisition of Paramount Global is complete, it will initiate a “comprehensive review” of CBS to ensure that the network is operating in the public interest, and that it will hire an ombudsman that will report directly to the president of CBS News “who will receive and evaluate any complaints of bias or other concerns” at the news division.
The ombudsman role will be guaranteed for at least two years, with CBS News leadership committing to “carefully review” any complaints.
Skydance also committed to eliminating all diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives (DEI) at the company, writing in a letter that, “The company is committed to ensuring that its storytelling reflects the many audiences and communities it serves in a manner that complies with non-discrimination requirements and other applicable laws.”
Unlike many Americans, I speak fluent “bloodless corporate vampire” and to me, that sure sounds like Skydance is promising to purge CBS of the Trump regime’s critics, and establish a liaison to directly funnel the Swine Emperor’s complaints about the network’s coverage to management. Throw in the new company’s immediate ideological surrender to Trump’s cracker revenge against diversity programs, and you’re looking at pro-Trump news network that probably shakes out like Fox News-lite in the end. And that transformation of a media outlet that was one of his most dogged critics, into an ideological ally through the force of capital and executive power, would in turn represent Trump’s greatest triumph thus far in his open war to control US culture, and redefine the acceptable limits of discourse in favor of a fascist dictatorship.
When NIMBY Reaction Meets Fascist Intentions
One of the most disturbing things about the ascension of the Trumpenreich regime to a position of enormous, and constantly increasing power in American life, is the way this administration’s open fascist agenda incorporates and expands on the already-existing American police state, and directs it towards even more extreme ends than its predecessors did. This turns analyzing virtually every Trumpenreich policy statement, or executive order into a guessing game, where you have to account for every possible outcome from reactionary business as usual, to a full blow nazi police state dictatorship under a perpetual condition of quasi-martial law.
As such I think a recent Swine Emperor Trump executive order seeking to effectively criminalize homelessness and mental illness on a national level, should probably be generating more examination in our discourse than it actually is. What Trump is trying to do here is a great example of how terrible NIMBY reactionary “tough love” and “community safety” policies can, with very little effort or alteration, serve a fascist, eliminationist, and eugenicist agenda in practice.
Trump Pushes Policies That ‘Treat Homelessness and Mental Illness as a Crime’
“Advocates for mental health and unhoused people blasted U.S. President Donald Trump on Thursday over his executive order titled “Ending Crime and Disorder on America’s Streets.”
Trump’s order directs U.S. Attorney General Pam Bondi to end policies that restrict the government from institutionalizing “individuals on the streets who are a risk to themselves or others.” She must also work with other Cabinet members “to prioritize grants for states and municipalities that enforce prohibitions on open illicit drug use, urban camping and loitering, and urban squatting, and track the location of sex offenders.”
As a White House fact sheet highlights, the order also “redirects funding to ensure that individuals camping on streets and causing public disorder and that are suffering from serious mental illness or addiction are moved into treatment centers, assisted outpatient treatment, or other facilities.” Further, it ensures grant money does not “fund drug injection sites or illicit drug use.”
It bears mentioning that everything about Trump’s strategy here, from criminalizing unhoused people through the disastrous Roberts Court’s Grants Pass v Johnson ruling, to using access to federal funding as combination carrot and stick designed to coerce individual local governments into adopting punitive, carceral, NIMBY policies towards unhouse people, people with substance addictions problems, and folks with mental health issues, mirrors tactics adopted by California Governor Gavin Newsome in his state over the past eighteen months; policies for which I rightfully called him a fascist and a monster. Given that these same types of objectively ineffective, authoritarian, and carceral solutions to problems that ultimately represent failures of both capitalism and the state are being enacted all over the Anglosphere (particularly in Canada, and the UK), I suppose it was inevitable that the fascist Trumpenreich would seize on this opportunity to grab more power over policy from local governments around our country too. Anything that helps Trump establish the idea that every political body in the United States has to do what he tells them to, is something the regime will be in favor of.
Even if however I grant the Trumpenreich the wholly unearned assumption that this is all just the same NIMBY bullshit being used to ignore a housing crisis, an opioid crisis, and a mental healthcare crisis brought on by capitalist exploitation and austerity policies at the state level, the reality is that none of this fascist police state nonsense works. Unhoused people don’t magically find someplace else to live when you clear encampments, or strictly enforce vagrancy laws. Forcing people with substance abuse problems into carceral rehab centers has a laughably poor track record of treating addiction. Institutionalizing people with mental health issues is an unspeakably poor and cruel substitute for funding mental healthcare programs that would allow these folks to lead healthy lives in our communities. If what Trump is proposing here represents some kind of solution, it’s not one for any of the problems the regime says they’re trying to solve.
Back in the real world however, we’re not obligated to pretend we don’t already know the Trumpenreich doesn’t give a fuck about safer communities, fighting drug addiction, or helping people with mental health problems. In fact, this is a fascist regime that has already shown a willingness to use false pretext to target its political enemies and keeps talking about locking up trans people and folks with autism on “therapeutic work farms.” Do you think an authoritarian, white nationalist government looking to replace a recently deported migrant workforce might want to solve that labor crunch with incarcerated unhoused people? Who decides the difference between a drug user and an addict? Who decides who is “mentally ill” and who is just having a bad day? Does anybody think it’s a good idea to let Trump, or any of the nazi goons that work for his regime decide these things? Yeah, me neither.
Trump Feeling Heat on Genocide in Gaza
Six months into the second Trump presidency, it is increasingly clear that when the Swine Emperor leaves the country, he’s going to say something that will fundamentally alter the Trump regime’s position on foreign policy, or trade relations in an unguarded moment. This means that as much as I wanted to ignore Downarket Mussolini’s recent mutual public hand-job tour with UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer, I knew sooner or later Trump would say something nobody expected and it would instantly become international news. Did I expect it to be good news? No, I did not.
I have a pleasant surprise for us all however, because this time Trump said something that fundamentally undermines his government’s position on Israel’s ongoing blockade and its engineered famine in Gaza. While it’s probably still too early to predict the regime’s next moves, Trump’s loose-lipped moment in Scotland has the real potential to implode the regime’s entire position on the US-backed, Israeli genocide of Palestinians in Gaza.
Trump acknowledges ‘real starvation’ in Gaza and tells Israel to let in ‘every ounce of food’
“The US president told reporters that Israel bore “a lot of responsibility” for the crisis in a rebuke to Netanyahu, who had claimed earlier on Monday that there was “no starvation in Gaza”.
Asked whether he agreed with this assessment, Trump said: “I don’t know. Based on television, I would say not particularly, because those children look very hungry.”
He later added: “We can save a lot of people, I mean some of those kids. That’s real starvation; I see it and you can’t fake that. So we’re going to be even more involved.”
Asked what he would ask Netanyahu for next time they spoke, Trump said: “We’re giving money and we’re giving food, but we’re over here … I want him to make sure they get the food. I want to make sure they get the food, every ounce of food.”
What Trump just said here is mind-blowing because it stands in direct opposition to how his State Department has explained the regime’s support for, and complicity in, both Israel’s famine-inducing blockade in Gaza, and the larger genocide we’re helping them conduct. As the article notes, Trump’s statements also openly and intentionally contradict Israeli PM Benjamin Netanyahu’s declaration that “it was a “bold-faced lie” to say Israel was causing hunger in Gaza.” Was Trump trying to pass the buck for an ongoing engineered famine his government has been gleefully supporting until too many pictures of starving babies found their way into the mainstream discourse? You bet he was. Is the Swine Emperor trying to squeeze his greasy carcass through the eye of a needle to oppose the famine we can all see Israel engineering, while continuing to support the IOF’s ruthless military extermination campaign against Palestinians in Gaza? He most certainly was; but that doesn’t mean that position is actually tenable for Trump or the other Pig Empire nations supporting Israeli’s genocide.
Trump just admitted that there was a famine in Gaza, openly disagreed with Netanyahu and thereby conceded that Israel is causing starvation, and directly demanded Netanyahu let all the humanitarian aid through, which again, very clearly implies that the Israeli PM has the power to do so and is responsible for the fact that the aid is not reaching the starving kids Trump can see on TV. Quite frankly, I’m pretty sure Marco Rubio had to be talked out of hanging himself in the executive bathroom at Foggy Bottom after hearing that. Once the President of the United States essentially admits that Israel is engineering mass starvation in Gaza, it’s hard to argue that they’re not conducting a genocide; the former, directly means the latter. And once you admit Israel is conducting a genocide, the argument that they’re not mass slaughtering Palestinians because they’re Palestinians, but rather “trying to eradicate Hamas” falls apart entirely. How the fuck does Rubio answer the question of why the US continues to arm and support the government of Israel, when the President himself just accused that same government of intentionally starving kids to death in Gaza while every camera in the western hemisphere was rolling?
This in turn is also likely to have a catastrophic effect on America’s pro-genocide allies in Europe; who are already scrambling as public opinion turns overwhelmingly against the genocide, thereby implicated most of the EU’s leaders in aiding and abetting these crimes against humanity. UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer himself is said to have been pressing Trump on Gaza throughout the trip, as he faces a domestic crisis of his own making now that he’s arresting seventy year old :”hard left” nans for “terrorism” to silence opposition to Israeli’s genocide in Gaza.
There are clearly cracks forming in the wall of silence protecting Israel, and its Pig Empire patrons, as they conduct a genocide in Gaza. As we close on two years of watching Israel conduct a livestreamed baby holocaust against Palestinians in Gaza, I understand that talk is cheap and hope won’t stop the massacres. The truth however is that the whole political class in the Pig Empire is starting to feel the heat and cynicism won’t stop the genocide either. Now isn’t the time for either hope, or despair -it’s time to keep applying pressure on team genocide until these emerging cracks in the wall of silence, turn into fissures, and eventually the kind of chasms that will bring down the whole rotten project.
Trump, Trafficking Flights, and a Global Gulag
One of the most underexamined, perhaps even actively avoided topics of discussion in the larger discourse about the Trump regime’s fascist ethnic cleaning project, is the administration’s efforts to establish what Nick Turse has dubbed a “global gulag” of unsafe third party countries willing to accept trafficked migrants the US government insists are “dangerous criminals” yet in many cases, have no significant criminal record at all. Perhaps adhering to a philosophy of out of sight, out of mind, the US media has shown little interest in pursing these stories beyond whatever mystifying, pro-kidnapping and deportation rulings come out of a 6-3 fascist-high Supreme Court. As multiple investigations by The Intercept have shown however, the regime is running far more deportation flights, to far more dangerous concentration camps around the globe, than mainstream media coverage would lead you to believe.
In this July 29th, 2025 Intercept examination, Turse checks out the US State Department’s own assessments of the human rights records of both the countries the Trump regime has actually trafficked people to, and the countries the Trumpenreich is negotiating with to allow those “deportations.” To the surprise of precisely no one, Foggy Bottom gave the vast majority of them a failing grade – 91% of them to be precise.
State Dept: Trump’s “Third Countries” for Immigrants Have Awful Human Rights Records
“The nations that the Trump administration is collaborating with to accept these expelled immigrants are some of the worst human rights offenders on the planet, according to the U.S. government’s own reports.
More than 8,100 people have been expelled in this manner since January 20, and the U.S. has made arrangements to send people to at least 13 nations, so far, across the globe. Of them, 12 have been cited by the State Department for significant human rights abuses.
But the Trump administration has cast a much wider net for its third-country deportations. The U.S. has solicited 64 nations to participate in its growing global gulag for expelled immigrants. Fifty-eight of them — roughly 91 percent — were rebuked for human rights violations in the State Department’s most recent human rights reports.”
Given the alarming number of people the Gestapo is rounding up off the streets, I can understand folks who aren’t paying close attention getting the idea that 8,100 kidnapped migrants trafficked to countries they often have no connection to whatsoever, is merely a drop in the bucket. They reality however is that these deportation flights, which can often contain as few as five people, represent one of the highest priorities for the Pork Reich’s larger ethnic cleansing project because they are among the most difficult to stop, or undo. This is why the Trump regime took their case to remove the injunction blocking these third country deportation flights all the way to the Supreme Court – where Roberts and the other “conservatives” found a loophole to let them get away with it.
Please then, keep in mind that the regime fought tooth and nail for the right to conduct expensive and inefficient migrant trafficking flights, while you consider what the rest of this data means. Specifically, and as Refugees International’s Yael Schacher told the Intercept, it means that “the Trump administration cares nothing for human rights and wants these deportations to third countries to be punitive.” Which is a very college way of saying we’re purposely shipping migrants to unstable third country gulags because we want to disappear them in the cruelest, most harmful way possible. Let me rephrase that: we are paying countries out own State Department recognizes as human rights violators to vanish people in some of the worst dungeons, and least safe places on Earth because our white nationalist government loves hurting nonwhite people, and is trying to create a white, or at least significantly whiter, American ethnostate.
Given the broad spread of countries the US is secretly negotiating with (at least sixty-four at the time of publication), the conditions trafficked migrants are held in vary significantly; but as the State Department’s own reports detail, confinement, abuse, torture and extrajudicial murder are common dangers in the majority of third party countries accepting US deportation flights. For example, both South Sudan and Eswatini, countries which recently accepting eight and five kidnapped migrants from the US government respectively, are unquestionably hotbeds for extrajudicial killings and torture according to both the US State Department, and the United Nations.
In the finaly analysis it doesn’t matter what the media, or the Supreme Court are willing to acknowledge, these are all violations of international law, and in some cases crimes against humanity. The Trump regime can write themselves whatever policy guideline excuses they like, it doesn’t change the fact that this is absolute nightmare Nazi shit, and everyone involved had better hope America never sees another day free from fascist domination, or they’re all going to prison for a very long time.
– Nina Illingworth
Anarcho-syndicalist writer, critic and analyst.
You can find my work at ninaillingworth.com, and on Mastodon.
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