This Week in Fascism

A Weekly Column by historian and author Paul Street

As of October 2, 2026. 9:30 AM*

It’s nearly impossible to keep up with the endless disorienting madness and atrocities of the zone-flooding Trump fascist regime. Here are some of the top fascism stories since last Friday.

A Farcical Fascist Attack on Jack Smith

A farcical hearing of the Republi-fascist-controlled Senate Judiciary Committee on Tuesday attacked former special federal prosecutor Jack Smith with baseless charges of perjury, bullying, and political persecution. The hearing was retribution for the investigations Smith conducted into Trump’s theft of classified documents and Trump’s attempt to subvert and cancel the 2020 presidential election. But for Trump’s re-election in 2024, both cases could have led to new felony convictions and possible incarceration for Trump.

Senator Eric Schmitt (Rf-MO) called Smith a “dirtbag.” Senator John Kennedy (Rf-LA) told Smith, “You make me want to throw up in my mouth.”

It was a chilling episode in the MAGA party’s war on the rule of law.

Fascist Advisors are Telling Trump to Declare Martial Law and Take Over the Midterms

Last Sunday morning, CNN reported on an Atlantic story showing that a number of Trump influencers are pushing him to declare martial law and seize federal control of the elections. Among these advisers are Peter Tickten, a wealthy fascist lawyer who went to military school with Mein Trumpf and the convicted 2020 Trumpist election meddler Tina Peter. Peters went on right-wing media to say that she recently met with Trump and that he told her “there is a plan to do what I am asking” — that is, to declare a national emergency and take over the elections.

“I Don’t Rule Out Anything”

The following exchange took place between Trump and TIME Magazine on Monday:

TIME: “Would you rule out declaring a state of emergency in the lead up to the midterms unless there’s widespread violence in the streets?”

Trump “I don’t rule anything out or in. We’ll see. You mean the Insurrection Act?”

TIME: “yeah.”

Trump: “ I could use it. A lot of people think I should…we have the lowest crime in the history of our country.”

Fascist Supreme Court Signs Off on a Fascist National Voter Database

Last Friday afternoon, after the time stamp (11 AM) of my last “This Week in Fascism” report, the Trumpist Supreme Court greenlighted the White House’s deployment of an unconstitutional and deeply flawed national citizen database. The database is meant to help “red” states (Republifascist) disenfranchise people on the false Trumpian premise that US elections are plagued by illegal noncitizen voting.

Georgia’s Fascist House of Representative and Senate Candidate “Fine” with Troops at the Polls

Last Sunday, Rep. Mike Collins, the Trump-backed Republi-fascist candidate for Georgia’s U.S. Senate seat, said he was “fine” with federal troops being sent to the polls this November.

Mein Trumpf Using Taxpayer Dollars to Advance Self and Fascism

Over the weekend, in an openly illegal misuse of public money, the White House aired a 30-second spot of Trump promising to “demolish the deep state, expel the warmongers from our government,” and “cast out the communists, Marxists, and fascists.”

Curious words from an open fascist warmonger who is trying to use “the deep state” to subvert the 2026 elections.

With this and previous commercials like it, the Trump regime is arch-criminally milking taxpayers to promote himself and promote fascist ideology, which obsessively targets the left, while denying his own fascism.

Fascist Meta’s Election Interference on Behalf of the Fascist Presidential Candidate in Brazil

The major “Nerd Reich” tech giant Meta (owner of Facebook and Instagram) has revealed its commitment to fascism by banning the left Brazilian President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva’s campaign ads. This is an act of election interference on behalf of Brazil’s fascist presidential candidate Flávio Bolsonaro, the son of Trump’s fascist ally Jair Bolsonaro, who attempted to lead a January 6-like coup against Lula’s re-election in 2022.

Fascist Supreme Court Approves Third Country Human Trafficking and Torture

In a one-page unsigned decision, the fascist Supreme Court ruled Tuesday that the Trump administration can resume rapidly trafficking immigrants to countries other than their own – to countries that beat and torture detainees. The Department of Homeland Security’s top lawyer responded by telling immigrants, “It’s not too late to get $3,000 and a flight home.”

Fascist ICE’s “Quiet” but Brutal Summer Surge

The New York Times on Monday reported at length on “A Quiet ICE Surge That Unfolded ‘Everywhere All at Once’ This Summer” – a vicious ethnic cleansing escalation criminally aided and abetted by local and state police:

“The most effective escalation of President Trump’s mass deportation campaign happened quietly…Arrests by Immigration and Customs Enforcement this summer soared to record highs since the start of this Trump administration — with 43,000 in June, more than 49,000 in July and nearly 51,000 in August — as officials cut or narrowed the pathways to legal residency in the United States and expanded the pool of people eligible for deportation…Federal agents appeared in nearly every corner of daily life, carrying out operations at hospitals and airports, outside suburban schools and along rural construction sites and truck stops. They fanned out from coastal cities in Maine to desert towns in Arizona, across the open plains of Wyoming and down through the southern borderlands…In Republican-led states like Texas and Florida, where the swell was strongest, they amplified their reach through partnerships with sheriffs and state highway patrol officers. In Democratic strongholds, they intensified their activities despite laws meant to restrict them.”

The Trump regime may have toned down its “highly visible, militarized ethnic cleansing raids that generated widespread backlash” last year and winter, but its repackaged fascist remigration campaign is brutally sweeping up, detaining, torturing and trafficking more of our fellow human beings than ever before.

Hegseth at Quantico

On Wednesday, the openly fascist Christian white nationalist Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth gave a wild “State of the Force” address to hundreds of officers and troops at the US Marines base in Quantico, Virginia. “As usual,” The New York Times reported, “Hegseth wove religious language and Christian themes throughout his address and derided ‘secular humanism,’ adding that he had established an office of religious affairs that would report directly to him.”

Hegseth applauded himself for firing dozens of “woke” admirals and generals, gutting diversity programs, and barring transgendered people from the military. “No fatties, no trannies, no beardos, no weirdos, no wimps, no radicals,” he said of the people he wants removed from the military.

Hegseth pointed to journalists who came to report on his harangue, describing them as “anti-American losers” and charging them with “treason” for their coverage of the United States’ criminal and failed war on Iran.

Hegseth announced the creation of a new US military Robotics Command and his intent of building a giant new America First “fortress” somewhere inside the United States.

Hegseth pointed to three civilians in attendance: the fascist, Trump-sponsoring tech trillionaire Elon Musk, the fascist tech billionaire Palmer Luckey, and the fascist former US House Speaker Newt Gingrich. Hegseth said these three monsters will map a new path forward for “the future of warfare.” Besides marking the world’s richest man and leading global fascist Musk’s return to Trump’s good graces, this new Pentagon initiative, dubbed “Project Meridian,” epitomizes the noxious wedding together of corporate power, private super-wealth, artificial intelligence/big tech, and military power that characterize contemporary “end times fascism.”

Hegseth’s fascist oration marked the one-year anniversary of his and Trump’s addresses to more than 800 top military commanders called to Quantico to hear Hegseth denounce international war and human rights law and to learn from the president that the United States’ top adversary is “the enemy within,” meaning any and all of Trump’s domestic opponents and critics, concentrated in Democratic-run cities Trump wanted to use as training ground for wars abroad.

(Last Friday, Hegseth made a not-so-veiled call for US military personnel to vote Republifascist in the midterm elections. Hegseth suggested that they could make the difference in some districts predicted to vote blue.)

*There’s more…there always is. This report is time-stamped for a reason: the dystopian Trump nightmare is moving so fast that it will have committed a significant number of new outrages before this report can appear on the Refuse Fascism website.

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