“This is not a joke. This is not normal."
The president threatens war with a U.S. state, uses racist tropes, and foists Black Hawk helicopters on civilians. A police executive says politicians no longer know where to draw the line
President Donald Trump posted the video photographed on his social media. his is what the presidency has become.
As of Friday, The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) boasted of having arrested more than 900 people in its Illinois “Operation Midway Blitz.” That’s the latest crusade against foreign-born people the DHS assistant secretary calls “the worst of the worst criminal illegal aliens in Chicago.”
But other than being in the U.S. without papers, those being subjected to violent, invasive treatment by the U.S. government have typically broken no laws: 65% of immigrants nabbed as of June had no criminal convictions. More than 93% were never convicted of violent offenses, according to the libertarian CATO Institute. In fact, some seized during an ICE raid this week on a Chicago apartment building were U.S. citizens.
About 300 masked officers descended from Black Hawk helicopters or trucks on the South Side building after midnight Sept. 30 in search of members of a Venezuelan gang Donald Trump calls a terrorist organization. After breaking down apartment doors, ransacking homes, hauling out children away from their parents and holding residents captive for nearly three hours, they arrested 37. Rodrick Johnson was one. He told them he was a citizen, and asked to see a warrant and have a lawyer, but that fell on deaf ears.
These appalling violations of due process are the kind of treatment you’d expect from a military dictatorship. Our government uses slanted, sweeping claims to justify invading autonomous states and carrying out such raids - which are generating quantifiable fear and anger.
Trump used that tactic in claiming U.S. troops were in Chicago to wage a war against “the enemy within.” That promped Democratic Illinois Gov. J.B. Pritzker to say, “The President of the United States is threatening to go to war with an American city. This is not a joke. This is not normal.”
No it isn’t.
The President also claimed his war on Chicago was in honor of a young woman killed in a January hit-and-run death by an undocumented drunk driver. (That was some 140 miles south of the city.) DHS Director Tom Homan did his part by declaring that illegal immigrants driving under the influence pose a “public safety threat.”
But the truth is, undocumented immigrants are responsible for far fewer drunk driving deaths than the general population. In fact, the highest such fatalities per capita are in states with some of the lowest rates of undocumented immigrants: Montana, Wyoming and South Carolina, where that population ranges from 0.5 % to 1.8 % of the e total.
A 2019 study found “no significant evidence for a relationship between illegal immigrant population share and the alcohol-related drunk driving death rate.”
But the skewed narratives persist. After an ICE officer pursued and later shot to death Silverio Villegas González, a 38-year-old Illinois father who had just dropped his kids off at daycare last month, DHS described him as a “criminal illegal alien.” But Villegas-González had no criminal record and only minor traffic infractions, according to his lawyer. DHS still justified his death claiming he had refused to stop, and drove his car toward the officer - who reportedly suffered only minor injuries.
These violent invasions of cities including Chicago, Los Angeles and soon Portland, Oregon, and the rhetoric used to support them, are having an impact. They’re prompting concerns among police chiefs about growing passed a resolution condemning the “incitement of violence.”
One police executive told NBC News that politicians no longer seem to know where to draw the line. He urged them to turn down their rhetoric, saying words encourage people to take radical actions. Another called out a “vacuum of leadership.”
Another said his agency now has more officers assigned to “threat-investigation and protected missions” than ever before in its 90 years. Some of that is linked to the growing need to investigate threatening speech online.
And while threats of violence used to be directed at public officials, the police chiefs say these days they also target corporate officials, health- care providers, housing administrators, educators and judges.
A sobering new NPR/PBS News/Marist poll finds that while 77 % of Americans are concerned about political violence, 30 % say they may need to resort to it to get the country back on track. That number is up 11 points since April, 2024. Though 31%, of Republicans feel that way compared to 28% of Democrats, there’s been a 12% rise in Democrats who also think so.
It certainly doesn’t help that the President’s social media posts and speech to military leaders show an appetite for armed warfare. In preparing to send National Guard troops to Chicago, Trump issued an online post in reference to his executive order renaming the Department of Defense the Department of War. It said Chicago was about to find out why he did that.
The post included an image of Trump himself looking like a lieutenant colonel in from the film, Apocalypse Now about the Vietnam War. And in a speech to military leaders, Trump called for Chicago and other cities to be training grounds for the military.”
Nor do racist tropes help, like the video Trump posted Monday ahead of the government shutdown to bolster the White House narrative that Democrats are holding up funding the government to give medical benefits to undocumented immigrants. It depicted Democratic House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries, who is Black, with a fake mustache and dressed in a sombrero against a backdrop of Mexican music. Reference was made to undocumented people voting.
After Jeffries called the video racist – which it unquestionably is – Vice President J.D. Vance said, “If you help us reopen the government, the sombrero memes will stop.” In other words, the Administration will continue exhibiting racism until Democratic members of Congress cave to its demands.
That’s just pathetic.
Pritzker is now calling for the 25th Amendment to the Constitution to be used to remove Trump from office. But don’t hold your breath: Vance would have to agree.
Those of us who refuse to buy into the cynical race-baiting, the celebration of violent attacks on cities and migrants, and the growing authoritarianism under this presidency can hold the higher ground. We can organize and build bridges with the communities being attacked. We can share our opposition in peaceful protests, in published opinion pieces and in votes.
Onward.
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Ordering and execution of dubious military operations against our nation’s citizens, visitors or guests, in their homes and streets of American cities is a crime against our constitution. There can be no doubt, nor any justification, for military leadership and soldiers to engage in illegal activities, regardless of who gives the order.
Consequently, what’s happened and still happening is a serious crime. So, what options and responsibilities do patriotic citizens have when the president, administration, chief enforcement officials and arguably a majority of the three branches of government are criminals?
As a pacifist who finds a new Civil War, under any circumstance thoroughly repugnant, this is vexing. Rekha accurately describes and urges (no surprise there), we not succumb to being lured into a domestic, armed, violent conflict in our cities which would likely trigger an escalation, endangering even more innocent people.
Contemplating state national guard and local police officers facing down regular army and ICE units is a nightmare scenario. But, is this entirely inconceivable? I’m not certain or completely convinced anymore. That’s too sad, scary and depressing to contemplate. What would Patrick Henry, Samuel Adams, Thomas Paine and so many other of our founding fathers think? What would they recommend? I wonder.
trump is a wanna be dictator and is largely succeeding day by day, inch by inch. There are about 300 cases in court that challenge various things he has done, and we, the people are winning many of them. However, if the decisions are being followed through is another matter. Project 2025 was drafted by very smart extreme right wing people, and trump is following that playbook. He’s not smart enough to do all of this on his own. His power play will be diminished if Dem win in 2026, and indeed if there are elections in 2026. Right now, there’s a newly elected House Representative (D) that speaker Johnson is refusing to swear in, because she will tilt the vote to release the Epstein files. Like Benjamin Franklin said “We’ve given you a Republic if you can keep it”. America has never been more threatened than now. Keep leaning on Congress— it’s what we can do .