The past week saw a series of attacks on Democratic leaders that were more and more openly about establishing the unquestionable authority of Trump/MAGA fascist rule, as yesterday’s “unprecedented” outrage becomes today’s “new normal.”

Check it out:

Sunday, June 8: In an interview with NBC News, “Border Czar” Tom Homan said that he wouldn’t rule out arresting the governor of California (Gavin Newsom) and the mayor of Los Angeles (Karen Bass) if they “impede law enforcement doing their job.” Homan is a thuggish ex-cop, ex-ICE agent who now holds the unelected, not Senate-confirmed, created-just-for-him position of “border czar.” This apparently comes with a lot of powers known only to him and Trump. But it is not clear how or why he has the authority to arrest anyone, much less the elected leaders of the most populous state and of the second largest city in the U.S. 

Homan left open the specific meaning of “impede law enforcement.” But it clearly included Newsom’s and Bass’s opposition to sending troops to occupy LA. And by the end of the week, the fascists had made clear that “asking questions” is also on the list of offenses.

Monday, June 9: As legitimate outrage about Homan’s threats grew, he claimed that his remarks were taken out of context—that he was trying to say that if someone acts in such a way that “I’d say that you impede law enforcement ... That's a crime, and that the Trump administration is not going to tolerate it.” [Emphasis ours.] In another interview Monday, he went on to say that Bass hadn’t “crossed the line yet.” (Yet!)

Far from “walking back” his threat, this was escalating it—basically saying “we are watching you, and if you do anything we don’t like, the hammer will fall.” And he strongly implied that it’s up to him/ICE to decide if the mayor and governor are “impeding law enforcement,” and therefore, whether they should be in office… or in jail.

The same day, Trump was asked about whether Homan should arrest Newsom; he replied “I would do it if I were Tom. I think it's great.” But the reason Trump gave for this was not any actual crime, it was the supposed offense that Newsom ran for governor. In other words, the California governor should be arrested because Trump doesn't agree with him!

Tuesday, June 10: Mike Johnson, the fanatical Christian fascist speaker of the House of Representatives, weighed in on the appropriate fate of these Democratic officials. Johnson said, “I’m not going to give you legal analysis on whether Gavin Newsom should be arrested. But he ought to be tarred and feathered, I’ll say that.” 

Johnson doesn’t know—or care—if they have broken any laws, but he’s all for punishing them anyway. And not just any punishment. Johnson reached back to a form of torture/public humiliation commonly inflicted in the U.S. in the 18th and 19th centuries—basically a form of lynch-like justice that involved stripping a victim naked, pouring tar (sometimes hot tar) on their bodies and then coating them with feathers. Newsom pointed out that this was fitting, since MAGA is overall trying to drag society back to the 17th century.

Wednesday, June 11: A federal grand jury indicted New Jersey Democratic Rep. LaMonica McIver on three criminal counts of “assaulting, resisting, impeding and interfering” with federal agent—charges potentially carrying a 17-year prison sentence! 

The U.S. Attorney’s Office says that “McIver forcibly impeded and interfered with federal officers as they attempted to arrest" Newark Mayor Ras Baraka outside the Delaney Hall Federal Immigration Facility in Newark, N.J., on May 9. McIver pleaded not guilty, rightly stating that the charges are “a brazen attempt at political intimidation.” 

What actually happened?

On May 9, McIver and two other congresspeople were attempting to inspect conditions at an immigrant prison in Newark—this kind of inspection is part of their legal duties. Newark Mayor Ras Baraka was also there to inspect in his capacity of mayor with jurisdiction over the area.¹

Federal agents—many masked and/or without visible agency identification—pushed Baraka outside of the center’s gates and then quickly moved to seize him. The congresspeople nonviolently sought to protect Baraka from this attack—as would any decent person. Baraka was arrested for “trespassing” even though he was on public property. This was so blatantly bogus that the feds dropped the charges 13 days later, and the judge who heard their motion for dismissal severely chastised them for making the arrest to begin with. Only after that did the feds go after McIver on this new set of bogus charges.

To boil this down—the fascists took illegal measures to prevent a legal inspection of the facility where they imprison immigrants that they have abducted off the streets. Then they illegally arrested the mayor of a major city. And now are trying to imprison a congresswoman for “impeding” them.

Thursday, June 12: Alex Padilla is a U.S. senator from California, the highest-ranking Democrat on the Senate Judiciary subcommittee on immigration, and himself the child of immigrants. He also represents a state with millions of immigrants who are currently under siege by the Trump regime, and part of which is under military occupation by the National Guard and Marines. 

Kristi Noem is secretary of the Department of Homeland Security (DHS, which includes ICE as well as the Secret Service) and one of three fascists that Trump assigned to lead the war against immigrants. 

Padilla says that he has been “asking the Department of Homeland Security for more information and more answers on their increasingly extreme immigration enforcement actions,” but got “little or no information.” When he found out that Noem was in LA and giving a press conference in the same building Padilla was in, he decided to attend, listen to what she was saying and ask questions. Escorted by FBI and Secret Service agents, he went to the press conference, and stood in the back of the room. At one point, he said, “I’m Senator Alex Padilla. I have a question for the secretary.”

Almost immediately, he was jumped by federal agents (apparently FBI) even though he clearly identified himself—twice—as a U.S. Senator, and even though he was just asking a question. Padilla was dragged out of the room, forced to the ground and handcuffed. (He was later released without charges.)

Despite the video evidence, Noem initially claimed that Padilla “lunged” at her and that he never identified himself. DHS characterized his behavior as “disrespectful political theater.” Rep. Mike Johnson suggested that Padilla should be censured (officially chastised) by the Senate for his “wildly inappropriate” behavior. 

Kristi Noem’s Fascist Message

The thread that runs through all of these incidents is that the fascists will tolerate no interference, of any kind and from any one, in carrying out their agenda. As Bob Avakian put it in his social media message REVOLUTION #113: “At one and the same time, they insist that they are above the law, and that Trump is the law. They recognize no authority beyond their own raw exercise of power.” 

And they are very consciously making this point via attacks on high-level Democrats, both because they actually want to break the opposition from the more “mainstream” section of the ruling class that the Democrats represent, and because this will—they hope—spread fear and demoralization among ordinary people. 

The revolutionary leader Bob Avakian spoke to the dynamics of this in a short piece titled "Trump is moving to make this a dictatorship, not of the ruling class as a whole, but of a certain—fascist—section of the ruling class":

What is happening now is that Trump is moving to make this a dictatorship, not of the ruling class as a whole, but of a certain—fascist—section of the ruling class, to the exclusion, and with a determined vendetta against, the other (“bourgeois-democratic”) section of the ruling class. At the same time, this can have tremendously negative consequences for the masses of people—because, to put it in basic terms: If the fascists can do this to people who have been part of the ruling class, think of the implications for what they can do to “ordinary people.” 

As Sen. Padilla put it, “If this is how this administration responds to a senator with a question, if this is how the Department of Homeland Security responds to a senator with a question, you can only imagine what they’re doing to farm workers, to cooks, to day laborers out in the Los Angeles community and throughout California and throughout the country.”

This message was also driven home in a different way by Noem’s comments during her press conference. Speaking of the ongoing ICE raids in LA, backed up by federal military forces, Noem declared” “We are not going away. We are staying here to liberate this city from the socialists and the burdensome leadership that this governor and that this mayor have placed on this country and what they have tried to insert into the city.” 

As historian Heather Cox Richardson points out, “In other words, the Trump administration is vowing to get rid of the democratically elected government of California by using military force. That threat is the definition of a coup. It suggests MAGA considers any political victory but their own to be illegitimate and considers themselves justified in removing those governmental officials with violence: a continuation of the attempt of January 6, 2021, to overturn the results of a presidential election.” 

All this underscores the urgency of raising the demand, and making the demand a reality: The Trump Fascist Regime Must Go NOW!