Donald Trump is in a race with his circulatory system to realize his ambition of becoming a dictator at the level of Vladimir Putin and Xi Jinping. He has brought Republicans to heel, so they overlook his spots of dementia now, as they overlooked his selling of the Big Lie that Democrats had stolen the election in 2020, when he tried to inspire his cult members to stop the transfer of power on Jan. 6, 2021.
The House on Jan. 13, 2021, voted to impeach Trump for incitement of insurrection. The Senate trial started Feb. 9, after Trump was forced out of the White House, and that was enough to get 43 Republican senators to rationalize voting for acquittal, which was 10 more than Trump needed to retain the opportunity to run again.
Trump spent the next three years picking up 34 felony convictions, a civil judgment of liability for misrepresenting his wealth to obtain favorable loan and insurance rates and civil liability for sexual abuse of E. Jean Carroll and defamation while a federal prosecutors brought felony insurrection and obstruction charges against him. But the GOP still sponsored his revenge tour.
Once back in the White House on Jan. 20, Trump started implementing measures to stay there, which started with naming an attorney general who would drop the charges against him and clear the Justice Department and FBI of anybody whose loyalty to Trump was suspect, as well as a defense secretary who would clear the Pentagon of leadership who would second-guess Trump’s orders if things got dicey. Trump’s lackeys transformed the Department of Homeland Security into into a police agency whose Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents became shock troops who would work with National Guards and other military to quell protests, first in Los Angeles and later in Washington, D.C., as they tested the plan.
Now Trump plans to follow up his occupation of Washington, D.C., with invasions of Democratic cities, including Chicago and Baltimore, which he called hellholes of crime, despite evidence that crime, including murder rates, have dropped in recent years.
Trump and his aides/controllers at the White House appear to be testing ways to intimidate voters in the runup to the 2026 midterm elections, when control of the House and Senate is up for grabs.
The next step was to target Chicago, and the White House gave the game away Sept. 6 when an image was posted on social media, titled “Chipocalypse Now,” a reference to the 1979 war movie, “Apocalypse Now,” which depicted a crouching Trump in a cavalry hat, with helicopters, billowing flames and the Chicago skyline in the background, under the text, “I love the smell of deportations in the morning,” a twist on the famous quote from Lt. Col. Bill Kilgore (played by Robert Duvall), “I love the smell of napalm in the morning.” But the post concludes, “Chicago about to find out why it’s called the Department of WAR … Chipocalypse Now”
The post escalated tensions between Trump and Illinois leaders. Illinois Gov. JB Pritzker, a Democrat, called the “Chipocalypse Now” post “not normal. ... The President of the United States is threatening to go to war with an American city,” he said. “Illinois won’t be intimidated by a wannabe dictator.”
But with a California federal judge ruling Sept. 2 that Trump’s use of the California National Guard and U.S. marines to patrol downtown Los Angeles was illegal, the White House may be relying on secretive ICE thugs to intimidate civilians and hope violent reactions of protesters will give the feds the pretext to call in the military to back up ICE activities across the country.
U.S. District Judge Charles Breyer of San Francisco ruled the use of armed soldiers (whose identity was often obscured by protective armor) and military vehicles to set up perimeters and traffic blockades, engage in crowd control, and otherwise demonstrate a military presence in and around Los Angeles was a violation of the Posse Comitatus Act, which prohibits the president from using the military as a domestic police force without approval from Congress.
California asked the court for an injunction to free the remaining 300 National Guard members stationed in Los Angeles from federal control, after Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth on Aug. 5 ordered the troops to stay on duty through the state’s special election on redistricting in November.
“The timing of Trump’s extension of the National Guard soldiers isn’t coincidental — he’s holding onto soldiers through Election Day,” California Gov. Gavin Newsom said in a statement. “The reality is this — they want to continue their intimidation tactics to scare Californians into submission.”
But hours after the California court ruled against Trump’s use of troops in Los Angeles, Trump touted his use of the National Guard in Washington, D.C., and said he would soon send troops into Chicago. “We’re going in,” Trump said about sending the National Guard to Chicago. The comment came during a Sept. 2 press conference in the Oval Office to announce moving the headquarters of the U.S. Space Force from Colorado Springs to Huntsville, Ala. “I’m so very proud of Washington. It serves as the template,” he said.
At a Sept. 2 press conference, Illinois Gov. Pritzker said the National Guard was not needed nor wanted in the city. But he said federal agents were already massing in a nearby military base and predicted they would soon start conducting immigration raids in Latino communities in order to spark demonstrations. “We know, before anything has happened here, that the Trump plan is to use any excuse to deploy armed military personnel to Chicago,” Pritzker said
Chicagoans came out in large numbers against Trump’s power play in the city’s downtown Sept. 6, as thousands of people protested the prospect of increased ICE arrests and the president’s plan to bring the National Guard into the city.
In Washington, D.C., groups of local residents have been operating “night patrols,” armed only with their cell phones, medical kits and the confidence to assert their dwindling rights to trail and record the activities of Trump’s occupation forces, Dave Zirin and Chuck Modiano reported at TheNation.com.
Although Trump says ICE is going after “the worst of the worst” criminals and bad characters, in fact the raids target any Latinos who can’t show proof of citizenship, including asylum applicants who have been working peaceably in the U.S. for years while they wait for immigration courts to review their cases.
Pritzker has said he is “deeply concerned” that ICE will target Mexican Independence Day in Chicago. “We have reason to believe that Stephen Miller chose the month of September to come to Chicago because of celebrations around Mexican Independence Day that happen here every year,” Pritzker said Sept. 2. “It breaks my heart to report that we have been told ICE will try and disrupt community picnics and peaceful parades. Let’s be clear: the terror and cruelty is the point, not the safety of anyone living here.”
If ICE or troops show up in your town, you have the right to observe and record their activities. Just don’t give them the excuse to call in armed troops, who don’t want to be there. — JMC
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