The fascist tide in the US has become a tsunami. On August 12, 2025, President Donald Trump sent the National Guard into Washington, DC, the nation’s capital, under the usual racist pretext of “law and order.” He had previously sent the US military into Los Angeles to support his horrendous ethnic cleansing campaign, aimed at forcibly deporting millions of undocumented immigrants. Still, Trump’s raids also detained many legal immigrants and even US citizens who happened to be present. ICE, short for Immigration and Customs Enforcement, has been raiding workplaces, courthouses, parks, and public schools across the country, and detaining thousands of people.
A US federal appeals court ruled on July 11, 2025, that ICE had to stop conducting its indiscriminate raids, which were based on racial profiling. The MAGA administration had the nerve to assert that people with Brown skin who might speak with an accent gave them legal cause to assume they are undocumented immigrants. In recent weeks, ICE has resumed its raids in Los Angeles, defying a court order. It seemed a test by the administration as to whether the courts can restrain their unconstitutional and undemocratic actions. And indeed, on September 8, 2025, the US Supreme Court, using its shadow docket, sided with the administration and effectively allowed ICE to continue racial profiling, signaling its willingness to legitimize unconstitutional attacks on immigrant communities.
Trump has also issued an executive order that would overturn the constitutional right to birthright citizenship – a right that grants anyone born to immigrants in this country to US citizenship, and a right that US courts have consistently upheld. The administration has also revoked temporary protected status, or TPS, for hundreds of thousands of Haitians, Venezuelans, and other refugees from violence or natural disaster. These refugees are now subject to deportation, for many, back to a homeland convulsed with chaos and violence.
Clearly, Trump and MAGA, as they promised in Project 2025, are setting out to destroy any vestiges of democracy that can potentially challenge their broader objective of establishing white minority rule. The goal is an apartheid Christian nationalist ethno- state that will allow the billionaire class to openly rule the US as befits their interests of never-ending profits.
To carry out his effort to destroy the remaining shreds of US democracy, Trump has:
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Promised to send the National Guard into other cities with large Black and Brown populations and where Democrats are the governing majority – Chicago, San Francisco, New York, Baltimore, and other urban centers.
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Compelled the Republican-controlled Congress to pass a bill that allocates more than $150 billion to the Border Patrol and ICE, now the largest domestic military force in the country. This was accompanied by new tax breaks for billionaires and drastic cuts in funding for Medicaid, public education, and environmental and climate protections.
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Begun to establish a network of concentration camps throughout the US to house immigrants and potentially any opponents of the Trump regime.
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Ordered Texas Governor Greg Abbot to gerrymander Congressional districts with large numbers of Black and Latino voters. The immediate aim is to create five new Republican seats. Trump and MAGA rightfully fear that the Republicans will lose their majority in Congress and possibly even the Senate in the 2026 midterm elections. They want to stack the decks against this potential outcome. And just in case, they are “cleansing” voter rolls in several states to eliminate millions of potentially Democratic voters.
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Purged voters, aiming to fire or push out hundreds of thousands of federal employees, and voided the union contract with several federal employee unions representing four out of five federal workers. Federal jobs have been a major area of employment for Black and Latino communities. Trump and MAGA also fear that federal workers could resist (in very creative on-the-job ways) the dismantling of environmental and climate regulation, workers’ rights, consumer protections, etc. The attack on federal workers is the new PATCO – the beginning of an all-out effort to destroy US unions.
The Storm Troopers Are in Our Streets – What Can We Do?
ICE and the Border Patrol are the MAGA storm troopers, playing the same role that the Nazi SS did for Hitler: to terrorize a vulnerable minority and their communities, and then crush all opposition by force or the threat of force. With GOP majorities, Trump and MAGA have a compliant Congress and Senate, and a stacked US Supreme Court. The Robert’s Court has already ruled, on very thin grounds, that US presidents have total executive authority to pretty much do whatever they want.
Clearly, we are on the road to fascism, folks. We can give it other names, such as authoritarianism or despotism, but finally, it means the destruction of democracy wrapped in a brutal racist cloak.
Let’s also be clear that Trump and MAGA are not invincible. We can defeat this New MAGA confederacy if we block their assaults, broaden the pro-democracy anti-fascist united front, and build a more substantive and equitable democracy that embodies the concept of “people before profits.”
A woman with a red skirt walks in front of a line of armed troops for the “No Kings” protest June 14, 2025 (credit: Larissa Puro, CC BY-NC 2.0)
BLOCK MAGA’s ethnic cleansing campaign
Donald Trump launched his ethnic cleansing campaign in California, mainly in Los Angeles which has the largest immigrant community in the country. Masked and heavily armed ICE agents, accompanied by armored vehicles and helicopters, stormed into agricultural fields, workplaces, schools, parks, and even courthouses where immigrants were seeking to secure legal documentation. ICE agents even assaulted US Senator Alex Padilla when he attempted to ask questions of a government official about the raids, and followed up that attack by assaulting labor leader David Huerta, president of the Service Employees International Union-United Service Workers West (SEIU-USWW).
Resistance to these tactics was immediate, broad, and militant. California Governor Gavin Newsom opposed the sending in of the National Guard and took Trump to court to stop this move. Citywide immigrant defense networks were established which warned people of ICE raids, provided legal support and mutual aid, and effectively utilized social medi, and even the mainstream media to let LA residents know what terror was being carried out in their city, which is a sanctuary city. These networks included labor unions, worker centers, immigrant support organizations, faith organizations, and others. Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass, the Los Angeles City Council, and the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors condemned the raids and stood up for the rights of immigrants. In fact, when ICE agents attempted to enter two Los Angeles public schools, they were stopped by the schools’ principals and teachers.
Faced with this resistance, Trump sent 700 US Marines and 4,000 National Guard troops into the city in a clear effort to crush this resistance. Well, you know what? They failed! Trump was forced to remove his storm troopers from the city, the last of them leaving on July 31, 2025.
What does the experience of Los Angeles tell us? First, that resistance is never futile. People from nearly every Los Angeles community – from the barrios to the suburbs – stood up to ICE and MAGA. It was a true multi-racial resistance led by those communities most affected by the ICE raids.
Second, a broad united front is the key to victory. The united front in Los Angeles included Black, Brown, and Asian Pacific Islander activists and leaders; a strong network of immigrant rights organizations; Black, Brown, and API worker center; broad sectors of the faith community’ legal and civil rights organizations; artists, musicians and other cultural workers; senior organizations; pro-Palestine organizations; socialist organizations, and…the Democratic governor; the state’s Democratic US senators and Congressional representatives; and LA’s Democratic mayor, city council, school board, and county board of supervisors. It was this broad united front that forced the Trump Administration to withdraw its military forces. This is an essential lesson for every community where the administration sends in the troops or threatens to do so. Of course, ICE is still doing its dirty work in Los Angeles, so the struggle continues. However, the city has learned that a unified and militant resistance movement can effectively counter MAGA.
Image Credit: Greg Lilly, “Together We Rise,” April 5 2025 (CC BY-NC 2.0)
BROADEN the Anti-Fascist United Front
ICE continues to terrorize communities in Los Angeles and throughout the US. And everywhere it operates, a dynamic resistance movement has arisen. The task of the US left and progressive movement is to support these movements, to help them connect into a coherent national force, and to help develop a strategy that can guide the multiple creative tactics that have emerged from among the masses, a plan whose goal is to build up a unified and militant resistance, and which weakens the forces of the New Confederacy/MAGA forces. To accomplish this task, we will need to be unafraid to work with a broad and diverse array of forces, including many leaders of the Democratic Party, top union officials, leaders of mainstream nonprofits, entertainment figures, and others whom we might not usually consider our allies. This idea is anathema to some on the left who would rather drink turpentine than work with, say, US Senator Chuck Schumer. I would argue that in order to defeat the fascist threat, we need all of the allies we can get.
Let’s keep in mind the enemy we are up against: a right-wing social movement supported by a significant sector of the billionaire ruling class, a social movement that now controls the White House and the US Congress e, as well as having a Supreme Court majority and a significant number of pro-MAGA federal judges. It has massive media support from Fox News and a diverse array of social media platforms. It has political dominance in 28 states. The enemy is also fed by well-funded think tanks such as the ones that developed Project 2025, a large social base among white evangelical churches, neo-Nazi organizations, and a growing array of well-armed militias.
We will not defeat these forces without a united front that has the necessary resources, a coherent strategy, effective leadership, and a diverse and broad range of allies. We need a united front that can work effectively at all levels of struggle: policy, electoral, litigation, mass action, peaceful civil disobedience, communications, media, and work on the art and cultural front.
As the experience of California shows, MAGA can be defeated if there is a strong leadership core and a broad front. But ICE is still conducting raids throughout California, sending masked thugs into workplaces and other areas where immigrants gather. The fight continues, and even in California, we cannot achieve complete victory – kicking out the ICE thugs – unless the united front is even broader, and with a clearly defined longer-term strategy.
“DTLA No Kings Protest,” Mike Velasquez (June 14, 2025) CC BY-NC 2.0
BUILD a Multiracial, Working-Class Democracy
While defeating the MAGA fascists must be our absolute number one priority, the US left should work together on this project AND work to advance a project for a more democratic, equitable, just, and non-imperialist US society. While a return to the “status quo” before Trump would be a huge victory for working and oppressed people in the US (e.g., winning the reproductive protections provided by Roe v. Wade), we should be working towards a much better society than that. This could include:
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Passing the John Lewis Voting Rights law, which would protect and vastly expand voting rights for working people.
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Passing comprehensive reproductive justice legislation that completely protects the right to abortion.
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Passing the PRO Act, to facilitate unionization throughout all US industries. This would be a huge economic and social benefit for tens of millions of US workers, most especially workers of color and women.
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Restoring the Department of Education, to reinstitute federal oversight of public schools, reverse privatization efforts, expand funding for K–12 and higher education, ensure robust programs for English language learners, and provide student debt relief.
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Creating strong legal rights and protections for trans people and the LGtBQ+ community
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Restoring the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, to protect working people from predatory lending, abusive debt collection, discriminatory financial practices, and corporate fraud.
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Abolishing ICE and creating an immigration system that facilitates the processing of asylum and refugee applications, and creating a path to citizenship for undocumented immigrants currently residing in the US.
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Grant immediate citizenship to all DACA recipients.
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Create a truly progressive federal tax system that makes the top 1% pay their fair share of taxes.
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Cut the military budget by 75%, close overseas military bases, and devote those resources to a comprehensive jobs program to build affordable housing, schools, health centers, and hospitals; to clean up the environment; and to build clean energy projects as part of a just transition from the fossil fuel economy.
These are just examples of the type of democratic and equitable society that we can and should create. But we can only do this if we work together. The billionaires will never give up their power without—as Frederick Douglass reminded us—a demand, an organized multiracial, worker-led movement that seeks to build a truly inclusive society that honors the history and contributions of the Indigenous peoples first of all, but also of the African American, Latino, and Asian Pacific Islander communities that have done so much to build the economic and social structures of our society. As the saying goes, “If we can dream it, we can make it happen.” That is the vision that should guide us as we work together to defend our immigrant sisters and brothers, to safeguard and enhance our democracy, and to defeat the fascist tide that would enslave us all.
Si Se Puede!
Bill Gallegos: Proud child of Aztlan, of the incredible liberation struggle of of the Chicano people and of the working class struggle for a new society free from exploitation and all forms of privilege.
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