Opinion: Yes, It IS a Police State. And Yes, You Can Do Something
David Rothkopf
Sat 23 August 2025
Photo Illustration by Thomas Levinson/The Daily Beast/Getty
Did you ever wonder what it would be like to live in a police state?
Well, you can check that box off your bucket list.
We’re there.
This week demonstrates that dire truth to a degree predicted by few if any of those who warned of what Trump would do should he return to office. I know. Last summer, I participated in a series of scenario exercises about what a second Trump Administration would look like. It was a process involving a broad range of former senior U.S. government officials and experts.
President Donald Trump speaks to the media wearing a hat that reads,
While the general thrust of Trump’s authoritarian power grab was predicted, the scope of what Trump has actually done was not anticipated nor was the lack of resistance to his actions. Indeed, many of those present, some quite well known, pooh-poohed the idea Trump would go so far
I truly hope they are tortured with regret. Because it is underestimating the inherent malevolence of Trump on his revenge tour that has gotten us to where we are today.
This past week has contained so many examples of steps the Trump Administration has taken to transform our government into a weapon designed to serve their grievances, hatreds and fears that it is hard for the casual observer to track them all. Indeed, after seven months, it is clear that approach is a central part of the regime’s strategy. Relentless infringements on rights, attacks on the law, restructuring of the government to attack rather than serve the people are perpetrated daily.
Gretchen Smith Bolton, wife of the former White House national security adviser John Bolton, stands in front of Bolton's house as it was searched by FBI members on Friday. / Tasos Katopodis/Reuters
Think back to the past few days.
We have seen the MAGA occupation of Washington, D.C. expand. Red states have surged national guard troops into the nation’s capital. Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth has ordered that many of those troops be armed. J.D. Vance and Stephen Miller held a press event at Union Station celebrating the invasion of the city as a bold step to fight crime—even though crime rates in the city have fallen. Donald Trump went on a ride along himself and then promised Chicago would be next on the list of blue cities that would face an illegal red invasion.
Former National Security Advisor John Bolton saw his home and office raided by the FBI. The administration of the president who kept classified documents stored in a bathroom at Mar-a-Lago asserted that it was because Bolton may have mishandled secret materials himself. But everyone knew better. Bolton was a critic of Trump, being targeted just like so many others—from James Comey to John Brennan to Miles Taylor to Olivia Troye—have been harassed and targeted.
Dozens of former senior officials have seen their security clearances stripped away, more this week at the behest of Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard. / Andrew Harnik / Getty Images
Indeed, all critics of Trump are targets. The head of the Defense Intelligence Agency was fired by Secretary of Defense Hegseth this week. His apparent crime? Overseeing an agency that let the truth be known about the failure of Trump’s vaunted bombing mission against Iran to achieve the results of which Trump had prematurely boasted.
In New York, attorney general Letitia James has been harassed by Ed Martin, the Department of Justice official whose job it is to pervert the mechanisms of our legal system, to torment those who have stood up to Trump and told the truth about him. The degree to which DoJ has been retooled into a Department of Retribution is clear on many levels. While the blame for this lies heavily with the Supreme Court which cleared the way for this in a devastatingly misguided ruling last year, look to the hostility to the principles on which our legal system was built of those now in charge of it.
Trump claimed this week that he was the nation’s chief law enforcement officer. Attorney General Pam Bondi did not challenge this despite the fact that she by statute holds that distinction. Meanwhile, conspiracy theorist turned FBI Director Kash Patel announced that his agency would redirect its focus away from many of the complex cases it once addressed so it could support a more Trumpian agenda. In that vein, it was also announced that the requirements for joining the FBI would be relaxed. The move mimicked a similar initiative by ICE.
President Trump with Pam Bondi (third from right) and Kash Patel (second from right), at the August 11 press conference where he announced his DC takeover. / Andrew Harnik / Getty Images
Why lower standards? Given the directions of the agencies involved it can only be concluded that these are DEI programs for the kind of white supremacist, right-wing extremist thugs that are needed to fulfill Trump’s vision of a national police force serving as his muscle, to enforce his will.
Once upon a time in Germany, the police forces of Prussia were put under unified leadership loyal to the new ruling party’s leader and instructed to go after his political enemies, as well as those from ethnic groups deemed undesirable. The new organization was called the Geheime Staatspolizei, a name that was shortened to Gestapo.
No one can watch the masked thugs that patrol American streets today, men who refuse to identify themselves or their organizations, who regularly violate the legal rights of those they are victimizing, who send people without due process to modern day concentration camps and hellhole prisons around the world and not be reminded of Hitler’s enforcers or Stalin’s or those in any other dictatorship. Their contempt for judges, the judiciary and the rule of law—heard again this week from Trump and Bondi—only underscores the fact that we now live in a country in which the rule of one man, one mob, is pushing aside any semblance of the judicial values that once at least ostensibly guided this country.
The average observer might have been distracted by such actions by other events of the week just past—the decision by the state of Texas to try to rig future elections, the announcement that the administration would try to rewrite American history as it is presented in our national museums, the announcement of the review of the legal status of the 55 million people who hold visas in our country.
Demonstrators rally against President Donald Trump on April 19, 2025, in Cocoa, Florida. / Miguel J. Rodriguez Carrillo / Getty Images
But rather than be boggled by it all, it is important that people see the connections between each and every one of these actions—all clearly part of an authoritarian agenda that is gaining momentum and impact daily.
The assaults on our system, values and citizens have become so incessant that it has become impossible to rationalize them all, for the media to normalize what is going on, or for the Democratic Party establishment to just write strongly-worded letters about each instance of the demolition of our democracy.
Which raises the question, what is to be done? Can anything be done? In the short term, the answer must be to use what tools remain to fight back—even at the risk of becoming the targets of the next wave of retribution. Use the courts. Speak out. Take to the streets. Record the actions of the administration’s thugs and share the videos of what is happening. Work hard to try to maintain enough of democracy to regain some control of some aspects of our government as soon as possible.
And when that control is achieved, do not make the mistake of the last administration, of pundits or experts who took this threat too lightly. There must be consequences. Those who seized and warped and debased our system must pay a price for it. The illegality of their actions must be met with real penalties or they will take it as acceptance of such tactics and the American experiment in democracy will be permanently over.
Isn’t that just another form of retribution, you might ask? But the answer is no. There is another word for it if we do what is right in a way that is consistent with our laws and our true national interests. And that is justice.
Trump ‘manufactured crisis’ to justify plan to send national guard to Chicago, leading Democrat says
Richard Luscombe
Sun 24 August 2025
THE GUARDIAN
Members of the national guard walk near the White House in Washington DC on 21 August.Photograph: Al Drago/Reuters
Planning is underway to send national guard troops to Chicago, an official at the Pentagon confirmed to ABC News on Sunday.
“We won’t speculate on further operations. The Department is a planning organization and is continuously working with other agency partners on plans to protect federal assets and personnel,” a Department of Defense official said, according to ABC.
Earlier on Sunday, Hakeem Jeffries, House minority leader and New York Democratic congressman, said Donald Trump has “manufactured a crisis” to justify sending federalized national guard troops into Chicago next, over the heads of local leaders.
Jeffries, appearing on CNN’s State of the Union, accused the US president of “playing games with the lives of Americans” with his unprecedented domestic deployment of the military, which has escalated to include the arming of troops currently patrolling Washington, DC – after sending troops into Los Angeles in June.
The mayor of Chicago, Brandon Johnson, said any such plan from Trump was perpetrating “the most flagrant violation of our constitution in the 21st century”.
Late on Friday, Pentagon officials confirmed to Fox News that up to 1,700 men and women of the national guard were poised to mobilize in 19 mostly Republican states to support Trump’s anti-immigration crackdown by assisting the Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency (Ice) with “logistical support and clerical functions”.
Related: Trump targets Chicago and New York as Hegseth orders weapons for DC troops
Jeffries said he supported a statement issued by the Democratic governor of Illinois, JB Pritzker, that Trump was “abusing his power” in talking about sending the national guard to Chicago, and distracting from the pain he said the president was causing American families.
The national guard is normally under the authority of the individual states, deployed at the request of the state governor and only federalized – or deployed by the federal government – in a national emergency and at the request of a governor.
Jeffries said in an interview with CNN on Sunday morning: “We should continue to support local law enforcement and not simply allow Donald Trump to play games with the lives of the American people as part of his effort to manufacture a crisis and create a distraction because he’s deeply unpopular.”
He continued: “I strongly support the statement that was issued by Governor Pritzker making clear that there’s no basis, no authority for Donald Trump to potentially try to drop federal troops into the city of Chicago.”
The White House has been working on plans to send national guard to Chicago, the third largest US city, dominated by Democratic voters in a Democratic state, to take a hard line on crime, homelessness and immigrants, the Washington Post reported.
Pritzker issued a statement on Saturday night that began: “The State of Illinois at this time has received no requests or outreach from the federal government asking if we need assistance, and we have made no requests for federal intervention.”
Trump has argued that a military crackdown was necessary in the nation’s capital, and elsewhere, to quell what he said were out of control levels of crime, even though statistics show that serious and violent crime in Washington, and many other American cities, has actually plummeted.
Talking to reporters in the Oval Office on Friday the president insisted that “the people in Chicago are screaming for us to come” as he laid out his plan to send troops there, and that they would later “help with New York”.
“When ready, we will start in Chicago … Chicago is a mess,” Trump said.
Johnson, in an appearance on Sunday on MSNBC, said shootings had dropped by almost 40% in his city in the last year alone, and he and Pritzker said any plan by the White House to override local authority and deploy troops would be illegal.
“The president has repeated this petulant presentation since he assumed office. What he is proposing at this point would be the most flagrant violation of our constitution in the 21st century,” Johnson said.
California sued the federal government when it deployed national guard and US marines to parts of Los Angeles in June over protests against Ice raids, but a court refused to block the troops.
Main target cities mentioned by Trump are not only majority Democratic in their voting but also run by Black mayors, including Washington, DC, Chicago, New York, Baltimore, Los Angeles and Oakland.
Related: Trump visits DC police station and boasts of success of crime crackdown
Rahm Emanuel, a Democratic former Illinois congressman, chief of staff to former president Barack Obama, and a former mayor of Chicago, also appeared on CNN on Sunday urging people to reflect that Trump, in two terms of office, had only ever deployed US troops in American cities, never overseas.
Emanuel said if he was still mayor he would call on the president to act like a partner and, although crime was coming down, to “work with us on public safety” to combat carjackings, gun crime and gangs and not “come in and act like we can be an occupied city”.
He added about Trump’s agenda: “He gave his speech in Iowa, he said ‘I hate’ Democrats, and this may be a reflection of that.” The speech was in July, when Trump excoriated Democrats in Congress who refused to vote for his One Big Beautiful Bill, the flagship legislation of the second Trump administration so far that focuses on tax cuts for the wealthy, massive boosts for the anti-immigration agenda and benefits cuts to programs such as Medicaid, which provides health insurance for poor Americans.
Trump draws up plans to deploy National Guard in Chicago
Benedict Smith
Sun 24 August 2025
Members of the Ohio National Guard patrolled 14th Street in Washington, DC, on Saturday - Valerie Plesch
Donald Trump may send thousands of National Guard troops to Chicago within weeks as he extends his control of Democrat-run cities.
The Pentagon has drawn up plans to deploy troops to the third-largest city in the US as early as September, although this has not yet been signed off by the president, The Washington Post reported.
Earlier this month, Mr Trump mobilised the National Guard in Washington DC and became the first president in history to take federal control of its police force, claiming the capital was being taken over by “bloodthirsty” gangs.
Officials said a military deployment in Chicago had been planned for a long time, and was likely to go ahead in conjunction with immigration agents as part of the administration’s mass deportation programme.
On Friday, Mr Trump suggested he would turn his attention to Chicago after Washington, bypassing the concerns of local officials including JB Pritzker, the Democrat governor of Illinois, who characterised the move as a power grab.
“Chicago’s a mess. You have an incompetent mayor. Grossly incompetent,” said the president, who has repeatedly feuded with Brandon Johnson, the city’s Left-wing leader. “And we’ll straighten that one out, probably next. That’ll be our next one after this. And it won’t even be tough.”
Residents of Washington DC marched through the US capital’s streets on Saturday night to protest against Donald Trump sending in troops and taking control of its police force
Credit: DVIDS/Reuters
Mr Trump’s control of the DC police department, currently commanded by Pam Bondi, the attorney general, is technically limited to 30 days under legislation.
But on Friday, Andy Biggs, a Republican congressman for Arizona, introduced legislation to extend this limit to six months. Other Republicans have sponsored resolutions that would allow Mr Trump to maintain control of the police until the end of his term in early 2029.
On Sunday, the president lashed out at Wes Moore, the governor of Maryland, after the Democrat invited him to the state to showcase its progress on reducing violent crime.
“There is no higher priority for me, as governor of my state, than the safety of my people,” Mr Moore wrote in a letter to Mr Trump on Thursday.
In a post on his Truth Social platform three days later, Mr Trump labelled the invitation “rather nasty and provocative”, and noted that Baltimore was ranked fourth among US cities for violent crime. “If Wes Moore needs help … I will send in the ‘troops’, which is being done in nearby DC, and quickly clean up the crime,” he wrote.
The president also suggested he could remove federal funding to rebuild the Francis Scott Key Bridge in Baltimore, which was demolished when a container ship crashed into it in March last year, killing six people.
It is unlikely Mr Trump could do so unilaterally, however, because Congress voted by a wide margin to cover the costs of the repairs in full in December.
Richard Luscombe
Sun 24 August 2025
THE GUARDIAN
Members of the national guard walk near the White House in Washington DC on 21 August.Photograph: Al Drago/Reuters
Planning is underway to send national guard troops to Chicago, an official at the Pentagon confirmed to ABC News on Sunday.
“We won’t speculate on further operations. The Department is a planning organization and is continuously working with other agency partners on plans to protect federal assets and personnel,” a Department of Defense official said, according to ABC.
Earlier on Sunday, Hakeem Jeffries, House minority leader and New York Democratic congressman, said Donald Trump has “manufactured a crisis” to justify sending federalized national guard troops into Chicago next, over the heads of local leaders.
Jeffries, appearing on CNN’s State of the Union, accused the US president of “playing games with the lives of Americans” with his unprecedented domestic deployment of the military, which has escalated to include the arming of troops currently patrolling Washington, DC – after sending troops into Los Angeles in June.
The mayor of Chicago, Brandon Johnson, said any such plan from Trump was perpetrating “the most flagrant violation of our constitution in the 21st century”.
Late on Friday, Pentagon officials confirmed to Fox News that up to 1,700 men and women of the national guard were poised to mobilize in 19 mostly Republican states to support Trump’s anti-immigration crackdown by assisting the Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency (Ice) with “logistical support and clerical functions”.
Related: Trump targets Chicago and New York as Hegseth orders weapons for DC troops
Jeffries said he supported a statement issued by the Democratic governor of Illinois, JB Pritzker, that Trump was “abusing his power” in talking about sending the national guard to Chicago, and distracting from the pain he said the president was causing American families.
The national guard is normally under the authority of the individual states, deployed at the request of the state governor and only federalized – or deployed by the federal government – in a national emergency and at the request of a governor.
Jeffries said in an interview with CNN on Sunday morning: “We should continue to support local law enforcement and not simply allow Donald Trump to play games with the lives of the American people as part of his effort to manufacture a crisis and create a distraction because he’s deeply unpopular.”
He continued: “I strongly support the statement that was issued by Governor Pritzker making clear that there’s no basis, no authority for Donald Trump to potentially try to drop federal troops into the city of Chicago.”
The White House has been working on plans to send national guard to Chicago, the third largest US city, dominated by Democratic voters in a Democratic state, to take a hard line on crime, homelessness and immigrants, the Washington Post reported.
Pritzker issued a statement on Saturday night that began: “The State of Illinois at this time has received no requests or outreach from the federal government asking if we need assistance, and we have made no requests for federal intervention.”
Trump has argued that a military crackdown was necessary in the nation’s capital, and elsewhere, to quell what he said were out of control levels of crime, even though statistics show that serious and violent crime in Washington, and many other American cities, has actually plummeted.
Talking to reporters in the Oval Office on Friday the president insisted that “the people in Chicago are screaming for us to come” as he laid out his plan to send troops there, and that they would later “help with New York”.
“When ready, we will start in Chicago … Chicago is a mess,” Trump said.
Johnson, in an appearance on Sunday on MSNBC, said shootings had dropped by almost 40% in his city in the last year alone, and he and Pritzker said any plan by the White House to override local authority and deploy troops would be illegal.
“The president has repeated this petulant presentation since he assumed office. What he is proposing at this point would be the most flagrant violation of our constitution in the 21st century,” Johnson said.
California sued the federal government when it deployed national guard and US marines to parts of Los Angeles in June over protests against Ice raids, but a court refused to block the troops.
Main target cities mentioned by Trump are not only majority Democratic in their voting but also run by Black mayors, including Washington, DC, Chicago, New York, Baltimore, Los Angeles and Oakland.
Related: Trump visits DC police station and boasts of success of crime crackdown
Rahm Emanuel, a Democratic former Illinois congressman, chief of staff to former president Barack Obama, and a former mayor of Chicago, also appeared on CNN on Sunday urging people to reflect that Trump, in two terms of office, had only ever deployed US troops in American cities, never overseas.
Emanuel said if he was still mayor he would call on the president to act like a partner and, although crime was coming down, to “work with us on public safety” to combat carjackings, gun crime and gangs and not “come in and act like we can be an occupied city”.
He added about Trump’s agenda: “He gave his speech in Iowa, he said ‘I hate’ Democrats, and this may be a reflection of that.” The speech was in July, when Trump excoriated Democrats in Congress who refused to vote for his One Big Beautiful Bill, the flagship legislation of the second Trump administration so far that focuses on tax cuts for the wealthy, massive boosts for the anti-immigration agenda and benefits cuts to programs such as Medicaid, which provides health insurance for poor Americans.
Trump draws up plans to deploy National Guard in Chicago
Benedict Smith
Sun 24 August 2025
THE TELEGRAPH
Members of the Ohio National Guard patrolled 14th Street in Washington, DC, on Saturday - Valerie Plesch
Donald Trump may send thousands of National Guard troops to Chicago within weeks as he extends his control of Democrat-run cities.
The Pentagon has drawn up plans to deploy troops to the third-largest city in the US as early as September, although this has not yet been signed off by the president, The Washington Post reported.
Earlier this month, Mr Trump mobilised the National Guard in Washington DC and became the first president in history to take federal control of its police force, claiming the capital was being taken over by “bloodthirsty” gangs.
Officials said a military deployment in Chicago had been planned for a long time, and was likely to go ahead in conjunction with immigration agents as part of the administration’s mass deportation programme.
On Friday, Mr Trump suggested he would turn his attention to Chicago after Washington, bypassing the concerns of local officials including JB Pritzker, the Democrat governor of Illinois, who characterised the move as a power grab.
“Chicago’s a mess. You have an incompetent mayor. Grossly incompetent,” said the president, who has repeatedly feuded with Brandon Johnson, the city’s Left-wing leader. “And we’ll straighten that one out, probably next. That’ll be our next one after this. And it won’t even be tough.”
Residents of Washington DC marched through the US capital’s streets on Saturday night to protest against Donald Trump sending in troops and taking control of its police force
- Tasos Katopodis/Getty Images
On Friday, Mr Pritzker accused Mr Trump of using Washington and Los Angeles as “a testing ground for his authoritarian power-grab”.
Mr Pritzker, who is thought to be considering a run for president in 2028, said: “Trump is now openly flirting with the idea of taking over other states and cities. Trump’s goal is to incite fear in our communities and destabilise existing public safety efforts – all to create a justification to further abuse his power.”
Mr Trump has previously suggested he could extend federal control to other Democrat-run cities, including New York, Baltimore, Los Angeles and Oakland.
He deployed National Guard troops to Los Angeles in June after violent clashes between immigration agents and protesters, prompting a legal battle with Gavin Newsom, the governor of California, which is still making its way through the courts.
“We won’t speculate on further operations,” a defence official told The Telegraph. “The department is a planning organisation and is continuously working with other agency partners on plans to protect federal assets and personnel.”
On Friday, Mr Pritzker accused Mr Trump of using Washington and Los Angeles as “a testing ground for his authoritarian power-grab”.
Mr Pritzker, who is thought to be considering a run for president in 2028, said: “Trump is now openly flirting with the idea of taking over other states and cities. Trump’s goal is to incite fear in our communities and destabilise existing public safety efforts – all to create a justification to further abuse his power.”
Mr Trump has previously suggested he could extend federal control to other Democrat-run cities, including New York, Baltimore, Los Angeles and Oakland.
He deployed National Guard troops to Los Angeles in June after violent clashes between immigration agents and protesters, prompting a legal battle with Gavin Newsom, the governor of California, which is still making its way through the courts.
“We won’t speculate on further operations,” a defence official told The Telegraph. “The department is a planning organisation and is continuously working with other agency partners on plans to protect federal assets and personnel.”
Credit: DVIDS/Reuters
Mr Trump’s control of the DC police department, currently commanded by Pam Bondi, the attorney general, is technically limited to 30 days under legislation.
But on Friday, Andy Biggs, a Republican congressman for Arizona, introduced legislation to extend this limit to six months. Other Republicans have sponsored resolutions that would allow Mr Trump to maintain control of the police until the end of his term in early 2029.
On Sunday, the president lashed out at Wes Moore, the governor of Maryland, after the Democrat invited him to the state to showcase its progress on reducing violent crime.
“There is no higher priority for me, as governor of my state, than the safety of my people,” Mr Moore wrote in a letter to Mr Trump on Thursday.
In a post on his Truth Social platform three days later, Mr Trump labelled the invitation “rather nasty and provocative”, and noted that Baltimore was ranked fourth among US cities for violent crime. “If Wes Moore needs help … I will send in the ‘troops’, which is being done in nearby DC, and quickly clean up the crime,” he wrote.
The president also suggested he could remove federal funding to rebuild the Francis Scott Key Bridge in Baltimore, which was demolished when a container ship crashed into it in March last year, killing six people.
It is unlikely Mr Trump could do so unilaterally, however, because Congress voted by a wide margin to cover the costs of the repairs in full in December.
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