5. Erosion of Civil Rights
Police State Tactics
Picture this: every street corner looks like a scene from a dystopian novel. Police and federal agents everywhere. Orwell would be rolling in his grave. People are afraid to speak up.
I almost have to laugh as I update this one, because it didn't just happen. It keeps getting worse.
Masked, armed federal agents flooded Minneapolis in January. They shot and killed two U.S. citizens, Renee Nicole Good and Alex Pretti. Trump threatened to invoke the Insurrection Act to send in troops.
Surveillance is everywhere, too. Police departments use Flock license plate cameras, and those searches have been used to help ICE. People are so fed up that they're cutting Flock cameras down across 23 states.
When Pam Bondi took over the DOJ, one of her first moves was to get rid of the departments that investigate corruption, kleptocracy, and civil rights. Bondi's gone now, but her replacement is Trump's former personal lawyer (see sign #4).
ICE ended up being used as the President's own special police force, on top of carrying out mass deportation.
Turning Protest Into "Terrorism"
In September 2025, Trump signed an order calling "antifa" a domestic terrorist organization. Days later, he signed NSPM-7, which tells federal agencies to go after "organized political violence." Here's the problem: antifa isn't an organization. It's a belief.
(See: What is antifa? We explain it here.)
This year, we saw what that order looks like in practice.
On July 4, 2025, a man shot and wounded a police officer outside the Prairieland ICE detention center in Texas. In March 2026, a jury convicted eight people on terrorism charges in the first federal "antifa" terrorism trial.
The shooter got 100 years. Others convicted at trial got sentences as long as 70 years. The Intercept reported that prosecutors even pointed to people wearing all black at protests as part of their case.
Shooting a police officer is a serious crime. But turning everyone standing nearby into a "terrorist cell" is how a government scares everyone else into staying home.
Prosecutors are going after other protesters too.
Restrictions on Free Speech
Free speech is a cornerstone of democracy. Under fascism, that cornerstone crumbles. When people are afraid to speak because they could get arrested, a society loses its ability to repair its own mistakes.
We saw the crackdown on free speech when college students like Mahmoud Khalil and Rümeysa Öztürk were arrested and locked up in detention centers. Not because they committed a crime. Because of what they said and wrote.
Marco Rubio appointed himself Head of the Thought Police and had foreign students arrested for saying Israel was committing genocide in Gaza.
Many young people here on student visas were arrested and threatened with deportation over campus protests. Many of those cases are still in court. Öztürk was released on a judge's order after six weeks in a detention center.
