Terror and Intimidation Are the Order of the Day
The Pendejo-in-Chief got to sign his Big Beautiful Baloney Bill into law.
The Pendejo-in-Chief got to sign his Big Beautiful Baloney Bill into law. The consequences will be felt for a long time. None of them good, unless you are among the wealthiest folks in the country. They will get permanent tax breaks and other nest-feathering favors. For la raza and the working class, not so much. Medicaid (known as MediCal in California) will be slashed. An estimated 15 million people will be denied health care. Many will die. But that doesn’t seem to bother the guy with the orange make-up. As long as he and his rich buddies are taken care of, nothing else seems to matter.
Remember, it’s a budget bill. Aside from tax cuts for the wealthy and draconian slashes to health care and science research, it allocates dough for Trump’s asinine, evil-minded endeavors. Lotsa dough The bill will provide about 150 billion dollars for what he calls “border security.” Part of that – some 46 billion dollars – will go to the building of his long-desired Great Wall of China at the U.S.-Mexico border. And that’s not all, at the annoying commercials pontificate. The budget allocates more than 45 billion dollars for new immigration “detention centers.” We’ve already gotten a taste of what that will look like with that so-called Alligator Alcatraz built hurriedly in the middle of a Florida swamp. There are already reports of brutal and unsanitary conditions at that make-shift prison.
And that big tax and spending bill is just one dimension of the Clown-led circus that is Trump’s White House.
Trump launched massive immigration raids in several cities.
Starting a few weeks ago, and continuing until just recently, Trump launched massive immigration raids in several cities, but primarily in the Los Angeles area. (Nearly a third of the population of L.A. is Latino.) Armed, masked agents (looking like something out of a Star Wars movie) swooped down and arrested presumed undocumented individuals at Home Depots, car washes and restaurants—wherever presumed undocumented folks could be found. Oh, and farmworkers were targeted too. One farmworker in Camarillo died when he fell off a building while trying to escape a raid by heavily armed agents.
Trump federalized the California National Guard and brought in some 700 hundred U.S. Marines. What was this? The Second Coming of Iwo Jima? With his typical outrageous and misinformed yammering, Trump claimed L.A. would have been “burned to the ground” and “obliterated” if he hadn’t sent in a militarized police force to the streets of L.A. Nonsense, of course. Here’s how he framed what was going on during the largely peaceful demonstrations against the ICE raids: “(They are) the attacks of a vicious and violent mob of left-wing radicals.” He couldn’t step himself; he went on, “Rioters continued a foreign invasion of Third World radical left lawlessness.” You can’t make this shit up. He punctuated his comments with: “These are animals.” To Trump’s addled perspective, “the only good immigrant is a deported immigrant.”
We’ve all seen the pictures of ICE (Immigration and Customs Enforcement) officers, the federalized National Guard and even the Trump dispatched Marines rounding up bewildered workers, most of them Latinos. All because they were suspected to be undocumented. Trump, in his idiocy, calls them “the worst of the worst.” But it’s been revealed that those who were rounded up at not “murders and rapists” as the Pendejo-in-Chief likes to claim. We all heard him rail about “illegal aliens who escaped from prisons and mental institutions” to make their way to the United States. Presumably to rape or eat your poodle.
It’s all about intimidation.
It’s all about intimidation. A virtual army of officers, wearing identity-concealing masks and bearing assault rifles descended on Mac Arthur Park, just west of downtown L.A. The place was empty, except for a bunch of kids at a summer camp meeting. But the intent was clear; Trump wants to intimidate and terrify.
It’s sometimes too difficult for a rational person to process Trump’s insane actions. We are living in a bizarro world. And the guy with the most elaborate comb-over ever seen just keeps hurling dangerous and unlawful lightning bolts. (By the way, what color is his hair this week? White? Orange? Kind of like those 50-50 ice cream bars we used to eat as kids?) His sycophants keep telling the public that the courts have no jurisdiction to limit his executive actions.
Well, milagro of milagros, some judges are pointing out the lawlessness of his actions and are, at least temporarily, putting a stop to them. A defeat for the Clown. A victory, for reason, at least so far. Expect endless judicial appeals.
United States District Judge Maame Ewusi-Mensah Frimpong ruled in Los Angeles that ICE agents and other federal law enforcement agents can’t just go around detaining people because they “look” like foreigners or are heard speaking Spanish or don’t appear to be English-speakers. Lawyers for the immigrants who brought the case emphasized to the judge that agents in those raids have terrorized the city, forcing people into hiding and that those actions have damaged the local economy. Trump is starting to look like the Number One urban terrorist. His I’ve got ‘em in my hip pocket Justice Department is appealing that sensible decision by the judge. You can guess what will happen if that case gets to the Supreme Court, which is dominated by his lap dogs.
Judge Maame Ewusi-Mensah Frimpong ruled that ICE agents can’t just go around detaining people because they “look” like foreigners.
The clear-headed decision by the judge with the seemingly unpronounceable name came following weeks of gestapo-like raids that terrorized Los Angeles, especially Latino communities. Places where immigrants live and work and attend school became targets of Trump-unleashed goons. Masks and assault weapons. No one, it seemed, was safe from these intimidating and borderline illegal actions. Photos showed children—children!—being led away in handcuffs. White House sycophant spokespeople declared the raids “a great success.” That’s the country we’re living in today.
When the raids to round up immigrants began the particular case of Kilmar Abrego Garcia crystalized the pernicious campaign against immigrants. Tapado Trump howled about arresting and deporting “the worst of the worst.” Tonterias. Even the Liar-in-Chief grudgingly acknowledged that Abrego Garcia was wrongly arrested and deported to a hellhole of a prison in El Salvador, known as CECOT. (The acronym stands for Centro de Confinamiento del Terrorismo.) Legal battles over that particular case continue. And the focus on the case has helped reveal the insanity of Trump’s terrorist raids on immigrant communities.
A lawyer for Trump’s own justice department just couldn’t put up with the hypocrisy and the ignoring of constitutional requisites such as probable cause and due process. He became a whistle-blower, challenging the tactics of ICE and other federal law enforcement agents. That attorney, Erez Reuvini, told the court: “If they can do this sort of thing to Abrego Garcia, to 238 people that nobody knows, and send them to CECOT forever with no due process, they can do that to anyone. It should be deeply, deeply worrisome to anyone who cares about their safety and their liberty, that the government can, without showing evidence to anyone of anything, spirit you away on a plane to wherever, forever.”
Again, the federal courts are straining to have Trump’s henchmen adhere to constitutional niceties such as due process (things we thought we could take for granted), but it’s a battle. The robotical White House spokesperson Karoline Leavitt claimed “the federal courts have no jurisdiction” in telling the president what he can or cannot do when it comes to pursuing migrants. Apenas se puede creer.
But, back to Trump’s Big Beautiful Baloney Bill: not only is there chaos in Latino communities. There’s also chaos and dangerous uncertainty in practically every realm you can think of. Education. Science. Health care. International affairs. The economy. Heck, what else is there? His on-again-off-again gamesmanship with tariffs is creating havoc on a global scale. His bombing of Iran, his disastrous position on the unraveling of life in Gaza, his Monopoly game dithering with Putin over the war in Ukraine, all are tremendous cause for alarm. And domestically, his gutting of the National Institutes for Health, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and a litany of other research and health agencies is creating calamity that will be felt for generations. Yeah, make America Great Again. Or make America grate again. Sabrá dios.
The specifics of his attitudes and actions are out in the open for all to see. Any reasonable person, it seems to me, should be able to see that the emperor has no clothes. But, alas, millions of folks in this country apparently don’t see it, or are willing to look the other way. That’s how a dishonest, narcissistic, authoritarian pathological liar gets away with it, and apparently will continue to get away with it. But what’s at the foundational core of this guy and his behavior? Books have been written about it and books are being cobbled right now, trying to explain it. Here are my two cents’ worth.
They fear that “their” America will cease to exist.
What’s at the base of all this is the generalized feeling that this country is being “taken away” by those of us who are not white Christian nationalists. A version of the odious “replacement theory.” Sounds cliché but I think it’s generally true. There is a fear out there that Latinos, Blacks, Muslims, Asians and LGBT Americans are somehow overrunning the country, to the detriment of the Ozzie and Harriet types who have long dominated the social culture of the country. They are afraid that “those people” are growing in numbers and influence – to the point that the Leave it to Beaver populace will no longer be in charge. They fear that “their” America will cease to exist. It scares the hell out of ‘em. Trump, of course, didn’t create that paranoia. He just became very, very proficient at nurturing it and manipulating it for his own advancement.
Sure, he’s a racist, misogynistic, nihilistic worm. And he’s a guy for whom money is the end-all and be-all cosa. He lives in an elite world, apart from the masses. But he has been crafty in convincing hard-working middle-class and working-class folks that he’s “one of you.” Unfortunately, they bought it. That’s why he gets votes and the slavish support from his minions. As he likes to post on social media: Sad. When will those in his “base” wake up?
Reasonable folks have to continue to resist. Just days ago the 4,000 National Guard troops that swooped down on L.A. left the city. But things are certainly not back to normal in L.A. or the rest of the country. The intimidation and the fear-mongering will continue from the Pendejo-in-Chief.
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Copyright 2025 by Luis R. Torres. Luis Torres is a veteran journalist who lives in Pasadena. Photof the Americna flag cpoyrighted by Barrio Dog Productions Inc. All other images used in this blog are in the public domain.