New York.
Chicago.
Los Angeles.
Baltimore.
Washington, D.C.
One after the other, their names crawl throughout the headlines like enemy targets in crosshairs. These cities are majority Black- and Brown, Democratic-led with Black mayors, labeled by the precise as “crime-ridden” city hellscapes.
The headlines clang collectively in ominous rhythm: the Pentagon is quietly “planning” to place Nationwide Guard troops on the bottom in Chicago. Trump is publicly threatening to withhold federal funds from Baltimore’s collapsed Key Bridge whereas dangling the potential of sending in troops. In the meantime, rapid-fire detention offers in crimson states are ramping as much as cage migrants quicker. CNN has broadcast photos of Nationwide Guard troops standing by for a crackdown in Chicago, at the same time as D.C. remains to be reeling from the same stunt. Trump guarantees that New York Metropolis and L.A. will comply with subsequent.
Every headline is a shard in the identical mirror. These are cities that conservatives have spent many years branding as cesspools of crime and chaos each time they should scare white suburbs into voting crimson. Now they’re the backdrop for an authoritarian flex Trump’s been telegraphing for years. So, it’s no shock to see them lined up for a spectacle of punishment. This isn’t a coincidence or a coverage wonk’s dreary technique; it’s a meticulously staged present of pressure. The choreography of authoritarian theater.
Trump is staging a dance of energy meant to appear to be regulation and order however designed to impress, humiliate, and dominate. He’s rehearsing a spectacle the place Black and Brown cities turn into the set items, the troopers turn into the props, and the headlines turn into the script. It’s not about stopping crime. It’s about baiting Black and Brown people into rise up so he can justify unleashing much more pressure, and fairly frankly, justify killing us.
It’s the authoritarian playbook in movement: manufacture a disaster, flood the stage with uniforms, watch for the backlash, unleash racialized terror, after which declare victory because the strongman who tamed the “city jungle.”
Whereas he factors cameras at “crime-ridden blue cities,” he’s quietly scaling capability to cage individuals quicker and longer. Offers are underway with Republican governors to spin up new or expanded migrant detention websites in locations like Florida, Indiana, and Nebraska as a result of crimson states are lining as much as money federal checks and deputize native cops beneath 287(g) to feed ICE. That’s the manufacturing unit ground of this crackdown, and it runs whether or not the road drama makes headlines or not.
That’s the darker layer beneath the optics.
When Trump threatens D.C., Baltimore, Chicago, New York, or L.A. on digicam, it’s a spectacle for his base. However while you zoom out, you see the infrastructure quietly being inbuilt crimson states: detention facilities, deputized sheriffs, expanded contracts for personal jail firms. This isn’t nearly regulation enforcement. It’s an financial engine.
It mirrors the outdated jail increase of the Eighties and ’90s, when rural white cities grew to become depending on prisons for jobs, contracts, and state funding. Now, Trump is rebooting the identical carceral logic however dressing it up as “border safety” and “city crime management.” Purple states don’t simply get to wave the flag of regulation and order. They get the federal cash, the development contracts, the guard jobs, the financial lifeline that comes with warehousing Black and Brown our bodies.
This crackdown doubles as a jobs program for MAGA America. These are carceral industries as financial growth. A contemporary plantation economic system, with detention facilities as a substitute of farming fields. And that’s the sinister genius of it: the individuals cheering the loudest for Trump’s battle on “crime” aren’t simply animated by racism, they’re being promised a paycheck that is determined by locking us up.
In the meantime, within the very cities being focused (Baltimore, Chicago, D.C., L.A., New York), this crackdown serves one other goal: dashing up gentrification. Flood a neighborhood with troops, slap on curfews, sweep migrants into cages, criminalize resistance, and also you soften the bottom for builders who need “security” for his or her new condos and occasional outlets. However builders aren’t simply bystanders. They’re a part of the authoritarian coalition. Black and Brown residents turn into disposable. They’re both displaced or funneled into the identical carceral system, feeding jobs to rural white communities.
After which there’s the meta-game: redraw the voting map whereas the sirens wail. Trump is brazenly pushing mid-decade gerrymandering, Texas first, to lock in Home energy earlier than 2026, triggering a redistricting arms race that even Democrats now admit they’ll reply in California and elsewhere. Deploy troops. Juice detention. Redraw the districts. This can be a holistic method to regime upkeep.
All these cities are excellent foils within the conservative creativeness: Black and Brown, immigrant-heavy, blue-run, sanctuary-leaning, and allegedly “uncontrolled.” By no means thoughts that the information undercuts Trump’s narrative. Chicago officers cite double-digit drops in homicides, robberies, and shootings; D.C. violent crime hit a 30-year low final yr. Information don’t matter in worry politics. Optics do.
So what’s the actual play?
Provoke, then pounce. Bait Black and Brown neighborhoods into seen anger beneath curfews, with troops within the streets, ICE in workplaces and courts, and when individuals defend themselves, cite it as proof that the regime was proper about cracking down on these communities. That justification then greenlights broader federalization of policing, fast-track deportations, mass arrests, and emergency powers. We’ve seen variations of this film throughout the globe. The ending is at all times the identical: obedience via exhaustion.
And the timing isn’t unintentional.
Epstein recordsdata are trickling towards Capitol Hill. Even the redacted scraps are a political danger as a result of they minimize throughout donor courses and media darlings. Trump is making an attempt to bury the narrative beneath “crime crackdowns” and “border chaos,” wrapped within the flag, so he can hand his base an enemy they will see. Distract, dominate, redraw, detain. And when the headlines about Epstein trickle out, he’ll have already got a much bigger story queued up, one with troopers and sirens.
Count on rolling pilot deployments marketed as success tales. Count on choreographed standoffs with big-city mayors. Count on a fog of conflicting statements from the Pentagon and White Home to maintain accountability slippery. Count on a speedy growth of detention capability removed from the cameras whereas governors and sheriffs brag about “partnerships.”
Look ahead to federal stress campaigns to flip or bypass governors in focused states. Look ahead to extra curfews and “safety zones” in choose city corridors. Watch additionally for a gentle drip of propaganda about “grateful residents,” particularly Black moms and elders begging for troops. The authorized fights will lag behind the details on the bottom. By the point courts catch up, the map can be redrawn, and the jail beds already paid for.
The grand message from Trump to the MAGA base can be primal: I’ll make enemy cities kneel. I’ll humiliate blue mayors and Black governors. I’ll management the streets, the borders, the our bodies, and the narrative. And when the midterms come, your crew received’t simply win, we’ll rig the principles legally and dare anybody to cease us. It’s dominance politics with a ballot-box kicker that units the stage for many years of Republican rule.
So, let’s name the factor what it’s: not a battle on “crime,” however a provocation technique geared toward producing the photographs Trump wants: helicopters over majority-Black neighborhoods, Nationwide Guard convoys via immigrant districts, protest clips minimize to appear to be riots. These footage will turn into advertisements, these advertisements will turn into worry, and that worry will turn into votes whereas the detention contracts get signed, and the congressional maps get carved.
That is kaleidoscope white supremacist politics. Activate the tube and also you’ll see the identical shards of racism, austerity, militarization, propaganda rearranged into a brand new sample that at all times factors to the identical end result: extra energy for the precise, much less freedom for the remainder of us. Put all of it collectively, and the sample is unmistakable. And each flip of that kaleidoscope rearranges the identical shards into the identical ugly image: Black and Brown individuals in cages, white energy in cost, and Trump smiling for the cameras.
So, what should we do to withstand?
To withstand what Trump is doing to Black and Brown cities, the response must be as layered because the assault itself. As a result of this isn’t nearly troops on the bottom or scary headlines. It’s about a complete infrastructure of worry, carcerality, and financial exploitation.
First, we’ve got to strip the lie out of the narrative each time it seems.
The correct thrives on optics: tanks in D.C., troopers in Chicago, staged press conferences in entrance of damaged bridges. These photos are designed to lock worry into individuals’s nervous methods and to normalize occupation as “safety.” Our work is to flood the dialog with the receipts: the falling crime charges, the ignored white crime zones, and the truth that these cities are safer than the propaganda suggests. If the spectacle is the stage, reality have to be the counter-theater.
Second, resistance has to name out the economics.
This isn’t nearly “regulation and order,” it’s a jobs program for rural white America. Identical to prisons within the ’80s and ’90s, detention facilities and federal contracts are lifelines for cities hollowed out by capitalism. We have to identify that this can be a plantation reboot, the place Black and Brown our bodies are the uncooked materials for white survival. When you expose the cash path, you unmask the actual motives and fracture the “public security” excuse.
Third, we’ve got to refuse the bait.
Trump’s technique hinges on upsetting uprisings he can movie, then branding them as riots to justify much more pressure. That doesn’t imply staying silent; it means shifting techniques. Artistic resistance, financial disruption, authorized warfare, mutual support, cultural counter-narratives. These are all of the methods of claiming “we won’t kneel” with out handing him the footage he craves.
Fourth, native energy has to double down.
Metropolis councils, mayors, and grassroots organizations should doc every thing — the curfews, detentions, and abuses — and push circumstances into federal courts even when the wheels flip gradual. Paper trails immediately turn into weapons tomorrow. In the meantime, communities should tighten their very own protection networks. Know-your-rights trainings, bail funds, protest security infrastructure, and convey again a Twenty first-century model of the Black Panthers as a result of the crackdown is designed to exhaust us into submission.
And at last, solidarity have to be kaleidoscopic.
Trump is banking on divide-and-conquer: portray migrant detention as “their drawback,” city occupation as “their fault.” However it’s all one machine. If we silo ourselves, Black people right here, immigrants there, working-class again there, liberals of their lane, then we’re already midway defeated.
The resistance must be holistic, loud, unashamed, and united in saying: this isn’t about crime, it’s about management. And we received’t let him script our future as spectacle.
Dr. Stacey Patton is an award-winning journalist and creator of “Spare The Youngsters: Why Whupping Youngsters Gained’t Save Black America” and the forthcoming “Strung Up: The Lynching of Black Youngsters In Jim Crow America.” Learn her Substack right here.
SEE ALSO:
Black D.C. Is The Stage For Trump’s Authoritarian Rehearsal
Harriet Jacobs, Rep. Nicole Collier, And Black Girls Who Don’t Bow
