Resistance Grows to Trump’s War Against Humanity

If there is any hope for humanity’s future, it is in the vision of the day when war criminals, authoritarians, fascists, and other enemies of democracy can no longer threaten the world with impunity.

We are far from that reality at present. As we enter a new year, global power remains decidedly in the grip of a status quo dominated by corporate politicians, war criminals, and financial elites. Led by President Trump, the worst of these political mobsters represent leadership on a moral caliber with history’s most malevolent barbarians.

In Minneapolis, the murder of Renée Good on January 8 by a federal ICE agent has rightly provoked an outpouring of popular grief, anger, and resistance. In turn, the Trump administration’s response makes it clear that even the pretense of accountability or expectation of due process are non-existent for this government. With even more federal agents flooded into Minneapolis in response, this lawless administration has made it clear it is at war with the American people.

Under a presidency led by a man with a reputation for lying about almost everything, President Trump has recreated his second administration in his own likeness. It took director of Homeland Security, Kristi Noem, only a couple hours after the shooting to brand Good a “domestic terrorist,” claiming the ICE agent acted in “self-defense” when she attempted to strike him with her vehicle. Noem also claimed Good had been stalking and impeding ICE’s activities “all day,” even though it was only just after 9:30 am when she was shot. She offered no evidence to support these charges.

In fact, ICE agents reportedly waited nearly three minutes before even calling 911 emergency services. Nor did they initiate CPR on Good or allow a doctor on the scene to assess her in the moments after the shooting. Instead, ICE agents briefly assessed Good and then left her bleeding and unattended until paramedics arrived several minutes later. It was more than 10 minutes before Good, who reportedly still had a pulse, received CPR from paramedics.

MAGA’s Hack Propaganda

Not surprisingly, President Trump and MAGA loyalists in the media and elsewhere quickly echoed Noem’s fantastical narrative. But anyone who watches video of the incident and thinks this victim-blaming is a closed case requiring no further investigation is just serving the cause of hack propaganda.

Incredulously, it took Homeland Security more than a week to claim the agent who shot Good, Jonathan Ross, had received medical treatment for “internal bleeding” in the torso after being hit by Good’s car. No corroborating evidence was offered in support of this claim. But what does this claim even mean? That Ross was slightly bruised after being bumped by Good’s car as she attempted to drive away? In videos of the incident Good is clearly turning her vehicle to the right (not toward Ross) as she attempted to drive away. Further, the ICE agent is plainly visible standing to the side of Good’s vehicle when he fired two more shots at her. Did Good also deserve to be shot in the face because she didn’t immediately comply with one agent’s order to exit her vehicle? Actually, the MAGA hive mind has no shortage of reasons to justify her murder. She was a “lesbian agitator” with pronouns in her bio, after all.

But not to worry. Vice President J.D. Vance has assured us the ICE agent who killed Good has “absolute immunity” from prosecution, a view many legal experts strongly refute. The Trumpified FBI has also barred Minnesota state criminal investigators from access to materials in the case, exposing the Trump administration’s utter disregard for both the law and the truth. Tellingly, the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) shows zero interest in even investigating the killing, a move that has prompted resignations of several federal prosecutors in Minnesota.

The litany of ICE atrocities in the past year are many. For months, these thugs have terrorized American neighborhoods, pursuing a mass deportation policy that is inhumane and racist. In the first nine months of 2025 alone, approximately 220,000 people were arrested by ICE officers. Despite the president’s bogus claim that the immigration crackdown is necessary to target murderers, rapists, and gang members, more than 75,000 of those arrested last year had no criminal record. Can Trump make the same claim?

Actually, available data does not distinguish detainees with serious legal offenses from those with minor violations. In many instances, being in the United States illegally is a civil violation or misdemeanor offense, not a felony. As of early December, there were about 65,000 or more persons being held in ICE detention facilities.

The shooting of Good is also not an isolated incident of government violence. In fact, since September, ICE agents have been involved in 11 shooting incidents. In Santa Ana, California, federal officers shot two people in the face with “less lethal” projectiles, causing permanent eye damage. In Minneapolis, federal agents deployed flash-bang devices and tear gas on a family with six children in their car who were driving home from a sports practice.

The exploding lawlessness of the Trump administration now constitutes a blatant threat to democratic and human rights everywhere. Indeed, it’s a sign of the urgency of our times that scheduled antiwar rallies across the United States on January 10 to oppose the recent U.S. military assault on Venezuela and kidnapping of President Nicolás Maduro and his wife Celia Flores, initiated by the Democratic Socialists of America (DSA) and the Party for Socialism and Liberation (PSL), had to be quickly amended to include a response to Good’s murder and the escalating threats from ICE.

Obviously, the military assault on Venezuela’s sovereignty was less about drugs and democracy than oil, power, and money. Maduro’s alleged complicity in narco-terrorism and weapons charges is only a specious pretext for an attack on a nation that just happens to have the world’s largest oil reserves. Venezuela’s real crime is that it operates independently of U.S. foreign policy, which under Trump’s crudely resurrected version of the Monroe Doctrine now constitutes an unforgiveable sin. Does anyone seriously believe Trump, who recently pardoned convicted former Honduran president Juan Orlando Hernandez of drug trafficking and weapons charges, actually cares about narcotrafficking?

With escalating threats now against Columbia, Cuba, Mexico, Denmark, Greenland, and Iran, there is little coherent or reasoned policy in this intensifying U.S. global aggression. But there is Trump’s need to distract the American people from his personal scandals and failures as a leader, and from the basic truth that he has absolutely nothing to offer to improve life for the majority of the people.

Gaza: Preface to a World Under Siege  

Of course, we should not be surprised at what is happening now in the United States. The preface to Trump’s wild assault on democratic and human rights, his unhinged violent imperialism, are just the logical next expression of two years of genocidal destruction unleashed upon the people of Gaza by the Israeli state. This was a campaign of pure evil facilitated with decisive military support from both the Biden and Trump administrations.

Ironically, in 2025 the president who thought he deserved the Nobel Peace Prize conducted military attacks on seven countries, and launched air assaults on alleged drug boats in the eastern Pacific and Caribbean. But don’t feel too sorry for Trump the Nobel loser. To thank him for bombing her country, Veneuelan right-wing coup plotter Maria Corina Machado has now given Trump her Nobel Prize. In his own name, Trump has also been awarded the Israel Prize by Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu, a war criminal and fugitive from an international arrest warrant issued by the International Criminal Court.

These war criminals and obsequious grovelers before the American president can give each other all the awards they want, it won’t erase the moral censure they deserve. Whatever hope for this world exists belongs instead to the many millions of human beings who don’t support targeting Palestinian children for bullets to the head or chest, starving families, bombing hospitals and schools, the forced displacement of around 2 million people, and other crimes against humanity. They don’t believe 250,000 Palestinians deserved to die, to be maimed or left buried under rubble by a genocidal apartheid state. Nor do these many millions believe in kidnapping leaders of foreign states, bombing and threatening other nations with capricious indifference to their sovereignty, and ignoring international law.

The Trump presidency is an authoritarian cancer on what’s left of the body politic of democracy, led by the mendacious real estate blowhard turned politician and his hand-picked cabinet of sycophants, grifters, opportunists, and assorted incompetents. Watching Trump and MAGA politics in action over the past year is like viewing a film documentary in reverse motion, as established rights are undone and the rule of a lunkhead mob of far-right extremists takes over. For what it’s worth, Trump is already floating his interest in finding a way to subvert or even cancel this year’s mid-term elections. That’s the direction his addled extremism is going. 

Those who support the democratic and human rights of migrants and citizens, who oppose genocide and imperialist violence, are in a moment now that demands an escalation in mass action, solidarity, and resistance. Enough of the entrenched timidity of the Democratic leadership, many of whom remain hesitant even to curtail ICE funding. We need a mass united front built on grassroots organizing power, fueled by the activism, energy, and strength of unions, communities, students and everyone with a vested desire to stop ICE terror and the larger and growing authoritarian threat.

The call by labor and community leaders in Minneapolis for a general shutdown of the city on January 23—an “economic blackout”—to protest Good’s murder and the ongoing harassment, abductions, and violence by ICE is an important initiative. This means no school, no work, and no shopping. Significantly, the Minnesota Labor Regional Federation AFL-CIO has announced support for the Minneapolis Day of Truth and Freedom, demanding ICE leave Minnesota now and the agent who killed Renée Good be held legally accountable.

This call for justice represents a significant step toward building an ever more forceful campaign of popular mass resistance to the current threats to our democratic and human rights.

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