Stephen Miller Embodies the Dark Fascist Heart of Trump’s White House

Trump's Goebbels

Arnold R. Isaacs for Common Dreams   

The video is not long, just 16 minutes and 25 seconds. But in that short time it provides a remarkable capsule of the Trump administration’s ongoing crusade against its critics. In one chilling moment after another, it captures the mentality of that campaign; its content, tone, and style; and its complete disregard for factual accuracy.

The video, taped on July 16, records the words of Stephen Miller, President Donald Trump’s deputy chief of staff for policy and Homeland Security adviser, addressing a multinational audience assembled at the State Department for the opening session of meeting convened by Secretary of State Marco Rubio under the title “Ministerial on the Resurgence of Political Terrorism.” In his welcoming address, Rubio defined the meeting’s focus: “far-left political terrorism” that he declared has been a “blind spot” in US counterterrorism doctrine, but would now be directly in the government’s sights.

Following Rubio to the podium, Miller delivered various—and sometimes unsettling—amplifications on that theme. 

After an opening passage declaring that under President Trump’s leadership, “We have taken the necessary and essential action of formally recognizing left-wing violence as a form of political terrorism that is a direct threat to our national security and the survival of our republican form of government,” Miller went on to proclaim that “for the first time in American history,” all US law enforcement and intelligence agencies are working together “to disrupt, identify, defund, debank, arrest, and prosecute these political terrorists that are operating in our country.” 

Then, in one of many questionable passages, he went on with an implied suggestion that the authorities should reject suspected terrorists’ claims of their legal rights. Miller put it this way:

One of the hallmarks of left-wing violence and terrorism is its completely pretextual and disingenuous appeal to civil liberties in an effort to shield its own violence. This is the tactic that the left always uses to try to protect itself from facing criminal punishment. It is essential that we are wise enough and strong enough to understand that these appeals must fall on deaf ears. When the leftist, who does not believe in freedom, who does not believe in civil rights, who does not believe in any ordered notion of justice, protests that we are violating his rights, understand that he is lying to try to persuade people who are not closely following the political scene that some injustice has been perpetrated against him.

Homeland Security tells Haitians to get out. NOW.

MAGA means

Catholic immigrant rights group wins major court battle against Trump ban on people from 75 countries

No discrimination based on national origin

Jon Queally for Common Dreams

Federal Judge Jeannette Vargas has struck down the Trump administration's suspension of immigrant visas for nationals of 75 countries, ruling the State Department policy violates federal immigration law and exceeds Secretary Marco Rubio's authority. Judge Vargas ruled federal law expressly prohibits nationality discrimination in issuing immigrant visas.

A federal judge in New York has ruled that Donald Trump and the US State Department overstepped their authority when they suspended the processing of visa applications for people from 75 nations earlier this year, a move that critics at the time called a “travesty,” cruel, and counter to the rule of law.

US District Judge Jeannette Vargas, a Biden appointee, ruled Friday that the pause in visa applications—which Trump and Secretary of State Marco Rubio claimed was necessary to prevent immigrant visitors from freeloading on US taxpayer dollars—was “contrary to law and in excess of statutory authority.”

What Is the Trump Administration Doing With Foreign Aid Money?

Instead of fighting famine and disease, Trump wants to investigate imaginary crimes against white South Africans

By Anna Maria Barry-Jester and Sharon Lerner for ProPublica

No longer a Trump priority. Photo: Doctors Without Borders

Since he returned to office, Donald Trump’s administration has upended foreign aid. It’s labeled well-established, long-running programs as “not aligned with American interests” and slashed their budgets. 

Still, the billions of taxpayer dollars Congress has allocated for foreign aid programs must be spent; lawmakers have insisted the government continue to fund humanitarian aid, global health and pro-democracy causes around the world. With most of the old programs now gone, however, we wanted to know: What is the Trump administration doing with that money now?

Trump's present priority for foreign aid to Africa

Recently, we published our investigation that found one answer to that question in a little-known bureau of the State Department that has dramatically transformed under Trump. 

For decades, the Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights and Labor, known as DRL, has supported human rights in some of the most oppressive countries in the world. Now, our reporting found, it’s planning to direct funds to controversial groups supporting right-wing causes in Europe and elsewhere. 

Our full story lays out some of the groups the government has considered funding, which include a British free-speech organization that has fought against bans on “gay conversion therapy” and a British American think tank created this year to focus on “existential threats to Britain, to America, and to our shared Judeo-Christian civilization.” (Administration officials dropped that grant after significant pushback from Congress.) 

One proposed grant particularly caught our attention: Trump administration officials suggested funding research on crime against minority populations in South Africa. 

Marco Rubio uses AI to make the US look stupid

US State Department map used at international AIDS conference mislabeled every African nations

Isn't geography something the State Department should know?

Jessica Corbett for Common Dreams

“AI use gone wrong.” “Utter embarrassment.” “Stupid empire.” “Idiot Reich.”

Those were just some of the responses to Thursday reporting on a US Department of State map presented at a global conference in Brazil that mislabeled every African country it included.

“Reuters viewed a video of the presentation given at the AIDS 2026 conference in Rio de Janeiro, which shows the errant map displayed halfway during a presentation about the State Department’s new health agreements,” the news agency reported.

“A Reuters analysis found the image of the map included in the presentation contained an artificial intelligence watermark that ⁠signals it was made with OpenAI tools,” the outlet noted. “The company said it was investigating the report.”

ICE Killings Are Acts of Terrorism

ICE’s indiscriminate violence conveys that nonwhite immigrants, lawful or otherwise, have no place in Trump’s America.

Mitchell Zimmerman

Lorenzo Salgado Araujo. Slain by ICE in Houston,
Texas on July 7, 2026.

In less than one week, ICE agents killed twice.

Neither victim was the man they were looking for. And each time their excuses made no sense. But the killings served a purpose: terrorizing immigrant communities, in pursuit of Trump’s white nationalist agenda.

On July 7 in Houston, masked ICE agents who did not identify themselves stopped and shot to death Lorenzo Salgado Araujo, a 52 year old Mexican national and father of three. Araujo had lived in the United States for 35 years and had applied to obtain legal status. He was on his way to work in construction.

Using its by-now familiar excuse, Homeland Security officials claimed that Araujo rammed an ICE vehicle and tried to run down ICE agents by “weaponizing” his van. The claim was disputed by witnesses, is inconsistent with the video evidence, and makes no sense.

Araujo had no criminal record. Why would this law-abiding, middle-aged family man ram an ICE vehicle and try to kill ICE agents?

Johan Sebastian Guerrero

Six days later, in Biddeford, Maine, ICE killed again. This time they killed Johan Sebastian Guerrero, a 26-year-old Colombian man who was authorized to work in the United States.

Again, ICE claimed that Guerrero tried to run down the ICE agent. Again, no evidence supported the excuse. Twelve hours later Homeland Security abandoned the “weaponized” vehicle claim and tried another story: The ICE agent, “fearing for public safety,” shot Guerrero because he “attempted to flee the scene.”

Under Homeland Security’s account, an unmarked ICE vehicle driven by an unknown masked man attempts to stop a vehicle, the driver (who was not their intended target) tries to escape, and the agent fires. They claim, essentially, that failing to stop (if that actually even happened) amounts to “fleeing the scene” — and requires deadly force.

Johan Sebastian Guerrero was working legally at two jobs, as a cleaner and a food delivery driver. He had a wife and a three-year-old daughter. Who can claim he was so dangerous he had to be killed?

Since Trump returned to the White House, ICE agents have killed at least 10 times, including Renee Good and Alex Pretti, as of this writing.

ICE agents routinely shoot at people in vehicles, even though official U.S. government policy warns against the practice and says law enforcement officers should “move out of the path of the vehicle” rather than shoot. In addition, at least 49 people have died in ICE custody so far in Trump’s second term — a number that will only climb.

Brutality and violence are routine features of ICE operations, yet no ICE agent has been held responsible. In Trump’s war against immigrants, ICE agents know they may slay with impunity.

Donald Trump’s campaign of demonization and vilification sets the stage. Trump calls immigrants “animals” and “not human,” likening them to criminals or escaped mental patients. He calls them “vermin” who “infest our country,” and he embraces the Nazi theme that a despised group is “poisoning the blood of our country.”

The unrestrained brutality of ICE is a reign of terror. Killing without cause is not a problem for the Department of Homeland Security; it is a feature. ICE’s indiscriminate violence conveys that nonwhite immigrants, lawful or otherwise, have no place in Trump’s America.

There is little point in considering DHS’s pretexts for killing on a case-by-case basis. ICE’s abuse of immigrants is not the result of individual misdeeds — it is policy. ICE cannot be reformed because its purpose is not enforcing the law. It is terrorism for a white supremacist vision of America.

Those who reject Trump’s vision, who insist on the humanity of our neighbors, who still believe we must welcome to America’s shores those yearning to breathe free, must stand up and say No.

Mitchell Zimmerman is an attorney, longtime social activist, and author of the anti-racism thriller Mississippi Reckoning. He's also a longtime contributor to Progressive Charlestown. His writing can also be found on his Substack, Reasoning Together with Mitchell Zimmerman.

Subscriptions to Reasoning Together with Mitchell Zimmerman are free at this time. If you find my writing of value, please like, subscribe and recommend Reasoning Together to your friends. Thank you.

You may also be interested in my road-trip novel / social thriller Mississippi Reckoning. Read an excerpt. Read the Progressive Charlestown review HERE.

There’s No Doubt: The Supreme Court Is Part of Trump’s Anti-Democracy Movement

They don't even try to hide it anymore

Robert Reich in Inequality Media

The real way to read the immigration decisions the Supreme Court issued on Thursday is not to see them solely as losses for immigrants to the United States or the rights of immigrants. They are much larger losses. 

They are losses for the authority of Congress to have its laws fully executed by a president who doesn’t agree with them.

Markwayne Mullin vs. Al Otro Lado concerns a 1917 law that requires immigration officers to inspect noncitizens who arrive at ports of entry to determine whether they may enter the United States. Congress amended the law in the Refugee Act of 1980 to allow noncitizens fleeing persecution in their home country to apply for asylum as part of this inspection process.

The act lays out a required set of procedures to guide this process. It says that a noncitizen who seeks admission to the United States “may apply for asylum.” If the noncitizen lacks valid travel documents, the officer “shall order [her] removed” unless she conveys an intention to apply for asylum or a fear of persecution, which in turn requires the officer to “refer” her for further processing of her asylum application.

This system is designed to ensure that the US government considers the application of each person seeking to come into the United States to determine who should be let in, who should be turned away, and who should be allowed to apply for asylum.

This must be seen for what it really is—a systemic effort by the six Republican appointees on the court to shrink congressional authority and enlarge the authority of the executive branch.

Whodunnit?

The Age of the Super A*sholes

Trump and Musk dominate our economy and our politics

Robert Reich

Elon Musk has just become the world’s first trillionaire. Donald Trump is America’s first dictator. But they have more in common than their economic and political dominance.

To describe both as selfish narcissists would be a wild understatement. Both are maniacally obsessed with increasing their own personal wealth, power, and control.

Both have been willing to break laws, norms, and other social constraints in pursuit of these goals. Both have manipulated, bribed, conned, robbed, and bullied their ways to dominance.

Trump tried to overturn the results of the 2020 election, was impeached twice, found criminally liable for cooking his corporate books, and civilly liable for sexual abuse.

Musk paid a quarter of a billion dollars to get Trump elected president, then ran Trump’s illegal and hugely destructive DOGE. Musk’s SpaceX has all the hallmarks of a gigantic Ponzi scheme in which insiders pocket the winnings and leave latecomers holding the bag.

Both pride themselves on paying little or no taxes. Trump famously said that paying not paying federal income taxes "makes me smart." Musk paid zero taxes in 2018.

While the country suffers,
Trump posts images like this

Both are notoriously lacking in empathy; they view all relationships as transactions. Trump refuses to be a "consoler-in-chief" in national tragedies and openly withholds sympathy for families of political opponents who die. (When Rob Reiner and his wife were murdered, Trump asserted they were killed “due to the anger [Reiner] caused others through his massive, unyielding, and incurable affliction with a mind crippling disease known as TRUMP DERANGEMENT SYNDROME.”)

Musk has stated that "the fundamental weakness of Western civilization is empathy” — arguing that a society can only afford to practice broad empathy if it operates from a position of systemic strength.

Both regard themselves as omnipotent and invincible. Both lash out verbally or physically at anyone who crosses them, often getting into raging disputes and fights.

And this

To the extent they have any belief beyond their own omnipotence, it’s white male nationalism. “Whites are a rapidly dying minority,” Musk wrote his 240 million followers in a January post on X. In a February post, he declared that “there has been unrelenting hate and poisonous propaganda in the West against anyone White, straight or male over the past decade or more,” adding, “No more guilt trips. ENOUGH.”

Musk has suggested that race plays a detrimental role in hiring. He’s touted the role of white people in eliminating slavery. He’s accused public figures of racism against white and Asian people.

In recent months, Musk has increased his online posts about perceived threats to whiteness, or what he views as calls for a “genocide” against white people. Over the past seven months, he has posted 850 times about race, nearly daily and triple the rate for the previous two years.

Trump also has a well-documented history of white supremacist actions and rhetoric, including the 1973 lawsuit brought against Trump management for allegedly discriminating against Black renters; his full-page ads in 1989 calling for the death penalty for the five Black and Latino teenagers eventually exonerated in the Central Park jogger case; his leading role in the debunked, racially-charged conspiracy theory that Barack Obama was not born in the United States; his 2016 accusation that Mexican immigrants were criminals and “rapists;” his 2017 “Muslim ban;” his “fine people on both sides” of the violent white supremacist rally in Charlottesville; his view of Haiti, El Salvador, and African nations as “shithole” countries; his determination to erase Black history from America’s classrooms; and his campaign against diversity, equity, and inclusion.

Both Musk and Trump have pushed the conspiracy theory that Democrats are seeking to import undocumented immigrants so they can take over the U.S. government forever.

Both have fomented white nationalism abroad. Trump was an enthusiastic ally of Viktor Orbán, who saw Western civilization threatened by Muslim immigration into Europe. Many people in Trump’s circle continue to support and encourage leaders of the European far-right.

Musk, too, encourages white nationalism abroad. During the recent anti-immigrant protests and riots in the United Kingdom—particularly in Belfast and London—Musk posted that “civil war is inevitable” and urged British protesters to “fight back or die” (prompting British Prime Minister Keir Starmer to condemn Musk’s comments as “dangerous.”) In response to the recent killing in Belfast, Musk blamed “murderous migrants beheading innocent people in their home town.” He shared an image of the stabbing suspect, who is Black, alongside the caption declaring “millions must go.” And he reposted messages claiming that Starmer “hates white people.”

Researchers from the nonprofit watchdog Center for Countering Digital Hate report that “Musk’s amplification” of anti-migrant narratives to his hundreds of millions of followers was “instrumental” in provoking the violence in Belfast: “No individual played a bigger role in spreading [hateful] content on X than Musk himself.”

‘Alarm’ at White House After Vance and Miller Pushed Insurrection Act, Habeas Corpus Suspension During Anti-ICE Protests

Close call for democracy

Brad Reed for Common Dreams

A June 15 report in The New York Times revealed what it described as the “alarm” felt by some White House lawyers at proposals made earlier this year by Vice President JD Vance and Trump adviser Stephen Miller as the administration was forced to contend with widespread anger over its anti-immigration agenda.

Among other things, the Times reported that Vance pushed for Donald Trump to invoke the Insurrection Act, which would allow for the US military to be deployed on American streets, in an effort to shut down mass protests in Minnesota against federal immigration enforcement operations in the state.

A few days after US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) officers fatally shot demonstrator Alex Pretti in the streets of Minneapolis, the Times reported that Vance—who had also elevated a baseless claim by Miller that Pretti had been a “would-be assassin”—said invoking the Insurrection Act was necessary “to crush the unrest in Minnesota.”

Vance also believed invoking the law would send a “message” that “paid agitators could not get away with disrupting ICE operations”—even though, as the Times noted, there is no evidence that Pretti; demonstrator Renee Good, who was also killed by federal agents; or any other organizers in Minnesota or elsewhere received any money in exchange for protesting.

However, right-wing attorney Will Scharf quickly shot down Vance’s suggestion, noting that the Insurrection Act is an instrument aimed at putting down armed rebellions rather than groups of citizens blowing whistles at ICE officers.

Former White House Deputy Chief of Staff James Blair then made the political case against invoking the Insurrection Act.

They walk among us

Can't imagine

The Supreme Court’s Whites-First Reasoning on Gerrymandering

It’s Always Been About Race

Mitchell Zimmerman

Will the Supreme Court’s evident desire to assist the G.O.P. before the midterms override a decision by three Republican-appointed judges to spare Black majority districts in Alabama from being gerrymandered out of existence?

This is the question posed by possible Supreme Court review of the finding by an Alabama judicial panel that Alabama could not use a congressional district map that deliberately discriminated against Black voters.

Two of the three judges on the panel which found race-based discrimination had been appointed to the bench by President Trump; one, by President Reagan. The issue now is whether the conservative justices of the Supreme Court will upend the panel’s racial discrimination finding, notwithstanding that the Alabama judges had followed legal standards set in the Supreme Court’s recent decision in Louisiana v. Callais.

If they allow the Alabama decision stand, it will be a rare exception to the flood of Supreme-Court-encouraged gerrymandering prompted by the Callais decision. Those Republican gerrymanders are likely to purge one-third of African -Americans representatives from Congress by destroying the Black majority districts that elected them.

Nonetheless, the six justices of the Supreme Court who caused this political bloodbath along racial lines claim that Republican gerrymandering does not violate the voting rights of African-Americans. The purge is lawful under the Voting Rights Act, say the justices, because the G.O.P. has partisan reasons to eliminate the Black districts that cannot be “disentangled” from racial motives.

With Miller, it could always be worse

MAGA Supreme Court Okays G.O.P. Overthrow of American Democracy

Disenfranchising 40% of a state’s citizens cannot be reconciled with representative democracy

Mitchell Zimmerman

The Supreme Court gave a “two-fer” to white supremacists and proponents of Republican autocracy: First, six right-wing justices completed the erasure of the crowning achievement of the 1960s Civil Rights Movement, the Voting Rights Act. Second, in the same case, Louisiana v. Callais, the right-winger judges approved of states shaping legislative districts that deny the opposing party any role in government.

In essence, the Supreme Court okayed the destruction of Congress as an instrument of American democracy.

The Fifteenth Amendment to the Constitution was enacted and ratified five years after the Civil War. The Amendment confirmed – in principle – that African-American citizens have the right to vote and to have their votes count.

So said the Constitution. But for almost a century the former Confederate states negated African-Americans’ right to vote.

The Voting Rights Act put an end to the myriad legal schemes Southern white politicians had used to disenfranchise Black Americans

The Fifteenth Amendment also gave Congress the power to enforce its mandate. After years of struggle over civil rights – after peaceful demonstrators in Birmingham confronted snarling police dogs, mass arrests and lethal bombing, after hundreds of nonviolent students worked for freedom in Mississippi in the face of murder, assaults and the burning of Black churches, after peaceful marchers for voting rights returned to Selma after being clubbed by state troopers and ridden down by racist possemen – Congress tackled the white supremacist obstacles to African-American voting.

The Voting Rights Act of 1965 put an end to the myriad legal schemes that Southern white politicians had used to disenfranchise Black Americans and terminated the ploys used to deny African-Americans a fair opportunity to elect representatives of their choice.

To be absolutely clear...

Stephen Miller's Strait of Hormuz

Trump's Bigot in Chief

Robert Reich

Trump’s chief bigot, Stephen Miller, said on Fox News that immigrants to the United States bring problems that extend through generations.

“Not only is the first generation unsuccessful,” Miller claimed. “You see persistent issues in every subsequent generation. So you see consistent high rates of welfare use, consistent high rates of criminal activity, consistent failures to assimilate.”

Bullshit. The children and grandchildren and great-grandchildren of most immigrants are models of upward mobility in America.

In a recent paper, researchers found that immigrants today are no slower to move into the middle class than immigrants were a century ago. In fact, no matter when their parents came to the U.S. or what country they came from, children of immigrants have higher rates of upward mobility than their U.S.-born peers.

Stephen Miller’s great-great-grandfather was born in a dirt-floor shack in the village of Antopol, a shtetl in what is now Belarus. He came to America in 1903 with $8 in his pocket and spoke no English. Three generations later, little Stephen was born in 1985 to American parents but somehow developed a visceral hatred for immigrants.

Miller and Trump have been dealing with immigrants the same way Pete Hegseth and Trump have been dealing with Iran and the Strait of Hormuz — inflicting pain on both them and the United States, in the hope their pain will be worse than the pain we endure.

Tax Day was supposed to be a big PR boon for Trump, in which he touts his “no taxes on tips” and other ersatz tax “cuts” for average working Americans (while hiding that his Big Ugly bill actually gave most of its benefits to the wealthy and big corporations, and paid for them by taking money from Medicaid and food stamps and other programs the working class and poor rely on).

But the war in Iran has made everything — even Stephen Miller’s war on immigrants — feel like the Strait of Hormuz.

The flags of MAGA

$380 Million in Funding Cuts to One of the Most Successful US Public Education Programs

Trump's assault on bilingual education

By Jeff Bryant for The Left Chapter

You can use the same maps to chart funding cuts

Chicago schoolteacher Claudia Morales may have been reflecting the feelings of most Americans about life under the Trump presidential administration when she told Our Schools, “Every day, there’s yet another abuse. It’s scary. And it’s coming from our own government.” In her work as a bilingual program teacher and bilingual coordinator at Curie High School in Chicago Public Schools (CPS), she’s been witness to one trauma after another.

“First, there were the funding cuts the Trump administration made,” said Morales, referring to the federal government’s decision to withhold more than $4 billion in funds for public education at the start of the 2025-2026 school year. CPS was particularly hit hard by the cuts, with the district losing millions it had counted on to pay for staffing positions and programs.

“Then we had ICE invade,” Morales recounted, noting that the Archer Heights neighborhood, where most of her students come from, was one of the communities targeted by the federal government’s immigration crackdown. The Trump administration’s decision to rescind the protected status that prohibited immigration raids at schools and student gathering places, like bus stops and playgrounds, made her school’s largely Hispanic student population—many of whom are recent immigrants—especially vulnerable.

“And now this,” she concluded. “This” is the December 2025 announcement from Trump’s U.S. Department of Education, signed by Secretary of Education Linda McMahon, to withhold some $380 million in federal funding that was previously granted to schools from the department’s full-service community schools (FSCS) program. The initiative provides support for the planning, implementation, and operation of the community school approach to school improvement. The community school approach transitions traditional schools from being strictly academic institutions into community hubs that provide student and family support services based on resources and voices of the surrounding community. The strategy is showing promise in improving student outcomes nationwide, but that seems irrelevant to current federal officials.

As a result of the funding cut-off to Chicago schools, according to Morales, Curie will lose money it needs to pay for tutors, after-school programs, parent education courses, and academic support for students who struggle with learning. These are programs and services parents specifically asked the school to provide, said Morales.

The loss of funding for in-school and after-school tutors will be especially damaging to the students’ academic achievement, according to educators at Curie.