President Donald Trump’s recent escalating rhetoric and actions across multiple fronts have alarmed political experts, who are now warning that the United States is not just drifting but accelerating toward fascism—and may have already crossed the threshold.

“He’s threatening media companies who are critical of him,” warned Republican Sarah Longwell, a political strategist and publisher of The Bulwark. “He’s talking about sending Americans to foreign prisons. He’s signing executive orders to investigate former staff members who spoke out against him. Don’t you see what’s happening here?”

Trump on Sunday night attacked CBS and its “60 Minutes” newsmagazine, a top-rated and esteemed broadcast for more than five decades. The President, apparently angered by its reporting, called for CBS’s broadcast license to be revoked. He also called on his hand-picked head of the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) to “impose the maximum fines and punishment, which is substantial, for their unlawful and illegal behavior,” namely, reporting facts he did not like.

On Monday, Trump told reporters he has asked Attorney General Pam Bondi to investigate sending U.S. citizens to foreign gulags, as The New Republic reported, without due process, something he floated last week, which experts say is illegal.

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“Trump is denying due process to foreign nationals here legally — ripping them from their families and deporting them. Do we really believe this regime will follow any sort of due process for American citizens before he tries to deport them? Call it what it is: fascism,” declared U.C. Berkeley Professor of Public Policy and former Cabinet secretary Robert Reich.

“If Trump can claim a ‘national emergency’ to disappear legal residents without due process, what’s to stop him from doing the same to U.S. citizens who oppose him?” asked Professor Reich. He warned: “No one is safe — not even people legally in the country, possibly not even American citizens. Fascism is here.”

Reich pointed to a conversation (video below) between Trump and Bukele, caught on camera, where the U.S. president says, “Home-growns are next. The home-growns. You gotta build about five more places.”

Also sounding the alarm, The Atlantic’s Adam Serwer on Monday warned: “The Constitutional Crisis Is Here.”

“Between the path of outright defiance of the Supreme Court and following its order to ‘facilitate’ the return of Kilmar Abrego Garcia from El Salvador’s infamous Centro de Confinamiento del Terrorismo (CECOT), the Trump administration has chosen a third way: pretending it is complying while refusing to do so.”

Abrego Garcia is the legal U.S. resident the Trump administration admits it wrongly “deported” to the notorious El Salvador mega-prison. Trump officials have made clear, through word and deed, they have no desire to right that wrong.

“That’s up to El Salvador if they want to return him. That’s not up to us,” Attorney General Bondi told reporters. “That’s not up to us. If they want to return him, we would facilitate it, meaning provide a plane.”

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El Salvador’s president, Nayib Bukele, backing up the Trump administration, declared on Monday he has no intention of returning the 38-year old Abrego Garcia to the United States.

“This morning, however,” Serwer wrote, “Trump’s adviser Stephen Miller claimed on Fox News that the acknowledgement that Abrego Garcia was wrongly deported had been made by a ‘saboteur,’ in the Department of Justice and that ‘he was not mistakenly sent to El Salvador’; he added that ‘this was the right person sent to the right place.’ This is a lie—the admission of error was made by an ICE official in a court filing.”

The Atlantic’s Dr. Norman Ornstein, a well-known political scientist, warned: “Defying the Supreme Court, planning to spirit American citizens to El Salvador and saying that the courts have no role since it is a foreign country and the president has all foreign policy powers. We have entered the realm of fullblown fascism.”

Pennsylvania state Rep. Malcolm Kenyatta, a Vice Chair of the Democratic National Committee, wrote: “Disappearing people without any due process is fascism — full stop. I’m sick to my stomach and we all should be.”

Thomas Kennedy, who works with the Florida Immigrant Coalition, responded to the video of Trump and Bukele.

“Referring to citizens as ‘home-growns’ while asking a foreign country known for prisons that operate like black sites to build more of those prisons so he can send those ‘home-growns’ is fascist stuff and it needs to be called as such.”

Watch the video below or at this link.

Trump to Bukele: “Home-growns are next. The home-growns. You gotta build about five more places. It’s not big enough.” pic.twitter.com/o20thGNK9e

— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) April 14, 2025

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Image via Reuters

Backing up the Trump administration, the President of El Salvador, Nayib Bukele, says he has no intention or ability to return an unlawfully removed Maryland legal resident, Kilmar Abrego García, to the United States. Abrego García was wrongly deported to a notorious maximum security “mega-prison” for terrorists in El Salvador.

“How can I return him to the United States?” President Bukele said to reporters on Monday, during a meeting with President Donald Trump and his top officials in the Oval Office, as reported by The Washington Post. “I smuggle him into the United States? Of course I’m not going to do it.”

Last week, the U.S. Supreme Court in an apparent unanimous opinion ordered the Trump administration to “facilitate” the return of Abrego García to the United States.

Minutes before President Bukele’s remarks, White House Deputy Chief of Staff for Policy Stephen Miller, on-camera in the Oval Office, delivered what is being called an “outrageous misinterpretation” of the Supreme Court’s opinion, which was quickly condemned.

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“I promise you, if he was your neighbor, you would move right away,” Miller, who was the architect of the first Trump administration’s child separation policy, told reporters.

“What was the ruling in the Supreme Court, Steve, was it nine to nothing?” President Trump interjected.

“Yes, it was a 9-0, in our favor,” Miller wrongly claimed. “against the district court ruling, saying that no district court has the power to compel the foreign policy function of the United States.”

“As Pam said,” Miller continued, referring to Attorney General Pam Bondi, “the ruling solely stated that if this individual—at El Salvador’s sole discretion—was sent back to our country, that we could deport him a second time.”

“No version of this legally ends up with him ever living here, because he is a citizen of El Salvador,” Miller claimed, before pointing reporters to Bukele.

“That is the president of El Salvador. Your questions about it per the court can only be directed to him,” said Miller.

Attorney Michael Kasdan responded to Miller’s remarks: “We have reached the point where the White House openly lies on television about what a unanimous Supreme Court ruling against them says. The stuff of dystopian novels.”

“This is a blatant lie. The Supreme Court ruled 9-0 AGAINST Trump,” wrote the progressive nonprofit People For the American Way.

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“This is deeply Orwellian. The Court ruled against the Trump administration 9-0,” observed the MeidasTouch Network.

Conservative legal activist and political commentator Ed Whelan, who clerked for U.S. Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia, weighed in.

“Outrageous misrepresentation of Supreme Court ruling,” Whelan declared, serving up a somewhat technical legal analysis. “The unanimous Court ruled that the district-court order ‘properly requires the Government to ‘facilitate’ Abrego Garcia’s release from custody in El Salvador and to ensure that his case is handled as it would have been had he not been improperly sent to El Salvador.’ Yes, the Court also stated that the “intended scope of the term ‘effectuate’ in the District Court’s order is, however, unclear, and may exceed the District Court’s authority,” and it told the district court to ‘clarify its directive, with due regard for the deference owed to the Executive Branch in the conduct of foreign affairs.’ But: (1) ‘due regard’ doesn’t mean that the district court couldn’t give any teeth to ‘effectuate’; (2) in any event, the district court dropped ‘effectuate’ from its revised order, so this is all irrelevant. Duty to ‘facilitate’ continues.”

Commenting on the video, immigration attorney Allen Orr Jr. Esq. wrote: “When you tell yourself the story you want to believe even when it is fiction.”

Watch the video below or at this link.

Trump: The supreme court, it was 9-0?

Miller: In our favor, against the district court ruling, saying no district court has the power to compel the foreign policy pic.twitter.com/Hjm2L3YCOE

— Acyn (@Acyn) April 14, 2025

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 Image via Reuters

Nearly 36 hours after the Pennsylvania Governor’s Residence was firebombed in what some have described as a possible assassination attempt and anti-Semitic terror attack targeting Democratic Governor Josh Shapiro, President Donald Trump has yet to publicly condemn the act of violence—which has been charged as attempted murder, arson, and terrorism—committed as the governor and his family slept.

Just days after he was sworn in to office in January, President Donald Trump signed an executive order denouncing what he called “an unprecedented wave of vile anti-Semitic discrimination, vandalism and violence,” as NPR reported January 29. He also declared that U.S. policy “shall be” to use “all available and appropriate legal tools to prosecute, remove, or otherwise hold to account the perpetrators of unlawful anti-Semitic harassment and violence.”

But, as critics have noticed, it’s been all but radio silence from the U.S. President on the heinous crimes carried out against Governor Shapiro on the first full day of Passover, the Jewish holiday commemorating liberation from slavery.

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The suspect, “Cody Balmer, 38, jumped a fence and managed to evade state troopers after he broke into the building, the authorities said,” The New York Times reported. “He fled the scene and was arrested after turning himself in to the police on Sunday afternoon, officials said at a news conference.”

According to the affidavit, Balmer said that if he had encountered Governor Shapiro, he would have beaten him with his hammer.

“Mr. Balmer was charged with attempted murder, arson and terrorism, the Dauphin County District Attorney’s Office said early Monday.”

Since the attack on Governor Shapiro and the governor’s mansion, President Trump, on his Truth Social platform, has announced the visit this week of El Salvador’s President Nayib Bukele, and thanked him for what some say is the unlawful imprisonment of “some of the most violent alien enemies of the World and, in particular, the United States,” whom Trump labeled “barbarians.”

He posted videos of his Saturday night visit to UFC 314, a mixed martial arts event. He denied the tariff exemptions on cell phones, computers, and other tech items are actually “exceptions.” He posted a message to Christians honoring Holy Week. He also posted video of an apparent drone strike and wrote: “Time for the terrorists to hide, but it won’t do them any good.”

Trump called for New York Attorney General Letitia James to resign from office.

In one random post, Trump wrote (in all-caps): “The best definition of intelligence is the ability to predict the future!!!”

In a lengthy post, Trump blasted CBS News for running two investigative stories on him Sunday evening. He called for the news network to lose its broadcast license, and wrote: “Hopefully, the Federal Communications Commission (FCC), as headed by its Highly Respected Chairman, Brendan Carr, will impose the maximum fines and punishment … for their unlawful and illegal behavior.”

And as recently as just past 10 AM, Trump posted a message effectively washing his hands of Russia’s unlawful war against Ukraine.

Trump also re-posted a video wishing Jewish families a “blessed Passover,” saying, “may God continue to watch over the Jewish people.”

As of publication time, the President does not appear to have said anything publicly to the people of Pennsylvania or Governor Shapiro to condemn the attack on their governor, his family, and the governor’s mansion.

“Last night at about 2AM,” Governor Shapiro wrote on Sunday, “my family and I woke up to bangs on the door from the Pennsylvania State Police after an arsonist set fire to the Governor’s Residence in Harrisburg. The Harrisburg Bureau of Fire was on the scene and while they worked to put out the fire, we were evacuated from the Residence safely by Pennsylvania State Police and assisted by Capitol Police. Thank God no one was injured and the fire was extinguished. Every day, we stand with the law enforcement and first responders who run towards danger to protect our communities. Last night, they did so for our family – and Lori and I are eternally grateful to them for keeping us safe.”

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Responding to that message, Attorney General Pam Bondi wrote that she is “deeply relieved that Governor Shapiro and his family are safe, thankful for the first responders who arrived on the scene, and applaud the police work that resulted in an arrest just hours ago.”

There was no indication she was considering federal charges. The FBI reportedly is assisting in the investigation.

The New York Times DC correspondent Glenn Thrush noted: “Interesting to see how Bondi’s response evolves if there’s evidence the attack was political. She called Tesla vandalism ‘domestic terrorism’ — and vowed to seek max sentences. Shapiro and his family were at home during an arson attempt. Seems far more serious at 1st glance.”

Vice President JD Vance appears to be the only Trump administration official to condemn the attack.

“Thanks be to God that Governor Shapiro and his family were unharmed in this attack. Really disgusting violence, and I hope whoever did it is brought swiftly to justice,” he wrote.

Writer Charlotte Clymer, a former Human Rights Campaign press secretary on Sunday afternoon remarked: “The attempt to burn down the Pennsylvania Governor’s mansion is pretty clearly an assassination attempt, and it’s likely an antisemitic hate crime. It should be referred to that way by political media.”

David Axelrod, the former Obama Senior Advisor and chief strategist, wrote: “Where is the @POTUS?”

“Did I miss it or has he not said, or posted, a word about this attack in PA?”

President Trump’s response so far follows a familiar pattern seen in previous instances of far-right violence or incendiary rhetoric—such as after the deadly “Unite the Right” rally in Charlottesville in 2017, when public pressure ultimately led him to issue a condemnation that some viewed as equivocal.

Asked aboard Air Force One on Sunday night if he had any reaction to the attack on Governor Shapiro, Trump could only say, “I just heard about it, no, I’ll have to look into it.”

Watch the video below or at this link.

“I just heard about it” — Trump opined at length about the Masters while talking to reporters this morning but played completely dumb about the arson attack targeting Gov. Shapiro pic.twitter.com/260OEI1qAj

— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) April 14, 2025

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