Fascism is rising in the United States. This isn’t hyperbole. Let me break it down without dumbing it down.
First, look at how they’re clearing the deck of anyone who might stand in the way of a fair count for the 2026 mid-term elections.
Trump just “cleaned house” in the U.S. Election Assistance Commission, firing every single member. The White House had spent months looking for ways to bypass this agency and use emergency powers to force changes to voting machines. This is the very agency that certifies voting systems, distributes federal grants, and helps state election officials run secure elections. Why would you gut the referee unless you’re planning to fix the game?
Trump’s own former lawyer Ty Cobb (no relation) sees it. He told MSNBC that “you can’t look at the termination of the Election Assistance Commission as anything other than another effort by one side to try to take over part of the referee role for the elections.” He went on to warn that Trump is “stacking every card in the deck that he can get his hands on” because “those forces are already on the field.”
That’s a man who knows how the sausage is made, and he’s sounding the alarm.
But they ain’t stopping at the referee.
They’re going after the actual ballots themselves.
Back in January, the FBI—with Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard present on the ground—raided the Fulton County, Georgia election hub and seized about 660 boxes of records from the 2020 election. This was the same election that had been recounted multiple times and certified as accurate, even by Trump’s own Attorney General William Barr. A federal judge, appointed by Trump himself, ruled the feds could keep those records. This wasn’t an investigation; it was a show of force to intimidate election workers and lay the groundwork for claims that the 2024 election was “stolen” too.
And it ain’t just the machinery of elections they’re after. They’re going after anyone who might fund the opposition or speak out.
CBS News reports that the Justice Department is investigating Neville Roy Singham, the husband of Code Pink co-founder Jodie Evans, over potential violations of the Foreign Agents Registration Act and tax laws. This is a criminal probe by a grand jury in New York, looking into whether money was unlawfully funneled through nonprofits. It’s a classic political hit job—intimidate a major progressive donor to scare off anyone else from funding the fight. They’re attempting to make it a crime to support left-wing causes, plain and simple.
They’re also trying to silence the press. The Justice Department issued subpoenas to several New York Times journalists—Michael Grynbaum and others—forcing them to testify before a grand jury about their reporting on security concerns with Trump’s new Air Force One jet. Federal agents even showed up at the reporters’ homes. The Times’s top lawyer called it “a brazen act” to “prevent the public from knowing what is happening in their country by intimidating journalists from doing their jobs.” And it’s not just the Times. The message to any journalist who might dig too deep is clear: fall in line or face the consequences.
Now, look at the red-baiting. Since a string of democratic socialist candidates won primaries in late June, Trump has invoked the word “communism” a whopping 94 times and counting, invoking the phrase “hardcore, godless communists.”
And Fox News is running scared, running segments on the “communist movement” gaining ground. They put up graphics with the DSA’s platform—things like Medicare for All and taxing the wealthy—as if helping working people is some kind of crime. It’s a smear campaign straight out of the Cold War, but it’s aimed at making anyone left of center seem like a foreign threat so they can justify crushing dissent.
And if you still think this is just political theater, look at what they’re doing to young protestors. In Texas, nine people were sentenced to between 30 and 100 years in federal prison for their involvement in a protest at an ICE detention facility. One of them, Daniel Sanchez-Estrada, got 30 years just for moving a box of zines—politically expressive pamphlets protected by the First Amendment—after his wife called him from the protest. Thirty years for moving pamphlets. That’s not justice; that’s state terror designed to chill dissent and criminalize any opposition to this regime. The Freedom of the Press Foundation called it “the latest example of the Trump administration grasping at any legal straws it can to criminalize disfavored ideologies and writings.”
Then there’s the Southern Poverty Law Center. The DOJ indicted the SPLC, accusing it of defrauding donors by using paid informants to track white supremacist hate groups. Evidence suggests this investigation was prompted by a letter from right-wing groups like Moms for Liberty and Turning Point USA, complaining about being labeled hate groups. A coalition of 15 state attorneys general warned that the administration is “weaponizing government power against nonprofit organizations.” They’re going after the very organizations that track the racists and fascists—that should tell you everything about whose side they’re on.
And finally, they’re sending a message to any politician who steps out of line. Look at what happened to Congressman Ro Khanna. While visiting the West Bank, Israeli settlers, brandishing American-made M4s, surrounded his van and detained him and his group for 90 minutes. When the IDF arrived, they sided with the settlers and continued the detention. Khanna, a vocal critic of the Israeli government, was publicly humiliated, and the Trump administration said nothing. It’s a clear signal: if you oppose their allies, you’re on your own.
Let me stop you right here if you’re thinking the answer is just to “vote harder.” That ain’t gonna cut it, and you know it. They’re taking over the referee role, silencing the press, intimidating donors, red-baiting their enemies, sending a message to any politician who dares to stand up, and locking up young people for exercising their First Amendment rights.
Ty Cobb is right: “those forces are already on the field.” You think a ballot box is gonna stop a government that’s already weaponized the DOJ, the FBI, and the courts against its political opponents?
You think showing up on Election Day is gonna undo the gutting of the EAC or the intimidation of election workers?
Hell no. That’s like bringing a butter knife to a gunfight.
We need to be ready for massive, creative non-compliance. I’m talking about the kind of civil disobedience that made the civil rights movement work. I’m talking about general strikes, workplace walkouts, rent strikes, and mass protests that shut down the machinery of power.
Look at what the French did when their government tried to raise the retirement age—they brought the whole damn country to a standstill. Look at what the Polish Solidarity movement did in the 1980s. They didn’t just vote. They organized, they resisted, and they refused to comply with an illegitimate regime.
Remember the 2020 George Floyd uprisings? In the summer of 2020, after the murder of George Floyd, millions of people took to the streets in over 2,000 cities across this country. They shut down highways, they occupied city centers, they set up autonomous zones, and they forced police reform conversations into every city council meeting from Minneapolis to New York. That wasn’t voting; that was direct action. That was people saying “enough is enough” and making the powers that be listen.
Or think back to the 2011 Wisconsin Capitol protests, when over 100,000 working people—teachers, fire fighters, nurses—occupied the state capitol building for weeks to fight Governor Scott Walker’s union-busting bill. They shut down the legislature, they sang “Solidarity Forever” from the rotunda, and they showed that when working people stick together, we can stop the machine cold. And don’t forget the 1934 Minneapolis Teamsters strike, when truck drivers shut down the entire city for over two months, fought off the police and the National Guard, and won union recognition for thousands of workers. That’s the kind of backbone we need now.
I know this stuff firsthand. I was there in the global justice movement of the 1990s, marching side by side with tens of thousands of us who said “another world is possible.” We shut down the WTO in Seattle in 1999—50,000 of us blockaded the streets, locked arms, and stopped the global trade talks cold. We fought the FTAA in Miami in 2003—over 20,000 of us filled the streets, with labor, environmental, and indigenous leaders all standing together against corporate globalization. We marched on the IMF and World Bank in Washington, D.C., in 2000, shutting down traffic and forcing the institutions to fence themselves in like scared animals. And we took it to New York City, too—when the World Economic Forum held its meetings there, we filled the streets with a carnival of resistance, making it clear that Wall Street and Davos don’t get to run our lives. We didn’t vote for change; we made change happen through our bodies, our courage, and our refusal to back down.
That’s what we need here—not begging the system to work, but building our own power outside of it. We need to be talking about mutual aid networks, community defense committees, and parallel structures that can keep our communities fed, housed, and protected when the state turns on us. We need to be ready to flood the streets, block the courthouses, and make it impossible for them to steal another election without a fight. We need to be ready to protect our neighbors, our organizers, and our journalists from political prosecution. And we need to start building those networks now, not on the morning after they steal the election.
This is class war from the top down.
The only way to stop them is to organize, build our own power, and fight like hell to defend ourselves. The fight for the midterms is already here, and we better be ready—not merely with ballots, but with our bodies, our communities, and our unwavering refusal to accept an illegitimate government.
David Cobb is the host of the popular podcast Redneck Gone Green, dubbed a “people’s lawyer”, David has spent his career litigating corporate polluters and civil rights violators. He was the Green Party Presidential nominee In 2004, In 2010 he co-founded Move To Amend, In 2016 he served as the Campaign Manager for Jill Stein’s presidential campaign. Currently he serves as the Co-Coordinator of the US Solidarity Economy Network and the People’s Network for Land Liberation, a consortium which seeks to de-commodify the land to reestablish a right relationship with the earth and all of our relatives and relations.
People didn't even cancel amazon or paramount. This country is morally bankrupt.
We needed to start building those networks about 30 years ago and did nothing.