A call for a New American Revolution and New Amendments to the United States Constitution
Presented at the Progressive Voices Lecture Series at the Unitarian Universalist Congregation of Greater Naples, Feb. 4, 2026 by David Silverberg
Text as prepared
If anyone doubts that Donald Trump regards himself as a king, “they should just look at the artificial intelligence-generated images Donald Trump posted of himself in the past year.” The author making his presentation. (Photo: June Fletcher)
In 1655 the French King Louis the Fourteenth reportedly said, “L’Etat, c’est moi” – “I am the state” (or literally, “the state is me.”).
This past January 8th, President Donald Trump was asked in a New York Times interview if there were any limits to his global power and he replied, “Yeah, there is one thing: my own morality, my own mind. It’s the only thing that can stop me.”
Think about that for a moment. He is “The only thing” that can stop him. He didn’t say Congress. He didn’t say the courts. He didn’t say the people. He didn’t say the Constitution. Just himself.
And he also didn’t say international law, which was the context of the question. On that, he said, “I don’t need international law.” Direct quote!
My friends, it pains me to say this but America has just had its Louis the Fourteenth moment.
Let’s take a moment to let all this sink in.
On its 250th birthday, the United States has become exactly what its founders worked and fought and struggled against: a dictatorship, a monarchy – and as I pointed out last year, monarchy doesn’t necessarily mean the title “King.” “Mono” means “one” “archy” means power – one power – and today we are a monarchy just as surely as we were before independence in 1776.
And if anyone doubts it, they should just look at the artificial intelligence-generated images Donald Trump posted of himself in the past year.
Note those crowns!
We’re not yet a complete monarchy. The Constitution has not been formally abolished. We still believe and act as though we have the rights granted us by the Bill of Rights. We’re gathered here tonight legally in the belief that our ability to do so is entirely proper. I believe that the words I’m speaking to you now are protected by the First Amendment.
But the President and all those around him are on a path toward ending that Constitution and those rights—and they make no secret of this. Donald Trump said he would be a dictator and during the course of last year he proceeded to expand his powers and disregard the law, legitimized by a Supreme Court ruling saying he had immunity for his official actions. And then we’ve seen the seizures and shootings on the streets of Minneapolis.
Now, I could spend the entire rest of this talk enumerating his sins, his crimes and his outrages. But I have other things to get to. Rick Wilson, the Florida pundit and Lincoln Project co-founder who remotely addressed a gathering here last year, has published what is essentially a new Declaration of Independence on Substack, that lists all this.
If you want to read this later, I recommend that you take a picture of it and the Internet address.
The essential question that confronts us is: What do we do about this? What can we, as normal, everyday, non-violent, law-abiding citizens, people who don’t hold public office and aren’t in the public eye, do about it?
I have a few thoughts, which I hope you find worthy of consideration.
First, all my suggestions are non-violent and lawful. I still believe in the law and obeying it. American law still provides us with tools for change and great latitude for action. We still have numerous avenues of appeal, redress and change.
Having said that, I believe that the situation and the threat are so dire, we need a New American Revolution. Not a violent overthrow of what we had before but what I’ll call a restorative revolution. We need to restore the rights, the checks and balances and the democracy that existed before Donald Trump usurped them.
But we have to look at the effort holistically.
Remember something: The Trump presidency is not merely an administration in the mold of past presidencies. It’s a political, social and cultural revolution of its own that seeks total control. It aims to utterly oppress, dominate and subjugate Americans and the world to the whims, the hatreds, the prejudices and the rages of one single man. It’s an attack on everything we had before he became president and everything this country has meant for the past 250 years. It’s truly American carnage.
Everyone who values democracy, the Constitution, the Bill of Rights and the rule of law and who takes action should see himself or herself as part of a new American revolution. This goes beyond Republican or Democratic labels. And it goes beyond any single, particular action. We need to view the demonstrations in Minneapolis and the protests at the Government Center on Route 41 in Naples as connected, they’re all part of the same movement. We have to see the lawsuits and the vigils against Alligator Alcatraz as part of the same effort as the midterm elections and the grassroots organizing that has to be done there.
I would hope that if we see all these individual efforts as a single mass effort, unified with a common purpose, we can be more effective—at least conceptually—than if we only look at those efforts as individual and fragmented. All these actions together have a cumulative effect.
The actions we take are aimed not just at protesting this president’s illegal actions but at reversing their worst abuses and restoring sanity, dignity and decency to our government.
The list of reforms and changes that are needed are long. Anyone can come up with his or her favorites.
We also have to recognize that nothing is quick in a non-violent movement. Whatever their aims, non-violent mass movements are always marathons. They take long-term, persistent pressure on a multitude of fronts. But history has shown that they can work.
But as a start, one goal has to be to end the domestic terrorism of ICE, the Immigration and Customs Enforcement directorate of the Department of Homeland Security, DHS.
On a personal note, from 2004 to 2013 I was editor of a magazine called Homeland Security Today, so I watched the department and this particular directorate evolve.
ICE was created in 2002 by combining the Immigration and Naturalization Service and the US Customs Service. It was intended to prevent bad people and bad things from getting into the country.
So I know what ICE was supposed to be—as opposed to what it’s become.
Every country has to protect its borders and regulate its immigration. That’s a fundamental function. But ICE under the second Trump administration is a violent, lawless, unaccountable force of domestic terrorism, like Mussolini’s Blackshirts or Hitler’s Brownshirts.
ICE was intended to protect the American people from terrorism. Under Trump and Secretary of Homeland Security Kristi Noem, its mission has become imposing terror and purging the Hispanic and foreign-origin population of the United States.
Sadly, I don’t think it can be redeemed. When sanity returns, its functions need to go to other agencies or a new agency with a different name. But ICE today is too twisted and tainted to remain as is. It needs to be demobilized and dispersed and those guilty of crimes prosecuted and the whole thing overhauled.
So that’s an example of an immediate, practical measure. But I want to look beyond the moment.
There are two revolutionary proposals that I think are particularly important, if less emotionally-charged than the many others people want to pursue. Both are constitutional amendments and could be enacted if the Constitution and its mechanisms remain in force—i.e., if they aren’t abolished altogether, which, by the way, Trump has threatened to do.
One amendment, which would be the Constitution’s 28th, would state that:
“The President of the United States shall be subject to the laws and penalties of the United States in his or her official and personal capacities.”
It is absolutely astonishing that this would have to be passed but when the Supreme Court ruled in 2024 that the president has legal immunity for all his official actions, they opened the gate to the outlaw dictatorship we’re suffering under today. This president is above the law and he knows it and he’s exploiting it. That can never be allowed to happen again. As the Supreme Court’s motto on the lintel of its building declares: “Equal justice under law” and that equality needs to be restored. Everyone—and I mean, everyone—has to be subject to the law.
Another amendment, which would be the 29th, would state:
“No Person shall be eligible to the Office of President who has not served in a prior elected office or held a military position of command. No Person previously found guilty of a crime by a jury of his or her peers, or found guilty of insurrection, or previously impeached and removed from office for high crimes and misdemeanors, shall be qualified to hold the office.”
No more criminals as President! This amendment is intended to ensure that never again can an utterly inexperienced, grossly unqualified, completely unfit individual attain the power of the presidency. Never again should the American people face the prospect of a criminal candidate running—or governing—from prison. It simply says: criminals need not apply.
Those are just a few suggestions.
Now, I put these and other ideas into a website post called “Manifesto for an American Rose Revolution” that went live on January 2nd.
A rose revolution? Why that?
Well, perhaps this is sentimental on my part but I—and maybe everyone in this room—can remember the Kennedy Administration.
And maybe you can remember when Jaqueline Kennedy created the White House Rose Garden.
It was a small area, only 125 feet long and 60 feet wide (38 meters by 18 meters) outside the Oval Office of the White House. But it was a place of beauty, elegance and grace that reflected the First Lady’s own.
The Rose Garden is no more. Trump paved it over to create a hideous patio.
What’s more, having destroyed the garden, he created an exclusive “Rose Garden Club” for his cronies, which costs a million dollars to join.
Well, you know, Trump believes that as President he owns the White House. He believes he can alter or destroy it as he pleases. He demolished the East Wing to replace it with a massive, gargantuan ballroom bearing his name, whose cost keeps ballooning and he has even more desecrations in mind.
But the White House doesn’t “belong” to the person who temporarily occupies it. It belongs to the American people. We’re the homeowners’ association. What’s more, every resident of that house is just a temporary tenant who holds it in trust for the next occupant.
The same can be said of the country as a whole. Trump thinks he owns it.
Folks, the time has come for the American people to take back their house—and their homeland.
And if there’s any one moment that will mark their success, it will be when that hideous patio is dug up and smashed and its pieces distributed as souvenirs and roses bloom again in the people’s garden.
That’s why I think a Rose Revolution is a good idea. The color “rose” is neither blue nor red; it includes a wide variety of shades and everyone and anyone can be part of it.
This is not just about a garden, of course.
Winston Churchill once said, “Democracy is the worst form of government—except for all the others that have been tried from time to time.”
The great thing about democracy, and the reason I believe in it so, is that it’s a form of government built on hope and courage and possibilities. We can all remember when Tim Walz thanked Kamala Harris for bringing joy back to politics. Democracy isn’t just about the way people are governed, it’s about enabling the pursuit of happiness—and giving people the hope and tools to achieve it.
By contrast, monarchy, dictatorship, autocracy are built on despair, and submission and hopelessness. In that kind of government there can be no success without the monarch’s approval or—especially with this president—getting his piece of the action. This is a presidency run on threat and fear and extortion.
So a Restorative Revolution, a New American Revolution, a Rose Revolution – whatever you want to call it – is not just about legislation or protests or particular measures, it’s about restoring joy and hope and dignity and decency and democracy and ending a reign of fear and intimidation. It’s about upholding the true values of America and restoring the Constitution and the Bill of Rights. And everyone has a role to play.
Now, I know that a single blogger typing in an obscure corner of Florida, throwing out some ideas, is hardly earthshaking. Believe me, no one is more conscious of the odds and the obstacles and the prospect of oblivion than I am. This talk may go up on the Internet along with billion and one other posts and comments and disappear completely into that great blogosphere in the cloud, or the sky, or whatever.
But you never know how history will play out—and this should inform all our actions. The one thing we can be certain of is that if we don’t do anything then nothing will ever be done.
I’m inspired in this by a hero of mine, Thomas Paine.
January 10th marked the 250th anniversary of the publication of Paine’s little pamphlet, “Common Sense,” which can truly be said to have sparked the American Revolution.
Who was Thomas Paine? Well, when he wrote Common Sense he was a nobody. He’d been a failed businessman and husband. He’d done some writing in his native England but of little more than local note. He’d immigrated to America in 1774 and was so sick from the passage that he had to be carried off the ship.
But he immediately grasped the potential of America and he had hope and could see the possibilities in change. He hated monarchy and oppression and he conveyed it to all the English inhabitants of North America. All he had to work with was language and logic and he put them to use, proving that anyone can have an impact.
Common Sense is as relevant today as it was in 1776 when it was published. I encourage everyone to make the effort to read it—and it does take some effort.
But even more immediate and relevant to us today is an essay that Paine wrote after Common Sense called The American Crisis. He wrote it during the darkest days of the American Revolution. He was a member of the Pennsylvania militia. American forces had been defeated in New York and pushed back through New Jersey. The army seemed about to dissolve and it looked like the revolutionary cause was at an end. The story is that he started writing an essay using a drumhead as a writing table.
It was under these circumstances that Paine penned the most famous paragraph he ever produced. Everyone knows the first sentence. But it’s worth listening to the entire paragraph because it’s every bit as relevant and as inspirational today as it was 250 years ago. We need to heed it.
I’m going to read it and I’m going to get through it.
“THESE are the times that try men’s souls. The summer soldier and the sunshine patriot will, in this crisis, shrink from the service of their country; but he that stands by it now, deserves the love and thanks of man and woman. Tyranny, like hell, is not easily conquered; yet we have this consolation with us, that the harder the conflict, the more glorious the triumph. What we obtain too cheap, we esteem too lightly: it is dearness only that gives every thing its value. Heaven knows how to put a proper price upon its goods; and it would be strange indeed if so celestial an article as FREEDOM should not be highly rated.”
So with that in mind, it’s time to start shaping America’s next 250 years.
A new flag for a new movement? (Art: AI for TPP/ChatGPT)
Jan. 2, 2026
The United States of America today has gone from a beacon of democracy to a dictatorship. The time has come to end that dictatorship.
This can be done non-violently, democratically, legally and constitutionally but it needs to be a revolution nonetheless.
This year’s political activity, whether grassroots street protests or midterm election efforts, whether rhetorical or physical, should be seen, not as fragmented, individual efforts but as part of a broad and reaching cultural, political and legal movement—and revolution.
Perhaps the best metaphor for this revolution and a physical expression of it lies in a small patch of ground, about 125 feet long and 60 feet wide (38 meters by 18 meters) outside the Oval Office of the White House.
It was known as the White House Rose Garden.
In 1961, First Lady Jacqueline Kennedy, working with professional landscape architects and botanists, reshaped the space into a formal garden, bordered by flowers, primarily roses. It was a place of beauty, elegance and grace that reflected her own.
Views of the White House Rose Garden in 2007. (Photos: National Park Service)
In the first administration of President Donald Trump, a new limestone walk was installed, many of the previous trees were removed and flowers were consigned to the sides, all allegedly at the command of First Lady Melania Trump. Presidential historian Michael Beschlosscalled the alteration an “evisceration” and said that “decades of American history [was] made to disappear.”
In the second administration of President Donald Trump the Rose Garden was paved over entirely. It is now a Mar-a-Lago-style patio with a private “Rose Garden Club” to go along with it, restricted to Trump’s closest sycophants and enablers.
The paving over of the White House Rose Garden in the second Trump administration. (Photo: Instagram)
President Donald Trump dines with co-conspirators on the White House patio. (Photo: White House)
In the Rose Garden can be seen the struggle between Trump and the American people.
Trump believes that as President he owns the White House. He believes he can alter or destroy it as he pleases. He has demolished the East Wing, on his own authority, to replace it with an expensive, gargantuan ballroom bearing his name.
But the White House does not “belong” to the person who temporarily occupies it. It belongs to the American people whom each resident serves and holds in trust for the next occupant.
The same can be said of the country as a whole. Trump thinks he owns it.
The time has come for the American people to take back their house—and their homeland.
And it is time to restore the Rose Garden to its previous state of beauty, grace and elegance.
But it’s not just about restoring the Rose Garden itself; the time has come to restore democracy, dignity and decency to American public life.
The time has come for an American Rose Revolution.
A new color revolution
In the past, a wave of what were called “color revolutions” swept the world when people long deprived of freedom and democracy demanded it. The very first of these was in the country of Georgia, which had long been part of the Soviet Union. When Georgia regained its independence, its people mounted a Rose Revolution to say that they didn’t want the kind of dictatorship they had endured in the past, they wanted freedom for the future.
The Georgia Rose Revolution was followed by others as people strove for freedom and democracy: the Orange Revolution in Ukraine, the Tulip Revolution in Kyrgyzstan, the People’s Movement (Otpor! or “outpouring”) in Serbia and the Arab Spring in the Middle East.
When Trump descended the escalator in Trump Tower in July 2015 (a descending metaphor in itself!) no one believed that this one man would turn the greatest democracy in the world into a source of fear, oppression and threat reflecting his own hatreds, prejudices and rages. No one imagined that he would turn a people’s presidency into a despotic dictatorship.
But he has done that and the time has come to end it.
What is the American Rose Revolution?
The American Rose Revolution needs to be an effort that transcends political party or past allegiances. It should be the effort of every single American at all levels to right the wrongs that have been done and restore democracy—and not just its outward forms but its inner values: civility, respect and allegiance to the Constitution and its Bill of Rights and the rights to participate, enjoy and contribute to the common good of each and every American, regardless of his or her race, creed, or place of birth.
It needs to be a revolution to gain freedom from fear as Americans cease to cower in the face of insults, threats and bullying by Donald Trump and his regime.
One of democracy’s great strengths is that it provides hope—hope that things can change for the better, that there will always be new chances and new opportunities to improve one’s own life and the lives of others. Dictatorship, by contrast, thrives on hopelessness—crushing any hope that anything can change without the intervention or approval of the dictator. Americans have always rejected this and they must reject it again.
So an American Rose Revolution needs to be a cultural revolution of hope and joy against hopelessness and despair.
An American Rose Revolution should be a revolution in which every American can participate by simply being civil to neighbors, by fully, actively and legally participating in political activities and civic life in contrast to the threats, insults and lying of Trump and his Make America Great Again (MAGA) cult; by calling out obvious wrongs and exposing wrongdoing.
This year the first opportunity to support the American Rose Revolution comes with the 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence. If still in office on July 4th 2026, there can be no doubt that Trump will try to hijack and make this celebration about himself. There is no other possibility. He cannot abide a situation where he is not the center of attention and flattery and that will certainly apply to the observation of the signing of the Declaration of Independence.
But for all other Americans, the 250th anniversary has to be a time to rediscover and remember the ideals and principles that led to the first American revolution; that all people are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable rights and these include life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness—and that no one man should be able to take them away.
It will also be a time to read some of the original complaints that impelled that Declaration when they wrote about King George III: “He has endeavoured to prevent the population of these States; for that purpose obstructing the Laws for Naturalization of Foreigners; refusing to pass others to encourage their migrations hither;” he has “obstructed the Administration of Justice;” he “has kept among us, in times of peace, Standing Armies without the Consent of our legislatures;” he was “cutting off our Trade with all parts of the world.”
And it is worth remembering the conclusion that the Founders reached: “A Prince, whose character is thus marked by every act which may define a Tyrant, is unfit to be the ruler of a free people.”
Fortunately, the American Constitution provides a civil and peaceful means to enact change and the next chance for that will come in elections slated for November. By vigorously participating in election activities, supporting campaigns, working for democratic candidates, registering voters, working at the polls and then being sure to vote, all Americans can contribute to making the change that’s needed.
These are traditional, legal and legitimate activities that have long been the essence of democratic, elected government. But this year not only are they more important than ever, they are revolutionary. It won’t just be an election, it has to be turned into an American Rose Revolution.
And those who wish to show their support and approval can use the rose as a symbol of their defiance, courage and hope, wherever, whenever and however they choose to do so.
New amendments
But beyond the general commitment to restoring American dignity and decency, there are some specific proposals that would improve and protect the United States, built from the experience of Trump’s tyranny. These presume that the Constitution remains in force and the procedure for amendments intact.
Passage of a 28th Amendment
The President of the United States shall be subject to the laws and penalties of the United States in his or her official and personal capacities.
On July 1, 2024 the majority of the United States Supreme Court ruled that presidents have immunity from the law for their official actions in the case of Trump vs. United States.
In practice, this ruling gave Donald Trump, then a presidential candidate for the second time, immunity from American laws when he gained the presidency. He won the presidency and began governing—actually, ruling—without regard to law, precedent or the Constitution, secure that nothing he did would face legal restraint or recrimination. It effectively led to a dictatorship.
Not only that, Trump vs. United States violates the very principle emblazoned on the lintel of the Supreme Court building: “Equal Justice Under Law.” The ruling creates a single, unaccountable individual above and beyond the reach of the law that applies to all others, in effect, a king. It violates the very first truth of the Declaration of Independence: “All men are created equal.”
It is time to correct this. In the future, everyone, whether president or everyday citizen, must be subject to the same laws. Since the inherent meaning of the Declaration is unclear to the majority of the current Supreme Court, it must take a constitutional amendment to state this principle outright. All people are created equal in the eyes of the law and that is what the 28th Amendment will do. No kings.
Passage of a 29th Amendment
No Person shall be eligible to the Office of President who has not served in a prior elected office or held a military position of command. No Person previously found guilty of a crime by a jury of his or her peers, or found guilty of insurrection, or previously impeached and removed from office for high crimes and misdemeanors, shall be qualified to hold the office.
When ratified in 1788, the only qualifications for the position of President were that the individual be a natural-born citizen, at least 35 years old and a resident of the United States for at least 14 years.
Those requirements were sufficient to ensure that relatively qualified people filled the office. Given that there had not been a United States before ratification of the Constitution, a prior-office qualification could not be included.
But after 250 years it is time to add to the qualifications for president. It seems a rather low bar to require that a person qualified for President should have the experience of serving in at least one prior elected position—and the position can be anything, from school board to dog catcher. The main point is that the person should have at least one experience of winning the approval of voters and experience the responsibility of serving them before aspiring to the highest office in the land.
As with a prior elected position, the amendment includes holding a military command as a qualification. From such a command the person in question, who has already proven his or her service to the country, will have the experience of being in a position of responsibility and authority. The amendment does not designate a rank, it just requires the experience of command at some level as a qualification.
This amendment is intended to ensure that never again can an utterly inexperienced, grossly unqualified, completely unfit individual attain the power of the presidency. Never again should the American people face the prospect of a candidate running—or governing—from prison. And it says: criminals need not apply.
Other measures
There are many other issues that need to be addressed and what follows are only a few of them, in no particular order. This list does not go into details, it simply proposes principles that all reasonable people can work toward as part of an American Rose Revolution.
Immigration: “To bigotry no sanction, to persecution no assistance”
America is special because it’s not just a country, it’s also an idea. In the past, America’s ideals of life, liberty and the free pursuit of happiness were considered so compelling and attractive that any thinking human could grasp them, live by them and become an American by adhering to American laws and contributing to American society.
Trump and his regime not believe this. They believe in hatred, prejudice and rage. But more, they no longer believe that American ideals and values are sufficiently compelling to inherently attract the allegiance and support of immigrants once they’re American citizens. Nor do they want non-white immigrants to become Americans and live by American laws and principles. They reject these ideals and express their rejection with brutality, threats and violence.
This should not continue. Borders need to be secure, the law must be enforced and those currently in the country without documentation need to comply with American requirements—but they should also have an incentive for compliance and lawful behavior and be treated with due process and reasonable humanity. Those undocumented migrants who came to the United States as children through no volition of their own deserve to have an opportunity for citizenship if they seek it as long as they have clean criminal records.
This all can be done in a rational, humane and lawful way. Requests for asylum should be evaluated on reasonable, humanitarian grounds with the wellbeing and dignity of the requestor as key factors. Citizenship should be granted on the basis of knowledge of the country, its laws and an oath of allegiance.
Asked what the attitude of the new United States might be toward the Jewish community, Washington replied that in America, toleration extended to all.
As he wrote: “For happily the Government of the United States, which gives to bigotry no sanction, to persecution no assistance requires only that they who live under its protection should demean themselves as good citizens, in giving it on all occasions their effectual support.”
Every American, every naturalized immigrant, as long as he or she performs as a good citizen, obeys the laws and gives the country “their effectual support” should be welcomed and protected by the United States.
It is time that the United States once again, “gives to bigotry no sanction, to persecution no assistance.”
All this requires comprehensive immigration reform and the federal government—both legislative and executive branches—should work toward a solution that secures the country, provides a legal path to citizenship, allows for guest workers and treats migrants and asylum seekers with dignity and respect.
Ending ICE
Every sovereign nation must secure its borders, protect them, allow legitimate trade and travel while filtering out criminals and contraband, and have a mechanism to enforce its laws.
This is ostensibly the job of the Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) directorate of the US Department of Homeland Security (DHS).
However, ICE has been vastly misused and its mission twisted into pursuing mass ethnic and racial population changes. Its warrantless searches and seizures, its masked and unidentified agents, its lack of legal approval, its concentration camps, its absence of due process, its secret transportations and deportations and its deliberate efforts to instill fear are all in contravention of not only the letter of the Constitution but its spirit. It has gone from a form of law enforcement to a paramilitary tool of terror.
ICE cannot be allowed to continue in its current form and is so tainted by its conduct it cannot be sufficiently altered to regain public confidence. It should be abolished as a DHS directorate and taken out of DHS. The previously independent Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS) should be revived to serve immigrants and the American public. Enforcement should be handed to the Border Patrol or Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) with creation of an internal enforcement element in whatever agency is appropriate. INS and Border Patrol or the FBI can then coordinate with DHS for other homeland security functions.
All anti-immigrant concentration and deportation camps must be closed, starting with Florida’s infamous Alligator Alcatraz.
Real Americans don’t build concentration camps—real Americans liberate them.
Reaffirmation of birthright citizenship
Section 1 of the 14th Amendment to the Constitution states that anyone born under the jurisdiction of the United States is an American citizen: “All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside.”
That should not be allowed to happen. The United States Congress needs to resoundingly reaffirm its support for the 14th Amendment with its grant of birthright citizenship so that there can be no mistake about where the United States stands. Full stop.
Restraints on tariffs
There must be some form of oversight and restraint on the imposition of tariffs. While any President must have some leeway and flexibility to respond to changing conditions there clearly has to be some enhanced form of congressional oversight and restraint.
This could take the form of a congressional veto: If the president proposes a tariff then Congress has 30 or 60 days to stop it. This could take place in one chamber or both. But the kind of wild, unnecessary and very personal and whimsical tariffs that Donald Trump imposed cannot be allowed to disrupt American trade and impoverish Americans again.
Healthcare as a right
The American people have a right to expect that their government will aid the state of their health to the greatest extent possible, through all possible means.
The Affordable Care Act must be repaired from the damage done to it during the Trump presidency.
Reliance on science
Throughout its history the people of the United States have relied on the scientific method to determine the physical state of the world around them and to safeguard their health and wellbeing. As a basic principle of governing, the United States needs to return to reliance on rigorous, unbiased scientific research and investigation in making the decisions affecting its policies and the welfare of its people.
Protecting public health
The government of the United States has a duty to protect and improve the health of the people of the United States based on sound science and rigorous research independently pursued without political or ideological interference.
The United States had the most robust, reliable and principled public health system in the world before Donald Trump, Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and Elon Musk attacked the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the Food and Drug Administration and the entire health infrastructure and the people who served it.
The damage done to these critical institutions must be repaired and the research that was under way restored. Sound science and the health of the American people must be the principles that guide the protection of Americans’ health and wellbeing and government of the people has a responsibility to do that.
Supporting climate science
Before the Trump presidency the United States was the world’s leader in the objective study and evaluation of the world’s climate and the changes occurring to it through either human or natural processes.
Because the results were unfavorable to current practices and prejudices, this effort was denounced by opponents as a “climate alarm industry” and its conclusions rejected in favor of old energy uses and routines.
This is unsustainable and will cost lives. It is a course that will ultimately destroy the planet. The United States must restore its efforts to scientifically study and respond to climate changes and prepare for their effects. It must once again take a leadership role in protecting and nurturing all life on the planet and its continuation. The United States must rejoin the Paris Climate Accord, adhere to its principles and recommit to doing what it can to slow damaging climate change.
Helping in disasters and building resilience
Because the climate is changing Americans need to prepare for its impacts and their government needs to assist them in every way possible.
The chief agency for aiding Americans in the event of disaster is the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA). As imperfectly as it may have functioned in the past, over time it became the most effective possible mechanism to respond to natural and man-made disasters and then assist in resilient rebuilding after they passed. As its motto stated, it helped Americans before, during and after disasters.
FEMA became a target of Donald Trump’s unreasoning hatred for partisan political reasons during the 2024 election campaign. He wanted to abolish it. His Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem was similarly critical, personalized disaster aid and added an approval requirement that virtually stopped the agency from functioning altogether.
FEMA needs to be restored because its mission is too important to the American people and will become even more vital as a changing climate imposes new contingencies.
FEMA should be broken out of DHS and made a full Cabinet department. The experiment of having it part of DHS has failed and the Trump regime has made clear that it is too prone to abuse in its current form. Its head should report directly to Congress and the President and it needs the latitude of independence to completely and neutrally fulfill its mission.
An independent, Cabinet-level FEMA, responsibly managed, will truly help the American people prepare, respond and recover from disasters and emergencies.
Cleaning up corruption
The Trump regime is notorious for its dubious deals, questionable pardons, personal enrichment and commercial schemes—and those are the practices that are blatantly obvious in public. There’s no telling what has gone on below the surface.
Corruption and crime in the presidency, among high officials and their accomplices must be exposed, investigated and prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law by an impartial, incorruptible and objective federal government and law enforcement establishment motivated by adherence to the law and commitment to seeing justice done on behalf of the American people. All ill-gotten gains at the expense of the American taxpayer must be clawed back.
Supporting and encouraging education
Ignorance is not strength. Ignorance leads to disaster. America should strive to return to being the world’s leader in thought, inquiry and free expression.
The Trumpist assault on education has to be stopped. Teachers should no longer be treated as enemies. Institutions of higher learning are not piggy banks for extortion and targets for threats. American higher education has to resume its place as a leader in the world, a center for inquiry and knowledge, pursuing truth wherever it leads, without political interference.
Public primary and secondary education is essential to a free, healthy and prosperous society. Public schools need to be supported, encouraged and improved to as great a degree as the federal government can provide. While private and non-public schools are welcome they should in no way damage or detract from the quality of public education.
Restoring a free media
As the Framers were well aware, a free media is critical to maintaining a free society. Presidential bullying, extortion and threats to an independent media must come to an end. Journalists and communicators in all media and on all platforms must be able to pursue, report, analyze and comment on the truth as best they are able to determine it. This is a fundamental to American right as part of the 1st Amendment but it needs to be re-learned and renewed.
America abroad
The Framers of the Constitution gave the power to declare war to Congress, which is where it belongs. When it is necessary for the nation to enter into armed conflict it should do so united and with the advice, consent and approval of representatives of the people and states, who after all, will be providing the blood and treasure required.
Pressing contingencies will always require a quick response. But wars of necessity nonetheless require congressional approval under the Constitution and that requirement must be respected when American lives are being put in harm’s way.
But America should always try to make its way in the world without conflict, violence or threats. War and conflict must always be a last resort. The strength and power of the United States should be vested in a Department of Defense that protects the American people and looks after American interests.
Nonetheless, for all its wealth and power, the United States is a nation among nations and it needs to treat all other nations, large and small, rich and poor, with the respect and dignity they deserve.
The United States needs to repair its relations with its closest neighbors, Canada and Mexico, and earn back the respect, friendship, trade and mutual prosperity it previously enjoyed with them. Their security contributes to the security of the United States.
The United States needs to recommit to its friends and allies of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization and again stand as a pillar for democracy, freedom and peace through strength against aggression, autocracy and tyranny. An attack on any of them is an attack on the United States and should be treated as such.
The United States should return to its previous place in the world by aiding the development, health and welfare of all people, assisting in responding to disasters, promoting democracy, and being a responsible role model and steward of the planet.
The front line of Ukraine is the front line of the United States and should be regarded as such. A peaceful and internationally recognized Ukraine was the victim of unprovoked, unjustified and unacceptable aggression by Russia. The United States needs to totally recommit to the defense, independence and sovereignty of a free, democratic and independent Ukraine, which should be enabled to achieve its victory conditions and pursue its own destiny as its people see fit. The United States should aid Ukraine in defeating Russian aggression and provide whatever material, intelligence and strategic assistance it can offer.
American democracy and opposition to tyranny inspired Ukraine’s Orange Revolution—now Ukraine’s Orange Revolution should inspire America’s Rose Revolution. As the Ukrainian people ejected a Putin puppet, the American people need to now reject another on their own soil.
Borders should never be changed through acts of aggression and invasion and that principle applies to the United States as it does to all nations. And the United States should always support fellow democracies when they are threatened with conquest, invasion or suppression.
Begin the beginning
This is hardly an exhaustive list—indeed, it barely scratches the surface of what needs to be done to make America good—and thereby great—again.
What is more, its suggestions—apart from the constitutional amendments—are not completely original and are in no way radical. They are firmly rooted in the Constitution, the Bill of Rights, the rule of law, democracy and American history.
Nonetheless, perhaps this manifesto can provide at least some ideas for a revolution that will expunge tyranny and restore democracy to the United States of America.
There is much to be done and little time to do it but the American people, when they are mobilized, determined and awake have always shown themselves unstoppable.
The American Rose Revolution should manifest itself in daily actions and commitment, political and personal. It will express itself in elections at all levels.
But it will truly know success when the American people again take possession of their White House and make clear that presidents serve them rather than rule them, when they emerge from the toilet to which Donald Trump has consigned them and regain their place as the owners and arbiters of their home, their White House and their destiny.
That moment will be known when the ugly and oppressive stones of the Trump patio are dug up and smashed and their pieces distributed as souvenirs and Jacqueline Kennedy’s White House Rose Garden is replanted and restored. When those flowers burst into glory again, the American people will know that they have regained their freedom and liberty. It is a goal to be sought and not an easy one to achieve.
But to bring forward that day, let a billion roses bloom.
The time for an American Rose Revolution has arrived.
Coming Jan. 5: The Year Ahead: Swamp or Sunshine? Florida’s choices
Last October 18, President Donald Trump published images that perfectly summarized his worldview in 2025. In a 19-second Truth Social video, a military plane labeled “King Trump” takes off on a runway.
The opening image of President Donald Trump’s Oct. 18 “Truth Social” AI video. (Image: White House)
At the controls is Trump, wearing a an oxygen mask covering his mouth (although not his nose) and most importantly, wearing a crown.
Donald Trump piloting his plane in his Oct. 18 “Truth Social” AI video. (Image: White House)
High above New York City, the aircraft opens its bomb bay doors and drops Trump’s waste on massive crowds of “No Kings” protesters in the streets.
The aircraft dumps its load in President Donald Trump’s Oct. 18 “Truth Social” AI video. (Image: White House)
It fully encapsulated Trump’s attitude: He’s a king, high above all other humans. “We the people” are worthy only of his waste. In his view, Americans’ proper place is at the bottom of his toilet. To put it in personal terms: He doesn’t serve us; he dumps on us.
What President Donald Trump thinks of the American people. An image from his Oct. 18 “Truth Social” AI video. (Image: White House)
And lest he leave any doubt of his view of himself, on Nov. 23, he re-posted an image of himself as an armored king, with Sens. Chuck Schumer (D-NY), Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) and Adam Schiff (D-Calif.) kneeling at his feet and the caption “NONE shall escape his justice.”
Donald Trump as king with conquests in an AI image reposted by the White House. (Image: WH)
This is the attitude with which Trump and the American people go into a year that marks the 250th anniversary of the United States.
It is a year when Trump will either fully impose his reign and sweep away the vestiges of American democracy, constitutionality and law, or the American people will assert themselves and restore government of, by and for the people.
Trump has made this an either/or proposition. As in 2024, by his actions he has a created a situation in which he can only win everything or lose everything. There is no middle ground, no halfway result.
The Great Equalizer
A traditional tarot card depiction of Death. (Art: Wikipedia Commons)
The projections in this look ahead are premised on the assumption that Trump will be in office and command throughout the year. But at 79 years old, that is hardly a given. While Trump may cheat on taxes, he can’t cheat death.
Trump’s physical and mental deterioration have been extensively detailed in media coverage, from the swelling of his ankles, to his dozing off in meetings, to his hand’s discoloration, to his well-documented and unpredictable rages, to his increasingly disjointed and unhinged speeches and social media postings. His doctors routinely give him clean bills of health but in a presidency where lying is equally routine they can be dismissed.
One of the most extensive and seemingly knowledgeable public diagnoses was posted in a 1-minute, 51-second video on Tik-Tok on Dec. 4. A person claiming to be a physical therapist with a doctorate in his field and experience treating geriatric patients with dementia argued that Trump’s obvious dementia and overall physical deterioration are so advanced that he only had three to five months to live, which means he could pass in the March to June timeframe.
If Trump should die in office, Vice President James David “JD” Vance would succeed him. At that point the rest of the year will revolve around the question of whether Vance will continue Trump “policies” and retain Trump’s personnel.
On the presumption that Vance would follow the Constitution the transition should be orderly. However, in personality-based regimes transitions are never smooth and the infighting and maneuvering in a new Vance regime will be spectacular. (A very good depiction of the succession to a dictator is the 2017 movie The Death of Stalin. Something similar can be expected from the Trump regime.)
Another possibility is that Trump suffers a debilitating medical episode, likely a stroke.
On the one hand his handlers may try to hide it, so any prolonged presidential absences should be vigorously probed by Congress and the media.
On the other hand it could be so debilitating the Cabinet has no choice but to invoke the 25th Amendment and take control of government. In this regime nothing less than an event so devastating that it could not be hidden from the public would trigger such action.
Otherwise, among the cultists and sycophants closest to him, his obvious and increasing dementia will be exploited, manipulated and rationalized for as long as possible regardless of the damage it does to the country.
Despite these very real possibilities, in attempting to look ahead at 2026, this analysis will proceed on the assumption that Trump will be in command and control.
Under any circumstances 2026 would be an eventful year.
War?
A view of a US strike on a boat in the Caribbean on Sept. 2, 2025. (Image: WH)
The year may see the United States in a full-blown war with Venezuela—or possibly other countries.
Politically, war is the ultimate distraction, effectively shifting attention from domestic matters and internal turmoil. (During the American Civil War, Union Secretary of State William Seward floated the idea of a war with Britain, France or Spain to distract from turmoil at home. “One war at a time,” answered President Abraham Lincoln.)
For months the United States has been making hostile moves against Venezuela and the government of President Nicolas Maduro, who is also an autocrat by any measure of the term. Trump has been insisting this is an attack on narcotics-smuggling terrorists, hence his attacks on boats in the Caribbean and seizure of an oil tanker. However, actual evidence has not been presented that any of this is related to narcotics and the killing of two survivors of a boat strike on Sept. 2 appears to have been a war crime that was allegedly committed on the orders of Secretary of War Peter Hegseth.
If Trump enters the United States into an all-out, undeclared war with Venezuela, the ups and downs of that conflict will dominate headlines until the conflict is resolved.
But just as Trump has learned so much from Russian President Vladimir Putin, he should also absorb the lesson that what may seem like an easy invasion and quick victory can turn into something much bloodier, unpredictable and protracted.
Epstein’s ghost
Ever since Elon Musk mentioned in June that Trump was in the federal files about sex trafficker Jeffrey Epstein, the files have been a bleeding ulcer for Trump, a painful, oozing wound that won’t go away.
Trump opponents have been hoping that the Epstein files would deliver a knockout blow to Trump’s presidency. Republican members of Congress defected from party discipline to vote to allow their release and thousands of pages were made public on Dec. 19 in response to congressional legislation—and as was to be expected, it appeared that massive redacting had been done to protect Trump.
Then, on Christmas eve, there was a further release of material by former federal prosecutor Jack Smith, which gave rise to lurid but unconfirmed allegations of rape—male and female—murder and infanticide by Trump.
What is year ahead likely to bring in the Epstein affair?
Given Trump’s weathering of other scandals that seemed to be knockout blows like the Hollywood Access tapes or the failed insurrection of January 6, 2021, it’s hard to imagine that even the torrent of Epstein revelations will be much more than a reminder of his corruption. Will it prove that he’s a pedophile? Does anyone doubt that now? Will it reveal a new level of depravity? So what? Will Epstein be proven to have been murdered on his orders? Who’s going to investigate and prosecute? Attorney General Pamela “Pam” Bondi and her Justice Department? Kash Patel and his Federal Bureau of Investigation? Will the utterly subservient Republican-majority Congress investigate and initiate impeachment proceedings? Doubtful. Nor can anyone imagine a weeping and remorseful Trump announcing his resignation in the face of overwhelming evidence.
Aside from further revelations in the year ahead, the Epstein files appear likely to mainly be significant in affording Republican politicians a justification for stepping down from their positions as they dissociate from Trump and the increasingly fracturing Make America Great Again (MAGA) movement. On the other side of the aisle the Epstein evidence will give Democrats a nail to keep driving into Trump’s standing and reputation.
Most of all, though, Epstein revelations are likely to just keep feeding public outrage and disgust with Trump as more evidence of pedophilia, perversion and abuse come to light.
Politically, though it seems unlikely to provide the legal or judicial mid-term knockout blow his critics are seeking.
Semiquincentennial storms
For Americans 2026 marks the 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence and the founding of the country, its semiquincentennial (a term virtually no one is likely to use, despite it being an official designation).
Clearly this will heighten political sensitivities given clashing views of the country and its course.
As with all things, Trump is likely to try to make the anniversary about himself. He just can’t help it, it’s essential to his nature.
While most Americans will want to celebrate the past 250 years and look to a promising future for the country as a whole, Trump will likely do everything he possibly can to put his personal stamp on the event. He will likely try to complete his ballroom in time for the celebration (perhaps hold his first party there on July 4th?).
He has also floated the idea of building a triumphal arch in front of Arlington National Cemetery to glorify himself.
He will no doubt try to personalize the celebration in ways impossible for normal people to conceive at this point.
Nor is he likely to be content merely with hijacking the celebration; he will want to force others to do the same and he may attempt to rewrite history to suit his own preferences.
This is already occurring as the White House Task Force pushes its own artificial intelligence (AI) exhibit of American history, which was created and produced by the conservative PragerU. The exhibit has caused concerns among historians. For example, in an AI video, John Adams uses the phrase “facts do not care about your feelings” a phrase more common to conservative commentator Ben Shapiro than John Adams. (Adams was better known for his phrase: “a nation of laws, not men.”)
As Trump tries to make the 250th anniversary about himself there will also likely be mass demonstrations against his abuses. This raises the possibility that he will exaggerate them as a threat and use the commemoration for a crackdown that laps over into an attempted coup or a military occupation of American cities and imposition of martial law.
There is no doubt that instead of a celebration of unity and pride, the 250th anniversary will be a time of tension and stress with grave dangers to the country that is celebrating its semiquincentennial.
(This is also not to forget that June 14th will mark Trump’s 80th birthday. Last year he celebrated with a $30 million military parade through Washington, ostensibly marking the US Army’s 250th birthday. Without that cover this year, Trump will no doubt find some expensive way to celebrate his birthday and then pile on top of that celebration of self when it comes to the Semiquincentennial.)
FIFA politics
President Donald Trump is awarded the FIFA Peace Prize by FIFA president Gianni Infantino on Dec. 5, 2025. (Photo: White House)
The United States, along with Mexico and Canada will be holding the Fédération Internationale de Football Association (FIFA) World Cup competition from June 11 to July 19. The United States will be hosting 11 of the 16 events in cities from Los Angeles to Miami.
While this is not necessarily a political event in the partisan sense of the term, it will be viewed globally as an example of American attitudes toward the rest of the world.
Trump expressed support for FIFA, calling it a “great event” and comparing it to “three Super Bowls a day for a month.” FIFA attempted to cement his support on Dec. 5 by awarding him a contrived FIFA “peace prize” to flatter his ego.
While soccer is ostensibly apolitical, Trump has threatened to politicize it domestically. He warned he would deploy the National Guard to ensure order in American cities with games or send scheduled games elsewhere if he considers them endangered, specifically naming Seattle.
As he said in the presence of Gianni Infantino, the FIFA president: “If we think there is a problem in Seattle, where there is a liberal mayor… Gianni, can I say we will move the event to some place it will be appreciated and safe?”
Matches are scheduled in Democratic-leaning states like California and New York, so he is clearly thinking of the games in partisan terms, using them as a justification for military deployments or using them as political leverage and this could happen without warning or notice. Given the elaborate logistics and preparations for these games any sudden moves or changes in venue will be tremendously disruptive and potentially result in significant economic losses to the cities that lose their scheduled contests.
(When it comes to global sports events, there will also be a 2026 winter Olympics in February in Italy.)
The G20 Summit
Logo of the 2026 G20 Summit to be held in Miami, Fla.
Capping off the year in December, Trump is scheduled to host the G20 summit of the world’s leading economic powers. Usually these summits revolve around financial affairs, climate change challenges and sustainable development.
This will be an entirely Trump show. The summit is planned to be held in the United States at one of Trump’s properties, the Trump National Doral Miami resort and spa. It will be a major event for Florida (and no doubt a source of vast profit for Trump personally).
Trump has already put his stamp on the event. The US boycotted the previous G20 held in Johannesburg, South Africa, denouncing the country for propagating a “genocide” against white Afrikaners.
“…The South African Government refuses to acknowledge or address the horrific Human Right Abuses endured by Afrikaners, and other descendants of Dutch, French, and German settlers. To put it more bluntly, they are killing white people, and randomly allowing their farms to be taken from them,” Trump raged in a Truth Social post on Nov. 26, 2025.
When it came time for the host head of state to hand over the gavel for the next summit to the next hosting head of state, the US sent an embassy staffer instead. The South Africans rejected this as an insult and breach of protocol.
That was all the excuse Trump needed to disinvite South Africa from the 2026 summit.
“Therefore, at my direction, South Africa will NOT be receiving an invitation to the 2026 G20, which will be hosted in the Great City of Miami, Florida next year. South Africa has demonstrated to the World they are not a country worthy of Membership anywhere, and we are going to stop all payments and subsidies to them, effective immediately,” he posted.
So Trump has already put his stamp on the G20 and if all goes as in the past he can be expected to lord his dominance over the other heads of state, insult and bully them and denigrate their countries and economies—if he deigns to attend in person at all.
But this will be taking place in December and by December, if the rest of the calendar proceeds as planned and Trump is still in office, he may find himself in a very different domestic position, one potentially far less dominant than he’d like to occupy.
The Midterms
A logo for the 2026 Midterm Elections. (Art: AI for TPP/ChatGPT)
This year’s midterms should be viewed as a presidential election, not just elections for a third of the Senate, the entire House of Representatives and state and local offices.
In November 2025 Democrats won stunning victories in races for the governorships of New Jersey and Virginia and the mayoralty of New York City. At the town and county levels they swept other off-year elections across the country. Even in a Tennessee special election in the 7th Congressional District, a Republican victor had a much closer call than the Party would have preferred. Then, on Dec. 9, a Democrat won the mayoralty of Miami, Fla., the first woman in the city’s history and the first Democrat in nearly 30 years.
It all appeared to be an overwhelming, grassroots repudiation of Trump, Trumpism and the Republican Party and a harbinger of far greater losses to come in the 2026 midterms.
“Democrats came out in record numbers, and this is a foreshadow of what we’re going to see next year,” Christina Freundlich, a Democratic strategist who worked on the Virginia lieutenant governor’s race told Politico, expressing a widely held perception.
Under “normal” circumstances that might be expected. Administrations have traditionally lost ground in their first midterm elections, so the momentum could be expected to continue. Polls appeared to overwhelmingly favor Democratic victories.
Trump argued he was not on the ballot in November and blamed the loss on the government shutdown and a lack of Republican fervor.
But if 2025 was a wake-up call for Democrats it was a five-alarm fire for Republicans.
No sooner were the results in than Trump had a very public feud with his formerly loud and fanatical supporter Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-14-Ga.). After agitating to publicly release the Epstein files, she turned on Trump, denounced him and then announced her resignation effective Jan. 5, 2026.
Other congressional Republicans, weary of Trump’s abuse and fearing voter sentiment followed suit. If enough of them resign this year and their districts are subject to special elections that Democrats win, the possibility exists that Trump could lose his Republican majority in Congress even before the midterm elections.
What is more, Trump’s Make America Great Again (MAGA) base appears to be fracturing over the Epstein files and there is no telling what other fault lines are erupting within the regime. There is a strong possibility that in the new year Trump will purge members of his Cabinet or other members of the regime in an effort to scapegoat them for his failures and buy some public approval. As he has shown repeatedly, not even the most subservient subservience or the most extravagant flattery is enough to save anyone he feels like sacrificing.
If these trends simply played out uninterrupted then Democrats would likely sweep the midterm elections and a Democratic House and Senate would likely impeach and probably remove Trump as soon as it took office in 2027.
Midterm gerrymandering: The Big Rig
But as Trump has shown time and again he does not allow trends to play out when they’re unfavorable to him and he is unrestrained, extreme and unpredictable in his interventions.
Susie Wiles, Trump’s chief of staff and political strategist, intends to have “a fun next year,” she told the Moms for Liberty podcast, MomsView on Dec. 9. Wiles intends to deliberately make the midterms a presidential contest because, she said, “so many of those low-propensity voters are Trump voters” and Republicans lose when he’s not on the ballot.
“So, I haven’t quite broken it to him yet, but he’s going to campaign like it’s 2024 again,” she said. “So all these people he helps—he doesn’t help everybody but those he helps, he’s a difference-maker and a turnout machine, so the midterms will be very important to us, so we’ll work very hard to keep the majority.”
But while Wiles may intend to use Trump for conventional campaigning, Trump himself is leaving nothing to chance.
He has already blatantly tried to rig the results with an unprecedented and unconstitutional mid-decade redistricting, arguing that the 2020 census was “rigged.” At his direction Texas agreed to gerrymander its districts to pick up five Republican seats but then California did the same to pick up an equal number of Democratic seats.
As of this writing six states are creating new congressional maps: California, Missouri, North Carolina, Ohio, Texas and Utah. Virginia was beginning the process as was Maryland. It seems appropriate to call his effort “The Big Rig.” (Editor’s note: You read it here first!)
Florida is considering redrawing its maps and the legislature began its first committee hearings. Gov. Ron DeSantis (R) declared himself in favor of redistricting and the Republican legislature is likely to comply, if past is any prologue.
The kind of pressure Trump would assert to get his way was publicly evident in Indiana, whose Hoosiers proved surprisingly stubborn in defending the Constitution.
Trump blasted anti-rig Hoosiers with insults like “RINO” and “WEAK and PATHETIC,” and threatened to run candidates against them in their primary elections.
Although Indianans agreed to consider redistricting, in the end the state Senate rejected it on Dec. 11.
“Misinformation, cruel social media posts, over-the-top pressure from within the state house and outside, threats of primaries, threats of violence, acts of violence. Friends, we’re better than this,” said state Sen. Greg Goode (R-38-Terre Haute) in a speech on the floor before voting against the measure.
It seemed a small payback for Trump’s incitement to lynch his Vice President, Indianan Mike Pence, on Jan. 6, 2021.
But gerrymandering is not the only scenario in which Trump is trying to rig the midterm elections to go his way.
As he has in past elections, Trump is on a crusade against existing forms of voting. On Aug. 18 he went on a lengthy tirade vowing: “I am going to lead a movement to get rid of MAIL-IN BALLOTS, and also, while we’re at it, Highly ‘Inaccurate,’ Very Expensive, and Seriously Controversial VOTING MACHINES…” and declaring “THE MAIL-IN BALLOT HOAX, USING VOTING MACHINES THAT ARE A COMPLETE AND TOTAL DISASTER, MUST END, NOW!!!”
But it’s not just restricting voting access through mail and machine counting that threatens the midterm ballot. Dominion Voting Systems, the company that made the voting machines Trump and his allied pundits attacked for the 2020 election results (and which successfully sued Fox News, Rudy Giuliani and Sidney Powell for defamation), was purchased in October by Scott Leiendecker, a former Republican election official for St. Louis, Mo., and a company he created called Liberty Vote. Dominion (or now, Liberty) machines are used in 27 states.
While Liberty Vote is attempting to reassure customers that the ownership change won’t affect the integrity of the vote count, the fact that it is run by a Republican partisan who is likely to be susceptible to Trump pressure is a cause for concern and could affect the midterm outcome.
Another possibility is election tampering with results through digital or wireless means. Given that false bomb threats forced the evacuation of swing state polling places on Election Day 2024 there has been suspicion that results were altered or affected digitally in some way.
Beyond these measures, if Trump doesn’t like the outcome there are a variety of other actions he might take to illegally alter it.
Scary scenarios
Trump could send in the military to seize machines as was contemplated in 2020. (The full text of his draft order is available for viewing and download at the end of this essay.)
This is likely one reason he was so outraged by the video made by six members of Congress who had served in the military or intelligence services telling servicemembers not to obey illegal orders. If Trump orders military units to seize voting machines, stop voting or lethally attack American voters, he needs them to automatically and unthinkingly obey. But with a military that learned its lessons from the Nazi Holocaust and which swears an oath to protect and defend the United States Constitution, such orders would be illegal—but they are orders Trump and his regime members would likely attempt to execute.
Also, his deployment of military personnel and National Guard units to American cities to ostensibly fight crime could also be used to impose martial law in cities where protests might erupt if he attempts to cancel or pre-empt the elections.
If the military proves unreliable for his purposes he could also use paramilitary units of the Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) directorate of the Department of Homeland Security. These are not subject to the Uniform Code of Military Justice and would be unlikely to defy any orders that would be illegal for the uniformed military.
Taking any of these courses of action risks civil disruption, mass protests, widespread litigation, military mutiny, and, most dangerous of all, civil violence—not to mention that they would simply be illegal. But Trump has legal immunity for official actions, he routinely ignores the law and he has proven himself heedless of consequences.
There will be carrots as well as sticks, of course. On Dec. 17, in his White House address Trump announced bonuses of $1,776 to members of the military to buy their loyalty, or at least silence. He has already proposed a $12 billion bailout to farmers hurt by his cutoff of their markets through punitive tariffs. There will no doubt be other inducements and likely outright bribes—something with which he is familiar—to voters.
But even if the election comes off as planned, the danger doesn’t end there. If Trump doesn’t like the results he could pull another big lie as he did in 2020, declaring that the results were rigged and deny the outcome. Then, 60 courts found his charges baseless. But he persisted nonetheless and even with evidence as compelling as a recording of him pressuring Georgia officials to “find” the votes to overturn the official results, he beat election interference charges. No doubt this will embolden him to do the same in the midterms.
A tsunami of lies, insults and threats, all of it fueled by a torrent of cash, both overt and dark, can be expected to flood America’s airwaves and media, social and otherwise, attacking the outcome if it’s unfavorable. As in 2020 Trump and his accomplices will do everything they possibly can to cast doubt on the count. They will no doubt launch a wave of baseless lawsuits to overturn unfavorable results in key races.
As on January 6, 2021, Trump may attempt to incite a physical prevention of a new Congress taking office, only this time he may try to use the military or ICE agents in place of a mob to overturn the legislative branch and physically prevent members of Congress from being sworn in and taking office. He might try to destroy the Capitol building—again.
In an AI-generated scenario illustration, on President Trump’s orders ICE agents cordon off the United States Capitol on Jan. 3, 2027 to prevent newly-elected members of Congress from convening and taking the oath of office. (AI for TPP/ChatGPT)
If Republicans retain their congressional majority they will likely be the most battered, beaten and bullied victors in history. Trump will expect absolute, unthinking obedience. He will be unrestrained in his threats, even—or especially—to members of his own party. Anyone stepping even an inch out of line will be labeled a “traitor,” as was Greene. Violence and death threats will follow. At some point one or more of those threats will likely be executed and an errant member of Congress or other Republican will be killed, maimed or wounded.
If these scenarios seem extreme or unlikely, one has to reckon with the desperation of Trump and his regime to stay in power. If he loses office he and his accomplices will face a reimposition of real law enforcement. There can be little doubt that not only Trump but his family and his every appointee have crimes to cover up. His billionaire backers not only have tax cuts to protect but every grift, embezzlement and fraud they may have perpetrated under his watch as well.
Steve Bannon sees this clearly and he didn’t mince words: “And I will tell you right now, as God is my witness, if we lose the midterms, if we lose 2028, some in this room are going to prison – myself included. They’re not gonna stop,” he told the Conservative Partnership Institute on Nov. 5. Bannon was referencing Democrats but what Trumpists will really face is the full, impartial machinery of the law, once that machinery is righted and set back in motion.
Steve Bannon addresses the Conservative Partnership Institute on Nov. 5. (Image: YouTube)
That is already fueling a lot of urgency and fear among Trump, the regime and MAGA. Bannon’s solution? “What do we have to counter it with? We have to counter it with more action, more intense action, more urgency. We’re burning daylight.”
If there was any doubt about the impact of the cascade of bad news on Trump himself, it was dispelled during his 20-minute White House address to the nation on Dec. 17. Numerous commentators saw its delivery as evidence of sheer panic. It was as though Trump thought that if he delivered the speech angrily enough, loudly enough and rapidly enough he could bend reality to his own vision where he was perfect, someone else was to blame and America was in a new golden age.
Trump and his accomplices literally cannot afford to lose the midterm elections. That makes them cornered, desperate and very, very dangerous—and the “intense action” Bannon mentioned includes all measures, legal, illegal and at this point, unimaginable.
A new Navalny?
Gov. Gavin Newsom of California. (Photo: Office of Gov.)
Gov. Gavin Newsom (D) of California has emerged as the chief elected official directly opposing Trump, countering his gerrymandering efforts and pointedly mocking him on social media.
While Trump directs his special hatred against former President Joe Biden, it is Newsom who is leading the charge against him and at this point seems like a front-running Democratic presidential candidate for 2028.
It is three years until that election. That’s a long time away, especially in politics. Whether Trump will be a candidate for an unconstitutional third term or whether he will even be in a condition to run cannot be known at this writing.
However, as predicted by The Paradise Progressive, Trump, his regime and his followers are waging a war against Newsom and California.
Newsom’s relative youth, energy, intelligence and charisma recall another politician who fought for democracy in his native land: Alexei Navalny in Russia.
Alexei Navalny in 2006 (photo: Wikimedia Commons/Oleg Kozerev)
Navalny was a lawyer who emerged as an opponent of Vladimir Putin and whose political activism and determined commitment to democracy increasingly threatened Russia’s slide into autocracy. Accordingly, he faced the opposition of Putin and the regime, which first used blatantly false criminal charges and trials against him, then arrests, then an attempted poisoning, then imprisonment in a Siberian penal colony and finally outright murder to end his threat.
Given Trump’s slavish admiration for Putin as a mentor and teacher, Trump could imitate Putin’s methods against Newsom, whether with false charges and investigations or even physical threats like poisoning.
Indeed, Trump’s selective prosecutorial vengeance against his perceived enemies endangers all Democratic or anti-Trump candidates this year. The American public may be treated to the horrifying spectacle of mass prosecutions against legitimate, legally running candidates.
There’s no need to consign this to the realm of conspiracy theory given that Trump revealed his direct orders to prosecute those whom he wanted persecuted in an X-post to Attorney General Pam Bondi on Sept. 20, 2025, which may have been a personal communication that was inadvertently made public.
President Donald Trump’s Sept. 20, 2025 direct order to Attorney General Pam Bondi ordering the prosecution of his perceived enemies and the hiring of lawyer Lindsey Halligan. (Image: Truth Social)
Prosecution and persecution
Bondi, who appears to be the most cowardly, compliant, complicit, feckless, subservient and partisan attorney general in American history, obeyed Trump’s order at that time and will likely obey further orders to prosecute candidates on whatever pretext Trump chooses. Even if the cases are thrown out in court the way the cases against James Comey and Letitia James were, investigations, lawsuits and prosecutions eat up valuable time and money just when candidates need to be campaigning.
What is more, Bondi has directed federal prosecutors to pursue what she views as “extremist groups” that threaten violence. In a Dec. 4 memorandum to federal prosecutors she called for the investigation and pursuit of allegedly extremist groups opposing “law and immigration enforcement;” and expressing “extreme views in favor of mass migration and open borders; adherence to radical gender ideology, anti-Americanism, anti-capitalism, or anti-Christianity; support for the overthrow of the United States Government; hostility towards traditional views on family, religion, and morality; and an elevation of violence to achieve policy outcomes, such as political assassinations.”
It’s a broad brush that could be used to stain virtually any Trump opponent. (The full memo can be read and downloaded at the end of this article.)
All of this could have happened previously in American history but before the emergence of Donald Trump a sense of concern for the welfare of the nation and the integrity of the political process restrained such actions. Even if higher values didn’t prevent this kind of lawfare, the iron law of politics that “what goes around, comes around,” induced some caution in even the most vengeful politicians.
But Trump has shown time and again and particularly on January 6, 2021, he believes no laws apply to him, he has no sense of restraint or limit, and backed by a Supreme Court ruling of official immunity, these kinds of measures are real possibilities in the year ahead, especially if he seems to be losing in the conventional political arena.
Trouble and turbulence
All this will be playing out against a backdrop of rising protests, economic stress, likely increasing violations of basic rights, intensifying immigrant deportations and, as always, Trump’s relentless, unremitting drive for total domination and complete autocracy.
The raids, detentions and deportations are likely to intensify this year because ICE has already picked the low-hanging fruit, having seized the people who actually have criminal records, as was the ostensible purpose of the effort. From there, they next grabbed the people—including American citizens—who were easy to snatch and those trying to comply with legal asylum requirements and proceedings.
But now they still have to fulfill their arbitrary quotas, which Trump has made clear are based more on race than rationality. That means there will likely be deeper, more invasive raids, more street snatchings and more violations of what were once thought to be safe spaces like schools, churches and workplaces, as well as homes.
If the true purpose was to rid the United States of criminal aliens, the effort might ease off as the number of actual criminal aliens go down but that’s not the purpose—the true purpose of this effort is to drive out the foreign-born population of the United States using racial profiling and smearing all aliens, immigrants and migrants as threats, criminals and undesirables. As last year ground to an end the regime was less and less bashful about stating that outright.
Trump has likened immigration to “an invasion” and his enablers, notably Deputy Chief of Staff for Policy Stephen Miller, denounced what the regime characterized as a Democratic plot to flood the country with foreigners so they could get “hooked to welfare and be able to participate in American elections,” as Miller put it in a Nov. 30 interview with Sean Hannity.
But no one put it more bluntly than Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem in an X-posting on Dec. 1 following a meeting with Trump: “I am recommending a full travel ban on every damn country that’s been flooding our nation with killers, leeches, and entitlement junkies,” she wrote.
“Our forefathers built this nation on blood, sweat, and the unyielding love of freedom—not for foreign invaders to slaughter our heroes, suck dry our hard-earned tax dollars, or snatch the benefits owed to AMERICANS.
“WE DON’T WANT THEM. NOT ONE.”
Given this blind, fanatical hatred of foreigners, immigrants and immigration, any slackening of the ICE onslaught is unlikely, even as legitimate targets become harder to find. Indeed, just as Adolf Hitler accelerated the roundup and murder of Jews as the Third Reich began to crumble, so Trump will likely accelerate seizures and detentions if he feels his grip on power—or life—weakening and there is not one of his appointees at any level who will stand up to him.
ICE agents on the ground will be tasked with filling those aircraft and warehouses.
America abroad
Also factoring into domestic politics will be a world increasingly in crisis as Trump threatens new wars and continuously moves to align the United States with Russian interests and Putin’s dictates at the expense of longstanding allies.
The United States of America no longer has a foreign policy. “Policy” is a rational set of directions and guidelines, rationally formulated, taking into account a wide variety of factors and influences. Indeed, so irrelevant is Secretary of State Marco Rubio to the process he was reduced to fiddling with fonts on State Department communications.
Today, America’s relations with the world are determined by one man’s whim and caprice based on his hatreds, rages and greed, without accountability or care for his impacts. Whereas the Constitution gives Congress warmaking powers, under Trump the United States can be committed to conflict based on his opinion or urges of the moment. It has become a country that can go to war on one man’s command, as Adolf Hitler did in Russia, Benito Mussolini did in Greece, Saddam Hussein did in Kuwait and Vladimir Putin did in Ukraine.
Further roiling the waters in addition to wars that might turn the rest of the Western Hemisphere against the United States and moves to detach America from its longstanding ties to Europe and the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, there will be the longer-term impacts of Trump’s isolationism, trade protectionism, unpredictable tariffs and hostility to foreigners of all sorts.
Poorer, sicker, weaker?
The United States might also be hurled into the abyss of sovereign default if it fails to pay its obligations—and Trump is notorious for welching on his obligations. It will certainly plunge deeper into debt. Americans may find themselves in the midst of an economic depression as great or greater than the one suffered in 1929, especially if Trump replaces Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell—whom Trump is threatening to sue—with one of his compliant, unqualified cronies as is expected when Powell’s term ends on May 15. His departure will be a major economic event in 2026.
All of this will impact everyday Americans at the bottom of Trump’s toilet with fewer goods at higher prices, fewer social services and protections, fewer public health protections and vastly more expensive healthcare, and far fewer freedoms and rights.
And Trump will not only simply not care, he will gloat.
As he has in the past, he will also try to shape perceptions to his fantasies—and believe his lies himself.
There is no good that can come from this dictatorship or the objects it pursues. It is irrational, delusional and even deranged. Its long term consequences are without a doubt catastrophic for the United States of America and are headed toward ending the great experiment in freedom that began exactly 250 years ago.
What can everyday Americans do about this?
They are not helpless.
That will be the subject of tomorrow’s post.
To read the full text of Donald Trump’s draft 2020 order seizing voting machines, click below. (Source: January 6 Committee)
Gazing into a crystal ball, not to look to the future but to understand the past. (Art: AI for TPP/ChatGPT)
Nov. 17, 2025 by David Silverberg
Sometimes clearly seeing the future brings no joy. There is such a thing as being too prophetic.
Since 2022, as each year has dawned, The Paradise Progressive has tried to look ahead at domestic political trends and likelihoods in the year to come, trying to objectively think through the direction events were taking. What would be the big stories that would bear watching in the coming days?
But it’s not enough to just make predictions; when the year ends, anyone peering ahead has an obligation to evaluate his or her accuracy and ability as a seer.
Accordingly, in 2023 The Paradise Progressive began grading its own predictions when the year ended, first on an A to F scale and then, last year, as simply “prophetic” or “pathetic.”
It is doing this again this year, if a bit early. There’s still a month and a half to go in 2025 and given this president and regime virtually anything may happen in the next 44 days.
But in a year of momentous events it makes sense to take a pause on the eve of Thanksgiving. People who are able to afford to sit down to a full table, free from fear of sudden seizure or detention, should truly give thanks for the abundance of their blessings.
It is sad and startling to report that the predictions made by The Paradise Progressive at the beginning of 2025, just before Donald Trump was inaugurated for the second time, were horrifyingly accurate and the darkest prospects and most extreme dangers came to pass.
This analysis only includes those firm predictions that can be judged in light of later events, not the many questions and uncertainties that were raised by Trump’s election and inauguration.
Together, these predictions provide a view of what historians will surely record as one of the most—if not the most—grievous years in American history.
What were they? Let us review them together, first the predictions in italics, then the results.
“Trump and his legions can be expected to hit hard and move fast. There will be sweeping disruptions, especially in the first 100 days of the regime, indeed probably even announced in the inaugural address on Jan. 20. Even on his first day, Trump has said he will be a dictator and issue an avalanche of executive orders to—at the very least—encourage fossil fuel exploration and usage, round up migrants and pardon January 6th insurrectionists. But numerous other orders are likely to go much further.”
Trump and his regime knew they needed to act before opposition could coalesce and their measures could be challenged through litigation or legislation. So, as predicted, they hit hard and moved fast.
Indeed, on his first day in office, Trump issued 26 executive orders, covering everything from establishing the Department of Government Efficiency to withdrawing the United States from the World Health Organization and the Paris Climate Accord. As of this writing, he has issued a total of 212 executive orders. Some have been challenged in court and remain unresolved. But they nonetheless upended the United States government and the lives of all Americans.
Of the three matters explicitly named, when it came to fossil fuel exploitation, Trump declared a national energy emergency and prioritized oil exploration on federal lands—including in the eastern Gulf of Mexico. When it came to rounding up migrants, the Trump regime initiated what has amounted to an ethnic and racial war against Hispanics and all immigrants, sweeping up US citizens of long duration in its dragnet. When it came to the insurrection of Jan. 6, 2021, on his first day in office Trump pardoned or commuted the sentences of the insurrectionists—and he has issued over 1,600 pardons for all kinds of federal criminals and miscreants since.
“It will be a year when Donald Trump attempts to dominate all thought, action, law, media, policy, and government and where he fails to do this personally, his cultists, followers and enablers will work on his behalf and toward his ends.”
That certainly proved prophetic. The second Trump administration not only pursued total dominance in all areas of government, it initiated a cultural revolution that attempted—and continues to attempt—a brutish cultural assault, from bullying and extorting institutions of higher learning to stop free inquiry, to suppressing critical media through threats and litigation, to disparaging and canceling individual artists and performers.
If any one act expressed this cultural revolution more than any other, it was Trump’s takeover of the Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts in Washington, DC, having himself named chairman of its board and even floating the idea of re-naming it for himself or his wife, neither of whom had any connection to it, its culture or its mission.
“This regime will be characterized by pettiness, cruelty, hatred, prejudice, rage, disparagement, racism, misogyny, and criminality. It will rule through threats, intimidation and defamation. It will be corrupt to its very marrow.”
This prophecy was fulfilled in so many ways that listing them would be exhausting—and redundant. Any American can recite a litany of Trump regime outrages, offenses and crimes. All one has to do is look at Trump’s Truth Social postings to document this prediction. What is more, every day brings new and often bizarre examples.
Fear has now been institutionalized as a governing principle and the regime is at war with the people whom previous presidents once served.
“For everyday consumers, anti-immigration measures will mean higher prices and harsher inflation and with national anti-immigrant measures coming on top of the ones that Florida has already enacted, the price at checkout is likely to be steep—to say nothing of the human suffering that will underly it.”
Prices are rising steeply, as anyone can see from their grocery bills (the price of coffee was up 18.9 percent in September). But it’s not just anti-immigration measures that are causing this; a major driver is Trump’s tariffs (more about them below).
Government-issued statistics on matters like inflation can no longer be automatically considered reliable. In August, Trump fired Erika McEntarfer, head of the Bureau of Labor Statistics when he disliked a revised report on the unemployment rate. The prolonged government shutdown and purges of vital government officials severely weakened the federal government data-gathering abilities.
This affected even vital functions like setting the Federal Reserve’s prime interest rate. When Chairman Jerome Powell held a press conference on Oct. 29, he acknowledged the lack of reliable data for Federal Reserve decisionmaking and likened it to driving in fog.
“What do you do if you’re driving in the fog?” he asked. “You slow down.” In this context he meant the Federal Reserve might not change interest rates at its next meeting.
However, a variety of sources, both government and non-government put the real current inflation rate at 3 percent.
When it came to immigration, The Paradise Progressive predicted:
“…the Trump roundup can be expected to be spectacular, very public and as harsh as possible. It will likely be conducted as a television spectacle, a reality show intended to send a message of mercilessness to the world that discourages all immigration, legal and otherwise.”
This prediction is horrifically borne out daily as stories emerge of brutality by masked agents of the Department of Homeland Security’s directorate of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE). In every corner of the United States, people suspected of illegal residence are being snatched off the streets and in courtroom corridors by anonymous men without warrants, in unmarked vehicles, with dubious justifications. Then they’re whisked away into a gulag of unaccountable and untraceable detention facilities and denied due process or the opportunity to prove their innocence—or citizenship, or legal resident status.
Lest residents of Southwest Florida believe that they are immune, their communities are in the crosshairs too, as ICE agents descend on the town of Immokalee, round up agricultural workers and simply stop vehicles on Southwest Florida roads with people they deem suspicious or who are simply the wrong color.
“For the first time there will be concentration camps on American soil and Americans will see them on their television screens.”
Of all the 2025 predictions, this one came most horrifyingly and surprisingly true. That there would be concentration camps for the regime’s undesirables was entirely predictable. But The Paradise Progressive did not foresee that the first of these camps, the archetype and model for an American gulag, would be established in its own back yard, in Collier County, Florida, in the heart of the Everglades and that it would be designated “Alligator Alcatraz.”
“These roundups and deportations will likely be fought in the courts but with its placement of obedient judges, the regime will probably plow through the court system the same way Trump plowed through his criminal cases. Those cases that reach the Supreme Court will be adjudicated by a Trump-appointed majority of justices—and he may gain more appointments as sitting justices retire.”
The US courts have proved an occasional impediment to Trump’s arbitrary actions but they also proved little more than speed bumps on the road to autocracy. Nonetheless, some of the most egregious actions were at least delayed or reconsidered as they were tried, appealed and judged.
The judiciary, established as a co-equal branch of government, was intended by the Founders as an important check and balance on the other two branches. It has not always gotten things right.
But, extraordinarily, the six-member majority of the current Supreme Court, three of whose justices were appointed by Trump and confirmed in his first administration, has not only aided, abetted and enabled dictatorship but specifically and actively sought to confirm and elevate a Trump dictatorship. They want him as king and they’ve done everything they can to ensure his unfettered rule—not governance, but rule.
Of all this Supreme Court’s decisions—and that includes its 2022 overturn of Roe v. Wade—the most fundamentally damaging one came with its ruling in Trump v. United States in 2024 holding that presidents are immune from the law in their official actions. That ruling, which overturned the concept of equal justice under law, the bedrock of American legal principle, enabled the wild, unchecked dictatorial rampage that characterized 2025.
“If Trumpflag-waving Southwest Floridians think they will be spared crippling inflation and a scarcity of goods, they should think again. At the very least the prices for the Canadian-made replacement parts for their sticker-covered pickup trucks are going to rise to the point where they’ll have to jury-rig their swamp buggies like Cubans keeping their 1959 Chevvies on the road.”
This absolutely came true. Tariffs have placed an enormous non-tax burden on the American consumer, according to both government and non-government estimates.
The rise in prices of common food items in September 2025. (Chart: CNBC)
“The accession of Donald Trump to the presidency will mean the return of what has been called ‘Trumpality,’ the Trump worldview or mindset in which objective truth has little to no value.”
Further,
“But in a broader sense, the imposition of Trumpality in the coming year will be pervasive and likely crippling to a United States whose whole success has been built on determining and responding to reality.”
Also,
“That delusional thinking will not only likely be evident this year, it will be imposed from above. It will likely affect everything from public health to weather forecasting. It will pervade the media whether mainstream, social or ideological as they both report what he asserts no matter how false and acquiesce to his version of events to avoid retaliation or retribution.”
Donald Trump’s war on reality and the media was aided and abetted by his billionaire supporters, who snapped up media properties in order to impose the Trump agenda from corporate boardrooms.
The First Amendment was not violated because Congress made no law abridging freedom of the press but the entire business infrastructure undergirding independent America media was undermined and subverted. Trump-obedient billionaires traded media properties among themselves like Pokéman cards.
The fiercely independent Washington Post of Donald and Katherine Graham became the cringing organ of Jeff Bezos, blocking the editorial board’s endorsement of Kamala Harris, cheering on Trump’s destruction of the White House East Wing, and banning alternative viewpoints from its opinion pages. The once-proud CBS television network of Edward R. Murrow and Walter Cronkite became the Trump cheerleading squad headed by Bari Weiss, a partisan, far-right columnist with no broadcast experience. The New York Times, the British Broadcasting Corporation, Wall Street Journal and over 20 media organizations were threatened by billion dollar lawsuits for reporting and broadcasting facts that Trump didn’t like. Social media platforms like Facebook ripped down their community standards to allow disinformation postings and Trump propaganda.
Many media controls had been imposed to protect the public against dangerous disinformation being spread during the COVID pandemic of 2020-2022. But that changed too, as The Paradise Progressive predicted.
“The opposition to vaccines and public health measures as evidenced by the nomination of Robert F. Kennedy Jr., as Secretary of Health and Human Services, has the potential to wipe out a century of medical progress and scientific advancement in promoting public health and replace it with a brew of conspiracy theories, disbelief and even outright superstition.”
After a horrifically botched response to the COVID outbreak based on Trump’s delusional assertions that “It’s going to disappear. One day, it’s like a miracle, it will disappear,” and his insistence that it didn’t matter, national science and public health staged a comeback under President Joe Biden. But as predicted, the Trump regime did all it could to undermine and subvert that, cutting jobs, dismissing scientists and experts and altering findings at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the Food and Drug Administration.
“The war on equality in all forms is almost certain to take place on many fronts this year.”
As predicted, the war on basic equality as well as diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) in all forms—already well underway in Florida—erupted with new ferocity during the year, with it being used as a club against higher educational institutions and corporations alike who faced extortionate fines and penalties for supporting equality in hiring, teaching and thinking. It was extended to the military by Secretary of War Peter Hegseth, who dismissed high-ranking female officers and eradicated monuments to black service people and heroes both at home and abroad.
“The most obvious possible Democratic presidential candidate to challenge Trump in 2028 (if there’s an election and if Trump runs again) is Gov. Gavin Newsom of California.”
And,
“The world can expect a massive Trumpist war against Newsom and the state of California starting this year and every year that Trump is president.”
Sure enough, Trump, who persisted in calling Newsom “Newscum,” embarked on a campaign of vilification and disparagement. But he didn’t predict—and The Paradise Progressive didn’t foresee—that Newsom would hit back with a campaign of his own that turned Trump’s social media postings against him with humor and pointedly funny parodies.
With his outspokenness and determination, Newsom emerged as the leader of the resistance among elected officials. He called out Trump’s autocratic moves for what they were and took concrete steps to counter them. And what were those autocratic moves? The Paradise Progressive predicted them too.
“Indeed, throughout the country expect attacks aimed at denying Democrats any possibility of ever winning any election again at any level, whether through ballot access denial or election interference in Democratic districts and cities, especially, in response to opposition to anti-migrant roundups and deportations and possible ‘sanctuary’ cities.”
The most blatant and egregious election interference was Trump’s attempt to get states to gerrymander district lines in mid-decade in order to deny Democrats seats in Congress in the 2026 elections.
The Paradise Progressive foresaw the effort but not the specific means—the idea of a mid-decade redistricting was so bizarre and unconstitutional it was beyond imagining at the outset of the year. The state of Texas immediately redrew its lines and other Trumpist states are doing the same. In Florida Gov. Ronald DeSantis (R) said he was open to the idea but concluded that Republicans wouldn’t gain that many seats. Still, as of this writing the notion hasn’t entirely been rejected.
Newsom understood the threat and launched a counterattack in California, pushing through a referendum on redistricting and proceeding to redistrict the state to counter Texas’ effort. Other Democratic states may follow.
However the Trumpist gerrymander turns out nationally, it was indicative of Trump’s determination to rig the 2026 election, stay in power no matter what, and deny Americans a genuine say in their government, as predicted at the outset of the year.
As the year began, The Paradise Progressive noted that a new triumvirate had emerged to dominate the world. In a subsequent post, it theorized about the possibility that Trump, Russian President Vladimir Putin and Chinese President Xi Jinping could conspire to divide the world between them and support each other’s expansionist goals and territorial ambitions. (Warning: A Trump-Putin-Xi conspiracy theory.)
But just as Rome’s triumvirate didn’t last, neither did today’s. The Paradise Progressive predicted that too.
“But also militating against the survival of this triumvirate is Trump’s inveterate lying and his lifetime record of welching on commitments and contracts. Just as a Mafia loan shark doesn’t take kindly to a deadbeat borrower, Putin and his mafia-like siloviki won’t take kindly to Trump reneging on whatever agreement they had that put him in office. The embers of this conflagration already seem to be sparking.”
What The Paradise Progressive did not foresee was the degree to which Trump used international trade tariffs as wildly and whimsically as he did, imposing and lifting them without notice or explanation. He tried to use them to punish Brazil for enforcing its laws against its own would-be dictator and Trump protégé, Jair Bolsonaro. He imposed them on Canada because the province of Ontario dared to run a television ad he didn’t like. He imposed them on China, then lifted them, then altered them, then reimposed them and then lifted them again after a phone call with President Xi Jinping. There’s no telling where they’ll stand tomorrow.
All these tariffs, which Trump regarded as a cost-free form of revenue, were in fact a form of consumer tax and drove up consumer prices, exactly as predicted.
“At least initially, this year, it’s likely to result in higher prices across the board and scarcity of goods as these men’s rivalries take the form of trade wars.”
Unforeseen was Trump’s war against Venezuela. At the beginning of the year it was Canada, Panama and Greenland that seemed to be in Trump’s crosshairs. But then American forces started destroying what were purported to be drug-smuggling boats off the coast of Venezuela, a campaign that steadily escalated.
As this is written American forces are gathering in the Caribbean in what appears to be preparation for an assault on Venezuela. But history provides a note of caution. Like Adolf Hitler’s invasion of Russia, or Saddam Hussein’s invasion of Kuwait, or Vladimir Putin’s invasion of Ukraine, a unilateral, Trump-commanded American assault on Venezuela has within it the possibility of a regime-changing catastrophe—and that regime very well might be Donald Trump’s.
“As the year dawns the two biggest local political stories in Southwest Florida concern criminal investigations and court cases.”
“In Collier County, on Nov. 7, multiple federal agencies searched the properties of Francis Alfred “Alfie” Oakes III, the extremely conservative, outspoken and politically active farmer and grocer.”
Further,
“An easy prediction for 2025 is that it will be a major story in Southwest Florida when a public announcement is made in this case.”
Indeed it was a major story but the outcome was different than anticipated. Oakes was never charged with any crime and the heavy hand of the law fell instead on Steven Veneziano Jr., an Oakes Farms vice president. Veneziano and six other defendants pleaded guilty to defrauding the Coronavirus Food Assistance Program by falsifying crop records.
“In Lee County to the north, resolution of accusations against Lee County Sheriff Carmine Marceno for possible money laundering and misappropriation of funds will be another major political story for 2025.”
“Hey Carmine, pay attention,” Romano stated in an October TikTok video directed to Marceno. “So, word on the street from your own people, a lot of your own people, is that [Anthony] Lomangino, [a major donor to both Trump and Marceno] and Pam Bondi, the Attorney General of the United States, is gonna take all this, whatever’s happened, and put it on the shelf for you. Is that true? Answer me, answer the public. Is that true?”
Since The Florida Trident report, there have not been any publicly reported developments in the case. Marceno is reportedly thinking of running for Congress in Florida’s 19th Congressional District.
As with the Oakes affair, Marceno’s ultimate fate may be resolved in the year to come.
“The prospect for 2025 is for DeSantis to keep governing the state, with an eye to his post-gubernatorial opportunities. But a position in the Trump regime seems unlikely to be one of them.”
This too turned out to be prophetic. Despite some positions being floated, DeSantis received no offers (at least none publicly announced or acknowledged) from Donald Trump. Their animus seemed to recede when Trump came to open the Alligator Alcatraz concentration camp in July and joked that “We had a little off period for a couple of days, but it didn’t last long.” But there was never any evidence of a deeper thawing of relations or a place for DeSantis in the regime in the days that followed.
When it came to the people of Florida as a whole, The Paradise Progressive predicted:
“This population will also be less healthy than in the past as public health protections are dismantled and vaccinations dismissed. Public health will be in the hands of anti-vaxxers, both nationally (Robert Kennedy Jr., as Secretary of Health and Human Services) and statewide (Florida Surgeon General Joseph Ladapo).”
As though destroying defenses against childhood diseases and epidemics was insufficient, in May the state of Florida decided to wage war against dental hygiene by banning the addition of decay-preventing fluoride in community water, a move that was preceded by the Board of Commissioners of Collier County in February 2024.
When it came to the state legislature,
“Once again DeSantis will be ruling over a subservient, super-majority legislature that will likely do his bidding on all things with the exception of paving over state parks.”
However,
“There’s less incentive to follow the DeSantis ‘line,’ whatever that may be in the coming year but that doesn’t mean they won’t follow a basically Make America Great Again (MAGA) ideology.”
That prediction plays out every day. But another prediction has already come true:
“Of course, Trump will take no responsibility for any of this. He will no doubt blame the weakened Democrats and ‘far left Marxist radicals’ for any problems he causes. If the past is prologue, Fox News and the MAGA faithful will buy it.”
Unexpected—and inspiring
The Paradise Progressive did not cover or make predictions in the off-year gubernatorial elections in Virginia, New Jersey or the mayoral race in New York City. However, those elections proved to be stunning repudiations of Trump rule and the MAGA program even though he frantically denied that he was on the ballot and blamed the debacle on the government shutdown and lack of Republican fervor.
Nor did the repudiations occur only in those major races. Across the country, in towns, cities and counties that held elections there was a marked shift away from Trumpism and the Republican Party in what amounted to a blue wave.
The Paradise Progressive also did not anticipate the resistance to tyranny, the grassroots organizing and popular outrage that led to national “Hands Off” and “No Kings” protests that attracted progressively larger and larger crowds.
Just how impressive this development was could be seen in Naples, Fla., an otherwise deeply Trumpist town, where each event brought out more and more people in what amounted to a massive turnout for the area—and throughout Southwest Florida in places not otherwise known for their activism, like Port Charlotte and Sanibel.
But while enormous crowds turned out in major cities, perhaps the most impressive demonstration occurred in rural Okeechobee, Fla., far from large gatherings or other “No Kings” protests. There, Linda Winner, a grandmother who had never demonstrated in any protest throughout her 76 years took a stand.
“I grew up in the ‘60s and ‘70s watching all the protests, and so I said, if I’m ever going to do it, it better be now, I might not get another chance,” she told reporter Eileen Kelley of WGCU. So she stood alone on a street corner for three hours holding a “no kings” sign,
She explained her action to her son in North Carolina, who disagreed with her. “I called him to confirm that he knew that his mother loved America, to make sure that he understood that my protest today was not because I didn’t love America, but because I did,” she said.
Standing on her street corner she received a few fingers from passing motorists but also a lot of support and was treated to a free lunch at a nearby restaurant.
When the Linda Winners of the country take to the streets alone to fight dictatorship it shows that Americans still value democracy, freedom and are willing to resist—at all levels, in all places and at all ages. When they do that Americans might just all be winners.
What will this mean in the coming year?
That is something which it will take an entirely different essay to examine. But that the examination will be made at the beginning of 2026 is one prophecy almost certain to come true.
Linda Winner takes her lone stand for democracy in Okeechobee, Fla., on “No Kings” day, Oct 18, 2025. (Photo: WGCU/Eileen Kelley)
Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis envisions a state run immigration force, complete with its own police force and detention camps, that operates largely outside federal rules. (Immigration and Customs Enforcement)
By David Silverberg
Mega-farmer Francis Alfred “Alfie” Oakes III addresses the camera as massive watermelons come rolling down a conveyor belt at one of his farms in Collier County. Behind him are workers, all of them Hispanic, rapidly picking up the melons and putting them in large bins.
“We’re loading as quickly as we can,” Oakes explains in a video he uploaded to Facebook on April 28. “We couldn’t do that without the help of this amazing team here.”
He continues his praise of immigrant workers, whom he says are superior to the American labor force that used to work his family’s farms.
Farmer and MAGA supporter Alfie Oakes extols the virtues of immigrant labor (Facebook/Alfie Oakes)
“They really do so much more of an amazing job than what we call the ‘domestic’ workers that we used to get 30 years ago when I started in this business,” Oakes says. “That’s why we can grow a 500 or 600-acre field and load 40 or 50 semi loads a day because these guys really know how to get it done. They’re true masters of their trade.”
It might be surprising to hear such pro-immigrant talk from Oakes, who is well-known as an ultra-conservative, pro-Donald Trump activist and local Republican kingpin. Trump, after all, has relentlessly attacked immigrants over the past decade, claiming they come from prisons and insane asylums, and has made deporting them en masse a cornerstone of his second term in the White House.
In the video, Oakes, who owns the Seed to Table supermarket in Naples, seems to be telegraphing a plea to Trump and Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) to leave his business alone in those deportation efforts. He says all the migrants who work for him are documented, but that hasn’t always been the case – in 2014, more than 100 of his employees were arrested for possessing false immigration papers.
Clearly Trump heard the pleas of farmers like Oakes who rely on immigrant labor, as earlier this month he did an abrupt about-face on his mass deportation plans.
“Our great Farmers and people in the Hotel and Leisure business have been stating that our very aggressive policy on immigration is taking very good, long time workers away from them, with those jobs being almost impossible to replace,” he wrote June 12 on social media.
After so many years of relentless demonization, Trump was suddenly acknowledging that immigrants – including undocumented workers – have economic value in America. Shortly thereafter he announced the deportation effort would be aimed primarily at America’s cities, the “Democrat Power Center,” as he called it.
Migrants work at one of Oakes’ farms. (Facebook/Alfie Oakes)
Trump’s admission only echoed what many economists and immigration experts have been saying all along: Migrant labor, rather than hindering the economy, is actually vital to it.
But there’s been no such concession by Gov. Ron DeSantis, and no sign his mission to make Florida the national leader in rounding up immigrants has lost any steam. “We’re leading,” DeSantis said during a May 12 press conference in Tampa. “I think others really need to do more.”
Florida already has the country’s largest number of local agreements to assist federal deportation, according to ICE, and the governor has even bigger plans. At that same presser DeSantis unveiled his “Immigration Enforcement Operations Plan” detailing his administration’s vision of a new state-run immigration enforcement system to “circumvent federal agency bureaucracy” and essentially operate on its own rules.
The 37-page plan paints a vision of immigrant holding camps where thousands of arrested immigrants would be detained in jails as well as tents and other makeshift facilities (“soft-side detention”) that it specifically notes may be built and run by for-profit prison companies. And it’s all part of the state’s effort to assist “President Trump’s fight against the ‘deep state’ within federal agencies,” according to the plan.
And DeSantis, who didn’t respond to an interview request, has a pot of taxpayer money at his disposal for the effort. In February, he signed a bill into law allocating $298 million in state funds toward the effort, with the money going toward the hiring of 50 law enforcement officers and detention facilities, among other things.
Uthmeier, center, walks the “Alligator Alcatraz” site with state troopers in his X video. (X/Attorney General James Uthmeier)
A very dramatic early implementation of the plan is so-called “Alligator Alcatraz” — a detention camp of large tents and trailers in a little-used airport facility located in the environmentally protected Everglades of eastern Collier County expected to hold 3,000 immigrants. The prison is estimated to cost some $450 million annually to run, with funding expected from the Federal Emergency Management Administration.
“There’s not much waiting for [immigrant detainees] but alligators and pythons,” said Florida Attorney General James Uthmeier in a June 19 X post. “There’s nowhere to go, nowhere to hide.”
The controversial project is moving at lightning speed. Its opening is expected today, with a visit to the site from Trump to mark the occasion, but a lawsuit filed against DeSantis by environmental groups on Friday aims to block its opening. “This scheme is not only cruel, it threatens the Everglades ecosystem that state and federal taxpayers have spent billions to protect,” said Eve Samples, executive director of Friends of the Everglades, which filed the lawsuit along with the Center for Biological Diversity.
At the same time, the Trump Administration has systematically removed legal status for well over a million formerly documented immigrants – from countries including Haiti, Cuba, Venezuela, and Nicaragua – that will provide human fodder for camps like “Alligator Alcatraz.”
Humanitarian and environmental concerns aside, multiple economic and immigration experts interviewed by the Florida Trident warn that mass sweeps, detentions, and deportations would do to the state’s economy precisely what Oakes fears it would do to his own massive farm operation.
Bring it to ruin.
The need for immigrants
Michael Collins has spent his life in the hospitality industry, doing everything from making beds to running hotels for Hyatt and Wyndham. He’s also interim director of resort and hospitality management at Florida Gulf Coast University’s Lutgert College of Business – and he told the Trident that a major sweep of immigrants in the state would be financially catastrophic.
“Bottom line, our business could not work at full capacity without foreign workers,” he said. “Next time you’re in a restaurant you might have a two hour wait to be seated, if not for them.”
The Department of Homeland Security, under Kristi Noem, promoted “Alligator Alcatraz” with this AI-generated image. (X/DHSgov)
Temporary workers in the hospitality industry are covered under H2B visas for non-agricultural workers, giving them permission to work up to three years in the United States. When it comes to Collier County as an example, Collins has a precise count: 661 H2B workers were admitted to the county for the first half of the federal fiscal year, which began in October. Of those, 85 percent were in the food preparation and serving business, while others worked in hotels, personal healthcare, and spas.
“That’s in one county,” Collins pointed out. “Double it up in Lee, Sarasota, and go to the east coast.”
Florida’s iconic citrus industry provides another example of the state’s reliance on immigrant workers, according to Florida Immigrant Coalition spokesman Thomas Kennedy.
“Florida in the 1990s produced 240 million boxes of oranges each year,” said Kennedy, whose coalition represents 83 groups that advocate for immigrants. “This year it’s 12 million. There are issues of land use, a lot of growers leaving the industry, citrus greening disease, hurricanes, the occasional drought, the willingness to make some money by selling land to developers—that’s all happening. But it’s silly to pretend that there isn’t a labor issue. [The growers] talk about the impact of tariffs but they also talk about it being increasingly difficult to find workers that are economically viable for them.”
He noted Florida’s slowing population growth, with more young people moving out of the state and birth rates in decline. “Legal or not legal, any population boost will be from immigration,” Kennedy said.
The response by state lawmakers to the need for more of these workers has been a flurry of proposals to drop restrictions on child labor and expand the hours that school-enrolled students can work part-time jobs. Even though these measures failed in the legislative session, Kennedy said they reflect the strains of an economy in need of workers.
The DeSantis Administration has “no feasible alternative if they went through with their mass deportation effort,” Kennedy said. “The thing they will never do is admit that they need more immigrants in the state.”
Roka (FGCU/Center for Agribusiness)
When it comes to the broader agricultural sector, Social Security data shows the stereotypical perception that most of the workforce is undocumented is erroneous, according to Fritz Roka, director of FGCU’s Center for Agribusiness. Most migrant agricultural workers are authorized to come into the United States under the H2A visa program, which produced what Roka calls “a radical shift” in the number of documented workers versus undocumented workers after its launch in 1986 under President Ronald Reagan.
Oakes, the Collier County farmer, made the same point in his video.
“All the workers here are H2A workers that come over here on a work visa from Mexico over here for maybe five months,” he said.
Oakes is especially sensitive to this after 105 of his workers were arrested in a 2014 raid by Florida Division of Insurance Fraud. The workers were charged with multiple crimes, including fraudulent documentation, use of personal identification, identity theft and workers’ compensation fraud.
While most of those charged were released on their own recognizance and given probation, he has said that ever since he’s been compliant with H2A and E-Verify, the federal database that tracks worker legal status.
But in the Trump sweeps, holders of legitimate visas and green cards are not immune from arrest, said Fort Myers immigration attorney Indera DeMine. People are being detained when they report for what were once routine meetings with authorities, or at traffic stops, or for lapsed drivers’ licenses, she said, and then transferred from facility to facility so that family and counsel can’t contact them.
“What will we be left with?”
Evidence of an aggressive targeting of workers in Florida is mounting. In Brevard County, ICE agents have raided construction and landscaping crews, according to Fox 35. In the Florida Keys, a roofing company owner (and Trump supporter) wept on camera during an NBC6-Miami interview after ICE took six of his workers, five of whom he said had valid work permits.
Attorney DeMine (DeMine Immigration Law Firm)
Like the Keys roofing company case, DeMine said she’s seen instances where documented immigrants are being targeted.
“What we’re seeing is an out-of-control targeting of immigrants, not just the undocumented,” DeMine related. “We’re certainly seeing an uptick in removals and detentions. … If [her clients] didn’t have a criminal history they would be released on their own recognizance, or given probation. Now there’s less discretion.”
While documented workers aren’t being targeted en masse, the Trump Administration has moved the goalposts in its deportation effort by stripping documented status from more than one million immigrants who previously had legal status. The U.S. Supreme Court in May allowed the administration to move more than half a million immigrants here on humanitarian parole from Haiti, Venezuela, Cuba, and Nicaragua – many of them living in Florida – into the undocumented ranks, making them fair game to be swept up. Just this past Friday, the Trump Administration announced it was stripping temporary protective status for some 500,000 Haitian immigrants, setting them up for round-ups, detention, and deportation back to their home country rife with hunger, crime, and chaos.
The Trump Administration just paved the way to round up a half million Haitians for deportation. (Immigration and Customs Enforcement)
Combined with the federal effort, DeMine said she finds the prospect of the governor’s immigration enforcement plan – with its vision of mass roundups and camps run by a largely unregulated state force – nothing short of horrifying both in terms of constitutional rights and the state economy.
“It threatens to strip people of their dignity, due process, and protections afforded under the U.S. Constitution,” she said. “It disregards international human rights standards and puts Florida at risk of becoming a state known for hostility and intolerance.
“What will we be left with? … Healthcare, agriculture, landscaping, hospitality and so many other businesses are so reliant on the immigrant workforce and no one in our government seems to be thinking of that.”
About the author: David Silverberg is a veteran reporter who covered Congress, defense, and homeland security during a 30-year journalism career in Washington D.C. As a freelance writer, his work has been published by Mother Jones, Gulfshore Business, and the Naples Press.
Workers on a Tallahassee construction site are rounded up by ICE and law enforcement officers for screening and detention on Thursday, May 29. (Photo: ICE)
May 30, 2025 by David Silverberg
A state proposal for widespread, unregulated roundups of foreign-origin aliens may improperly favor a private, for-profit Florida-based security firm with financial ties to Tom Homan, the Trump regime’s “border czar” (more formally, White House Executive Associate Director of Enforcement and Removal Operations).
The proposals are contained in Florida’s Immigration Enforcement Operations Plan (henceforth referred to as “the Plan”), which was unveiled by Gov. Ron DeSantis (R) on May 12. (The full Plan, with some redaction, is available for viewing and download at the end of this article.)
“In support of President Trump’s fight against the ‘deep state’ within federal agencies, the State of Florida with a waiver of certain federal regulations could circumvent federal agency bureaucracy,” states the Plan, which then goes on to list possible actions.
The Plan aims to deal with the challenges caused by a swift, massive roundup of people of foreign origin suspected of having criminal records, lacking documentation, or having lost temporary protected status to stay in the United States.
Among the actions proposed is waiving “federal detention facility requirements” so that detainees picked up in a massive sweep of Florida migrants, immigrants and foreigners can be housed in non-standard shelters like tents. Currently, federal detainees are held in facilities that meet National Detention Standards (NDS).
The Plan argues that NDS limits the number of facilities where detainees can be held and in Florida some state and county facilities don’t meet NDS standards.
“Waiving select requirements would significantly increase the State’s capacity to detain individuals,” states the Plan. If the standards are suspended, the state would be allowed to hold more people more rapidly and “pave the way to set up soft-side detention as needed and desirable”—i.e., house them in tents.
If the state cannot build out this holding capacity on its own, the Plan envisions turning to private companies to provide additional space. As the Plan puts it, the state could “Utilize existing logistics vendors to establish additional detention space. If the State chooses to forgo the federal detention sites as well as the federal detention standards, logistics vendors are prepared to rapidly deploy detention facilities statewide.”
The ‘vendors’
Florida is currently home to seven privately-run, for-profit prisons, the most of any state.
“Before he joined the administration, border czar Tom Homan earned an undisclosed amount in fees consulting for a division of the Geo Group, one of two companies that operates the vast majority of the nation’s immigrant detention facilities, according to the disclosure, which was released last week,” stated the article, written by reporter Douglas MacMillan and researcher Aaron Schaffer.
It continued: “The filing, which has not been previously reported, did not specify what work Homan performed. The document said Geo paid him more than $5,000 during the two years preceding his government appointment in January. Ethics rules do not require any more specific disclosure, and the amount Homan received could be far higher.”
In response to Washington Post questions, Abigail Jackson, a White House spokesperson, told the Post that Homan adhered to “the highest ethical standards” and on taking office had agreed to recuse himself “from any involvement, discussion, input, or decision of any future government contracts that may be awarded.”
The pace of detention, removal and deportation operations is picking up, as confirmed by a statement from the Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) directorate of the Department of Homeland Security on May 29.
At the time ICE announced replacement of two of its top officials in order to “support its increasing operational tempo.”
This could be interpreted to mean that the two officials replaced, Kenneth Genalo, who headed Enforcement and Removal Operations, and Robert Hammer, the head of ICE’s Homeland Security Investigations office, were not rounding up enough people fast enough for the administration’s liking.
Confirming the administration’s intentions were Stephen Miller, White House deputy chief of staff and homeland security advisor, and Homan himself.
Miller, in an interview with Sean Hannity on Fox News, said that “Under President Trump’s leadership, we are looking to set a goal of a minimum of 3,000 arrests for ICE every day.”
Homan confirmed this in several media appearances. “We’ve got to increase these arrests and removals,” he said on Fox’s “America’s Newsroom.”
“The numbers are good, but I’m not satisfied. I haven’t been satisfied all year long,” he said, repeating his displeasure in an appearance on the CBS News show, “The Takeout.”
While 3,000 a day was “attainable” he told CBS, “it’s not good enough.”
The same day the crackdown came to Tallahassee, Fla., when ICE and other law enforcement officers raided a construction site and arrested over 100 workers. According to ICE, some of the detainees had been previously deported or had criminal backgrounds.
Analysis: The Plan and implications
A “tent city” in Maricopa County, Arizona for migrant detainees set up by Sheriff Joe Arpaio in the 1990s. These were dismantled in 2017. Under the Florida Immigration Enforcement Operations Plan, similar camps could be set up in Florida. (Photo: AP/Charlie Reidel)
In Florida, the dry, bureaucratic language of the Plan belies the full magnitude of what it is proposing: a mass roundup of people, based purely on arbitrary quotas, who will then be housed in whatever kind of temporary shelters can be hastily thrown together.
Given the number of detainees envisioned, they would likely be held in holding camps that would be vulnerable to extreme heat, the ravages of hurricanes and other outdoor threats.
As pointed out in an earlier posting, this would be done by the state of Florida outside the constitutionally regulated federal system for immigration enforcement, due process and humane treatment.
Financially, it would all be done at the expense of Florida taxpayers, at a time when the state is seeking savings and is likely to face hurricanes and natural disasters with much diminished federal support.
The beneficiaries of this Plan are privately-held, for-profit incarceration and detention companies, one of which has employed the man overseeing the entire national effort for enforcement, removal and deportation.
The potential for massive corruption, insider dealing and personal enrichment at the cost of human suffering and constitutional illegality should be obvious.
Beyond the corruption aspects, the Florida Plan appears to be proposing crimes against humanity.
Among these crimes, as defined by the internationally recognized Rome Statute, are: deportation or forcible transfer of populations; persecution of “identifiable group or collectivity on political, racial, national, ethnic, cultural, religious, gender” grounds; and enforced disappearance of persons.
Commentary: Time to act
It needs to be emphasized that, as far as can be publicly discerned, the Plan’s most extreme proposals are exactly that—“preliminary proposals,” so there is still time to stop them before they do any damage.
It’s unclear at this point when the Plan’s proposals would go into effect.
The Florida legislature is expected to reconvene on June 2 to work on a state budget for the next fiscal year.
If the state Plan is to be implemented, money for implementation will need to be included in the budget.
While hearings and committee work occurred in the legislature’s first session, it is not too late for the appropriate bodies to examine this Plan in detail, hold hearings, call witnesses and weigh its full implications.
One would hope that a full examination would lead the legislature to stop any further progress.
The Plan was covered by the media when it was revealed but without a full appreciation and understanding of the magnitude of the “Preliminary Potential Actions.” Given their implications, Florida-based media of all kinds should take a deep dive into these proposals and the Plan in general.
To repeat: This Plan is proposing illegal, unconstitutional and inhumane actions by the state of Florida. It could lead the state to commit crimes against humanity. It will make Florida a pariah state in a country that’s already on a course to isolation and rejection by the rest of the world. It will cause suffering throughout the population, whether documented or not, and it has the potential to penalize the innocent.
If the human and legal arguments are insufficiently moving, its financial implications should give any honest, thinking person pause. It will be extremely costly for the state. It has immense potential for graft, corruption and improper personal enrichment. Economically, it will devastate the workforce, severely impact key industries and drive consumer prices higher.
From a historical perspective it will put Florida on the side of the great crimes and tragedies of history.
In short, it will be an injustice and a stain on the state and nation. By any human and thoughtful standard, it is vastly criminal and just plain wrong.
However, there is still time to prevent it from happening. The “Preliminary Potential Actions” in the Immigration Enforcement Operations Plan are exactly that: “preliminary” and “potential.” They should be publicly and emphatically rejected by the state of Florida, all Floridians and all patriotic Americans.
The world is watching and history will judge.
Click below to view and download the 37-page PDF Florida Immigration Enforcement Operations Plan with redactions.
Could this be Florida’s future? Deportees from the United States are processed at El Salvador’s CECOT (Centro de Confinamiento del Terrorismo) prison in March 2025. (Photo: Office of the President of El Salvador)
May 20, 2025 by David Silverberg
Florida’s “Immigration Enforcement Operations Plan” unveiled by Gov. Ron DeSantis (R) on May 12 envisions actions that “circumvent” federal regulations and restrictions, including standards and procedures ensuring humane treatment of detainees—and its first use may be against Venezuelans who lost their temporary protected status yesterday, May 19.
The 37-page Plan lays out creation of a state immigration enforcement and detention system separate from the federal one in “support of President Trump’s fight against the ‘deep state’ within federal agencies.”
The “Preliminary Potential Actions” section suggests the most radical actions the state could take. The majority of the Plan is concerned with authorities and areas of responsibility by various state and federal agencies.
Venezuelans who lost their legal status in the United States could be the first aliens to be subject to the Florida plan.
Yesterday the US Supreme Court ruled that President Donald Trump had the authority to revoke the Temporary Protected Status (TPS) of Venezuelans in the United States. TPS allowed Venezuelans fleeing the dictatorial regime of President Nicolas Maduro to legally live and work in the United States for a specified period of time. They are now subject to detention and deportation.
If Florida decides to implement its Plan, this population could be the first target, subject to mass roundups and deportations by a state whose officers feel themselves unbound by standards of law, humane treatment or due process.
Key state proposals
Under existing law the federal government and its officers have sole authority for all matters of immigration, naturalization and border security. This is administered through the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) and its enforcement and removal arm, the directorate of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE).
Under the Florida Plan’s recommendations, local police trained under the 287(g) program would become “fully empowered immigration officers,” which the Plan states “would enable the State to bypass the operational bottleneck caused by the limited availability of ICE personnel.”
The 287(g) program trains local police to cooperate and support federal immigration personnel and efforts, but does not supplant them. Under this proposal, state officials, police and local law enforcement officers would be enabled to act with the same powers as federal immigration officers, detaining and ultimately possibly deporting detainees.
To oversee the anti-immigrant effort, the Plan would “Create a command structure led by the state that empowers coordinating officers to act without prior federal authorization.”
In other words, Florida would act independently of the federal government, establishing its own immigration command. It would act independently, taking on a role that was and has been confirmed as federal under the Constitution.
Why would it do this? As the Plan states: “Due to the limitations of the current Federal Executive Order, there has been a lack of leadership coming from the federal government that could be supplemented if the state of Florida were to assume operational control and enabling timely decision-making.”
The Plan proposes waiving “federal detention facility requirements” in order to “expand housing capacity for arrested individuals.”
“One of the stumbling blocks that we perceive exists in the detention section of the overall removal cycle. At present, the Federal government does not possess adequate bedspace capacity for its ambitious, and long overdue, enforcement strategy. While this can be mitigated by better, quicker through-put in physical repatriation—an important factor—it still poses a choke-point to be addressed.”
It continues: “At its current state, ICE is overwhelmed with the number of detainees that have been arrested prior to the state assisting with the process. With the state’s assistance, this number will grow by multitudes, which will likely become unsustainable if ICE were to remain operating at its current state. Many of the individuals arrested by state and local law enforcement will be forced to be released due to the lack of space in ICE detention facilities.”
Under current law and procedure the federal government has standards for housing inmates and detainees to ensure humane, sanitary, and proper treatment and housing. The Plan proposes waiving those requirements to allow holding of inmates under non-standard conditions, presumably substandard ones.
The federal standards are contained in the National Detention Standards (NDS). These are the standards used by ICE. It is against these standards that local jails are judged when it comes to housing federal detainees.
However, the Plan considers NDS too restrictive for what it has in mind.
“The standards are so limiting that many county jails cannot meet the standard even though they are otherwise accredited by the American Correctional Association,” complains the Plan. It finds it “anomalous” that local jails holding American citizens are considered unfit to hold detained aliens.
“This self-limiting proposition works against achieving the President’s goals,” argues the Plan, which also complains that it drives up costs and makes “transportation and logistics more complex and cumbersome.”
To correct this, the Plan suggests that the Department of Homeland Security suspend the standards for the duration of the presidential state of emergency. (Trump declared an emergency on the US southern border on Jan. 20, 2025, the first day he took office.)
As an afterthought, the Plan adds that despite the suspension detainees will still be treated humanely and facilities will try to maintain humane standards.
All of this would be done to rapidly increase capacity. “Waiving select requirements would significantly increase the State’s capacity to detain individuals,” it states. If the standards are suspended, the state would be allowed to hold more people more rapidly under substandard conditions and “pave the way to set up soft-side detention as needed and desirable”—i.e., house them in tents.
If the state cannot build out this holding capacity on its own, it envisions turning to private companies to provide additional space. As the Plan puts it the state could “Utilize existing logistics vendors to establish additional detention space. If the State chooses to forgo the federal detention sites as well as the federal detention standards, logistics vendors are prepared to rapidly deploy detention facilities statewide.”
All of this is intended to hold massive numbers of people swept up in deportation raids, both state and federal.
The only obstacle to implementing the effort envisioned by the Plan is the fact that it may not be reimbursed for the expense by the federal government.
“The federal government has shown itself to be very hesitant to commit to any form of reimbursement to past or future immigration operations,” it complains. “There may come a time when, without federal assistance, a long-term immigration support mission may become fiscally untenable.”
Analysis and commentary: Bad ideas
Make no mistake: This is a plan for a mass roundup of people, using dubious justification, to be housed in questionable circumstances prior to deportation, which may be done by the state of Florida on its own authority. It would “circumvent” or supplant federal authorities, rules and regulations.
With these recommendations the State of Florida is proposing a completely separate state anti-migrant system and command structure without federal oversight, input or approval. Its operations would be conducted by local law enforcement officers who would have the powers of federal immigration officials but without the training, legitimate authority or legal background. Detainees would be housed in facilities and tents unregulated by federal standards of humane treatment including those of nourishment, healthcare and shelter, all of which it views as “bottlenecks” and “chokepoints.”
This would all be done at Florida taxpayers’ expense without any assurance of federal reimbursement or funding. Aside from its legal and humanitarian aspects, it would add an enormous expense to the state budget.
It would also be a gold rush for private for-profit detention companies, which could pursue lucrative, barely monitored contracts no doubt issued with little to no competitive bidding. The potential for graft, corruption and profiteering is enormous.
All this would be done in great haste, “circumventing” all proper procedures for due process, adjudication, regulated law enforcement or oversight.
Why the urgency? Partially because of a flawed, deeply questionable national “emergency,” partially in opposition to a delusional “deep state,” and purely out of what appears to be hatred, prejudice and rage against an alien population, whether legally resident or not. Trump and DHS Secretary Kristi Noem have cited the presence of a Venezuelan gang, Tren de Aragua, to justify their targeting of Venezuelans.
But Tren de Aragua is tiny group whose presence is being exaggerated to stereotype an entire population. In a press conference on Monday, May 19, Adelys Ferro, executive director of the Venezuelan American Caucus, a non-profit advocacy organization, stated that Tren de Aragua members constituted “just 0.04 percent of our community.”
The Supreme Court decision allowing the Trump regime to revoke TPS for Venezuelans immediately establishes a vulnerable population to be preyed upon by the mechanism envisioned by the Plan.
This is especially relevant to Florida given its large Venezuelan population.
“As a lawyer and as the vice mayor of this city, I will continue to advocate and fight so that our community has access to the resources and information necessary to continue to fight and continue to prepare for what may come from all of this,” said Doral Vice Mayor Maureen Porras (R). Doral, Fla., is home to a Venezuelan population estimated at around 34,000, the largest in the United States.
As of this writing, Rep. Mario Diaz-Balart (R-26-Fla.), whose district includes Doral, had not issued any statements regarding the loss of TPS on any of his social media accounts, although he has been extremely active in the past in denouncing the Maduro regime.
Right now the most radical elements of the Plan are recommendations only. They can still be stopped by the legislature when it passes its budget for the next fiscal year. People can protest against them, with a reasonable chance of defeating them.
They are evil ideas proposed at an evil time for evil reasons. They’re a form of darkness that should never see the light of day in the Sunshine State.
Darla Bonk (Ward 6) of the Fort Myers City Council (center) tears up as she votes against a motion to participate in the 287g policing program at the March 17 city council meeting. To her left is Diana Giraldo (Ward 2) and to her right is Liston Bochette (Ward 4). (Image: FMCC)
March 23, 2025 by David Silverberg
For 92 years, since 1933, Americans have not had to fear their government.
That was the year that President Franklin Roosevelt said in his inaugural address that “the only thing we have to fear is fear itself.”
Roosevelt took office in an atmosphere of fear; fear of economic and social collapse. He himself had to overcome fear in his personal life when he confronted the loss of his legs to polio. He inspired Americans to face adversity with the same confidence he had to instill in himself to struggle against the ravages of that terrible disease.
In 1941 he again emphasized his opposition to fear when he made “Freedom from Fear” one of the four fundamental freedoms for which the United States stood, along with freedom of speech and expression, freedom of worship, and freedom from want. Then, he was thinking of freedom from fear of international aggression.
Americans have had moments of fear since then: fear of war, nuclear annihilation, Communism, terrorism, disease. But the United States government, made of, by and for the people, has not deliberately used the inculcation of fear in the people it governs as a deliberate tool of state.
Until now.
President Donald Trump has used threats and intimidation—the inculcation of fear—throughout his time on the political stage, whether threatening violence against protesters at his rallies, or inciting a mob to attack Congress, the Capitol building and his vice president, or disparaging migrants and immigrants.
Where other presidents would use public threats sparingly and only as a last resort, for Trump the use of threats and intimidation is a first response, his default mode. It’s his immediate, reflexive reaction when facing a challenge, whether from foreign actors, domestic opponents or uncooperative judges.
In the past his threats were just bloviating on Twitter or he used them against celebrities, business rivals, unpaid contractors, or local officials insisting he adhere to the law. But now, as president, he is setting the national tone and establishing the model for behavior. As he himself once said in projecting his feelings onto his opponents, his primary emotions are “hatred, prejudice and rage.”
He has taken the presidential bully pulpit and turned it into a pulpit for bullying.
Coupled with the presidency’s formal, constitutional power, he’s creating a national mood of intolerance, intimidation—and fear.
That mafia-like atmosphere of menace is pervading American society. It’s falling most heavily on migrants and foreigners, for whom Trump is showing an almost psychotic hatred. It’s also manifest as officials down the chain of government ape Trump’s attitudes and approaches.
No one is immune, not even heavily Republican, Trumpist Southwest Florida.
The case of Fort Myers
On Monday, March 17, the seven-member Fort Myers City Council deadlocked on whether or not to give the city’s police officers immigration enforcement training under the 287(g) program.
Established by the Illegal Immigration Reform and Immigrant Responsibility Act of 1996, the program allows local law enforcement agencies to work with the Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) directorate of the US Department of Homeland Security. Local law enforcement agencies can detain suspected undocumented migrants and perform other immigration enforcement functions, which are constitutionally under federal authority.
In the current atmosphere of widespread deportation raids that are seen as increasingly indiscriminate, 287g has become a controversial program. Since each local jurisdiction has to individually approve involvement in it, it has sparked intense debate at the local level.
When it came up in Fort Myers, three members of the City Council voted against the training: Diana Giraldo (Ward 2), Terolyn Watson (Ward 3) and Darla Bonk (Ward 6). Three voted for it: Liston Bochette (Ward 4), Fred Burson (Ward 5), and Mayor Kevin Anderson. Another councilmember, Teresa Watkins Brown (Ward 1), attended remotely but was ineligible to vote, hence the evenly split vote.
The vote followed a passionate and intense discussion, driven by palpable fear. Although the program means only that local police will be trained to handle immigration cases and cooperate with ICE, speakers at the meeting worried about raids and mass deportations. They expressed concerns about racial profiling, improper detentions, disappearances, unwarranted surveillance, illegal arrests and persecution of Fort Myers’ Hispanic population and just general anti-immigrant attitudes.
The council members who voted against the program were sensitive to those concerns.
Addressing Police Chief Jason Fields, Giraldo, an immigrant and the first Latina to serve on the Council, said, “The city is not just us sitting here, it’s the people who live here. To support you, chief, to support the intent of the city, I can’t stand behind this. As an immigrant, though this is not going to affect me particularly [as a full citizen] I have been in that position and…I can’t even express how heavy this is to my heart and my mind, knowing that the majority of us that come as immigrants, we don’t come here to commit crimes. Of course there are crimes out there, people who commit crimes but everybody needs to be accountable for it regardless of whether they are legal or not. But this notion that all immigrants have a motive and we’re chased after, it’s just something I just can’t…” and she choked up and couldn’t continue.
Bonk followed her: “The last thing I want is anyone in our community feeling that we are not hearing a very deep concern that has been nationally put at our feet from many people who have become piranhas about the issue, that we have to be very careful at the local level,” she said.
In the pre-vote discussion she became increasingly distraught as she spoke and finally broke into tears. “You cannot begin to imagine how this affects me,” she said, weeping. “The argument—and I know there is no malice meant to it—that we would risk federal or state funding if I don’t sign up for this… . It is a tumultuous day and age and this is a day I hate to be in this seat, but my city is not for sale.”
Because the Council deadlocked, the motion was defeated.
That brought swift, outraged threats from Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis (R), who has made hostility to immigration a cornerstone of his governorship and Attorney General James Uthmeier, who served as DeSantis’ chief of staff before being appointed attorney general.
DeSantis posted on X: “The 287 (g) program trains local law enforcement to aid ICE. Florida will ensure its laws are followed, and when it comes to immigration—the days of inaction are over.” Then in a direct command to Fort Myers he stated: “Govern yourselves accordingly.”
Initially, Uthmeier announced that his office would investigate the vote and the individual council members who voted against the program.
Subsequently, he posted on X: “Today, I sent a letter to the Fort Myers City Council.
“Sanctuary policies are illegal in Florida. Your vote last night makes you a sanctuary city.
“Fix this problem or face the consequences.”
In the letter he sent, Uthmeier provided his legal reasoning and detailed his threats to bring civil and criminal charges against the Council members and have them removed.
In addition to the legal warnings, there were extrajudicial threats. In a subsequent town hall, Bonk confirmed that she had received death threats because of her vote.
In addition to DeSantis and Uthmeier demanding obedience, Rep. Byron Donalds (R-19-Fla.), a Trump-endorsed candidate for governor, piled on. Fort Myers is in his congressional district.
“These officials that don’t understand their role, which is to implement a federal and state law, not circumvent and create sanctuary cities,” he said in an interview on the conservative NewsMax channel. “They simply need to be removed from office. They’re not going to follow the law. It’s that simple.”
He continued: “These Council members need to understand they have a responsibility to execute and implement state and federal law not to run against it, not to create a sanctuary. In my view, that’s a dereliction of their duty and their oath of office, and if they don’t reverse course, they should be removed.”
The Council reconvened in a special meeting on Friday, March 21.
Once again there was passionate input from the public overwhelmingly opposed to 287g, in fact to the point where people had to be gaveled down and order maintained. Members of the public still expressed fears of ICE and anti-immigrant measures and the speakers were overwhelmingly opposed to the agreement.
But this time the meeting was very different from the previous one.
The atmosphere had altered and council members were calmer. No one had changed more than Bonk. She went from a weeping, remorseful politician to a steely, resolved civil official and an angry one at that.
“Last I checked, this is still a republic,” she acidly observed. Regarding her comments on March 17 she said: “Expressing emotion is not a sign of weakness in leadership but of strength and for that I will not apologize, ever.”
She said she had not gotten answers from the city attorney to her previous questions about the 287g program but had done research on her own among state agencies, cities and attorneys who volunteered their advice.
Though she said she didn’t “harbor a sense of anger,” she directed a calm, relentless fury at City Attorney Grant Alley, who she said hadn’t provided the Council with the advice it needed to make an informed decision.
“I must express my grave concern that there was a significant dereliction of duty on the part of my city attorney. We as council members were put in a position of voting on a matter that was not within our legal authority or jurisdiction,” she said.
“It is the duty of our city attorney to guide this Council clearly, lawfully and thoroughly, especially when our decisions carry legal, financial and physical implications. The silence last Monday night placed each of us in jeopardy.” Addressing him directly, she said: “In this matter you failed us.”
But Bonk also defended her right to skepticism.
“Let me be clear: asking a question does not equate to disloyalty to my country,” she declared.
“Seeking understanding does not equate to weakness. And upholding the law includes questioning it when necessary to ensure that we act within it.”
She continued: “To those who misrepresented my actions, mischaracterized my words or weaponized misinformation I urge you to continue to get your facts straight. I will continue to uphold my oath and I will continue to represent Ward 6 with integrity, transparency and courage. I will continue to ask the hard questions, not in spite of my responsibility but because of it.”
Another vote was taken and this time all members of the Council voted to approve the program.
After the vote was taken, Donalds gloated on X: “Fort Myers will never be a sanctuary city. Today, City Council members UNANIMOUSLY reversed course to allow @ICEgov coordination with @fortmyerspolice. Thank you to everyone who helped us pressure them into taking corrective action & ensuring the security of our SWFL community.”
Analysis: Fear and consequences
The new national attitude of fear was on full display in the Fort Myers debate. Everything was pervaded by fear; the residents’ concerns, the council members’ votes, the debate and discussion, the reaction and the final decision.
For immigrants, migrants and other residents of Fort Myers, the fear was of indiscriminate, racially-based persecution that would know no legal bounds.
No matter how much the police chief tried to reassure the Council and the public that the program was limited and bound by law, he couldn’t cut through the fear driving the opposition. Despite all his responses, 287g was seen as the immediate, tangible tip of the spear of a Trump-generated effort that increasingly appears to be heading toward ethnic and racial “cleansing.”
One Fort Myers resident, Christina Penuel, put it very succinctly in a letter to the editor published in the neighboring Naples Daily News on March 23.
“I’m not confident that our local police force wouldn’t take advantage of ICE’s broad language and lax training. We live in a very safe community and adding some terrible ICE program isn’t going to make it safer,” she wrote. “The ICE program is nothing more than thinly veiled racism aimed towards out Spanish population. We can decide as a community what we need and Fort Myers doesn’t need ICE.”
Speaking up like that was the only thing people could do given their limited leverage and ultimate powerlessness.
The council members responded to these constituent fears with their initial votes. They had their own concerns too. Furthermore, they were well within their rights and duties as elected public officials in casting their votes based on their individual and independent assessments of the issue even if, as Bonk stated, they were not given the full information they needed to make a fully cognizant choice.
But in an atmosphere where threat, menace and intimidation are the operative attitudes rather than rational discussion, respectful disagreement and dispassionate analysis, the immediate reaction to their vote, regardless of its legal legitimacy, was to issue threats and those threats were made to induce fear—“pressure,” in Donalds’ language—and through fear impose compliance.
Donalds’ approach was very instructive and illuminating. He didn’t really have a dog in this fight and could have stayed out of it without consequence. But aping Donald Trump, his endorser and the person to whom he owes any chance of the governorship, his immediate reaction was to jump in with threats to the city, the Council and the individual council members. What was more, his demand that they be removed was reflexive and unthinking.
It demonstrates that if elected he will be a very Trumpist governor in both policy and approach. Floridians can expect him to bully and browbeat officials, cities, towns, counties, lawyers—and individual citizens—into submitting to his will, just as Trump is trying to do to the rest of the country. Florida will become a state ruled by fear—even more so than now.
It is notable that the zeal for enforcing the law shown by DeSantis and Donalds in the case of Fort Myers on its most powerless and vulnerable residents, somehow does not extend to a 34-count convicted felon who has escaped punishment for his crimes, who incited a riot, attempted to overturn an election, overthrow the legislative branch of government, allegedly stole secret documents and sought to improperly alter election results, not to mention was found liable for sexual assault and whose collaboration with Russia has been well documented—and who presents an immediate and present danger to the public on a vastly greater scale than any possible migrant in Fort Myers. In his case, they have not made a peep about the majesty of the law or the need to vigorously enforce it.
(It also bears mentioning that if DeSantis and Uthmeier really want to crack down on a “sanctuary” jurisdiction, they should look at Collier County’s “Bill of Rights Sanctuary” ordinance, passed in 2023. If they’re going to be consistent, this one, which aims to place Collier County outside the “commanding hand” of the federal government, should be on their radar.)
It was written by Kanan Makiya, an Iraqi writer and academic, under the pseudonym Samir al-Khalil. It detailed the way Saddam Hussein and the fascist Ba’ath Party took over Iraq and imposed a regime of threat, menace and deadly violence on that country.
It opened with a man named Salim being taken from his house for no discernible reason by men with no discernible authority, with no warrant or justification. Nonetheless he doesn’t resist when he’s taken to an office, interrogated closely and then told to vacate his home immediately, which he does. After a time he’s allowed to move back. He never learns why he had to leave, who ordered him out or why he can return. It’s just the way things worked in Iraq.
And throughout the ordeal, Salim is in a state of fear, a state that Makiya made clear extended to all of Iraq and all Iraqis. Fear was simply how Saddam Hussein governed.
Fear is how all dictators govern.
Now fear is spreading outward from the Oval Office as President Donald Trump pursues retribution against all enemies, real and imagined; against prosecutors who charged him, against political opponents who dared to challenge him, and against judges who resist him to uphold the law.
The fear being used to impose this domination is trickling downward and outward and no place is immune, no matter how obscure or remote, as the case of Fort Myers has shown. At least these councilors who voted their conscience only faced removal and their city only faced a loss of grants and legal retaliation. In places like Iraq and Russia dictatorial retaliation has been and is deadly and permanent.
Under the nearly 250 years of their independence, Americans became perhaps the most fearless people on earth, securely confident in their values and inalienable rights, overcoming fear to settle a wilderness, explore the heavens, defeat Fascism, build a democracy and welcome people from all places and races. It’s what made America great.
Right now, unlike in Roosevelt’s time, there is more to fear than just fear itself. It has a name and address. But as Americans have conquered fear before, if they’re going to preserve themselves as Americans, this new fear must be confronted—and conquered in its turn.
ICE agents arrest suspects in a 2017 raid. (Photo: DHS)
July 16, 2019 By David Silverberg
Today, July 16, marks the anniversary of one of the biggest law enforcement raids on migrant workers in Southwest Florida history.
It was on this date five years ago that Florida Division of Insurance Fraud investigators raided Incredible Fruit Dynamics in Naples and arrested 105 workers for fraudulent documentation, use of personal identification, identity theft and workers’ compensation fraud.
The anniversary comes as the threat of deportation raids continue to hang over Southwest Florida along with the rest of the country.
The 2014 raid demonstrated the role and extent of undocumented or fraudulently documented workers in the economy of Southwest Florida. It’s a role that continues today.
The company was owned by Alfie Oakes, owner of Oakes farms, Food & Thought organic farm market and Seed to Table.
At the time, authorities made clear that Oakes was not being charged; they were trying to find the source of the false documents. Oakes denied knowing anything about the undocumented workers in his employ. “We definitely knowingly never hired any illegals,” Oakes told The Naples Daily News. “The company hires only people that provide Social Security cards.” He and his brother Eric had purchased the company and kept the workers on, some of whom had been working there for over 10 years.
Though he checked Social Security cards, “If everything looks legit, we’re not allowed by law to challenge them,” he said, referring to discrimination laws. “It’s kind of a fine line when you’re hiring people.”
Southwest Florida has always been a center of cheap migrant labor, given its extensive agricultural sector. In 1960 the legendary journalist Edward R. Murrow and CBS News exposed the harsh conditions under which migrant workers labored in the fields in Immokalee in its landmark documentary, “Harvest of Shame.”
This past weekend, when Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) personnel made their presence known in Immokalee they succeeded in instilling fear—but from a law enforcement perspective, they also gave possible deportees time to flee. Unlike the 2014 raid, which was intended to actually catch wrongdoers, the point of this activity just seemed intended to terrorize.
Commentary: Terrorism vs. enforcement
In his campaign kickoff speech in Orlando on June 18, President Trump accused Democrats of being driven by “hatred, prejudice and rage” but that seems a perfect description of what is driving him and his approach to governing.
In the past, immigration enforcement was guided by an effort to effectively apprehend wrongdoers or suspects, while minimizing disruption but still sending a strong signal.
President Barack Obama’s administration was active in pursuing undocumented migrants who had committed crimes or had deportation orders against them. Between 2009 and 2011, federal authorities deported 385,000 people per year, according to Department of Homeland Security data. In 2012, that hit a high point of 409,000. However, the Obama effort was directed at migrants with criminal records who posed a danger to the community or those with court-ordered removal orders against them. They featured careful intelligence, stealth and discretion.
Despite broad allegations of migrant criminality by Trump, his enforcement efforts seem intended to just showboat, stoke fear and vent his bile against foreigners, particularly those from south of the US border.
This comes at the same time as the president’s latest eruptions on Twitter against Reps. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-14-NY), Ilhan Omar (D-5-Minn.), Rashida Tlaib (D-13-Mich.) and Ayanna Pressley (D-7-Mass.). No other word will serve to describe his insults— it’s racism, pure and simple. This shouldn’t surprise anyone. From the day Trump announced his candidacy his racism, xenophobia and cruelty have been on full display. The only difference now is that he has no restraints and no filters, there’s just pure hatred, prejudice and rage.
In Southwest Florida, the member of Congress whose district encompasses Immokalee is Rep. Mario Diaz-Balart (R-25-Fla.). When asked about the possibility of raids, arrests and deportations, all he would say was, “Until we have a real fix of a system that is totally broken and has gotten worse, these things are going to continue to happen,” according to the Tampa Bay Times. “It’s not an issue of what I support or not. ICE is going to follow the law and I expect them to follow the law and to do so in a way that’s honorable.”
Meanwhile, Diaz-Balart’s neighbor to the west, Rep. Francis Rooney (R-19-Fla.) has introduced legislation to cut legal immigration by half and make asylum-seeking more difficult both by shortening deadlines and restricting applications to ports of entry. Rooney’s legislation (House Resolution 481) doesn’t go as far as the administration, which is proposing a rule to prevent asylum applications at the border at all and only in the countries refugees are fleeing.
Diaz-Balart is right: The immigration system is broken and needs fixing. But anti-immigration hardliners have consistently sunk past efforts at bipartisan solutions and this president and his administration haven’t put forward any sane solutions other than a brick-and-mortar wall and the president’s “hatred, prejudice and rage” as expressed in cruelty and callousness toward refugees and asylum-seekers.
Democratic members of Congress and immigration advocacy groups are suing to prevent the administration’s proposed new rule and are demonstrating against the administration’s anti-immigrant actions.
This is the battle will be decided in the 2020 election.
As a side note, it’s worth following up on the Alfie Oakes story. On Aug. 13, 2018 the Naples Daily News reported that Oakes Farms Food & Distribution Services had been awarded a $46.8 million contract by the US Defense Logistics Agency to supply food to the military.
Six days later, Oakes posted a screed on Facebook against “the Democratic party recently morphing into all out socialism” and complaining that “current events are censored from the MSM [mainstream media] to support their one world order narrative.”
“The puppeteers that orchestrate the MSM, most of our universities, the [Democratic National Committee] along with the Obama administration have been pushing for a one world order that would ultimately destroy the opportunity for the individual,” he wrote. “We must with all our might reject socialism and adhere to the genius of the christian [sic] principles that our founding father so masterfully created (through the hand of GOD in my opinion) so that we may continue to be the beacon of the world for individual prosperity and freedom.”
It will be interesting to see if there are any raids this time at Oakes Farms.
The Paradise Progressive 