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As the political power of Donald Trump diminishes and his behavior grows increasingly volatile, he has intensified hostile rhetoric aimed at women in media and racial minorities, with Somali Americans as a recent focal point. These disparaging remarks gain traction stems from their malice and his platform, not their factual accuracy. In a parallel manner, the government's actions against immigrants are poorly executed and driven by misinformation. It is abundantly clear that the goal extends beyond targeting those who have committed crimes. The assault is directed at anyone with brown skin.

From Native Americans with official tribal documentation to naturalized US citizens, individuals performing critical jobs in building sites and hospitals to those who served, college students, people in their own homes, and very young children: a broad cross-section of the country's inhabitants are being threatened.

"Immigration enforcement raids are cruel, unjust and achieve nothing for public safety," asserts a leading political figure from New York. The spectacle of masked agents shattering windows and dragging parents away from infants, instilling fear and disrupting schools and businesses, achieves the opposite effect.

These waves of orchestrated bigotry—directed at people from Haiti in the 2024 campaign, Venezuelan migrants this spring, and now Somalis—lean heavily on defamatory falsehoods and slurs. This is because: the actual facts about these communities do not justify such hostility.

The Imaginary Nation of White People Versus Actual History

This campaign of terror and demonization purports to aim at recreating 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". At the nation's founding, the original thirteen colonies included a significant percentage of Black and Indigenous peoples—certain states in the South had Black populations exceeding a third.

When the United States expanded, annexing Texas in 1844 and acquiring northern Mexico in 1848, it incorporated a large community of Hispanic settlers already living across the modern Southwest and California. Historical records show the initial Muslim of African descent in this land arrived with a Spanish expedition almost one hundred years before the Mayflower Puritan passengers reached the shores of New England in 1620.

Population Truths Against Coercive Fantasies

The systematic targeting of huge populations of people of color and even mass deportations will not manufacture the ethnically pure country of far-right dreams. Los Angeles, for instance, is nearly half Latino, and regardless of aggressive enforcement, arrests, and deportations, its character persists. Its name itself is Spanish, an ongoing testament of who was there first.

All this hatred and oppression resembles the panic of racists attempting to believe they can stop the coming changes of a country that is ceasing to be predominantly white through sheer brutality.

This is paired with an assault on reproductive rights that is, at times, openly intended to encourage white women to bear more babies. The rationale cites a fertility rate below replacement level in the US, a trend less severe than in other countries because of a hard-working population of immigrant laborers which keeps the economy functioning. However, rather than providing the societal assistance that could ease the burdens of parenthood, the strategy has been punitive and coercive.

An noted writer observes that the policies on childbirth of certain political figures—along with insults toward childless women—constitute a form of pronatalism. This ideology "usually combines worries about declining birth rates with anti-immigration and anti-women's rights viewpoints."

In a similar vein, reporting indicates that "attempts to raise the birth rate do not compensate for broader policies aimed at slashing government assistance initiatives like Medicaid and children's health insurance. The so-called 'pro-family' focus isn't merely about promoting having children. Rather, it is utilized as a tool to advance a conservative agenda that threatens women's health, bodily autonomy, and economic participation."

Contradictory Strategies and Widespread Resistance

The combination of anti-immigration and pro-birth policies constitute an effort to forcibly alter the nation's demographic trajectory. In the end, both amount to senseless intimidation by proponents of hate who inadvertently reveal that their assertions of being better must be based on skin color and sex; absent these categories, their arguments collapse into incoherent nonsense.

Much of the justification put forward by the administration fails to align with observable realities and real-world results. As an instance, maritime attacks in the southern Caribbean frequently focus on small vessels which are not proven to be carrying narcotics and not able of reaching US shores. Likewise, Venezuela's involvement in fentanyl trafficking is minimal, and its role in cocaine trafficking is much smaller than that of neighboring countries on the continent.

The government's position extends to environmental policy, with a rejection of "the science of climate change" and "carbon neutrality targets." There is a sentimental attachment to coal and oil, particularly coal, resulting in measures that compel localities to spend money on outdated and polluting energy sources while undermining cheaper, cleaner renewables. Concurrently, public health leadership have promoted anti-scientific dietary schemes while eroding broader health protections.

The foundational assumption of the anti-immigrant offensive is that people of color born abroad are dangerous intruders. However, across the nation—in cities like L.A. and Charlotte, from Chicago to Portland—it is the administration's own agents, the ICE and Border Patrol officers, whom local communities view as the dangerous and hostile interlopers.

There is no clearer sign of the broad repudiation of this approach than the thousands of people mobilizing, demonstrating, risking safety and arrest to defend their neighbors. City after city has risen up in defense of its residents. No amount of derogatory language or intimidation can alter this fundamental truth.