The United States of Terror

Trump's Second Administration is transforming into a reign of terror for anyone and everyone who defies the MAGA agenda and refuses to bend the knee to its corrupt, authoritarian impulses.

(A portrait of President Donald Trump unveiled inside the Colorado State Capitol on Thursday, Aug. 1, 2019.)

Terrorism, like freedom and liberties, is an elastic word that doesn’t mean much these days considering how often it is exploited, misdefined, and weaponized by bad faith, hypocritical actors.

Officially, terrorism is the use of force or violence against persons or property for the purposes of intimidation, coercion, or ransom.

Since the 9/11 terror attacks, it has mostly been synonymous with scary brown people speaking a foreign language. It is rarely associated with white supremacists or right-wing militias that have constituted the number one source of violent domestic terrorism for several years in a row. From the official definition, one can easily describe the January 6th violent insurrection incited by Donald Trump as an act of coordinated terrorism against the United States of America. Police officers were beaten and assaulted, the Capitol was defiled, and some individuals with weapons were there to assassinate our elected officials and overthrow the election results. However, these individuals were all pardoned by Trump and are now referred to as political prisoners, victims, patriots, warriors, and freedom fighters by MAGA.

Instead, in 2025, “domestic terrorists” are now pro-Palesitinian students and activists on college campuses engaging in the time-honored tradition of civil disobedience against Israel’s war and genocide. That’s how Attorney General Pam Bondi described these overwhelmingly peaceful, multicultural students on Fox. According to Trump, they join protestors who vandalize Musk’s Tesla vehicles as fellow “domestic terrorists.” Considering Tesla vehicles are breaking down on their own these protestors don’t need to take the risk. But, I digress.

As I said, the word terrorism is elastic and rendered almost meaningless in 2025 under Trump’s aspiring authoritarian regime. Now, you can engage in nearly any crime as long as you wear a MAGA hat. You can be the President of the United States, or you can be his Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth, who paid $50,000 to silence a woman who accused him of rape. What you can’t do is live peacefully in this country as a legal immigrant anymore. It’s not even limited to brown and Black folks like the good ol’ days.

You can be an attractive, white, Canadian actress and be detained in a freezing cell for two weeks without explanation. You can be a Filipino American woman who has been here legally on a green card for fifty years and then be randomly detained in a private prison without any explanations given to her family. You can be a Venezuelan barber here legally on asylum and be kidnapped by ICE and sent to be beaten in an El Salvador prison because you were brown at the wrong place and the wrong time. Whatever you do, please don’t be a Palestinian activist here on a green card like Mahmoud Khalil, or be an Indian national and postdoc at Georgetown like Badar Khan Suri, married to a Palestinian woman, because then you, too, will be kidnapped and detained. While you’re at it, please also don’t be a Cuban, Nicaraguan, or Haitian immigrant here on temporary legal status. Sadly, you’ll join over 500,000 immigrants asked by the Trump Administration to self-deport.

“Where’s the due process? This is illegal! Trump can’t do this! We live in a country of checks and balances and laws!” These are valid questions and concerns, and even though they are factually correct, none of this matters in an authoritarian regime. As podcast host and conspiracy theorist Dan Bongino, now our Deputy Director of the FBI, said, “The only thing that matters is power. Power. That is all that matters. A system of checks and balances? Haha! That’s a good one.” Unfortunately, Trump and Republicans have all the power now. They have the Presidency, the House, the Senate, the Supreme Court, the media, and the Justice Department. They are flexing and flaunting their power without fear, accountability, or restraint and betting on every establishment pillar to crumble before them. So far, it’s been a solid bet. Just look at the law firm Paul Weiss which was targeted by Trump as a test case and not only bent the knee but went out of the way to offer its services to be complicit actors in Trump’s reign of terror. After already breaking corporate media, Trump and his Justice Department will try to bully and intimidate all law firms that dare challenge his Administration’s growing violations.

Even visitors aren’t safe in this country. A French researcher on his way to a conference in Houston was stopped and deported after immigration officers searched his phone and found messages critical of Trump. Over the weekend, it was reported the Trump Administration may ramp up scanning social media accounts of green card and citizenship applicants for “hostile attitudes” toward the US. This is an official way of saying don’t do anything that will make Trump upset, like the utterly amazing portrait of him put up by Colorado Governor Jared Polis. Instead of running the country and trying to bring down inflation, Trump took to social media to scold Polis for the portrait, because this is what will make America great again. Polis, and other Democrats, better be careful, or else they might trigger the wrath of AG Bondi and FBI Director Kash Patel. Bondi told Democratic Rep. Crockett to “tread very carefully” with her critique of Apartheid-lover and Seig Heil-aficionado Elon Musk. Meanwhile, Patel has already promised to use his role to go after Trump’s media and political critics.

I am still waiting for the free speech warriors and First Amendment advocates from the conservative movement to speak up, but they’ve been as quiet as a mouse fart the last two months. It seems they used up all their energy and rage against college students.

If it wasn’t evident from this essay, an authoritarian regime doesn’t spare anyone. Ultimately, all have to bend their knee or lose their head. As they divide Americans over useless culture wars and debates about trans athletes, Trump and the broligarchy continue stealing all of our cookies without even having the decency to leave us crumbs. They attack Social Security as a Ponzi scheme and mock SNAP benefits, while shamelessly giving the rich tax cuts and gifting Musk billions of government dollars for his crappy companies. The Trump Administration has even found a way to grift off of Easter by seeking corporate sponsors for this year’s White House Easter Egg Hunt. With this Administration, we can be assured those eggs will be Lilly White and probably signed by Musk and Putin.

For the rest of us, the last two months should awaken anyone slumbering due to naive optimism and delusion. Trump and MAGA aren’t just going after undocumented immigrants, the Muslims, the Black folks in the urban cities, the Latinos, the LGBTQ+, and the poor. They’re coming for everyone, including attractive, white, Canadian actresses, and U.S. citizens.

Your income, credit score, degrees, suburban neighborhood, Christian background, light skin tone, Republican voting record, and Rust Belt zip code won’t save you. Nobody is safe under fascism. Nobody is safe under Trump’s reign of terror.

***Danielle and I break all this down on today’s episode of DEMOCRACY-ISH