The arrest of an undocumented man in Florida, as caught on video by Kenny Laynez-Ambrosio on 2 May 2025. Photograph: Screengrab from video by Kenny Laynez-Ambrosio/Courtesy of the Guatemalan-Maya Center
Trump’s Fascism, Happening Right Here and Right Now
The arrest of an undocumented man in Florida, as caught on video by Kenny Laynez-Ambrosio on 2 May 2025. Photograph: Screengrab from video by Kenny Laynez-Ambrosio/Courtesy of the Guatemalan-Maya Center
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Congress and the courts are not going to stop Trump's fascism. So it falls to us.
Donald Trump has smashed the checks and balances, obliterated the integrity of corporate journalism, stifled dissent, and created a climate of fear with his constant threats and aggressions against the US Constitution and the American people over the last 188 days.
Trump’s “Big Beautiful Bill” has added $3.4 trillion to the national debt over the next decade, according to the non-partisan Congressional Budget Office. He has also engaged in a level of self-dealing and corrupt acts that are best described as plundering.
Trump has filled the government with weirdos, incompetents, and extremists. He has created a masked secret police force, and turned it loose in America.
He has built concentration camps and desensitized a cult following to cruelty and maliciousness, by celebrating and glorifying thuggery.
Read this account of an 18-year-old American citizen who was detained and abused by ICE, but had the wherewithal to record the incident. This was part of the exchange that Kenny Laynez-Ambrosio had with Florida highway patrol officers:
Laynez-Ambrosio: “I was born and raised right here.”
Audio in the video catches the unidentified officers debriefing and appearing to make light of the stun gun use. “You’re funny, bro,” one officer can be overheard saying to another, followed by laughter.
Another officer says, “They’re starting to resist more now,” to which an officer replies: “We’re going to end up shooting some of them.”
Later in the footage, the officers move on to general celebration – “Goddamn! Woo! Nice!” – and talk of the potential bonus they’ll be getting: “Just remember, you can smell that [inaudible] $30,000 bonus.” It is unclear what bonus they are referring to. Donald Trump’s recent spending bill includes billions of additional dollars for ICE that could be spent on recruitment and retention tactics such as bonuses.
It is chilling.
ICE is turning deadly, and their already low standards and lack of training are about to get much worse as the wannabes and emotionally-damaged dregs who want to abuse people while wearing mass are made federal agents.
Prices on everything are rising everywhere.
Home sales have slowed to a trickle.
Trump’s tariffs are make-believe. They are show business. Each is an act of arson that burns something and someone for no reason other than satisfying an audience of fools who line up to be abused by millionaire and billionaire liars.
Meanwhile, the Democratic Party stands at its most unpopular position in three decades, according to a new The Wall Street Journal poll.
Trump’s numbers are collapsing on all fronts, and the American people are disgusted, but they have also made a judgement about the Washington, DC, leaders of the Democratic Party.
The American people despise Chuck Schumer.
Yet, the position of the Democratic senators remains steadfast.
They have decided the 2026 election is about neither Trump’s abuses, or a plan to make them stop.
Instead, it is to be about maintaining Chuck Schumer’s grip on power.
After all, what could possibly be more inspiring in this moment of national crisis during which fear is rising and dissent is being punished than six more years of Chuck Schumer—other than perhaps the re-election of 79-year-old Ed Markey in Massachusetts to get him ready for his next re-election at 86?
Donald Trump is a fascist, and mostly, he faces weakness.
Democrats who tell you that the election is about affordability are as out-of-touch as Pete Hegseth is running the Pentagon.
The election ahead is about America.
The election ahead is about We the people.
It is about freedom.
It is about liberty.
It is about stopping a growing tide of malice and evil before it comes for every last one of us. Nobody should believe it can’t happen here because it is happening here. Right now, and right here.
It is happening all around us. Don’t look away.
Instead, prepare.
Prepare to make an American stand against the wrong, and bring it to an end.
We must.
Steve Schmidt
Steve Schmidt is a political analyst for MSNBC and NBC News. He served as a political strategist for George W. Bush and the John McCain presidential campaign. Schmidt is a founder of The Lincoln Project, a group founded to campaign against former President Trump. It became the most financially successful Super-PAC in American history, raising almost $100 million to campaign against Trump's failed 2020 re-election bid. He left the group in 2021.
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