In a recent Interview, the fascist leader Steve Bannon said, "If you take power and exert it, this system's not so tough. You know why? They're all gutless cowards. They've all hid behind the system for decades and decades and decades. So the university administrations, they're not that tough. The big law firms, they're not that tough. The media? Look who's cratered. How many times—look how they’re settling with Trump. They're not tough." He contrasted this to the hardened fascist social base: "We're resilient, we're anti-fragile, and we're tough. You can put us in fucking prison. You can take Trump up there and put him on trial every day. The people around Trump are battle-hardened, OK? You're not going to scare us, and we're not going to stop... You will fold, because we're relentless, and we're not going to stop."

Bannon is not just taunting you and trying to demoralize and deter you, he's also telling you their strategy: to overwhelm, to flood the decent people with so much fascist madness that you can't even keep up, let alone respond. And they are banking on people giving up the fight—to fold.

And as he says, there has been a wave of gutless capitulation and accommodation, which only strengthens the side of Trump fascism.

This should ring in people's minds like the sirens of a five-alarm fire. If we are to prove Bannon wrong—which we MUST—we have to ACT NOW, with determination and self-sacrificing courage that we will not let these illegitimate fascists have the future. The side of the decent people is acting in the interests of the truth, and in the interests of the people of the world. 

As the revolutionary leader, Bob Avakian said in a social media message recently:

...all those who oppose the tyrannical madness of this Trump fascist regime must mobilize with continuing, and growing, determined non-violent action to prevent this fascist regime from functioning and create the conditions where it is removed from power, before it can fully consolidate its rule of fascist atrocity. (From REVOLUTION #126: More on why only the sustained determined action of decent people can be relied on to defeat and remove the Trump fascist regime.)

Below, we cover just three ways out of many that the fascists have escalated in the past week. This includes using mass immigrant detention for what can only be called intentionally “cruel and unusual punishment.” It takes in preparing now to rig elections, should they decide to allow them in 2026. And it features what amounts to the forcible incarceration of homeless people whose only “crimes” are being too poor or too broken by this system to afford shelter.

This too should underscore the emergency situation we are in, and why we cannot fight this outrage by outrage, but must go on the offensive—acting to defeat the whole fascist program.

ICE Declares: No More Bail Bond for Immigrants in Detention, Creating Legal Basis to Drastically Expand the Population in Hellish Concentration Camps

On July 8, Todd Lyons, acting director of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), issued a memo declaring that most undocumented immigrants fighting deportation in court will not be eligible for bond hearings and will be kept in detention “for the duration of their removal proceedings.” This is a drastic reversal of current policy, under which most undocumented people without serious criminal convictions bonded out and returned to their families and jobs as their cases proceeded. And it will affect millions of immigrants, including those who have been here for years or decades, who are now being swept up in the nationwide ICE raids. 

Immigration courts are badly backed up and these proceedings can take years, during which time people will now be condemned to confinement in ICE detention centers which are notorious for concentration camp-style conditions. 

Already, there is testimony of nightmare conditions in "Alligator Auschwitz"—a detention center in the alligator-infested swamp deep in the Everglades in Florida.

Detainees report living amidst sewage, unbearable heat and sparse food. A major expose was released this week about conditions in other detention centers in Florida, “‘You Feel Like Your Life is Over’: Abusive Practices at Three Florida Immigration Detention Centers Since January 2025.”  (This was released by Americans for Immigrant Justice, Human Rights Watch and Sanctuary of the South.)

The report describes: “Some [detainees] were detained shackled for prolonged periods on buses without food, water, or functioning toilets; there was extreme overcrowding in freezing holding cells where detainees were forced to sleep on cold concrete floors under constant fluorescent lighting; and many were denied access to basic hygiene and medical care.” In one incident recounted in the report: “…officers made men eat while shackled with their hands behind their backs after forcing the group to wait hours for lunch: ‘We had to bend over and eat off the chairs with our mouths, like dogs,’ one man said.”

This new ICE policy of preventing migrants from bonding out is punishment before trial—a blatant denial of due process of law. And it will make it much more difficult for immigrants to fight their cases. 

But even more, this provides the legal basis to drastically expand the population of concentration camps. This new policy came down shortly after Trump’s fascist tax-and-spending bill that, among other things, allotted $45 billion to dramatically expand ICE “detention centers.” In other words, ICE has the funds to build a network of concentration camps, which they can now keep migrants in for as long as they want to.

Trump Pushes Texas Congressional Redistricting to Give Republi-fascists More Seats 

Texas is already solidly dominated by Republi-fascists—the governor, attorney general, both U.S. senators, and 25 of the state’s 38 congressional representatives are all-the-way MAGA. But Trump has been pushing the Texas Republicans to redraw the congressional map (known as “gerrymandering”)—he thinks a “simple redrawing” could “pick up five seats” for MAGA.

Governor Abbott heard Trump's directive and called a special session of the state legislature to carry it out (and a few other matters). 

Democratic legislators have floated the idea of leaving the state en masse so that there is not a quorum (the minimum number of legislators that has to be present to pass legislation). They tried this in 2021 to prevent a vote on a bill that attacked voting rights—this tactic did delay the bill for several weeks. (Though it passed when the Democrats returned.) Attorney General Paxton responded by threatening that he will work with “local, state and federal authorities in hunting down and compelling the attendance of anyone who abandons their office.”

Aside from the fact that we cannot let this fascist nightmare continue for one more day, this Trump-ordered gerrymandering—and the threat to use federal forces to “hunt down” those who resist—should serve as a lesson in how delusional it is to think that fascist consolidation can be defeated through elections, since the only elections they consider “legitimate” are those that they win. 

Trump’s “Solution” to Homelessness: Treat Them as Criminals and Lock Them Up

On any night in America, more than 277,000 people are without a roof over their heads, living in the streets and trying to survive. Many also have mental health disabilities and problems with addiction. Millions of others are just one crisis away from being thrown into the streets. 

This week, Trump signed an executive order—"Ending Crime and Disorder On America’s Streets"—with a fascist resolution to this crisis: sweep the homeless off the streets and force them into locked institutions. The order mentions “humane treatment” of the homeless once—but it is all about dehumanizing and criminalizing homeless people and putting them out of sight, in order to “restore public order.” 

The order calls for the federal government to push states and cities toward dealing with homeless people via “civil commitment”—which means basically forcibly removing homeless people with mental health issues from the streets and institutionalizing them for indefinite periods, without the individuals’ consent. The order also calls for local areas to force people with substance abuse problems into treatment programs. This not only violates people's basic rights, but it's an approach that addiction experts widely see as counterproductive. The order eliminates federal funding for “harm reduction” programs for addicts (like providing safe needles) and “housing first” programs that prioritize finding homes for homeless people. Trump’s press secretary made it plain when she said Trump’s order was aimed at “removing vagrant criminals from our streets.” In other words: being homeless is a crime. (We're not able to speak more here to the utter criminality of a system where eviction and foreclosure—forcing people from their homes because they can't afford the rent or mortgage payments—is not just not a crime, it's "good business"!)

Last year, the fascist-dominated U.S. Supreme Court ruled that cities can arrest and ticket people for sleeping outside, even if there are no homeless shelters in the area. In the past year, over 220 local laws making it a crime to be homeless have passed. 

Now, this executive order ramps this up even more: setting up an infrastructure and fascist justification for locking people up for homelessness or drug addiction.