Trump’s Thugocracy

What’s going on in Minneapolis right now — and less dramatically across the rest of the country — is the very face of the Trump Administration. This is exactly who these people are.

Masked men in fatigues carrying overpowered weapons dragging people from their cars. Demanding to see their papers like Gestapo agents at German train stations. And now the FBI, which has become the muscle employed by Trump, has searched a reporter’s home and seized her devices under the guise of investigating leaked government secrets.

This last bit is especially ironic as Trump himself improperly took top secret documents when he left the White House and stashed them in a bathroom at Mar a lago. And this is the same administration in which Pete Hegseth inadvertently shared military secrets with an Atlantic editor and used an insecure app to chat about attack plans.

This is an administration filled with incompetent bunglers who like to push their weight around. Literal or figurative muscle making up for intellect.

Or trying to. I have some faith in the American people. I haven’t seen polling on this yet, but I have a hunch that all of this is turning off large numbers of voters. They’ve already been turning away from the Republicans over affordability issues, but I have to believe that all these scenes on their news feeds has to offend their basic sense of decency.

It’s one thing to secure the border. Democrats didn’t and paid the price for it. It’s one thing to deport violent criminals who are in the country illegally. People will support that too. But harassing people on the street just because they look different? Rounding up hard-working people who are doing necessary jobs and paying taxes just because they’re here illegally? I don’t think most Americans are buying into that.

One of the great disappointments of recent years is how few Americans seemed to care much about democracy and about the norms of behavior that held our country together. Maybe this latest blatant overreach will turn that around. We’ll see.