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As Donald Trump's influence wanes and his behavior grows increasingly volatile, there has been an escalation in vitriolic attacks aimed at female journalists and racial minorities, with Somali Americans as a recent focal point. The impact of these insults stems from the animosity behind them and his position, not their factual accuracy. Similarly, his administration's offensive against immigrants are haphazard and founded on falsehoods. It is abundantly clear that the objective is not targeting those who have committed crimes. The true target is people of color.

This includes Indigenous peoples carrying tribal IDs to naturalized US citizens, individuals performing critical jobs in construction and healthcare to those who served, college students, people in their own homes, and toddlers: a wide array of the country's inhabitants are being threatened.

"Immigration enforcement raids are cruel, unjust and do nothing for public safety," asserts a prominent New York City official. Scenes featuring masked agents shattering windows and separating parents from children, terrorizing entire communities and hindering the function of institutions, achieves the opposite effect.

These waves of orchestrated bigotry—focusing on people from Haiti in the 2024 campaign, Venezuelan migrants this spring, and now Somalis—lean heavily on libelous lies and insults. The reason is simple: the actual facts about these groups of people do not justify such hostility.

The Imaginary Nation of White People and Historical Reality

This campaign of terror and demonization purports to aim at rebuilding a uniformly white United States that is a fantasy. Although America had a larger white population in the youth of today's white supremacists, it was never exclusively a "white country". In 1776, the original thirteen colonies contained a substantial percentage of African and Native American individuals—certain states in the South had Black populations exceeding a third.

When the United States expanded, taking Texas in the 1840s and acquiring northern Mexico in 1848, it incorporated a large community of Hispanic settlers long established in the modern Southwest and California. Historical records show the first African Muslim in this land came as part of a Spanish expedition nearly a century before the Mayflower Puritan passengers landed in Massachusetts in 1620.

Demographic Realities Versus Coercive Fantasies

The persecution of vast numbers of brown-skinned individuals and even mass deportations will not manufacture the ethnically pure country of far-right dreams. Los Angeles, for instance, is close to 50% Hispanic, and despite enforcement outrages, detentions and removals, it remains so. The city's very name is Spanish, an enduring reminder of its original inhabitants.

All this hatred and oppression looks like the fear of bigots who pretend they can stop the coming changes of a country that is ceasing to be predominantly white through sheer brutality.

It is coupled with an attack on abortion access that is, sometimes, explicitly designed to prompt Caucasian women to bear more babies. The argument points to a below-replacement birthrate in the US, a phenomenon less severe than in some other nations because of a hard-working population of immigrant laborers which keeps the economy functioning. Yet, instead of offering the societal assistance that could ease the burdens of parenthood, the approach is punitive and coercive.

An noted writer observes that the policies on childbirth of certain political figures—coupled with derogatory comments toward childless women—amount to pronatalism. This philosophy "usually combines worries about declining birth rates with anti-immigration and anti-feminist viewpoints."

In a similar vein, analyses show that "efforts to bolster the fertility rate do not compensate for broader policies designed to cut federal support programs like Medicaid and children's health insurance. This focus on families isn't merely about promoting having children. Instead, it is being weaponized to advance a conservative agenda that threatens women's health, reproductive rights, and economic participation."

Incoherent Policies and Widespread Resistance

The combination of anti-immigration and pronatalist policies constitute an effort to artificially redirect the nation's demographic trajectory. Ultimately, both amount to foolish bullying by proponents of hate who unintentionally demonstrate that their assertions of being better must be based on skin color and sex; without these constructs, their arguments collapse into incoherent nonsense.

A lot of the reasoning offered by the Trump team fails to align with observable realities and real-world results. For example, naval operations in the Caribbean Sea often target tiny boats which are not proven to be transporting drugs and not able of reaching US shores. Likewise, Venezuela's role in fentanyl trafficking is minimal, and its role in cocaine trafficking is much smaller than that of other South American nations.

The administration's stance extends to environmental policy, with a dismissal of "climate change ideology" and "Net Zero goals." There is a sentimental commitment to fossil fuels, particularly coal, leading to policies that force communities to invest in obsolete and toxic power sources while sabotaging cheaper, cleaner renewables. At the same time, public health leadership have advanced anti-scientific dietary schemes while eroding broader health protections.

The core premise of the anti-immigrant offensive is that non-white individuals born abroad are dangerous intruders. Yet, from coast to coast—from Los Angeles to Charlotte, from Chicago to Portland—it is the administration's own agents, immigration enforcement personnel, whom many residents view as the unwelcome, violent invaders.

No symbol is more powerful of the widespread rejection of this approach than the thousands of people mobilizing, demonstrating, risking safety and arrest to protect their communities. City after city has stood up in protection of its people. All the insults and threats can alter this fundamental truth.