By Michael Wongsam
It is not possible to comprehend contemporary US politics without understanding the peculiarities which differentiate the USA from European imperialism. The most important of these is its settler colonial origins. The special political character of the USA derives from the fact that it combined two distinct types of settler colonialism: i) the ’first type’ was associated with a form of production based on ’the mass of the farming colonists’ — necessitating the extermination of the First Nations1 — who then set out ’to produce their own livelihood’, and whose mode of production was thus not immediately capitalist in character; ii) the ”second type” consisted of ”plantations — where commercial speculations figure from the start and production is intended for the world market.” This type was part of the emergent capitalist mode of production, although only in the formal sense, since the slavery of Africans precludes free wage labor, which is the basis of capitalist production.
These two forms were not independent systems but were bound together as elements in a Eurocentric mercantilist system within which they played distinct roles. This distinctive origin has left its imprint on the whole of the subsequent American history, including the battle over the constitution; the civil war and its aftermath, the overturning of reconstruction and introduction of Jim Crow; the civil rights struggle; and now the right wing counteroffensive2.
From the outset, race became the primary organising principle of the nation. The first uniform rules for U.S. citizenship was the Naturalisation Act of 17933, which explicitly stated ”That any alien, being a free white person, who shall have resided within the limits and under the jurisdiction of the United States for the term of two years, may be admitted to become a citizen thereof, on application to any Common Law Court of Record, in any one of the States wherein he shall have resided for the term of one year at least…”.
Its function was to enlist the adherence of white workers in the extermination of the Indigenes, and the suppression of the resistance of the Africans to their enslavement. The US was created as a white nation, with class collaboration between white workers and white elites organised to facilitate the expropriation of the land and resources of Indigenes and the exploitation of the Africans crystallised into the foundations of the state4. The important subjective instrument here is the social construction of ’whiteness’ itself and its foundational role as the basis of the national consciousness. Thus, common cause between white workers and white elites was accomplished not by elevating the position of white workers with respect to white elites, but by relegating the position of Black workers and slaves with respect to white workers.
This was continually reinforced by statute and custom until it became the organising principle of the nation 5. For instance, the acquisition of new territories following the Mexican-American war necessitated the Compromise of 18506 — ”a package of five separate bills passed by the United States Congress in September 1850 that temporarily defused tensions between slave and free states during the years leading up to the American Civil War.”
Indeed, these tensions themselves arose out of the struggle over what the new territories should be used for: either they should be used by the planter class of the South to extend the realm of slavery; or the territorial claims of white settlers, many of whom were recent immigrants should take priority over the planters. Implicit in this struggle were conflicting ideas about “imagined demographic futures” 7. Central to this package of bills was the Fugitive Slave Act of 18508 which “required that all escaped slaves, upon capture, be returned to the slave-owner and that officials and citizens of free states had to cooperate”.
All people of colour, not just African-Americans, were to one extent or another constituent of ’internal colonies’ brought about respectively by the pacification of the indigenese and the annexation of former territories of Mexico. The Chinese arrived in the middle of the nineteenth century as a cheap source of labour, driven by the economic catastrophe then taking place in China resulting from the Taiping rebellion. They were highly prized by industrial employers, particularly for the construction of the American Transcontinental railway beginning in the 1850’s, thereafter settling in numbers in California. ”Since they arrived as a source of cheap labour, white workers considered them to be unfair competition for jobs, as well as bringer of a strange, alien, i.e. non-European, culture”9.
This national principle was confirmed in the Supreme Court decision of 1857 in Dred Scott vs. Sandford, which ruled that the US Constitution did not extend American citizenship to people of Black African descent. The idea was continuously reinforced by proscribing non-white naturalisation and immigration. Restrictive immigration laws were intended to preserve this white national identity. In particular, these included:-
• The Chinese Exclusion Act (1882) which barred the immigration of Chinese labourers for ten years, marking the first significant law to restrict immigra- tion based on ethnicity — it was extended multiple times, effectively banning Chinese immigration until its repeal in 1943.
• The Immigration Act (1917) which created the Asiatic Barred Zone, restricting immigration from most of Asia and the Pacific Islands.
• The Emergency Quota Act (1921) which capped immigration at 3% of each nationality’s U.S. population at its 1910 level.
• The Immigration Act (1924) which reduced the Emergency Quota Act cap to 2% and based quotas on the 1890 census, skewing the caps in favour of older immigrant groups. The effect of the 1921 and 1924 Acts was to effectively exclude Asian immigrants and favour immigrants from Northern and Western Europe while severely limiting those from Southern and Eastern Europe.
• The Nationality Act (1952, McCarran-Walter Act) which retained the quota system but abolished racial restrictions on naturalisation. Thus, quotas continued favouring European immigration. It also introduced ideological restrictions, barring communists and other suspected ’subversives’.
• The Illegal Immigration Reform and Immigrant Responsibility Act (IIRIRA, 1996) which increased border enforcement and penalties for unauthorised immigration.
• The Trump Administration Policies (2017–2021) which restricted entry from several majority-Muslim countries, and restricted asylum claims and reduced refugee admissions to historic lows10.
Even after emancipation, peonage and other coercive labour arrangements persisted well into the twentieth century11. Southern states innovated ways to impose peonage but avoid violations of the law, including criminal surety statutes that allowed employers to pay the court fines for indigent misdemeanants charged with minor offenses in exchange for a commitment to work12. Under these conditions marxists identified Black Americans, who in their majority still lived in the so called ’Black Belt’ in the southern states, as an oppressed nation within the US, with the right to self-determination, including secession if necessary13. So, although at the time Blacks overwhelmingly lived in rural districts of the South, they are not ’reserves of capitalist reaction,’ but potential allies of the revolutionary proletariat – Black Nationalism is not a reactionary but a progressive development. This is diametrically opposed to white nationalism, which is a thoroughgoing reactionary movement which is the bedrock of class collaboration.
Even after emancipation, when ”one system of economic oppression collapsed, new ones were created to fill the void”14, including through dispossession. For instance, in 1910 Black farmers made up around 14% of all U.S. farmers, owning from 16 to 19 million acres of land.
By 2012, Black Americans represented just 1.6% of the farming community, owning 3.6 million acres of land, accompanied by a 98% decline in the number of Black farmers between 1920, and 199715. This is despite the Black population constituting 14% of the total US population.
In effect, despite efforts through collective action to organise landless Black farmers and to pool money to buy land and tools, by for instance, the Colored Farmers’ National Alliance and Cooperative Union16, the overturning of the post civil war reconstruction and Jim Crow together with the New Deal, resulted in the great land dispossession. A lengthy discussion is given by The Oakland Institute17.
Passed in 1866, the Southern Homestead Act made land available to Black Ameri- cans in Alabama, Arkansas, Florida, Louisiana, and Mississippi in 80-acre and then 160-acre plots. While this land overwhelmingly went to whites, some Black Ameri- cans got land as well. That is, until Congress repealed the Southern Homestead Act in 1876, bowing to white Southern opposition. By 1910, Black Americans owned as many as 16 million acres of land. By 1920, there were 925,000 Black-owned farms in the United States 14 percent of all American farms. This marked the height of Black land ownership in the United States.
Between 1910 and 1997, however, Black-owned farmland was slashed 90 percent. Meanwhile, white farmland ownership was where it was at the beginning of the century. The total value of Black farmland lost since 1920 is estimated to be US$326 billion with most of the losses being in the South and California. The decline in Black farmers has been equally precipitous plummeting 98 percent from 1900 to 1997.
During most of the 1920s, the CPUSA made weak and ineffective efforts to organise Black workers. For example, in 1925, with only about fifty Black members nationally, the party called for ’full equality in the relationship between Black and white workers,’ and ’the right to vote, abolition of Jim Crowism in law and custom, including segregation and intermarriage laws18. In 1929 and 1930, and under the influence of the Comintern and some of their Black leadership, they called for the right of self-determination for the Negro nation in the Black Belt South. This decision helped bring about a major positive change in the work and fortunes of the Party among people of African descent. Tens of thousands of Black people were recruited into the CPUSA during the 1930s, an advance that lasted until the rise of McCarthyism. Thereafter along with the rest of the left, the CPUSA went into political retreat, dissolved the Southern region of the Party and eventually abandoned its position on self-determination for Blacks in the South. This return to their 1920s position was followed by over a decade of organisational inactivity by the CPUSA on questions connected to Black Liberation. Hence, the CPUSA contributed no organised political leadership to the civil rights struggle during the 1960s — the most dynamic period in the formation of Black leadership.
The two Trump administrations, especially the second term, are signifying the prospective culmination of a long struggle from the aftermath of the decade of civil rights and the following urban rebellions, organised primarily through the Republican Party, to return the nation to its original principle. On September 8, 2025, in the case of Noem v. Vazquez Perdomo, the Supreme Court lifted restrictions that had previously stopped Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) from using factors such as race, ethnicity, and language as cause to detain individuals. That is, the Supreme Court signaled its support for ICE’s continued use of racial profiling in immigration policing.
Black Nationalism
The impetus for the communist movement to raise the slogan for self-determination of American Blacks on the basis that they comprise an oppressed national minority arose because there was already a movement among Blacks themselves raising such demands. While many Blacks were chiefly concerned with suffrage, desegregation, economic and legal justice, Black people found a degree of self-determination in the creation of cooperatives and other Black controlled autonomous institutions. Black Nationalism can be thought of as the set of beliefs or political theories that African Americans should maintain social, economic, and political institutions separate and distinct from those of whites. Alternatively, in its purest form it did include, among other ingredients, the quest for a national homeland, and it was perhaps incorrect to refer to anyone as a Black Nationalist unless they supported territorial separatism. Also, it is a social theory and practice organised around the concept and conviction that Black people have a distinct historical personality, and they should therefore unite in order to gain the structural capacity to define, defend, and develop their interests themselves.
Also, there are identifiable cultural continuities that can help to make Black people culturally distinct from whites in America. The most viable definition of Black Nationalism is one that includes group mass consciousness among Black people, and the belief that they, independently of whites, can achieve liberation by the creation and maintenance of Black institutions to serve the best interest of Black people.
There are four periods in the U.S. History in which Black Nationalism, both in its strict separatist and more open racial solidarity guises, has been ascendant19:
• 1790 — 1820: the explicit recognition of slavery in the constitution of 1787, the passing of the Naturalisation Law of 179020 which restricted naturalisation to any ”free white person” of good character, and the passing of the Fugitive Slave Law of 1793 — which empowered a slaveowner or his agent, to seize or arrest the fugitive and bring him before a federal judge — by the US Congress as a means of implementing the slavery clause in the Constitution, led to the founding of the first expressions of self-organisation. The African Methodist Episcopalian (A.M.E.) Church, the A.M.E. Zion Church, and the Negro Baptist Church; the formation of the Black press; and many mutual aid and benevolent societies; Black schools for free Blacks in the North; and in December of 1816 the foundation of the American Colonisation Society (ACS) in order to seek a broad base of support for emigration to Africa. This resulted in the founding of the colony of Liberia in 1821.
• 1830s — 1850s: abolition groups adopted a more militant posture in response to a further retrenchment of slavery. The fugitive slave laws of 1850 required citizens and officials of free states to assist in the capture and return of escaped enslaved people; the Kansas-Nebraska Bill of 185421 which placed the United States of America on the path to Civil War; the Dred Scott Decision of 1857 wherein the US Supreme Court stated that enslaved people were not citizens of the United States; and the general proliferation of pseudo-scientific racist theories. These developments resulted in actions such as the Nat Turner slave rebellion in 1831 and John Brown’s assault on Harper’s Ferry in 1859; while in the northeastern states, there were increasing trends toward disenfranchisement, and in the northwestern states where levels of discrimination continued to be similar to those that were prevalent in the South.
• 1890 — 1920s: The Supreme Court ruling in Plessey vs Ferguson stating that racial segregation laws — Jim Crow — did not violate the US Constitution, saw the founding of the NAACP in 1909; the Garveyite movement in 1919 — the UNIA (United Negro Improvement Association), a mass Black Nationalist organisation; the Urban League in 1910; the Nation of Islam in 1930; the African Blood Brotherhood in 1919 — a radical black liberation organisation that advocated for armed self-defense, Black nationalism, and the creation of a Black socialist commonwealth. The African Blood Brotherhood considered themselves to be a covert insurgent vanguard for the Black community against racist attacks22.
• 1950s — 1960s: The era of the civil rights struggle, which coincided with the largest volume of migration of Blacks from the rural south to the urban north which took place in two great waves23. This urbanisation did not end the oppression of Blacks, but only transformed it24. It combined with an upsurge in the decolonisation struggles in Africa and the Caribbean to produce a surge in Black consciousness which impacted the modes of organisation now employed by Black communities. For instance, it saw the Nation of Islam achieving its greatest influence when Malcolm X — himself the son of committed UNIA activists the Reverend Earl Little and Louise Little — emerged as Elijah Muhammad’s chief aide and the national spokesperson for the organisation. Also, the phenomenal rise of the Black Panther Party in Oakland, California represented the face of new Black radicalism during the era — their 10-point manifesto, issued in 1966, called for Black self-determination, decent housing and education, and the end to police brutality and exploitation in the ghetto25. Importantly, the gains of the civil rights struggle together with the upsurge in the global class struggle including most importantly the Vietnamese revolution, the upsurge in Black militancy constituted a major challenge to the US political system which reacted with a major counter-insurgency campaign aimed at crushing this militancy. This resulted in the decimation of the most militant Black organisations — ”by the end of 1969, an estimated 30 Panthers were facing capital punishment, 40 faced life in prison, 55 faced terms up to thirty years, and another 155 were either in jail or being sought”26; the Black Liberation Army — which adopted an armed struggle to defend the Black liberation movement from the state repression — itself became victim to widespread police conspiracy27. Under these new circumstances, ’Black Power’ was described as ”the methodology for the implementation of the goals of Black nationalism”28.
It would be instructive to situate these four periods in the development of Black Nationalism in the USA to a periodisation of the US history itself.There are three periods of US history which almost exactly divide into equal eighty year sized segments — i) the period between its founding and the civil war, 1776 – 1865; ii) the period between the end of the civil war and the great depression, 1865 – 1939; iii) the period between the second world war and the present, 1939 – 2026. These periods define definite segments of the arc of development of US history.
For instance, in phase i), a white nation was birthed based on the existence of two different modes of production, one of which was the enslavement of Africans, and both of which were based on the expulsion of native Americans. This phase saw within it the growing contradiction between the two modes of production, resulting in the civil war and the triumph of incipient industrial capitalism over plantation slavery. Phase ii) saw the defeat of the confederacy contradict the essential racially defined birth of the nation, which resulted in the overturn of reconstruction and the institution of Jim Crow in the Southern states. The great depression was a global, existential crisis of capitalism combined with the advance of the organised working class. The strategy of the anti-Fascist popular front was defeated in Europe where the organised working class was strong, whereas it triumphed in the US with the New Deal, where the organised working class was weak. That is to say, the organised working class — weakened by its racial divisions — could be integrated as a subordinate element in the US, whereas in Europe the bourgeoisies chose to side with the Fascists in order to inflict a historic defeat on the working class. Phase iii) saw the USA emerge from the great anti-Fascist war as the undisputed leader of the capitalist world, and consolidate the American century, wherein its interests shaped the organisation of world governance and world economy.
It can be seen that periods one and two of Black Nationalism, that is 1790 – 1820, and 1830s – 1850s respectively, correspond with the first roughly eighty years phase of US history; period three of Black Nationalism, that is 1890 – 1920s correspond with the second roughly eighty years phase of US history; and period four of Black Nationalism, 1950s – 1960s corresponds with the most recent roughly eighty years phase of US history. The birth of a white nation and the entrenchment of its codes, combined with the deepening contradictions between the two distinct modes of production correspond with the first incipient forms of Black self-organisation and their adoption of more militant forms. The reconfiguration of white supremacy following the civil war and subsequent overturning of reconstruction corresponded with the formation of mass Black organisations, and the flowering of Black culture. The defeat of Fascism in the great anti-Fascist war, great colonial struggles and revolutionary advances against the European empires correspond with an intense decade of struggle for Black rights and the establishment of the beginnings of Black power in the urban centres. These advances in the struggle for Black liberation collided with the established racial character of the American national psyche to produce the counter revolution which is playing out currently.
The contemporary situation
While there still exist many small organisations with roots going back to the era of the civil rights struggle and the Black Power ethos, by far the largest Black Nationalist organisation in the US today is the Louis Farrakhan led Nation of Islam. Since the crushing of the main Black Nationalist organisations and the advance of conservative reaction29. Black Nationalism has made a long retreat beginning in the 1970s and lasting well into the twenty first century. In many ways, the current attacks on Affirmative Action, welfare reform, increased incarceration, and police brutality can be understood as the consequence of both the defeat of Black Nationalism and the advance of white reaction. The defeat of Black Nationalism removed the most militant and organised cadre of the Black movement, which resulted in a truncation of the gains of the civil rights struggle. The advance of white reaction has resulted in the construction of the cadre of a new conservative movement, of which MAGA is its latest incarnation. The Obama presidency and its aftermath can be seen as the point at which resistance to the advance of the white reaction collapsed, and the new conservative movement broke through.
The progress of this political point of inflection can be outlined in the following sequence. Obama was elected President of the United States in 2008; a new conservative movement was launched in the guise of the Tea Party in 2009; Trayvon Martin was shot by George Zimmerman in 2012; George Zimmerman was acquited of all charges in 2013; Black Lives Matter (BLM) was launched in 2013; Breonna Taylor was assaulted and killed at home in her bed by a rogue, renegade taskforce of three white male Louisville Metro Police officers; Eric Garner, was killed in New York by a police officer, who put him in a prohibited chokehold while arresting him in 2014; Mike Brown was murdered by Ferguson police officer Darren Wilson, which sparked widespread protests and the formation of many local BLM chapters throughout the nation in 2014; Dylann Roof attacked the Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church in Charleston, South Carolina, killing nine parishioners, in 2015; Trump was elected President of the United States in 2016; a man attacked Tree of Life synagogue in Pittsburgh killing eleven people and wounding six in 2018; Patrick Wood Crusius, shot forty-five people, killing twenty three at a Walmart store in El Paso, Texas — the deadliest attack on Latinx people in modern American history, in 2019; Ahmaud Arbery, was murdered during a racially motivated hate crime while jogging in 2020; George Floyd was killed by policemen in 2020; the summer of 2020 saw protests spreading quickly nationwide and to over 2,000 cities and towns in over 60 countries in support of Black Lives Matter; polls in the summer of 2020 estimated that between 15 million and 26 million people had participated at some point in the demonstrations in the United States, making them the largest in U.S. history; 17-year-old Kyle Rittenhouse shot and killed two people when local police effectively deputised a ”band of white nationalist vigilantes” during protests sparked by the shooting of a Black man Jacob Blake by a white police officer in 2020; Biden was elected President of the United States in 2020; on January 6th 2021 a far right Trump inspired insurrection attacked and entered the Capitol Building in Washington in an effort to overturn the result of the presidential election; Payton S. Gendron, shot thirteen Black people at a Tops supermarket in east Buffalo, killing ten in 2022; Mauricio Garcia, a thirty three year old neo-nazi, shot and killed eight people and injured a further seven at an outlet mall in Dallas, in 2023; A White neo-nazi gunman who opened fire in a Dollar General store in Jacksonville, killing three Black people in a racially motivated attack, after first trying to enter the campus of a nearby historically Black college.
With the reawakening of Black radicalism in the early 2020s and its combination in particular with pro-Palestinian activism, the reaction has moved quickly to remobilise state repression30. Contemporary manifestations of this historical logic include white nationalist movements31 , systemic inequality, and policy efforts to roll back civil rights protections32, 33. The cultural backlash which has surfaced today is nothing but the reaffirmation of the fact that race is the organising principle of a nation that has its origins in settler colonialism and African slavery. It seeks to reverse seventy years of development, which was achieved through one of the titanic struggles of the second half of the twentieth century. When, in 1954, the then moderate dominated Supreme Court reversed their 1898 Plessy v Ferguson separate but equal ruling and said that public schools must integrate, the response from the right was swift. By the end of that decade public schools across the South had closed, leaving private school or no school as the only option34. It continued into the 1960’s.
To achieve these goals, the MAGA movement seek to portray white working class males as the most oppressed section of society; seek to shift the blame for the deteriorating circumstances of white working class males from the general upward transfer of wealth from the poorest in society to corporations and the richest, onto ’special privileges’ given to Black people and women because of their race or gender. At the same time, ”The collective wealth of US billionaires surged to $8.1 Trillion in 2025 as working-class Americans faced a cost of living crisis made worse by President Donald Trump’s tariff regime and unprecedented assault on the social safety net”35.
They also seek to blame the left for creating that situation36, and deleted a 2024 study that showed right-wing extremists are behind the vast majority of ideologically driven killings in the US, contrary to the White House’s repeated claims about violence from the left37. It therefore achieves collaboration between white male workers and the imperialist ruling class, while simultaneously suppressing the alternative, which is class solidarity which would strengthen the unity of the working class and pose the possibility of achieving a redistributive downward transfer of wealth from the richest to the poorest.
The successful conservative campaign to dismantle the Voting Rights Act of 196538, and Trump’s stated aim of ending birthright citizenship, if realised, together open the way for an assault on the 14th amendment39. The 14th amendment overturned the Supreme Court’s 1857 Dred Scott vs. Sandford decision, which ruled that African Americans could not be US citizens.
The question of the 14th amendment, and Trump’s effort to overturn it is discussed later in this Section. However, it must be remembered that in 1877, the post civil war reconstruction, which was the project of enabling African Americans to claim full citizenship, with all its attendant rights, was abruptly ended with the withdrawal of federal troops from the South40. Those rights were then effectively de facto revoked through murderous violence and terrorism, and thereafter legitimised by the Supreme Court in its ruling in the case Plessey versus Ferguson of 189641.
The MAGA movement’s obsession with American identity and Western civilisation is shaping federal policy far more in Trump’s second presidency than in Trump’s first term — fueling a reckoning over who belongs and what history should be remembered. Moreover, it has intersected with the US geostrategic goals to bring a McCarthyite association between resistance with treasonous behaviour. Following the assassination of right wing populist Charlie Kirk, Trump issued NATIONAL SECURITY PRESIDENTIAL MEMORANDUM/NSPM-742 ”identifying ’anti-Christian’ and ’anti-American’ views as indicators of radical left violence”43. All of this escalation around a supposed threat of radical left wing violence is despite the fact that radical right wing violence is responsible for the overwhelming majority of politically motivated violence in the USA44.
A National Security Memorandum, unlike an executive order which lays out the course of day-to-day federal government operations, is a sweeping policy decree for the defense, foreign policy, intelligence, and law enforcement apparatus. Under this memorandum ”President Trump directs the Justice Department, the FBI, and other national security agencies and departments to fight his version of political violence in America, retooling a network of Joint Terrorism Task Forces to focus on ’leftist’ political violence in America…directs a new national strategy to ’disrupt’ any individual or groups ’that foment political violence,’ including ’before they result in violent political acts.”45. In this way — the use of a National Security Memorandum instead of an executive order — frames the Kirk assassination and political violence generally as a national security problem and not merely one of law enforcement46.
Even as Trump was inaugurated on January 20th 2025 the US’s chief investigative agencies ’closed the book on a notorious, massive unsolved crime in the annals of American racial history’47. The Tulsa race riot of 1921, where white citizens, some of them armed by the all-white police department, burned and looted 1,000 homes and businesses in the all-black section of north Tulsa, has been described48 as ’the worst single example of racial violence against blacks in American history’. And the administration has moved to sever partnerships between the federal government and civil rights organisations49.
At the time of writing, so far Trump’s cultural program has made the achievements outlined in the following paragraphs.
DEI initiatives
Trump has successfully used federal funding to suppress DEI admissions policies in Universities50, leading to more than thirty educational institutions abandoning admissions policies51. This had actually been anticipated by the Supreme Court two years earlier during the Biden administration which found that ’the race-conscious admissions programs as practiced at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and Harvard — the nation’s oldest public and private universities, respectively — are unconstitutional’52, and could have major implications for the country’s approach to the Fourteenth Amendment’s equal protection clause.
The same tactics have been used for instance against law firms. For instance, the multi- national headquartered in New York, Paul, Weiss, Rifkind, Wharton & Garrison LLP, agreed to abandon DEI policies and to provide $40 million of free legal work to the White House in exchange for the rescinding of an executive order which targeted it53. These measures have resulted in the flow of money or the provision of legal services from institutions to the government; the government has succeeded in redefining discrimination, and has acquired a great measure of oversight, and has imposed its ideology on companies and institutions54. The administration has launched investigations into the use of diversity initiatives in hiring and promotion at major U.S. companies that contract with the government using a federal law meant to punish businesses that cheat the government55. In effect, “the Justice Department is embracing the theory that holding a federal contract while still considering diversity when hiring is, in effect, fraud against the government that entitles it to recoup potentially millions of dollars.”
Mention must also be made of the efforts of the Supreme Court in this regard, which includes three Trump appointees from his first administration. An analysis has been conducted by the Washington Post56, which found that the “court is the first since at least the 50s to reject claims in a majority of cases involving women and minorities…The shift brings to an end a streak of successive courts expanding such protections that began with the dawn of the civil rights era”.
It must be emphasised though that the administration’s efforts have met with resistance. The attempt to withhold federal funding from the Department of Education for educational institutions that maintained DEI programs were dropped in January 202657, when challenged in American Federation of Teachers et al. v. Department of Education et al.
Moreover, this is increasingly aligning with the administration’s efforts to suppress pro- Palestinian support on campuses58, including targeting pro-Palestinian academics for deportation59. The extent of the attack against historic gains in the struggle against the oppression of Black people are hard to imagine just by reading the mainstream media. The full extent can only be appreciated from for example an October 2025 report by Onix Impact60, which comprehensively outlines the scale of the attack.
Culture wars
There is a continuation and extension of the culture war promoted during the first Trump administration61. The administration embarked on a revisionist crusade with Executive Order 14253: “Restoring Truth and Sanity to American History” in March 202562, removing displays and exhibits depicting the history of slavery. Trump has installed his campaign officials as leaders of America250, the U.S. Semiquincentennial Commission, dismissed contractors who have ties to Democrats, and partnered with conservative organisations, and made significant changes to the topics the celebration will emphasise. “Such executive orders as Restoring Truth and Sanity to American History, Trump’s commitment to dismantling diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) frameworks, and combating racial indoctrination in schools have placed dozens of projects that highlight the less palatable aspects of American history under siege”63.
Trump has ordered the Smithsonian Institution64 to revise exhibits the administration deems problematic in ”tone, historical framing and alignment with American ideals”65. There is also a program of restoration of confederate monuments that were removed during, and in the aftermath of the summer of rage following the killing of George Floyd66, and restored Confederate names to U.S. military bases.
According to Rev. Graylan Scott Hagler67 this is part of ”the political project to change the narrative of America and make that narrative into the blessings and triumphs of white people, while ignoring the blemishes, scars, and overcoming that is as great a part of America’s history as any other…In 2026, the United States of America will celebrate its 250th birthday. In those 250 years of existence, in comparison, there are 247 years of enslavement. Then, there is de facto enslavement, called Jim Crow or American Apartheid, that lasts for at least another 100 years. So, there is no way that America was born, existed, or its story told without the story of Black people”.
There is also a purge of law enforcement officers who display sympathy with Black activism. For instance, FBI agents who had been photographed ’taking the knee’ during racial justice protests in 2020 were initially reassigned, then fired68.
There is further a continuation of the intervention into the content of education itself from the first administration. This is consistent with the effort begun during the first Trump presidency with the publication of the 1776 commission report69 which blamed racial disadvantage in the US not on the legacies of slavery, segregation and continuing racism but on the teaching of the histories of slavery and segregation in American schools and universities. To advance this view, they called for critical scholarship to be replaced by what they called ’patriotic education’. This is continuing to have an impact especially in Republican controlled jurisdictions70, and continues to impact the battle over books and the control of education boards71. The assasination of the right wing propagandist and founder of the conservative educational interventionist group Turning Point USA, Charlie Kirk, on September 10th 2025, the culture war in education became even more aggressive with civics programming by the Education Department partnering with conservative groups including Turning Point USA72, and a push to use administrative means to set up Turning Point USA chapters in public schools in Oklahoma73.
Immigration and citizenship
With the ’unauthorised immigrant’ population reaching 14 million in 2023 according to the Pew Research Centre74, the administration ramped up the expedited removal of migrants75, including by invoking76 the Alien Enemies Act77; U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services announced that it will screen legal immigration applicants for ”anti-American ideologies,” including views expressed on social media; ramped up workplace raids, including a massive arrest of 475 workers at a Hyundai factory in Georgia78, and the unprecedented use of the US military for domestic operations. One of the matters of particular concern insofar as it sets a dangerous precedent for constitutional rights is the assertion of “sweeping power to forcibly enter people’s homes without a judge’s warrant”79.
This has led to a massive expansion of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE)80 against unauthorised immigration, which is accompanied by a tightening of legal migration81, and a review of all 55 million current visa holders for any potential violations82. The Trump administration has returned to a theme visited during his first term83 by which the Department of Housing and Urban Development seeks to end assistance to mixed status families84. To this end U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) Secretary Scott Turner and U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS) Secretary Kristi Noem signed the American Housing Programs for American Citizens Memorandum of Understanding (MOU), to end the ’wasteful misappropriation of taxpayer dollars to benefit illegal aliens instead of American citizens’85. A major aspect of Trump’s Africa policy consists of negotiating reductions in tariffs86 plus small payments in exchange for African countries taking in deportees from the US87.
Of course, the sheer scale and brutality of the deportation program has provoked large and sustained resistance across the country, including notably in the twin cities Minneapolis and St Paul starting in December 2025, and later expanded to the whole of Minnesota88. This has resulted in federal agencies carrying out nationwide anti-terrorism probes against activists protesting against federal immigration enforcement officers89.
All of this tightening happened even as the administration — after having suspended refugee admmissions on his first day in office — carved out exceptions and granted asylum90 for white South African farmers following a visit from South African President Cyril Ramophosa in which ridiculous accusations of genocide were made91. This was followed by the administrations’ overhauling the refugee system such that only 7,500 refugees would be accepted in the fiscal year starting October 1st 2025, within which 7000 are expected to be white South Africans92, and the Department of Homeland Security unsubtly posting on its X feed @DHSgov a string of social media content from the agency including invoking explicitly white supremacist themes93. In the period October 1st to January 31st records show that refugee status has in fact been limited to white South Africans94.
As of late November 2025 the Trump administration directed U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) to pause decisions on all asylum applications, regardless of the applicant’s nationality. The impact has been immediate for people from the 19 countries on the travel ban list, for which not only all future travel was immediately curtailed, but now the restrictions are used against immigrants already in the country who are applying for visas, work authorisation or permanent legal status like a green card95.
These escalating attacks on non-white immigrants, along with racist invective against particular targeted immigrant communities, such as the description of the Somali community as ”garbage”, make the Trump administration the most hostile US administration to non-white immigrants in the country’s history. The effect has been immediate. The backlog in immigration cases fell by 341,006 between Trump’s inauguration and Jan. 30, 2026, mainly due to a lack of new cases from border crossings, which have been comparatively low in Trump’s first year. Trump’s purging of the immigration courts — sacking 55 immigration judges and retiring a further 80, and hiring new ideologically aligned judges — will further speed up the rate of removals96. Furthermore, Trump has unleashed large scale purges of immigration judges97 — who are not members of the judiciary, but of the Department of Justice under Trump’s command.
An interesting thing to note is that since the Latinx population has been driving US population increase98, the administration’s immigration crackdown is projected to reduce the U.S. workforce by 6.8 million people by 2028 and by 15.7 million by 203599.
Birthright Citizenship
The Justice Department continues to pursue a ban on birthright citizenship100 for the children of undocumented immigrants — a right enshrined in the 14th Amendment — while prioritizing denaturalisation for naturalised citizens who commit certain crimes. One executive order among the blizzard of such orders on Trump’s first day in office, to deny birthright citizenship to thousands of newborns, within months reached the Supreme Court101, with the court ruling that ’a single judge cannot block a presidential order from taking effect nationwide’102. This is despite birthright citizenship being enshrined in the constitution.
It must be remembered that the passing of the Civil Rights Act of 1866 which led to the 14th Amendment overturned the pre-civil war Supreme Court ruling in Dred Scott vs. Sandford, which affirmed that African Americans could not be citizens103. As a matter of fact, the constitution was further tested in a Supreme Court case United States v. Wong Kim Ark104. This was the first Supreme Court case to decide on the status of children born in the United States to alien parents, and established an important precedent in its interpretation of the Citizenship Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment to the Constitution105.
The successful repeal of the 14th Amendment would return the situation to the status quo ante; ie. to the Dred Scott decision. For instance, the Citizenship Clause in Section 1 overrode the Supreme Court’s 1857 Dred Scott decision. Its elimination could create a class of people born in the U.S. but denied citizenship and its full rights. It would also undo the 1898 Supreme Court ruling (United States v. Wong Kim Ark) that birthright citizenship applied to the children of immigrants.
Generally, it would undo the legal foundation for much of the civil rights decisions, and remove the constitutional requirement for states to provide due process before depriving their residents of ”life, liberty, or property”. The accumulated effect of the replacement of the ’narrative of America’ which includes the experience of the black, Mexican and First Nations communities, with one that expunges those experiences in the name of a more ’patriotic’ narrative, combined with an attempt to remove large parts of that non-white population is aimed at a reaffirmation of the centrality of race as the main organising principle of the nation. As stated in the afformentioned piece by Rev. Graylan Scott Hagler ”They have succeeded in some circles in criminalizing immigrants so that they could carry out their agenda of eliminating non-whites from the population. And not recognizing the presence and history of Black people is to render in perception, historical understanding, and official narrative the pronouncement and indoctrination that the United States is a white Christian nation without blemish or scar.”
Black neighbourhoods and voting rights
The administration has pursued a course of removing federal funds from black communities. For instance, the Trump administration has axed nearly two dozen projects addressing health and environmental issues in Southern Black communities106. Moreover, Trump’s control of the federal government and particularly its disbursement of funds, effectively pressurises local authorities into rigging the upcoming midterm elections in 2026107.
This continues a long tradition in US politics of gerrymandering, and the erosion of the voting rights especially of Black communities108. This continuation of the general attack on voting rights for the Black community is now joined by an attack on the voting rights of anybody presumed to be a non-citizen. The SAVE (Safeguard American Voter Eligibility) Act introduced into the House of Representatives on March 1st 2025 and passed through the House in February 2026 seeks to ’prohibit states from accepting and processing an application to register to vote in a federal election unless the applicant presents documentary proof of U.S. citizenship’. This legislation is motivated by the false premise — voting by non-citizens is vanishingly rare109 — that the 2020 General election was stolen by the Democrats by allowing non-citizens to vote. Incidentally, the Brennan Center for Justice claims that ’more than 9 percent of American citizens of voting age, or 21.3 million people, don’t have proof of citizenship readily available’110.
All of these attacks of the past few decades generally, but accelerated during the present Trump administration in particular, against the advances made by the Black community since the civil rights struggle and its aftermath point backward to two periods in the past. First, the advances of reconstruction brought about by the victory of the Union in the civil war endured for eleven years before the compromise of 1877, which saw federal troops withdrawn from the South. Key factors forcing this compromise included rising white supremacist violence, Northern apathy, the economic depression of 1873, and the return of political power to Southern Democrats. Second, the period following the First World War when the Second Ku Klux Klan was at its height, Jim Crow was in its heyday, and race riots and racial violence were endemic across the nation.
Notes
1. It is telling that under the second Trump administration, whereby a cultural offensive is being waged to return the US to its original principles, that ”Defense secretary Pete Hegseth has announced that 20 US soldiers who took part in the 1890 massacre of hundreds of Lakota men, women and children at Wounded Knee will keep the Medals of Honor that were awarded to them” after a review of the honors was ordered in 2024 after Congress called for it in the 2022 defense bill. See Campbell, Lucy; Hegseth says Wounded Knee massacre soldiers will keep Medals of Honor ; The Guardian, September 26th, 2025; https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/sep/26/pete-hegseth-wounded-knee- massacre-medals-of-honor. See also Brewer, Graham Lee; Wounded Knee medals decision sparks outrage in Native communities; Military Times, October 1st, 2025; https://www.militarytimes.com/news/pentagon-congress/2025/10/01/wounded-knee-medals-decision-sparks-outrage-in-native-communities/
2. For instance see Wongsam, Michael; Donald Trump and the states’ rights pendulum; Socialist Action, 23rd November 2016; https://www.socialistaction.net/2016/11/23/donald-trump-and-the-states-rights-pendulum/
3. https://loveman.sdsu.edu/docs/1790naturalizationact.pdf
4. Wongsam, Michael; On the interrelation between race and mass consciousness; Socialist Action; https://www.socialistaction.net/2025/01/14/on-the-interrelation-between-race-and-mass-consciousness/.
5. This was reinforced further by bolstering the rural vote as compared to the urban vote through migration from the cities. ”After the civil war the USA rapidly industrialised, quickly surpassing every other imperialist power. This led to a rapid expansion in the working class especially in the northern cities. As a countermeasure to the growth of the urban working class, migrants from the East and immigrants mainly from Germany and Scandinavia were settled in land seized from the indigenous population who were driven onto reservations. The settlers were provided with agricultural colleges and cheap loans to enable them to manage, equip and mechanise the farms. This settler population provided a counterweight to the rapidly growing urban population, who were now being supplemented by migration of former slaves from the southern states.” From Woodley, Martin; Class and voter suppression in American politics; Socialist Action, 30th October 2020; https://www.socialistaction.net/2020/10/30/class-and-voter-suppression-in-
american-politics/
6. See Compromise of 1850; Wikipedia; https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Compromise of 1850
7. de Leon, Cedric; Articulating the Crisis: Population Politics and the Onset of the US Civil War; Social Science History (2026), page 1 of 25; Cambridge University Press, April 16th 2026; https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/social-science-history/article/articulating-the-crisis-population-politics-and-the-onset-of-the-us-civil-war/0873FA0BB5F51B941E6C8DCE06BE3C6B
8. Fugitive Slave Act of 1850 ; Wikipedia; https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fugitive_Slave_Act_of_1850
9. Woodley, Martin; Historical and contemporary aspects of US anti-Asian racism; Socialist Action, https://www.socialistaction.net/2021/04/02/historical-and-contemporary-aspects-of-us-anti-asian-racism/
10. Wongsam, Michael; January 14th, 2025
11. Washington, Booker and Shapiro, Herbert; Slavery and Peonage in the United States: 1865–1920; University Press, 2000.
12. In its ruling in Bailey v. Alabama (1911) the U.S. The Supreme Court found the state’s peonage law, which had legalised forced labor for people in debt, in violation of the Thirteenth Amendment; and in United States v. Reynolds (1914), the Supreme Court ruled against Alabama’s system of using labour contracts to pay off court fees, determining it to be a form of peonage prohibited by the Thirteenth Amendment. Yet these decisions ultimately had little impact on the persistence of servitude, and the practice continued under a variety of forms until after World War II.
13. Trotsky, Leon; The Negro Question in the United States; Marxists.org, 1940; https://www.marxists.org/history/etol/newspape/isj/1970/no043/trotsky1.htm
14. Shermerhorn, Calvin; Why the racial wealth gap persists, more than 150 years after emancipation; The Washington Post, June 19th 2019; https://www.washingtonpost.com/outlook/2019/06/19/why-racial- wealth-gap-persists-more-than-years-after-emancipation/
15. See Agyeman, Julian and Boone, Kofi; Black People Own Less of the U.S. than 100 Years Ago. A Black Commons Could Help Reverse the Trend; In These Times, July 8th 2020; https://inthesetimes.com/article/land-loss-slavery-racism-redlining-jim-crow-juneteenth-black-commons
16. See White, Monica; Freedom Farmers: Agricultural Resistance and the Black Freedom Movement, 18802010 ; University of North Carolina Press, February 1st 2021
17. The Great Black Dispossession: How US Black Farmers Lost 90 Percent of Their Land; The Oakland Institute, May 20th 2024; https://www.oaklandinstitute.org/our-take/great-black-dispossession. See also Francis, Dania V; Hamilton, Darrick; Mitchell, Thomas W; Rosenberg, Nathan A; and Stucki, Bryce Wilson; Black Land Loss: 1920 – 1997 ; RACE, GENDER, AND FINANCIAL WELL-BEING, AEA Papers and Proceedings 2022, 112: 3842; https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract id¯4214797
18. Haywood, Harry. 1978. Black Bolshevik: Autobiography of an Afro-American Communist; Chicago, Liberator Press, 1978
19. Hugley, Darryll; The State of Black Nationalism in 21st Century Urban America; https://www.academia.edu/9103334/The_State_of_Black_Nationalism_in_21st_Century_Urban America
20. Naturalization Act of 1790 ; Wikipedia; https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Naturalization Act of 1790.
21. The Kansas-Nebraska Act of 1854 is one of the most contentious pieces of American legislation ever passed. Essentially, it repealed the Missouri Compromise of 1820. This Compromise admitted Missouri and Maine to the Union as a slave state and a free state respectively, and prohibited slavery in the western territories acquired in the Louisiana purchase north of latitude 36◦30´. The Kansas-Nebraska Act, however, allowed these territories to determine for themselves whether or not they were slave-holding…the bill rekindled the controversy over slavery and placed the United States of America on the path to Civil War. The Kansas-Nebraska Act of 1854: States’ Rights and Slavery; June 8th, 2020; https://www.shapell.org/historical-perspectives/curated-manuscripts/the-kansas-nebraska-act-of-1854-states-rights-and-slavery/
22. Emerging in America’s urban centers as a radical Black secret society, the African Blood Brotherhood (ABB) advocated that Blacks organise in trade unions, build cooperatively owned businesses, and create paramilitary self-defense units. By 1925, the ABB leadership had established close ties with the Communist Party and was no longer an independent organisation. Its dissolution was the result of its members deciding to become the Black cadre of the American Communist Party. The organisation stands as a precursor of later revolutionary Black Nationalist groups. Hugley, Darryll. See also African Blood Brotherhood: Organisational History; https://www.marxists.org/history/usa/eam/other/abb/abb.html
23. Black migration from the rural South to the urban North took place in two waves; one lasting between 1910 — 1940, and the other between 1940 — 1970. Approximately 1.6 million participated in the first great wave, primarily due to the entrenchment of Jim Crow and the rise of the second Ku Klux Klan as push factors, and the reduction in European immigration due to WWI which created labour shortages and constituted the most important pull factor. The second and much larger great migration involved around five million people, and occurred because the recovery from the Great Depression and the US’s entry into WWII created labour shortages.
24. The anatomy of American racism during this period has been discussed by Wongsam, Michael; 1968 and the Lineages of America’s Racialised Politics; Transform No. 4, 2018, pp. 7 — 41; Public Reading Rooms, www.ppr.co.uk; ISBN 2514-3387
25. ”The ever changing leadership of the Black Panther Party’s Central Committee casted staunch Black Power era luminaries such as David Hilliard (Chief of Staff), Don Cox (Field Marshal), George Mason Murray and Raymond ’Masai’ Hewitt (Minister of Education), Kathleen Cleaver (Communication Secretary), Emory Douglas (Cartoonist and Minister of Culture), Eldridge Cleaver (Minister of Information). (SNCC) Student Non Violent Coordinating Committee leaders Stokely Carmichael, H. Rap Brown, and James Forman also ended up as members of the Black Panther Party.”; Hugley, Darryl
26. Hugley, Darryl.
27. Famously, Assata Shakur was convicted of killing New Jersey State Trooper, Werner Foester during a shootout on the New Jersey Turnpike along with two other Black Liberation Army members. In 1979, Assata Shakur escaped from the Clinton Correctional Institution for Women in New Jersey with the help of fellow BLA members and lived with political asylum in Cuba under the protection of Fidel Castro.
28. This formula is attributed to Roy Innis, who became leader of the Congress for Racial Equality (CORE). Allen, R. L. (1969). Black Awakening in Capitalist America: An Analytic History. Trenton, New Jersey: Africa World Press. Quoted in Hugley, Darryl.
29. See Wongsam, Michael 2018
30. Indeed, the use of Federal agencies over an extended period of time for the purpose suppressing dissent has been chronicled by Speri, Alice; The FBI Has a Long History of Treating Political Dissent as Terrorism; The Intercept, October 22nd, 2019; https://theintercept.com/2019/10/22/terrorism-fbi-political-dissent/
31. For a discussion of the new phenomenon of the White Power movement, see for instance Miller, Cassie; ’There Is No Political Solution’: Accelerationism in the White Power Movement; SPLC, June 23rd, 2020; https://www.splcenter.org/resources/hatewatch/there-no-political-solution-accelerationism-white-power-movement/
32. Trump Administration. Policy statements on civil rights rollbacks; https://civilrights.org/trump-rollbacks/.
33. Trump on DEI And Anti-Discrimination Law; https://www.aclu.org/trump-on-dei-and-anti-discrimination-law
34. Prince Edward County, Virginia, for example, shut down all their public schools from 1959 to 1963. In Clarendon County, South Carolina, that school district closed the all-Black Summerton High School in 1966 to avoid integration, so White parents sent their children to a newly-built private segregated school instead. .
35. Johnson, Jake; US Billionaire Wealth Surges to $8.1 Trillion as Affordability Crisis Hammers Working Class; Common Dreams, January 2nd 2026; https://www.commondreams.org/news/us-billionaire-wealth
36. The assassinated right wing proselytiser Charlie Kirk famously said ”The American Democrat Party hates this country. They wanna see it collapse. They love it when America becomes less white.” https://www.mediamatters.org/charlie-kirk/charlie-kirk-american-democrat-party-hates-country- they-wanna-see-it-collapse-they. See also Charlie Kirk popularising the ’Great Replacement Theory’ in Media Matters Staff; Charlie Kirk pushes the ”great replacement” conspiracy: ”They won’t stop until you and your children and your children’s children are eliminated”; Media Matters, January 1st, 2024; https://www.mediamatters.org/charlie-kirk/charlie-kirk-pushes-great-replacement-conspiracy-they-wont-stop-until-you-and-your. Following Kirk’s assassination, Congress passed a ’National Day of Remembrance for Charlie Kirk’ to be commemorated on his birthday, October 14th. Forrester, Megan; House, Senate pass ’National Day of Remembrance for Charlie Kirk’ ahead of memorial service; ABC News, September 19, 2025; https://abcnews.go.com/US/senate-passes-national-day-remembrance-charlie-kirk/story
37. Beitch, Rebecca; DOJ quietly removes study showing right wing attacks ’outpace’ those by left; The Hill, September 17th, 2025; https://thehill.com/homenews/administration/5507682-doj-removes-far-right-extremism-study/
38. This has been discussed extensively by Woodley, Martin; in The battle for the midterms is exposing fundamental questions of American politics; Socialist Action, March 9th, 2021; https://www.socialistaction.net/2021/03/09/the-battle-for-the-midterms-is-exposing-fundamental-questions-of-american-politics/ and An attack of immense proportions is now underway in the US; Socialist Action, October 25th, 2021; https://www.socialistaction.net/2021/10/25/an-attack-of-immense-proportions-is-now-underway-in-the-us/. The gutting of what is left of the Voting Rights Act is currently underway before the Supreme Court. See Van Sickle, Abbie; Will the Supreme Court Use a Louisiana Case to Gut theVoting Rights Act?; The New York Times, October 14th, 2025; https://www.nytimes.com/2025/10/14/us/politics/supreme-court-voting-rights-act.html
39. Judge blocks Trump’s birthright order nationwide in fourth such ruling since Supreme Court decision; AP; 8 August 2025; https://apnews.com/article/trump-birthright-citizenship-judge-blocked-order-1b126f594c6a2d7dda3888d82cefd4eb
40. See Wongsam, Michael; Donald Trump and the states’ rights pendulum; Socialist Action, 23rd November, 2016; https://www.socialistaction.net/2016/11/23/donald-trump-and-the-states-rights-pendulum/
41. ”Plessy v. Ferguson was the first major inquiry into the meaning of the Fourteenth Amendment’s (1868) equal-protection clause, which prohibits the states from denying equal protection of the laws to any person within their jurisdictions.” Plessy v. Ferguson law case [1896] ; Britannica; https://www.britannica.com/event/Plessy-v-Ferguson-1896
42. Countering Domestic Terrorism and Organized Political Violence; Presidential Actions, September 25th, 2025; https://www.whitehouse.gov/presidential-actions/2025/09/countering-domestic-terrorism-and-organized-political-violence/
43. Klippenstein, Ken; National Security Directive Declares War on Those Who Don’t Support Trump Agenda; Truthout, September 29th, 2025; https://truthout.org/articles/national-security-directive- declares-war-on-those-who-dont-support-trump-agenda/.
44. For instance, in 2022 all domestic extremist-related killings — twenty-five in total, were committed by right wing extremists. See Murder & Extremism in the United States in 2022 : A Report from the ADL Center on Extremism; February, 2023; https://www.adl.org/sites/default/files/pdfs/2023-02/Murder-and- Extremism-in-the-United-States-in-2022.pdf
45. Klippenstein, Ken; September 29th, 2025
46. The heated atmosphere following the Kirk assassination, where the administration went into overdrive to escalate the agenda for domestic political and legal warfare, has been described in an article by Perez, Andrew and Suebsaeng, Asawin; ”They Need to Suffer”: Inside Trump’s War on Dissent; Rolling Stone, October 5th, 2025; https://www.rollingstone.com/politics/politics-features/trump-war-dissent-charlie-kirk-killing-1235440581/. Anticipating public resistance, the Pentagon has ordered the National Guard to establish quick-reaction forces in every state. Bergengruen, Vera; Seligman, Lara and Lyon, Dan; Pentagon Orders National Guard to Establish Quick-Reaction Forces for Civil Unrest, Riots; The Wall Street Journal, October 29th, 2025; https://www.wsj.com/politics/national-security/pentagon-orders-national-guard-to-establish-quick-reaction-forces-for-civil-unrest-riots-f602b193
47. Ali Kanu, Hassan; DOJ Closes Tulsa Massacre Probe as Trump Takes Office; The American Prospect, January 20th, 2025; https://prospect.org/justice/2025-01-20-doj-closes-tulsa-massacre-probe-as-trump-takes-office/. The Justice Department issued a press release announcing the results and findings of the investigation on 10th January, 2025; https://www.justice.gov/archives/opa/pr/justice-department-announces-results-review-and-evaluation-tulsa-race-massacre
48. Olafson, Steve; Tulsa shootings evoke city’s past racial violence; Reuters, April 11th, 2012; https://www.reuters.com/article/idUSBRE83A02J20120411/
49. See for instance FBI Director Kash Patel ended the agency’s partnership with the Southern Poverty Law Centre, Walker, Josephine; FBI axes partnership with civil rights watchdog SPLC ; Axios, October 4th, 2025; https://www.axios.com/2025/10/03/fbi-ends-partnership-splc-civil-rights. Also the partnership with the Anti-Defamation League has been severed following the ADL’s stance on Charlie Kirk and Turning Point USA. See Lotz, Avery; Kash Patel cuts FBI ties with Anti-Defamation League; Axios, October 4th, 2025; https://www.axios.com/2025/10/02/kash-patel-fbi-adl-comey-anti-defamation-league
50. See for instance The Guardian, Wed 30 Jul 2025 ; White House freezes $108m in funds to Duke University over affirmative action; https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/jul/30/white-house-duke-university-racial-discrimination. Also Dunbar, Marina; Brown University reaches deal with Trump administration to restore $50m in funds; The Guardian, Wed 30 Jul 2025 ; https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/jul/30/brown-university-trump-administration-agreement
51. Bianca Quilantan and Madi Alexander; None of these goals are illegal: Universities struggle to respond to funding threats; Politico, 04/16/2025; https://www.politico.com/news/2025/04/16/trumps-dei-backlash-ripples-across-the-nations-flagship-universities-00288742
52. Harris, Adam; The Decision That Upends the Equal-Protection Clause; The Atlantic, JUNE 29th, 2023; https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2023/06/scotus-affirmative-action-ruling-implications/674567
53. Ahmadi, Ali Abbas; Trump rescinds order targeting law firm after it makes $40m promise; BBC News, 21 March 2025; https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c2d4kex0w2ro
54. Wu, Ashley; What Has the Trump Administration Gotten From Law Firms and Universities? ; The New York Times, September 5 2025; https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2025/09/06/us/trump-deals-law-firms-universities-concessions.html
55. Wheeler, Lydia; Justice Department Using Fraud Law to Target Companies on DEI; The Wall Street Journal, December 28th 2025; https://www.wsj.com/politics/policy/trump-doj-dei-fraud-investigations-93213d52
56. Jouvenal, Justin; Supreme Court remade by Trump ushers in historic defeats for civil rights; The Washington Post, April 9th 2026; https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2026/04/09/supreme-court-conservative-trump-rulings
57. US Department of Education Drops Appeal Against Federal Court Case Blocking Enforcement of Anti-DEI Directives; Barclay Damon LLP, January 26th 2026; https://www.barclaydamon.com/alerts/us-department-of-education-drops-appeal-against-federal-court-case-blocking-enforcement-of-anti-dei-directives; and Binkley, Collin; Trump administration drops legal appeal over anti-DEI funding threat to schools and colleges; AP, January 21st 2026; https://apnews.com/article/dei-education-department-lawsuit-appeal-ad150d5ab7747b9c782bc381890e5c8f
58. Laura Meckler, Dan Rosenzweig-Ziff, Susan Svrluga, Perry Stein and Emily Davies; Inside the powerful task force spearheading Trump’s assault on colleges, DEI ; The Washington Post, July 24, 2025; https://www.washingtonpost.com/education/2025/07/18/antisemitism-task-force-dei-universities-trump/. Also Kathryn Palmer; Berkeley Releases 160 Names, Complies With U.S. Investigation; Inside Higher ED, September 16, 2025; https://www.insidehighered.com/news/quick-takes/2025/09/16/berkeley-releases-160-names-complies-us-investigation
59. Josh Gerstein and Kyle Cheney; Trump officials used shadowy website to target pro-Palestinian academics for deportation, court records show; Politico, 07/09/2025; https://www.politico.com/news/2025/07/09/pro-palestinian-deportation-documents-trial-00445238
60. The Blackout Report: The Real-World Cost of erasing, distorting, and suppressing Black Progress; October, 2025; https://blackoutreport.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/10/Blackout_Report_Final_10_25.pdf. See also the article by Abrams, Stacey and Osa, Esosa; US leaders are erasing Black history. That threatens our future; The Guardian, October 22nd, 2025; https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2025/oct/22/us-black-history-dei
61. Trump went as far as signing an executive order, PREVENTING WOKE AI IN THE FEDERAL GOVERNMENT to direct the development of AI Large Language Models (LLMs) against DEI, Critical Race Theory, etc. https://www.whitehouse.gov/presidential-actions/2025/07/preventing-woke-ai-in-the- federal-government
62. RESTORING TRUTH AND SANITY TO AMERICAN HISTORY; The White House Executive Orders, March 27th 2025; https://www.whitehouse.gov/presidential-actions/2025/03/restoring-truth-and- sanity-to-american-history/
63. Bethune, Naomi; Whitening American History; Prospect, February 23rd 2026; https://prospect.org/2026/02/23/whitening-america-black-history-trump-slavery-dei-philadelphia
64. Gedeon, Joseph; Trump administration’s anti-woke campaign targets Smithsonian museums; The Guardian, August 21st, 2025; https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/aug/20/trump-administration-smithsonian-museum-review
65. Also, the National Parks Service has been given a directive to report items that ’disparage Americans’. See Spring, Jake; Natanson, Hannah and Mathur, Anusha; Parks gift shops directed to report items that ”disparage Americans”; The Washington Post, July 12th, 2025; https://www.washingtonpost.com/climate-environment/2025/07/12/national-parks-shops-products-review/
66. For instance, see McShane, Julianne; Trump Will Restore a Confederate Monument in the Nation’s Capital; Mother Jones, August 5th, 2025; https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2025/08/trump-pike-confederate-statue-washington-dc/ or Lennard, Natasha; Trump is putting confederate statues back up. Here’s why they must fall again; The Intercept, August 8 2025; https://theintercept.com/2025/08/08/trump-confederate-statues/
67. Scott Hagler, Graylan Rev.; American History is Black History — We Will Not Be Erased; Counterpunch, September 19th, 2025; https://www.counterpunch.org/2025/09/19/american-history-is-black-history-we-will-not-be-erased/
68. Tucker, Eric; FBI fires agents photographed kneeling during 2020 racial justice protest, AP sources say; AP, September 27th, 2025; https://apnews.com/article/fbi-george-floyd-kash-patel-8d18a1e6a5a36636cc2415fc492b3f52
69. The 1776 report was in part a response to The New York Times 1619 project, which was first published in August 2019 in commemoration of the arrival of the first shipment of African slaves to the English colony of Virginia. The controversy accompanying the publication of these two reports stimulated Senator Tom Cotton (R-Ark) to propose a bill to bar federal funds from schools that used the 1619 curriculum – ”a radical work of historical revisionism aiming to indoctrinate our kids to hate America.” Ellison, Sarah; How the 1619 Project took over 2020; October 13, 2020; https://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/style/1619-project-took-over-2020-inside-story/2020/10/13/af537092-00df-11eb-897d-3a6201d6643f_story.html. Although this bill did not pass and Biden terminated the entire effort, many Republican-led states introduced or passed their own laws targeting the 1619 Project and critical race theory in 2021. By the end of that year, 27 states had introduced bills that echoed the federal legislation’s intent. There is now a renewed federal push to bar funding from schools that use the 1619 Project. Following the 2024 election, President Donald Trump issued an executive order in January 2025 to reinstate the 1776 Commission.
70. For instance, the state of Oklahoma will require teachers coming from New York and California to pass a test to combat what it calls ”woke indoctrination” before being hired. See Wolfe, Jonathan; Oklahoma Proposes ”America First Test” for Teachers From New York and California; The New York Times, Aug. 20, 2025; https://www.nytimes.com/2025/08/20/education/oklahoma-woke-teacher-test.html
71. See for instance, Attiah, Karen; Why books have become a battlefield in Texas ; November 1st, 2021; https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2021/11/01/why-books-have-become-battlefield-texas. Saul, Stephanie; Energizing Conservative Voters, One School Board Election at a Time; Published Oct. 21, 2021 Updated Nov. 8, 2021; https://www.nytimes.com/2021/10/21/us/republicans-schools-critical-race-theory.html
72. McDaniel, Justine and Meckler, Laura; Education Dept. partners with conservative groups for civics programming; The Washington Post, September 17th, 2025; https://www.washingtonpost.com/education/2025/09/17/education-department-conservative-groups-civics-patriotism/
73. Conley, Julia; Oklahoma Threatens Public Schools Accreditation Unless They Set Up Turning Point USA Chapters;, September 25th, 2025; https://www.commondreams.org/news/oklahoma-school-superintendent-ryan-walters
74. Passel, Jeffrey S. and Krogstad, Jens Manuel; U.S. Unauthorized Immigrant Population Reached a Record 14 Million in 2023 ; Pew Research Centre, August 21st, 2025; https://www.pewresearch.org/race-and-ethnicity/2025/08/21/u-s-unauthorized-immigrant-population-reached-a-record-14-million-in-2023/
75. It was reported that a quarter of FBI agents had been reassigned to immigration enforcement. See Stein, Perry; A quarter of FBI agents are assigned to immigration enforcement, per FBI data; The Washington Post, October 8th, 2025; https://www.washingtonpost.com/national-security/2025/10/08/fbi-agents-reassigned-immigration. Within this remarkable focussing of the FBI, ”Nearly half of the FBI agents working in the US’s major field offices have been reassigned to aid immigration enforcement”. See Levin, Sam; Nearly half of FBI agents in major offices reassigned to immigration enforcement; The Guardian, October 9th, 2025; https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/oct/09/fbi-agents-reassigned-ice-immigration
76. THE PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA, A PROCLAMATION; Invocation of the Alien Enemies Act Regarding the Invasion of The United States by Tren De Aragua; The White House, March 15th, 2025; https://www.whitehouse.gov/presidential-actions/2025/03/invocation-of-the-alien-enemies-act-regarding-the-invasion-of-the-united-states-by-tren-de-aragua/. The administration has also threatened the use of the Insurrection Act of 1807, which empowers the President to ’nationally deploy the U.S. military and to federalize the National Guard units of the individual states in specific circumstances, such as the suppression of civil disorder, of insurrection, and of armed rebellion against the federal government of the U.S.’ Insurrection Act of 1807; Wikipedia, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Insurrection_Act_of_1807. The threat was made in the context of legal challenges to the deployment and federalisation of the National Guard in relation to their being sent from Republican controlled states to Democrat controlled cities in order to assist ICE in their immigration crackdown. See, Lennard, Natasha; The Sinister Reason Trump Is Itching to Invoke the Insurrection Act; The Intercept, October 7, 2025; https://theintercept.com/2025/10/07/trump-insurrection-act
77. Sofia Ferreira Santos; What is the 1798 law that Trump used to deport migrants?; BBC News, 17 March 2025; https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cy871w21d3vo
78. LeVine, Marianne and Kaori Gurley, Lauren; Raid at Hyundai factory in Georgia is Trump administration’s largest yet; The Washington Post, September 5th, 2025; https://www.washingtonpost.com/immigration/2025/09/05/hyundai-trump-immigration-raid-south-korea/
79. See Santana, Rebecca; Immigration officers assert sweeping power to enter homes without a judge’s warrant, memo says; AP, January 22nd 2026; https://apnews.com/article/ice-arrests-warrants-minneapolis-trump-00d0ab0338e82341fd91b160758aeb2d
80. Natanson, Hannah and Klemko, Robert; ICE seeks hundreds of new offices across U.S. as agency expands; The Washington Post, September 18th, 2025; https://www.washingtonpost.com/immigration/2025/09/18/ice-expansion-new-offices/. It has been pointed out that if ICE were a national military it would be the thirteenth largest in the world. See Lazare, Sarah and Koshgarian, Lindsay; The 13th Largest Army in World Is Unleashing Violence in Chicago; In These Times, October 5th, 2025; https://inthesetimes.com/article/ice-immigration-chicago-trump-broadview
81. Kaori Gurley, Lauren and Nakamura, David; Trump unveils $100K yearly fee on H-1B visas in clampdown on legal immigration; The Washington Post, September 19th 2025; https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2025/09/19/trump-h1b-visa-fee-immigration/
82. Campbell, Lucy; Trump administration to review all 55m US visa holders for potential rule violations; The Guardian, August 21st 2025; https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/aug/21/trump-administration-visa-vetting
83. Congressional Research Service; HUD’s Proposal to End Assistance to Mixed Status Families; July 29th, 2019; https://www.congress.gov/crs-product/IN11121
84. Sisson, Patrick; Trump Takes Second Swing at Cutting Housing Assistance for Immigrants; Bloomberg, August 19th, 2025; https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2025-08-19/trump-revisits-a-first-term-goal-cutting-housing-aid-for-immigrants
85. U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development; HUD Secretary Scott Turner, DHS Secretary Kristi Noem Establish Partnership to End Illegal Alien Exploitation of Housing Programs; https://www.hud.gov/news/hud-no-25-046
86. For instance, see Msweli, Melisa; Eswatini scores big on US tariffs; Eswatini Observer, August 2nd, 2025; https://eswatiniobserver.com/eswatini-scores-big-on-us-tariffs/
87. In just one instance, Eswatini agreed to receive up to 160 deportees from a variety of countries for a payment of just $5 million. See Mbabane, Savior Kakama and Fihlani, Pumza; Eswatini accepts 10 US deportees despite legal challenge; BBC, October 6th, 2025; https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cn5qdx260lzo
88. For a timeline of Operation Metro Surge, see A timeline of Trump’s immigration crackdown in Minnesota; PBS News, February 13th 2026; https://www.pbs.org/newshour/nation/a-timeline-of-trumps-immigration-crackdown-in-minnesota
89. Levin, Sam; Revealed: FBI opened domestic terrorism investigations into anti-ICE activity across US; The Guardian, December 19th 2025; https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/dec/19/fbi-terrorism-investigations-anti-ice-activity. An FBI document was circulated to other law enforcement agencies warning of increased ”threat activity targeting government personnel or facilities related to immigration enforcement efforts”. The document can be obtained at https://s3.documentcloud.org/documents/26385855/14-nov-2025-fbi-report-re-anti-ice-organizing-nspm-7.pdf
90. Malik, Nesrine; White South African ”refugees”? The jokes write themselves; The Guardian, May 21st, 2025; https://www.theguardian.com/news/2025/may/21/white-south-african-refugees-trump-afrikaners-black
91. Guardian Staff; Trump’s evidence of South Africa ”white genocide” contains images from Democratic Republic of Congo; The Guardian, May 23rd, 2025; https://www.theguardian.com/world/2025/may/23/trumps-evidence-of-south-africa-white-genocide-contains-images-from-democratic-republic-of-congo
92. Zolan Kanno-Youngs, Zolan and Aleaziz, Hamed; Trump Cuts Refugee Admissions and Prioritizes White South Africans; The New York Times, October 30th, 2025; https://www.nytimes.com/2025/10/30/us/politics/trump-refugee-admissions-white-south-africans.html and Corbett, Jessica; Trump Ripped for ”Absurdly Low” and ”Racist” Refugee Cap Prioritizing White South Africans; Common Dreams, October 30th, 2025; https://www.commondreams.org/news/trump-south-african-refugees. Taylor, Adam and Armus, Teo; Trump refugee plan seeks 7,000 Afrikaners and virtually no one else; The Washington Post, October 21st, 2025; https://www.washingtonpost.com/national-security/2025/10/21/trump-refugees-afrikaners-south-africa. As of April, 2026, the US had admitted 4,499 refugees, all but three of which were white South Africans. See Jones, Mayeni; US has let in 4,499 refugees since October — all but three were South African; BBC, April 9th 2026; https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c4g89kkvenqo. Furthermore, at the time of writing, the Trump administration has under consideration an expansion of the framework with the aim of enlarging the number of white South Africans. See Ekanem, Solomon; Trump administration explores higher refugee limit for white South Africans; Business Insider, April 24th 2026; https://africa.businessinsider.com/local/lifestyle/trump-administration-explores-higher-refugee-limit-for-white-south-africans/xk6d7p3
93. These have been reproduced and commented on at the Instagram post which is viewable at https://www.instagram.com/p/DP2FE3WESGS/. This is also discussed by Trivedi, Naman; What Does ”Remigrate” Mean? Term Used by Trump DHS To Promote Voluntary Self-Deportation; Times Now World, October 16th, 2025; https://www.timesnownews.com/world/us/us-news/what-does-remigrate-mean-term-used-by-trump-dhs-to-promote-voluntary-selfdeportation-article-153007287
94. See Prager, Stephen; Data Shows the Only Refugees Legally Settled in the US Since October Have Been White South Africans; Common Dreams, March 5th 2026; https://www.commondreams.org/news/no-refugees-trump-south-africa. The actual record of refugee arrivals by state and nationality for fiscal year 2026, between October 1st to January 31st can be obtained at https://www.rpc.state.gov/documents/Refugee%20Arrivals%20by%20State%20and%20Nationality%20as%20of%20Janua%2031,%202026.pdf
95. See Betancourt, Sarah; Immigrants kept from Faneuil Hall citizenship ceremony as feds crack-down nationwide; GBH, December 5th 2025; https://www.wgbh.org/news/local/2025-12-05/immigrants-kept-from-faneuil-hall-citizenship-ceremony-as-feds-crackdown-nationwide. Moreover, from January 2026, foreign travelers from seven additional countries are now required to pay up to $15,000 for a reimbursable bond when applying for a U.S. visitor visa. Masih, Niha; U.S. mandates more foreign travelers to pay $15,000 visa bond deposits; The Washington Post, January 6th 2026; https://www.washingtonpost.com/immigration/2026/01/06/visa-bonds-state-overstay-rates. Also, Trump paused indefinitely immigrant visa processing for 75 countries.Taylor, Adam and Nakamura, David; Trump administration indefinitely pauses immigrant visa processing for 75 nations; The Washington Post, January 14th 2026; https://www.washingtonpost.com/immigration/2026/01/14/trump-immigration-visa-processing-pause, and Klippenstein, Ken; U.S. Freezes Visas to 75 Countries; Ken Klippenstein, January 14th 2026; https://www.kenklippenstein.com/p/trump-freezes-visas-to-75-countries. However, wealthy immigrants are excepted as long as they obtain a $1 million gold card visa. A $5 million platinum card visa exempts the wealthy immigrant from some US taxes. Dunbar, Marina; Trump launches $1m ”gold card” visa scheme amid immigration crackdown; The Guardian, December 10th 2025; https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/dec/10/trump-us-gold-card-visa-launchl
96. Gibson, Brittany; Inside Trump’s purge of U.S. immigration courts; Axios, February 24th 2026; https://www.axios.com/2026/02/24/trump-deportation-judges-margolin
97. See Nehamas, Nicholas; McCann, Allison; Rich, Steven; Ulloa, Jazmine; and Hamed Aleaziz; How Trump Purged Immigration Judges to Speed Up Deportations; The New York Times, April 9th 2026; https://www.nytimes.com/2026/04/09/us/politics/trump-miller-immigration-judges-purge.html. By April, 2026, Trump had dismissed more than 100 of the 750 immigration judges in place at the time of his inauguration.
98. Contreras, Russel; Census: Latinos drove U.S. population increase in 2023; Axios, June 27th, 2024; https://www.axios.com/2024/06/27/census-latinos-population-increase-2023
99. Contreras, Russel; Exclusive: Trump immigration plan may wipe out 15M jobs by 2035, study claims; Axios, October 17th, 2025; https://www.axios.com/2025/10/17/trump-immigration-workforce-economy
100. Breaking Down Trump’s Attempt to End Birthright Citizenship; American Immigration Council, February 7, 2025; https://www.americanimmigrationcouncil.org/blog/breaking-down-trump-end-birthrigh-citizenship/. See also Wolf, Thomas; Presidents Can’t End Birthright Citizenship; Brennan Centre for Justice, June 30, 2025; https://www.brennancenter.org/our-work/analysis-opinion/presidents-cant-end-birthright-citizenship
101. Levy, Pema; The ”Dual State” Theory Was Invented to Describe Nazis. The Supreme Court Could Take Us There; Mother Jones, October 6th, 2025; https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2025/10/dual-state-supreme-court
102. ”Judges in district courts in Maryland, Massachusetts and Washington state issued nationwide injunctions that blocked the order from taking effect”. Brandon Drenon and Lisa Lambert; What to know about the Supreme Court’s birthright citizenship ruling; BBC News, June 27th, 2025; https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cjrl7dd1dp9o
103. Rierson, Sandra L; FROM DRED SCOTT TO ANCHOR BABIES: WHITE SUPREMACY AND THE CONTEMPORARY ASSAULT ON BIRTHRIGHT CITIZENSHIP; https://www.law.georgetown.edu/immigration-law-journal/wp-content/uploads/sites/19/2024/02/GT-GILJ230023.pdf
104. United States v. Wong Kim Ark ; Wikipedia; https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United States v. Wong Kim Ark. Wong Kim Ark, who was born in San Francisco, had been denied re-entry to the United States after a trip abroad, under the Chinese Exclusion Act. The ruling, in favour of Wong Kim Ark, established that a person born in the United States who is ”subject to the jurisdiction thereof” acquires automatic citizenship.
105. For a discussion of this case in relation to the contemporary attacks on these provisions, see This Man Won Birthright Citizenship for All; The New York Times, February 10th 2025; https://www.nytimes.com/2025/02/10/us/birthright-citizenship-wong-kim-ark-supreme-court.htm
106. Kaur, Anumita and Felton, Emmanuel; Black communities, shaken by Trump cuts, feel ’left behind again’; The Washington Post, September 15, 2025; https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2025/09/15/trump-environmental-justice-climate-health/
107. See for instance Reed, Brad; Top Indiana Republican Claims Trump Pledged to Withhold Funds If State Didn’t Approve Rigged Map; Common Dreams, December 12th 2025; https://www.commondreams.org/news/trump-indiana-funding-threat
108. These issues have been discussed at length for instance in Woodley, Martin; Class and voter suppression in American politics; Socialist Action, October 30th 2020; https://www.socialistaction.net/2020/10/30/class-and-voter-suppression-in-american-politics/; Woodley, Martin; The battle for the midterms is exposing fundamental questions of American politics; Socialist Action, March 9th 2021; https://www.socialistaction.net/2021/03/09/the-battle-for-the-midterms-is-exposing-fundamental-questions-of-american-politics/; Woodley, Martin; An attack of immense proportions is now underway in the US; Socialist Action, October 25th 2021; https://www.socialistaction.net/2021/10/25/an-attack-of-immense-proportions-is-now-underway-in-the-us/, and in Wiley, Ella; LDF’s Work to Safeguard the VRA and Black Political Power; NAACP Legal Defense Fund; https://www.naacpldf.org/merrill-v-milligan-supreme-court/; Hounshell, Blake and Epstein, Reid J; Why Wisconsin Is the Most Fascinating State in American Politics; The New York Times, August 12th 2022; https://www.nytimes.com/2022/08/12/us/politics/wisconsin-politics.html; Wines, Michael; Wisconsin Supreme Court Approves Republican-Drawn Legislative Map; The New York Times, August 15th 2022; https://www.nytimes.com/2022/04/15/us/wisconsin-districts-gerrymander-supreme-court.html.
109. See Waldman, Michael; Noncitizen Voting Is Already Illegal — and Vanishingly Rare; Brennan Center for Justice, April 17th 2024; https://www.brennancenter.org/our-work/analysis-opinion/noncitizen-voting-already-illegal-and-vanishingly-rare. In fact, ”From 2002 to 2005, the mighty Department of Justice convicted all of 24 individuals for voting when they shouldn’t have, 14 of them noncitizens who mistakenly believed they could vote. Not a single case of organized voting from those ineligible to vote was turned up…authorities found just one (1) case of voter impersonation in the United States from the years 2000 to 2005: a New Hampshire teenager who voted as his father”. See Meyerson, Harold; The Big Lie at the Heart of Republican Electoral Strategy; The American Prospect, February 24th 2026; https://prospect.org/2026/02/24/big-lie-republican-electoral-strategy-voter-fraud/. Consequently, despite a major campaign by the administration for the Department of Justice to ramp up prosecutions of non-citizen voters, the Department has struggled to meet the administration’s demands. See Stein, Perry; Marley, Patrick and Arnsdorf, Isaac; DOJ struggles as White House presses on voter fraud; The Washington Post, February 20th 2026; https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2026/02/20/trump-voting-fraud-justice-department/
110. Morris, Kevi and Henry, Cora; Millions of Americans Don’t Have Documents Proving Their Citizenship Readily Available; Brennan Center for Justice, June 11th 2024; https://www.brennancenter.org/our-work/analysis-opinion/millions-americans-dont-have-documents-proving-their-citizenship-readily. Incidentally, it has been estimated that as many as 69 million American women ’who have taken their spouses name do not have a birth certificate matching their legal name’. See The SAVE Act Would Disenfranchise Millions of Citizens; CAP, January 26th 2026 (updated); https://www.americanprogress.org/article/the-save-act-would-disenfranchise-millions-of-citizens/
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