The most significant event in the escalation of Trump MAGA fascism is the call from RefuseFascism.org:

The time has come for… The FALL of the TRUMP FASCIST REGIME. Beginning November 5, 2025, Washington DC. The call begins:

Fascism is not a looming threat. It is upon us now. 

Humanity's only hope is for the decent people of this country to rise in our millions. We cannot wait for future and rigged elections. We must drive the Trump Fascist Regime from power.

Beginning November 5, the one-year anniversary of Trump's election, flood DC in nonviolent protest. Surround the White House. Surround the Capitol. Surround the illegitimate fascist-packed Supreme Court. Come back again and again. Across the country, refuse to comply. Every person of conscience, millions of us together, grind the machinery of the fascist regime to a halt.

Don't stop until Trump is removed.

Every decent person needs to take this call to heart, spread it far and wide, and act on it. 

This call from Refuse Fascism comes at a time when Trump MAGA fascism is tightening the bolts on all fronts. This past week in particular, in addition to the military takeover of DC and ramped up ICE raids across the country, we cover here how the regime has gone after scientific truth (and scientists themselves); historical memory and truth, artistic conscience, and California Governor Newsom and other Democratic politicians, and has created a 24-hour strike force that can be dispatched anywhere in the country on a moment's notice.

Gunfire Hits CDC—an Attack on Scientific Truth and Scientists

On August 8, an anti-vax assassin fired more than 180 shots into several buildings of the headquarters of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) in Atlanta, Georgia. About 150 windows were shattered by the bullets. A cop was killed, and the anti-vaxer killed himself. This was incredibly dangerous—and could've been much, much worse.

As of a week after the CDC attack, Trump has said nothing about it. Contrast that with public show of outrage by Trump at the alleged carjacking of a DOGE operative at the hands of several unarmed teenagers in Washington, DC—and his use of that incident as a part of justifications for the police-military clampdown of the capital city. 

The shooter apparently believed the COVID-19 vaccine was responsible for physical and mental problems he was having, including depression, weight loss, trouble swallowing, and stomach disorders. As Jeremy Faust, emergency room doctor and public health expert, wrote at Inside Medicine, this was a violent rampage “stoked by anti-vaccine sentiments.” This irrational, anti-science nonsense about the “dangers” of vaccines is, in turn, being stoked from the highest levels of the Trump regime, as part of its extreme attacks on scientific truth and scientists. 

Vaccines for COVID-19, measles, smallpox and other serious diseases have saved tens of millions of lives around the world over decades. There is a mountain of scientific evidence about the safety of vaccines. But Trump’s “health czar,” Robert F. Kennedy Jr., has claimed the CDC was a “cesspool of corruption,” called the CDC scientists “Nazis” who should be imprisoned, and said the COVID vaccine was the “deadliest vaccine ever made.” He has purged real scientists from the CDC and other agencies and replaced them with anti-vaccine and anti-science hustlers who promote all kinds of anti-scientific nonsense and conspiracy theories. 

While RFK Jr. officially condemned the shooting, he continued to put a target on the CDC. In response to being asked if he would "quell misinformation about vaccines," RFK responded that "people [are] not believing the public health agencies," because "the public health agencies have not been honest."

This is fundamentally a lie, and it's aimed at spreading anti-scientific lunacy, and targeting scientists and medical workers. It is this regime that has put a target on the backs of the CDC.

White House Orders Whitewashing of Smithsonian Museums

On August 12, the Trump regime took another step in its fascist assault on the Smithsonian Institution—and on historical memory and truth about this country. The regime sent the Smithsonian a letter ordering a “comprehensive internal review” of eight of its museums¹ in Washington, DC. The letter demands that the Smithsonian make sure the museums’ exhibits, social media, etc. are in “alignment with the President’s directive to celebrate American exceptionalism.”

This latest order follows Trump’s executive order Restoring Truth and Sanity to American History, which targeted the National Museum of African American History and Culture (MAAHC) by name. claiming that it is part of a “concerted and widespread effort to rewrite our Nation’s history.” In fact, it is Trump and the MAGA fascists who are trying to whitewash and sanitize the actual history of U.S.—the history of slavery, genocide of Native peoples, and colonial and imperialist wars, invasions, and domination. 

The reality is, as Lenny Wolff wrote when Trump issued the executive order, the MAAHC “is an amazing and, in many sections, historically accurate and scientifically rigorous museum. Spend a day there … and you will come away with a living and basically accurate explanation of the role slavery played in the rise of capitalism, and vice-versa. You will get a good grounding in how central slavery was to the economy and culture of the U.S. in its first 90 years. You will also experience in a visceral way the actual horrors of the Middle Passage, in which over a million Africans died in shackles on their voyage to slavery in the Americas. There is much else there to get into, but I have little doubt that this element is a big part of what so offends the diehard white supremacist Trump.”

In July, the Smithsonian National Museum of American History retracted any mention of Trump’s two impeachment trials in a museum exhibit that is supposed to be about impeachment. They left only mentions of Andrew Johnson and Bill Clinton as presidents who were impeached (but not convicted), and Richard Nixon as one forced to resign. According to NPR, the museum “has since restored those references, using revised language and placing them in a less prominent location within the exhibit display.”

Urgently, there needs to be mass institutional non-compliance from within the Smithsonian, among historians, academics and all the decent people in and around DC: standing up for truth, refusing to distort and erase truth in museum exhibits, wall signage, websites—everywhere this truth is under fascist attack.

Turning the Kennedy Center into a Center of Fascist Culture

The John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts (known as the Kennedy Center) in Washington, DC, is supposedly the “national cultural center of the United States.” Its Kennedy Center Honors, given annually to five artists for lifetime achievement, are considered one of the most prestigious prizes in American performing arts. Honorees have included prominent artists in music, dance, theater, opera, film and television and are usually selected through a board of trustees.

This year will—with Trump MAGA fascism taking over every arena of society—be very different. On August 13, Trump announced that he personally picked this year’s recipients of the Kennedy Center Honors and would host the awards ceremony in December—not because of the recipients contributions to the wider culture, but (with no disrespect to the artists) because—based on his homogenized, American idiocy—he likes them.

Trump’s choices for Kennedy Center honorees are country singer George Strait, actor and comedian Michael Crawford, actor Sylvester Stallone, singer Gloria Gaynor, and the band Kiss. If these artists go ahead with accepting the Trump-bestowed “honor,” they are following in the utterly dishonorable footsteps of cultural figures in Nazi Germany who actively collaborated with Hitler.

Trump took control of the Kennedy Center in February when he fired several board members and seated himself as chair of the board, declaring that “We ended the woke political programming.” The Kennedy Center’s public spaces used to be adorned only by a bronze bust of John F. Kennedy. Now, it has been joined by giant portraits of Trump and J.D. Vance along with those of their wives. And Trump “joked” in a Truth Social post about renaming the center the “TRUMP/KENNEDY CENTER.”

Trump’s push to turn the Kennedy Center into the fascist emperor’s entertainment center is part of the MAGA drive to remake America’s culture into white bread and mayonnaise "entertainment" with utter contempt for critical thinking, and the great diversity of art.

An Open Threat of Intimidation Against Newsom and Other Democratic Politicians 

Amidst a wave of ICE raids throughout Los Angeles—in ongoing defiance of a court order—ICE descended outside a press conference being held by Governor Gavin Newsom. On Thursday, Newsom was holding a press conference at the Japanese American National Museum in Little Tokyo. This is a symbolic location that commemorates the internment of people of  Japanese descent in World War 2. Newsom was there to announce a plan to counter an attempt by Trump and the Republicans to rig the 2026 election. In particular in Texas, the fascists are planning to redraw the maps to give the Republicans five more seats in Congress. Newsom was announcing that if this goes ahead, California will put up for a vote the redrawing of the California election maps to give the Democrats five more seats (see the article “Fight Over Texas Gerrymandering Exposes Fascist Plans to Rig Elections and Violently Suppress Opposition” for background). 

This was clearly an attempt at intimidation against the Democratic politicians. An essential part of the fascist program is the way Trump, and the fascists overall, are going after their counterparts among the rulers. If they carry out these open threats against governors, mayors and congresspeople—just think what they will do to the masses of people!

Pentagon’s 600-Troop Strike Force Against Cities

When Trump announced that he would be sending federal military troops into Washington, DC, he also threatened he'd do the same for Chicago, New York, Baltimore, Oakland—all Democratic cities with Black mayors.

Now the Pentagon is reportedly making plans to set up a 600-troop “Domestic Civil Disturbance Quick Reaction Force” that could be used by Trump against these and other cities at a moment’s notice.

According to the Washington Post, the strike force would be split into two groups of 300 National Guard soldiers each. One would be stationed at a military base in Alabama, for deployment east of the Mississippi, and the other at a base in Arizona, for deployment in the western states. They would be on standby around the clock and be ready to deploy in as little as one hour. 

Trump wanted this kind of force in 2020 to use against the uprising of protest that erupted in cities across the country after the police murder of George Floyd. He was prevented from doing so by opposition within his own regime. Now Trump has as his defense secretary Pete Hegseth, a fanatical Christian fascist who made clear his willingness to faithfully carry out orders from Trump, no matter how unconstitutional, and they have removed Black and female officers and others who may stand in their way from the top ranks of the military.

5,000 National Guard and Marines to Los Angeles… 800 National Guard troops in DC (to be joined by hundreds from West Virginia, Ohio and South Carolina)… thousands of combat troops sent to the border with Mexico… now a strike force at the ready to be flown to any city on a moment’s notice. The fascist regime is moving very quickly to clamp down on the whole country. 

To end where we began, as RefuseFascism.org says in the new call: “Fascism is not a looming threat. It is upon us now. Humanity's only hope is for the decent people of this country to rise in our millions. We cannot wait for future and rigged elections. We must drive the Trump Fascist Regime from power."