How Close to Midnight?

The marker: A relentless, ostentatious patriotism — flags, slogans, anthems, and military pageantry — in which loyalty to the nation is fused with loyalty to the leader, and the symbols of the state are deployed to crowd out dissent.

Where we stand: “America First” is no longer a slogan but the organizing doctrine of the federal government, and the administration has staged the kind of leader-centric military spectacle American presidents have historically avoided. The very definition of who counts as an American is being narrowed by executive fiat — the surest sign that nationalism here is an instrument of power, not mere sentiment.

• On June 14, 2025, the administration rolled 28 Abrams tanks and roughly 6,700 soldiers through Washington in a massive military parade that fell on Trump's 79th birthday, a spectacle critics likened to authoritarian shows of force. Source
• The parade, costing an estimated $25–45 million, drew “No Kings” counter-protests nationwide and was deemed “not a good use” of money by about 6 in 10 Americans. Source
• On January 20, 2025, Trump signed an executive order purporting to end birthright citizenship for U.S.-born children of undocumented or temporary residents — redefining American nationhood by decree. Source
• In September 2025 the administration pressed the Supreme Court to validate that birthright-citizenship order, escalating its bid to restrict who is born American. Source

The marker: Out of fear of “enemies” and the need for “security,” the regime persuades the public that human rights can be ignored — due process, the right to a hearing, and protection from torture or rendition are recast as obstacles to be overcome.

Where we stand: The government has shipped people out of the country with almost no process, has sent at least one man abroad in admitted error and then resisted bringing him back, and has fought in court for the power to deport people to dangerous third countries with hours' notice and no chance to be heard. When the Supreme Court itself rules you violated migrants' due-process rights, the disdain is no longer alleged — it is on the record.

• In April 2025 the administration admitted in court it had deported Maryland resident Kilmar Abrego Garcia to El Salvador's CECOT mega-prison by “administrative error,” despite a judge's order protecting him from removal there. Source
• Even after the Supreme Court ordered his return, officials resisted for months; Abrego Garcia was finally brought back in June 2025 only to face newly filed criminal charges. Source
• On May 16, 2025, the Supreme Court blocked the administration from restarting deportations under the 1798 Alien Enemies Act, finding detainees had not been given adequate notice or a chance to challenge their removal. Source
• In June 2025 the administration deported men to South Sudan — a country the State Department deems too dangerous for Americans — with roughly 16 hours' notice and no opportunity to reach a lawyer. Source
• On June 23, 2025, the Supreme Court let the administration resume rapid deportations to third countries with minimal notice, lifting a lower-court block. Source

The marker: The population is rallied into a unifying patriotic frenzy directed against a common enemy — an ethnic, religious, or political out-group — blamed for the nation's ills, with the leader's domestic opponents recast not as rivals but as internal foes.

Where we stand: The administration runs on enemies. Immigrants are cast in dehumanizing, blood-and-soil terms; transgender Americans are made a wedge issue; and most ominously, the president brands his own political opposition the “enemy from within” and has openly mused about turning the machinery of justice and the military against them. This is scapegoating elevated to governing strategy.

• Trump has repeatedly called domestic political opponents the “enemy from within,” describing Democrats as more dangerous than China or Russia and as “radical left lunatics.” Source
• His “enemy from within” rhetoric, including suggestions the military could be used against it, drew alarm from critics warning of an authoritarian shift. Source
• In a March 14, 2025 Justice Department speech, Trump assailed journalists, judges, and prosecutors and threatened opponents such as Liz Cheney with jail. Source
• Trump has used degrading language against immigrants for years, including claiming they are “poisoning the blood of our country” — echoing a Nazi-era theme — and falsely alleging Haitian migrants in Springfield, Ohio were eating residents' pets. Source
• Those false Springfield claims were debunked by local officials but triggered bomb threats that evacuated city hall and schools serving Haitian students. Source

The marker: Fear — of enemies, invaders, internal subversion — is kept at a constant boil and used as the all-purpose justification for expanding state power, militarizing daily life, and overriding ordinary legal limits.

Where we stand: The administration has reframed American cities as battlefields and ordinary protest as “insurrection,” deploying active-duty troops and federalized National Guard onto domestic streets at a half-billion-dollar cost — and federal judges have repeatedly ruled the security threats invoked to justify it simply did not exist. When the president openly muses about invoking the Insurrection Act and calls U.S. cities “training grounds” for the military, the security pretext has become a permanent instrument of governance, not an emergency response.

• By late 2025 the administration had deployed National Guard and active-duty troops to Washington, Los Angeles, the Chicago area, Memphis, New Orleans and Portland, with costs surpassing $500 million. Source
• On Sept. 2, 2025, U.S. District Judge Charles Breyer ruled Trump’s deployment of the National Guard and Marines to Los Angeles was an illegal violation of the Posse Comitatus Act. Source
• On Nov. 7, 2025, a federal judge permanently blocked the Portland deployment, finding there was no rebellion and that nightly ICE-building protests had been overwhelmingly peaceful. Source
• Trump claimed without evidence that an “insurrection” was underway in Portland and said he would invoke the Insurrection Act “if it was necessary.” Source

The marker: Government and large corporations become mutually supporting allies — the levers of the state are turned to enrich and shield big business and the wealthy, while the watchdogs meant to hold them accountable are defunded or dismantled.

Where we stand: The administration assembled the wealthiest cabinet in U.S. history, passed a tax law steering its largest benefits to corporations and the richest 1% while average Americans pay more, and moved to gut the federal agencies that police corporate wrongdoing — firing most of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau and quietly dropping dozens of enforcement actions against major banks. This is the fusion of corporate and state power operating in the open.

• Trump tapped an unprecedented 13 billionaires for top administration roles, the wealthiest cabinet in U.S. history. Source
• Under the One Big Beautiful Bill Act, the richest 1% are projected to receive about $117 billion in net tax cuts in 2026 while all but the richest Americans pay higher taxes on average. Source
• Acting CFPB Director Russell Vought issued a stop-work order, moved to fire up to 90% of staff, and the agency dismissed or rolled back dozens of public enforcement actions in 2025. Source
• On Aug. 15, 2025, a divided D.C. Circuit panel cleared the way for mass CFPB layoffs over a dissent warning the executive may not unilaterally abolish an agency created by Congress. Source

The marker: Because organized labor is one of the few forces that can check a regime, fascist governments move to gut independent unions — stripping collective-bargaining rights, capturing the agencies meant to protect workers, and punishing the unions that resist.

Where we stand: This is no longer a warning sign — it is a program. In its first year the administration voided collective bargaining for the overwhelming majority of the unionized federal workforce by executive order, neutered the agency that enforces labor law by firing a board member without cause, and then defied a court injunction to tear up a union contract anyway. When an administration keeps shredding contracts after judges tell it to stop, the suppression is systematic, not incidental.

• Executive orders issued March 27 and August 28, 2025 ended collective bargaining for roughly 84% of the unionized federal workforce — more than a million workers across a dozen-plus agencies. Source
• In March 2025 the administration ended collective bargaining for some 50,000 TSA airport security officers, revoking rights granted under prior administrations. Source
• Trump fired NLRB member Gwynne Wilcox on January 27, 2025 — the first such firing in the board's history — stripping the agency of a quorum; a judge ruled the removal unlawful before the Supreme Court let it stand for now. Source
• On December 12, 2025, DHS terminated the TSA union contract despite a June injunction blocking that very action — a day after Congress passed bipartisan legislation to restore bargaining rights. Source
• The House passed bipartisan legislation in December 2025 to nullify the anti-union executive orders, underscoring how sweeping the rollback was. Source

The marker: Fascist regimes treat universities, scholars, museums, and artists as enemies to be defunded, purged, or bent to the state's ideology — because free inquiry and independent culture expose the regime's lies.

Where we stand: The state is now openly dictating what scholars may study, what museums may display, and who may run the nation's premier cultural institution. Billions in research funding have been frozen or canceled as leverage over university policy; the president installed himself as chairman of the Kennedy Center after purging its board; and an executive order directs federal officials to scrub "improper ideology" from the Smithsonian. This is not budget-trimming — it is the deliberate subordination of knowledge and art to political loyalty.

• In April 2025 the National Endowment for the Humanities terminated nearly all its grants to redirect funds toward "the president's agenda"; a judge later ruled the terminations unlawful. Source
• The administration froze about $2.2 billion in grants to Harvard in April 2025 after the university refused demands over admissions, curriculum, and DEI. Source
• In February 2025 Trump fired half the Kennedy Center board, which then installed him as chairman and ousted longtime president Deborah Rutter. Source
• Executive Order 14253 (March 31, 2025) accused the Smithsonian of "divisive, race-centered ideology" and put the vice president in charge of policing its exhibits. Source
• In August 2025 the White House ordered a "comprehensive internal review" of Smithsonian exhibits to align them with Trump's directives. Source

The marker: Fascist regimes whip up fear of crime to justify expanded police and military power, mass detention, and the suspension of legal protections — while applying the law selectively, harshly against enemies and leniently toward allies.

Where we stand: The administration has turned "law and order" into a pretext for deploying troops in American cities, building mass-detention camps, and arresting people for their political speech — even as it pardoned the violent rioters of January 6. Crime in DC was falling when Trump federalized its police and put soldiers on the streets; legal residents have been jailed for protest; and detainees describe squalid conditions in hastily built camps. The punishment apparatus is being aimed at dissenters and immigrants while loyalists who attacked the Capitol walk free — the textbook selective justice of an authoritarian state.

• On his first day in office (January 20, 2025) Trump pardoned roughly 1,500 January 6 defendants and commuted 14 sentences, including militia leaders convicted of seditious conspiracy. Source
• In August 2025 Trump federalized DC's police and deployed the National Guard over a "crime emergency," though violent crime had fallen 35% from 2023 to 2024. Source
• Mahmoud Khalil, a legal US resident and Columbia activist, was detained on March 8, 2025 — the first arrest in the crackdown on campus protesters — and held over three months before a judge ordered his release. Source
• The "Alligator Alcatraz" detention camp opened July 3, 2025 in the Everglades, where detainees reported worms in food, non-flushing toilets, and floors flooded with waste. Source
• A federal judge ruled in November 2025 that the DC Guard deployment was illegal, even as an appeals court allowed troops to remain into 2026. Source

The marker: Fascist regimes are run by, and for, a clique of friends and associates who appoint one another to power, loot the public purse, use government to enrich themselves, and shield each other from accountability.

Where we stand: The line between the president's private fortune and his public office has effectively dissolved. The administration has turned a sitting president's family business into a billion-dollar crypto enterprise that takes money from foreign and anonymous buyers, gutted the watchdogs whose job is to catch self-dealing, traded the dismissal of a corruption case for political loyalty, and used the pardon power to spring allies and donors. This is not the occasional scandal that every administration produces; it is corruption operationalized as a governing method.

• On May 22, 2025, Trump hosted a private dinner at his Virginia golf club for the top 220 buyers of his $TRUMP memecoin, who collectively poured an estimated $148 million into the token for access to the president, with many buyers appearing to be foreign nationals. Source
• The top buyer granted a seat at the memecoin dinner was Chinese-born crypto mogul Justin Sun, who had recently faced a U.S. civil fraud case, and the dinner's guest buyers were promised effective anonymity. Source
• On Jan. 24, 2025, Trump abruptly fired at least 17 independent inspectors general overnight, the very watchdogs charged with rooting out waste, fraud, and corruption, in apparent violation of the law requiring 30 days' notice to Congress. Source
• In 2025 the DOJ moved to drop its corruption case against NYC Mayor Eric Adams in what prosecutors described as a quid pro quo tied to his cooperation on immigration, prompting the acting U.S. attorney and top career corruption prosecutors to resign in protest. Source
• Experts told NBC News that firings, pardons, and policy changes in Trump's first months had gutted the federal government's anti-corruption enforcement infrastructure, creating "the ripest environment for corruption" in a generation. Source