Police State by Geoff Carter « The Pen in Hand Blog

Illustration by Michael DiMilo

By Geoff Carter

Much has been said and written about President Trump’s desire to transform our American republic into an autocracy, and it is indisputable—even to his propagandists at Fox News and OAN—that this is where he is leading the country. And we’re letting him do it. When the Supreme Court ruled last July to grant “absolute immunity from criminal prosecution for actions within his ‘conclusive and preclusive constitutional authority (Brennan Center for Justice)”.

There are far-reaching and frightening implications of this ruling. According to Sean Willentz, a professor of American History at Princeton, Trump -v- U.S. “radically changed the very structure of American democracy, paving the way for MAGA authoritarianism just as the 1857 Supreme Court in Dred Scott v. Sandford tried to pave the way for enshrining slave power control over American law and government (Observer/Reporter).”

Jeffrey Rosen of the National Constitutional Center termed the ruling “a dramatic, radical expansion of presidential power (NPR)“. The ruling grants immunity to the president for any official act and leaves it to the courts to determine the difference between official and unofficial acts in this context, a ruling that places control over the executive branch almost solely into the judiciary—specifically for all intents and purposes—SCOTUS, leaving the legislature almost completely out of the picture.

After the election, armed with this new far-reaching mandate, Trump issued a flurry of executive orders whose legality (to be generous) is questionable. His high-handed appointment of Elon Musk to head DOGE, a government—I don’t know what. Agency? Bureau? Commission? Men’s Club?—to “clean up” waste and fraud in the government was a joke—except it’s not funny when we step back and view the damage. DOGE has done irreparable harm to our government agencies. Musk and his minions forced their way into government offices, fired staff willy-nilly (sometimes rehiring them the next day) and illegally accessing sensitive database information—specifically at the Social Security Agency.

Back at the White House, Trump was issuing a plethora of executive orders ranging from renaming the Gulf of Mexico, abolishing DEI programs, opening up millions of acres of federal lands for logging, restricting funding for reproductive health, and a raft of separate orders aimed at militarizing the immigration process. And he’s gone after immigrants with a vengeance.

Various people, including a PhD candidate, were summarily arrested and detained without due process for months. Kilmar Abrego Garcia, along with two hundred other men, was arrested and sent to a maximum-security prison in El Salvador. Garcia was alleged to be part of a gang—charges which have proven to be manufactured. This is only the tip of the iceberg.

Masked ICE agents have been rounding up people in Home Depot parking lots, outside community centers, at schools, and in immigration offices. Parents have been physically separated from children and some people—many of them U.S. citizens—have disappeared without a trace. Family members have no clue as to their welfare or whereabouts. Because of the SCOTUS immunity ruling, Donald Trump cannot be prosecuted for crimes committed during the discharge of his duties, including border security.

These abuses of constitutional law continue and are in fact getting worse. While trying to Secretary of Homeland Security Kristi Noem a question about the Trump administration taking over the California National Guard—and 700 marines—to suppress a supposedly dangerous insurrection (which had already been handled by the LAPD), United States Senator Padilla was forcibly escorted from the room, wrestled to the ground, handcuffed, but never charged.

A couple weeks ago New Jersey Representative LaMonica McIver was charged with interfering with federal officers after trying to an ICE detention facility when she and other members of a congressional delegation along Newark mayor Ras Baraka attempted to inspect the facility—which is not only within their rights but within their prescribed duties. NYC comptroller and Democratic mayoral candidate was detained and arrested after attempt to help a defendant out of immigration court. None of the officers who detained him were in uniform.

This past weekend, Minnesota State Representative Melissa Hortman and her husband were brutally assassinated in their own home in a politically motivated shooting. Another state senator and her husband were grievously wounded by the same assailant. The attacker allegedly had a hit list with over forty names of Democrats on it.

It would seem that Donald Trump has co-opted the Department of Justice to implement his own political ends. He has already subjugated the Republican arm of the legislature to his will. Only a few, putting their own self-interests over the survival of our democracy, have dared to defy him. Now he is attempting to intimidate and coerce the Democrats.

In another instance of gross overreach, the president overruled the sovereignty of State of California and mobilized 4000 members of the California to help suppress non-existent unrest, a power play that he will no doubt use in other communities. He also, in yet another breach of Constitutional law, ordered 700 marines to be deployed in LA—again for no reason.

While acknowledging it is a somewhat tired and overused analogy, Trump’s use of a police force (ICE) to implement his own political ends is frighteningly similar to the rise of the Gestapo, the SS, and the SA in Nazi Germany. According to (Bergen Belsen Stitfung), the Gestapo, or the Secret State Police, were formed to combat political enemies of the Reich. The SA, or Sturmabteilung, was responsible for intimidating and terrorizing Hitler’s political opponents. It was only later, after the assassination of its leader, Ernst Rohm, that the SA was folded into the SS. Trump’s masked ICE agents have been arresting citizens without warrants and have been holding them without due process. Beginning to sound familiar?

Over the past few months, we’ve seen citizens kidnapped off our streets and taken to detention centers or to maximum-security prisons in foreign countries. Some have simply disappeared. Many have not been given food, water, or medical treatment. Leaders of the president’s opposition party have been beaten, detained, handcuffed, arrested, and now murdered.

We have a rogue president who has been ignoring the Constitution, the courts, the legislature and the people who have taken to the streets to oppose his draconian policies. Over five million Americans from cities large and small, blue and red, took to the streets to protest the man who is kidnapping our citizens, dismantling our government and threatening to take away health care for millions of people. He will probably even betray the proponents of Project 2025, the kingmakers who boosted him into office, once he’s done with them. Trump is also using the office of the presidency and the coffers of the Treasury to line his own pockets. His bitcoin schemes, his real estate deals with Saudia Arabia and other countries reek of corruption. His “big, beautiful bill” is a travesty that will explode the deficit and expand his own powers.

He is well on his way to turning us into an autocracy, a kleptocracy, an oligarchy, and place that will more closely resemble Nazi Germany or New Gilead than not. Stand up. March. Demonstrate. It’s just about all we have left.