Immediately after last month’s ‘Notes from the US’, Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents murdered another man—in Maine; then took over the ‘investigation’, refusing to work with local authorities. Protests continued in Houston following ICE’s shooting of Lorenzo Salgado Araujo. Reports emerge daily of horrendous maltreatment of ICE abductees, while estimates show that everyone in the US is paying an extra US$2,358 (about £1,750) for the abuse, kidnap, torture and murder of non-whites by Trump and his cult.

In the absence of effective opposition from the Democrats, the courts are, at times, ruling against MAGA actions. But these are regularly both being challenged – and thus move to higher courts, with firm prospects of being sanctioned by the Supreme Court. And are simply ignored. What’s more, judges who rule against Trump now regularly receive death threats.

The courts are also playing their part in supporting fascist militias: last month a judge appointed by Trump sided with the Department of ‘Justice’, and dismissed charges of seditious conspiracy against five members of the Proud Boys fascist militia for their part in the January 6 attempt to subvert the 2020 elections. Trump has already pardoned nearly all of the 1,600 rioters convicted—including those who murdered non-participants.

There are thoughtful journalists: Maggie Haberman is one of the more astute and insightful—not to say almost placidly measured—of those in the US covering Trump as person and ‘politician’. Her new book with Jonathan Swan has been positively received for its accuracy and restraint. So it came as no surprise when Trump threw a tantrum at Haberman replete with threats and silly insults after she was interviewed last month on MSNow, the only remaining vaguely non-right-leaning national TV station.

Meanwhile, the view of poverty as crime is gaining traction again. Kevin Stitt, the Republican governor of Oklahoma, which has one of the highest rates of child poverty and food insecurity in the US, recently suggested on the heels of Trump’s cut in food benefits that “Maybe we should go back to […the days when…] there was a little stigma attached to go[ing] to a food bank… so you were a little embarrassed… instead of just making it so easy”. It’s estimated that a million and a half children have lost food benefits to which they’re entitled under ‘SNAP’ (Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program) as a result of the appalling ‘budget’ bill, virtually the only major legislation enacted in Trump’s second term. This is certain to lead to malnutrition, amongst other adverse health effects, and increased mortality.

The Trump/MAGA cult continues to make the threat of ‘commies’ and Muslims its main response to polling suggesting that they’re becoming ever more unpopular. Indeed, informed observers from the Democrat establishment even met last month to explore the possibility that the only way in which MAGA can avoid losing control of Congress in the midterm elections about ten weeks away (in which all 435 seats in the House of Representatives and 35 of 100 in the Senate will be contested) is by subverting them. Indeed, senior administration officials have already  threatened that anyone not complying with the way Trump wants to control the elections may face “…fines, …penalties, and even, depending on how far it goes, prison time.”

To back this up, Trump is to reduce the length of foreign journalists’ visas by nearly three quarters; Chinese correspondents by 95%. He will also donate nearly £9 million to right-wing organisations in the UK.

As part of the push to emphasise disinformation and so silence alternative voices, the House Ways and Means committee issued subpoenas to three left-leaning news and advocacy groups last month: The People’s Forum, BreakThrough News and Tricontinental. If such threats are successful, it could happen that no news outlets except those supporting the MAGA/Trump platform would survive… indeed, three major sources of news and opinion, CNN, CBS, and ABC, have already acquiesced in one way or another to demands from Trump and become less critical of the régime. The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) last month also voted to abolish rules which prevent any one organisation from owning a monopoly on TV stations

This makes for interesting watching—for all it may not be statistically representative—when thinking of Trump’s support and popularity. They also behave like this when challenged.

In an unusual move last month the major US bank, Capital One, closed accounts held with it by the Trump Organization after an investigation into their money laundering.

Health

Central to fascism is the intention that only the ‘fittest’ white males (Trump is again trying to defeat the Birthright citizenship clause of the constitution, despite a recent Supreme Court judgement) should prosper. The rest can go to the wall.

Trump signed an executive order earlier this week to deprive tens of millions of children needing vaccines, sure to result in untold suffering and deaths. Even some Republicans joined the immediate outcry from informed health specialists. Judges have previously ruled to block anti-vaccine nonsense like this.

What’s more, massive cuts to the grants awarded to science, including health, were announced last month by the OMB (Office of Management and Budget). Such valuable work stands to lose as much as a trillion dollars, which will have a huge negative impact on many aspects of public health—for example work by epidemiologists on the relationship between discrimination and health. Trump is also quite open about the reasons why he withholds grants from some states and not others: because the former did not vote for him.

There have also been massive cuts in the once gold standard for information and prevention, the Centers for Disease Control (CDC), and the discontinuation of grants which research and promote health across the US, the principle to do which has been approved by the US Supreme Court.

It’s clear that at the very least political interference in the work of medical experts has at best exacerbated the impact of the current outbreaks of measles (the highest numbers for 35 years) and the food-borne illness, cyclosporiasis.

Also central to right-wing/fascist/Republican ‘beliefs’ is the denial of contributions which science can make. Science generally aspires to objectivity, which can easily subvert the selfishness which is at the core of… right-wing/fascist/Republican values.

It is the attack on science and scientists that motivated the attack at end of July on Dr Anthony Fauci, whose dedication and expertise steered the US through the Covid pandemic. The MAGA cult wants him imprisoned (for that). He was called – yet again (for the 250th time) – to testify before Congress, but felt it incumbent to refuse to play the entrapment game and decline to respond to the MAGA bullying and goading. This resulted in his lawyer’s exclusion from the chamber; and a commitment to further humiliate and punish Fauci as a way to retaliate against measures to save lives which MAGA cultists see as an infringement of their ‘freedoms’.

Following what is likely to be only the first stage in an attempt to destroy Fauci, his being found in contempt of Congress (as several MAGA witnesses have been over the years – without any consequence) for refusing to collude in his own attempted humiliation and denigration, right wing propaganda outlets unfavourably compared him to those like Florida Governor de Santis who caused many thousands of deaths by denying the seriousness of Covid, which actually resulted in nearly a million and a quarter deaths in the United States.

When the person responsible for guiding the nation’s public health, Health and Human Services Secretary Robert Kennedy, deals not in facts about medicine but lies, disinformation, sycophantic misstatements designed to please a cult leader, and deliberate falsehoods based on party dogma—we’re in trouble.

Racism

The MAGA/Trump cult’s attempts to wreck as much of the environment as possible in order to enrich petroleum and greenhouse gas developers took another step forward last month as the Bears Ears and Grand Staircase-Escalante national monuments in Utah were opened up to destruction. What makes it worse is the fact that these are sacred to Native Americans, the sites of age-old cliff dwellings and irreplaceable petroglyphs.

In their push to degrade the environment, Trump is actually paying the German company RWE US$1.2 billion (almost £900 million) to switch an offshore project in the US from clean energy to fossil fuels—as many parts of the rest of the Earth burn.

Such trampling on the rights and history of non-whites is now common. On Independence Day itself (4 July) this year, the cult replaced interpretive signage at the one-time residence of George Washington with a narrative that minimises the evils of slavery and his involvement therein.

Early this month a federal judge blocked the move by lawmakers in New York to oblige ICE agents not to wear masks, something they were only too keen to do during the Covid pandemic in order to preserve their ‘freedoms’.

It’s not just better to be white in Trump’s world; you’d also do well if you want to join US terrorist forces: ‘Defense’ Secretary and ex Fox ‘News’ host Pete Hegseth plans to offer you testosterone injections so that you can be a really big bully boy when killing foreigners. Amongst those foreigners are the estimated tens of thousands of Middle Easterners who have died and been injured in a war that the Pentagon itself estimates has already (in nearly five months) cost US$100 billion (or over £7,000 a second – around the clock).

The main ‘worries’ expressed in the media about Trump’s war on Iran are that he seems to have no ‘good plan’ to carry it out ‘properly; that is: to cause as much death and destruction as are needed to call it a success. After all the late Lindsey Graham, darling of the Right, was proud to have lobbied so vehemently for slaughter and wreckage.

And the sad fact that American terrorists involved my die and have died. So it’s hardly surprising that the Pentagon should minimise ‘American casualties’ and a few days later almost surreptitiously revise the figures to their advantage, which seems unlikely to be any more accurate or honest than many ‘facts’ which the Pentagon publishes.

Talking of facts, this is a map used by the U.S. State Department in a presentation it gave to a global audience in Brazil last month—mislabelling every single country on it.