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As the political power of Donald Trump diminishes and his public demeanor becomes more erratic, there has been an escalation in vitriolic attacks aimed at women in media 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. In a parallel manner, his administration's offensive against immigrants are poorly executed and driven by misinformation. It is abundantly clear that the objective is not targeting those who have committed crimes. The assault is directed at anyone with brown skin.

From Native Americans carrying tribal IDs to naturalized US citizens, from essential workers in building sites and hospitals to military veterans, college students, residents asleep in their beds, and toddlers: a broad cross-section of the country's population is under siege.

"Immigration enforcement raids are cruel, unjust and achieve nothing for public safety," states a leading political figure from New York. The spectacle of masked agents breaking car glass and dragging parents away from infants, instilling fear and hindering the function of institutions, achieves the opposite effect.

The cycles of orchestrated bigotry—directed at people from Haiti in the 2024 campaign, Venezuelan migrants this spring, and now Somalis—rely extensively on libelous lies and slurs. This is because: the actual facts about these communities cannot support the animosity.

The Imaginary White Nation and Historical Reality

This campaign of terror and demonization claims to seek at recreating a homogeneously white America that is a fantasy. While the US was demographically whiter in the youth of today's white supremacists, it was never exclusively a "white country". At the nation's founding, the original thirteen colonies contained a substantial 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 absorbed a vast community of Hispanic settlers already living across what is now the Southwestern U.S. and California. It is documented that the first African Muslim in territory that became the U.S. came as part of a Spanish expedition nearly a century before the Mayflower English Puritans reached the shores of New England in 1620.

Demographic Realities Against Forced Dreams

The systematic targeting of vast numbers of people of color and attempts at large-scale expulsion cannot fabricate the ethnically pure country of far-right dreams. A city like Los Angeles, for instance, is nearly half Latino, and regardless of aggressive enforcement, detentions and removals, it remains so. Its name itself is Spanish, an ongoing testament of who was there first.

The entirety of this animus and persecution resembles the panic of bigots attempting to believe they can halt the demographic future of a country no longer predominantly white through sheer brutality.

It is coupled with an assault on reproductive rights that is, sometimes, explicitly designed to encourage white women to bear more babies. The rationale cites a fertility rate below replacement level in the US, a phenomenon less severe than in some other nations due to a hard-working population of immigrant laborers that sustains the economy. Yet, instead of offering the societal assistance that could ease the burdens of parenthood, the approach is based on punishment and force.

An noted writer observes that the reproductive politics espoused by figures like JD Vance—along with insults toward childless women—amount to pronatalism. This ideology "usually combines concerns over falling fertility with anti-immigration and anti-feminist ideas."

In a similar vein, analyses show that "efforts to bolster the fertility rate cannot make up for wider administrative priorities aimed at slashing government assistance initiatives like healthcare for the poor and children's health insurance. The so-called 'pro-family' focus isn't merely about promoting having children. Instead, it is utilized as a tool to push a right-wing political program that endangers the health of women, bodily autonomy, and economic participation."

Incoherent Policies and Public Rejection

The combination of anti-immigration and pronatalist policies constitute an effort to artificially redirect the nation's demographic trajectory. Ultimately, they represent senseless intimidation by individuals filled with hatred who inadvertently reveal that their claims to superiority must be based on skin color and sex; absent these categories, their positions devolve into incoherent nonsense.

A lot of the reasoning offered by the Trump team does not match up with observable realities and actual outcomes. As an instance, maritime attacks in the Caribbean Sea often target small vessels not confirmed to be carrying narcotics and incapable of making it to the United States. Similarly, Venezuela's role in fentanyl trafficking is minimal, and its involvement with cocaine is far less than that of other South American nations.

The administration's stance extends to environmental policy, with a rejection of "climate change ideology" and "carbon neutrality targets." An emotional attachment to fossil fuels, especially coal mining, resulting in measures that compel localities to spend money on obsolete and toxic energy sources while sabotaging affordable, clean alternatives. Concurrently, public health leadership have advanced anti-scientific dietary schemes while eroding general public health safeguards.

The foundational assumption of the attacks on immigrants is that non-white individuals not born in the US 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 perceive as the dangerous and hostile interlopers.

There is no clearer sign of the broad repudiation of these tactics than the thousands of people organizing, protesting, risking safety and arrest to defend their neighbors. Municipality after municipality has risen up in defense of its residents. No amount of derogatory language or intimidation can change that reality.