"I write to correct a fundamental error in my understanding of American history. For years, I have described Donald Trump as a threat to democracy, as an aberration, as something unprecedented in our nation’s story. I was wrong. Trump is not destroying American democracy — he is revealing what American democracy has always been: a system designed to work for some at the expense of others. He is not America’s first fascist president; he is America’s first president to make fascism explicit for everyone. The truth is more chilling than I initially understood. America has been operating as a fascist state for Black people since our arrival on these shores. What Trump represents is not the beginning of American fascism, but its expansion beyond the boundaries of race to encompass class, immigration status, and political dissent. He is not breaking the system; he is using it exactly as it was designed, just applying it more broadly..."
The Blueprint Has Always Existed: Terry v. Ohio and the Architecture of Control
Yesterday’s Supreme Court ruling allowing law enforcement to detain people based on their race, location, employment, clothing, and accent feels shocking to white America. But for Black Americans, this is simply Tuesday. We have been living under these conditions since 1968, when the Court decided Terry v. Ohio. That decision gave police officers the power to stop and frisk individuals based on “reasonable suspicion” — a standard so subjective it has become a license for racial profiling.
The data is devastating and undeniable. In New York City alone, from 2003 to 2024, 90 percent of people stopped by police were people of color. Black New Yorkers were stopped at nearly eight times the rate of white people, and Latino New Yorkers at four times the rate. In 2012, when stop-and-frisk reached its peak, NYPD officers stopped people 685,724 times — with 87 percent of those stops targeting Black or Latino individuals.
But here’s what makes this particularly obscene: despite being stopped and frisked at astronomical rates, Black and Latino people were no more likely to be found with contraband than white people. In fact, many studies show they were less likely to possess anything illegal. The police were not fighting crime; they were terrorizing communities of color. The system worked exactly as designed.
Now that similar tactics are being applied to undocumented immigrants, to political protesters, to anyone deemed “suspicious” by increasingly militarized police forces, suddenly there’s outrage. Suddenly there are calls for reform. Black people have been screaming about this for decades, and no one listened because it wasn’t happening to white people.
Yesterday’s Supreme Court ruling allowing law enforcement to detain people based on their race, location, employment, clothing, and accent feels shocking to white America. But for Black Americans, this is simply Tuesday. We have been living under these conditions since 1968, when the Court decided Terry v. Ohio. That decision gave police officers the power to stop and frisk individuals based on “reasonable suspicion” — a standard so subjective it has become a license for racial profiling.
The data is devastating and undeniable. In New York City alone, from 2003 to 2024, 90 percent of people stopped by police were people of color. Black New Yorkers were stopped at nearly eight times the rate of white people, and Latino New Yorkers at four times the rate. In 2012, when stop-and-frisk reached its peak, NYPD officers stopped people 685,724 times — with 87 percent of those stops targeting Black or Latino individuals.
But here’s what makes this particularly obscene: despite being stopped and frisked at astronomical rates, Black and Latino people were no more likely to be found with contraband than white people. In fact, many studies show they were less likely to possess anything illegal. The police were not fighting crime; they were terrorizing communities of color. The system worked exactly as designed.
Now that similar tactics are being applied to undocumented immigrants, to political protesters, to anyone deemed “suspicious” by increasingly militarized police forces, suddenly there’s outrage. Suddenly there are calls for reform. Black people have been screaming about this for decades, and no one listened because it wasn’t happening to white people.
The Jail-to-Grave Pipeline: America’s Internal Concentration Camps
The parallels between Trump’s immigration detention centers and America’s pretrial detention system are not coincidental — they are the same machine with different inputs. Trump takes people who might be here without proper documentation and locks them away for indeterminate periods, letting them rot in brutal conditions while denying them basic rights. But Black Americans have endured this exact treatment for generations through cash bail and pretrial detention.
Consider the story of Kalief Browder, whose tragic life Jay-Z documented in the powerful series Time: The Kalief Browder Story. In 2010, at age 16, Browder was accused of stealing a backpack — a charge he denied. Because his family couldn’t afford the $10,000 bail, Browder spent three years on Rikers Island without ever being convicted of a crime. Of those three years, two were spent in solitary confinement. The case against him eventually fell apart, but the damage was done. Two years after his release, haunted by the trauma of his imprisonment, Browder took his own life at age 22.
Browder’s story is not unique — it is the norm. As of 2019, nearly 80 percent of people detained at Rikers Island had not yet been found guilty or innocent of the charges they faced. They sit in cages, presumed guilty until proven innocent, because they lack the money for bail. This is exactly what Trump is doing to immigrants — detaining people indefinitely based on accusations, denying them due process, and warehousing them in dehumanizing conditions.
The only difference is scale and visibility. When it happened to Black people, it was a “criminal justice issue.” When Trump applies the same tactics to immigrants, suddenly it becomes a “constitutional crisis.”
The Mathematics of Racial Suppression: Prison as Political Control
The numbers reveal the true purpose of America’s prison system: the systematic removal of Black political power. In Minnesota — supposedly a progressive state — Black people are incarcerated at rates 9.1 times higher than white people. Nationally, Black males receive sentences 13.4 percent longer than white males for the same crimes, and are 23.4 percent less likely to receive probationary sentences.
But these aren’t just statistics about crime and punishment — they’re statistics about voting rights and political representation. In all but two states — Maine and Vermont — people with felony convictions lose their right to vote. One in 13 Black adults cannot vote due to a felony conviction, compared to 1 in 56 non-Black adults. In states like Florida, Kentucky, and Tennessee, over one in five Black adults is disenfranchised.
This is not accidental. This is not an unfortunate byproduct of tough-on-crime policies. This is a deliberate strategy to maintain white political control by removing Black voices from the democratic process. The War on Drugs, which Nixon’s domestic policy chief John Ehrlichman later admitted was designed to target “blacks and antiwar hippies,” has been the primary vehicle for this mass disenfranchisement.
Maine and Vermont — two of the whitest states in America — allow all citizens to vote, even while incarcerated. They can afford this “generosity” because their prison populations don’t threaten white political dominance. But in states with large Black populations, felony disenfranchisement serves as a modern poll tax, ensuring that those most impacted by systemic racism have no voice in changing it..."
The numbers reveal the true purpose of America’s prison system: the systematic removal of Black political power. In Minnesota — supposedly a progressive state — Black people are incarcerated at rates 9.1 times higher than white people. Nationally, Black males receive sentences 13.4 percent longer than white males for the same crimes, and are 23.4 percent less likely to receive probationary sentences.
But these aren’t just statistics about crime and punishment — they’re statistics about voting rights and political representation. In all but two states — Maine and Vermont — people with felony convictions lose their right to vote. One in 13 Black adults cannot vote due to a felony conviction, compared to 1 in 56 non-Black adults. In states like Florida, Kentucky, and Tennessee, over one in five Black adults is disenfranchised.
This is not accidental. This is not an unfortunate byproduct of tough-on-crime policies. This is a deliberate strategy to maintain white political control by removing Black voices from the democratic process. The War on Drugs, which Nixon’s domestic policy chief John Ehrlichman later admitted was designed to target “blacks and antiwar hippies,” has been the primary vehicle for this mass disenfranchisement.
Maine and Vermont — two of the whitest states in America — allow all citizens to vote, even while incarcerated. They can afford this “generosity” because their prison populations don’t threaten white political dominance. But in states with large Black populations, felony disenfranchisement serves as a modern poll tax, ensuring that those most impacted by systemic racism have no voice in changing it..."
-- Garrick McFadden, I Was Wrong: Trump Is The First President. Medium, September 9, 2025
Charlie Kirk Shooting
- Trump Comments: President Trump said the “radical left” was responsible for much of the political violence in the country, and appeared to excuse violence on the right.
- 2026 Midterms: In audio obtained by The Times, Vice President JD Vance urged Republican donors to win the midterms in honor of Mr. Kirk, his close friend.
- Suspect Arrested: While the federal government surged investigative manpower and technological firepower into the hunt for Mr. Kirk’s killer, the big break came with a single tip — from the suspect’s own family.
- Bullet Casings: Unfired cartridges found with the gun that officials say was used in the killing were engraved with a variety of messages, the authorities said. Here's what some of them mean.
- Connecting With Young Men: With his right-wing group Turning Point USA, Mr. Kirk engaged controversial topics. Some were inspired. Others found his views appalling.
- ‘Something Is Wrong’: In interviews from across the country, people expressed fear and wariness, and said that the country seemed to be spinning out of control.
