A weekly column my historian and author Paul Street

As of 8 am, CST, Friday, October 16, 2026

Saturday, October 10

+ The Associated Press reported that the Trump fascist regime (hereafter “TFR”) stripped Medicaid health insurance coverage from “certain legal immigrants…include[ing] refugees and victims of human trafficking.”

+ Miguel Parra-Hernandez was hospitalized with a suspected broken leg after he was deliberately run over by an ICE Gestapo TFR thug in Harris County, Texas.

+ In what the Washington Post rightly called “a sharp escalation in the Trump administration’s use of its powers against perceived enemies in the press,” the Post reported that Trump’s Department of Justice was absurdly investigating ABC, CBS, CNN, NBC and Fox News for antitrust violations as punishment for those networks’ brief collective withdrawal from White House pool coverage in response to the TFR’s exclusion of CNN, Politico and MS NOW from White House reporting. https://thehill.com/homenews/administration/6141115-doj-investigates-tv-networks-boycott/

+ The fascist Department of Homeland Security (DHS) Secretary Markwayne Mullin referred to the Pentagon’s proposed livestreaming of the public execution of Fort Hood shooter Nidal Hasan as part of Trump’s project of “restoring American values.”

Sunday, October 11

+ A federal judge ordered the Trump administration to cancel all further airings of President Donald Trump’s criminal and fascistic taxpayer-funded ads but the spots continued to be broadcast in defiance of the order.

+ A Trump hate rally crowd in Ohio chanted “Deport!” as their Dear Leader Trump called the Somali-American US House Representative Ilhan Omar (D-MN) “a disaster,” disparaged Somalia, said that Somali immigrants come from a part of the world that “only knows how to kill each other,” and repeated baseless claims that Democrats cheated in the 2020 election in Minnesota.

+ The antivax pandemo-fascist RFK Jr, Trump’s anti-science head of the US Department of Health and Human Services, absurdly questioned whether deaths during the 2025 Texas measles outbreaks were caused by the disease.

Monday October 12

+ The TFR’s Homeland Security Investigations department conducted a pre-dawn raid on the Washington DC home of Rep. Omar, looking for evidence of immigration violations as part of Trump and his top fascist advisor Stephen Miller’s plan to deport Omar. The raid occurred three weeks before the midterm elections, despite longstanding Justice Department policy against enforcement actions so close to an election that would be likely to create the perception of federal election interference.

+ It was reported that local officials were demanding answers from Trump’s Gestapo after a young father was brutally swept up by ICE thugs in front of his traumatized children. Video of the kidnapping shows

Jhon Maykel Correa Sangucho’s children screaming as Trump’s fascist federal paramilitary drag him from his e vehicle.

+ The TFR published a new rule, bypassing the formal notice and comment period, to accelerate the process for terminating a refugee’s status. The new rule permits the previously rare revocation of refugee status to take place in as quickly as 10 days, not the previous 30-day window that allowed for appeal.

+ During a hate rally in Alaska, the lethal eco-fascist and fossil fuel champion Trump signed pardons for two diesel mechanics who had pleaded guilty in 2022 to federal charges that they violated the Clean Air Act by illegally tampering with equipment and removed equipment meant to control air pollution.

+ ProPublica reported that the Trump administration has terminated federal reimbursement for SNAP recipients whose benefits are stolen – yet more evidence of the cruelty of Trump fascism.

+ A young woman wearing a shirt saying “Release the Epstein Files” was beaten by multiple Trump supporters at a Trump rally in Ohio. As the woman was brutally removed by police, the crowd chanted “USA! USA! USA!” Trump claimed without evidence that the woman was a “paid protester.” Trump said “He’s a paid protester. They are all paid. They get paid by the lefties in order to destroy our country. They are scum, but he is going back home to mom…Don’t we love our law enforcement?”

Tuesday, October 13

+ In a brazen act of unconstitutional federal interference in elections, the TFR’s Department of “Justice” (DOJ) sent the California Secretary of State a letter giving it 48 hours to review a list of alleged noncitizen voters that the DOJ concocted. The DOJ threatened legal action for non-compliance. The letter demands that California deny mail-in ballots to people on their highly dubious list.

+ The TFR expressed its total contempt for independent media by unveiling as its new press secretary the egregiously and woefully unqualified fake lawyer Katie Zacharia, a former far-right television personality who said in her highly awkward and poorly read comments that “I have wanted to work for Donald Trump for a long time….I get to do what I was doing on the outside already, which was hoping to amplify, multiply and expand upon President Trump’s incredible agenda for the American people.” She is qualified to represent this regime, however, as a former board member of an organization that publicly calls for women who have had abortions to be publicly executed. They also advocate that pro-choice citizens be barred from holding public office. Zacharia quickly left the podium after not saying a single word about the need to provide accurate information to the American people.

+ The fascist US Vice President JD Vance resorted to juvenile gay-bashing in an attack on the Democratic US Senate candidate James Talarico in Texas. “I love you, too,” Vance told a crowd: “In a totally platonic way, to be clear. I’m the vice president, not James Talarico.”

Wednesday, October 14

+ During a hate rally in Arizona, Mein Trumpf said that military “leakers” (government sources who reveal information about military plans) “should be shot” – a remarkably dictatorial escalation of his rhetoric against journalism and free speech.

+ The Wall Street Journal reported the TFR intends to strip Rep. Omar of her citizenship and deport her, citing US officials and others familiar with the case.

+ The TFR rejected a government watchdog’s recommendation that its ICE/Gestapo gendarmes use technology that would ‌activate body-worn cameras when an officer pulls a weapon or sets off a car siren.

+ ProPublica reported that immigrant women seeking police protection from domestic abusers are being detained for ICE detention and deportation. This is because the TFR has “rescinded guidelines that largely prevented immigration agents from making arrests at sensitive locations — including domestic violence shelters and hospitals” and “eliminated key protections granted to victims under the Violence Against Woman Act….. For the first time in decades, immigration authorities could disregard those protections and more freely arrest, detain and deport immigrant victims.”

Thursday, October 15

+ It was reported that the TFR’s ICE/Gestapo gendarmes are terrorizing California’s community colleges. “Last month,” the Independent reported, “the San Diego Community College District said ICE agents arrested a student on a public street that cuts through the urban campus and proceeded to chase another student up the steps of the school’s Arts and Humanities building,” to give just one of many examples.

+ The TFR sued the State of California and a Los Angeles County official to stop the state and county from counting mail-in ballots submitted by 20,000 people the DOJ laughably calls “likely noncitizens.”

+ CNN reported that the Trump Pentagon has “developed new strike plans that include potentially using the ‘mother of all bombs’ to target Iranian energy infrastructure and nuclear sites should President Donald Trump give the order to resume combat operations either before or after the midterm elections, according to multiple US officials familiar with the matter. Using the GBU-43/B Massive Ordnance Air Blast Bomb or MOAB, the largest non-nuclear bomb in the US arsenal, for the first time in the conflict with Iran would mark a notable escalation.”

This is fascism. The Trump Fascist Regime Must Go Now.