The “F-word,” fascism, has recently seen increasing use in American public discourse—and for good reason. Some critics claim that the word, fascism, has been overused—and wrongly applied to the behavior and propaganda of President Donald Trump and his regime. They are wrong. Even though other words do describe Trump’s behavior, such as authoritarian, corrupt, cruel, vindictive, racist, or misogynistic, they do not wholly capture the political essence of Donald J. Trump. “Fascist” clearly does.

What are the classic hallmarks of fascism? The analyses of several historians and other experts, such as Ruth Ben-Ghiat (Strongmen), Timothy Snyder (On Tyranny), Jason Stanley (How Fascism Works) and Umberto Eco ("Eternal Fascism," 1995 article in the New York Review of Books) describe fascism as including these features: mythologizing the past; persecution of racial, religious, or ethnic minorities and celebrating violence against them; pseudo patriotic and militaristic spectacles; big business capture of government; suppression of civil liberties, including free speech; white supremacy, combined with a sense of victimhood; and male dominance. Without any doubt, Trump and his regime qualify as fascist, or at the very least, incipient fascist.

Only recently, the Trump regime issued a memorandum (NSPM-7) in which Trump directs his officials to investigate supposed incidents of “anti-Americanism, anti-capitalism and anti-Christianity.” Trump falsely claims that leftists and other “antifa” activists use violence to accomplish their political goals. The memorandum facilitates Trump’s threat to go after “the enemy within”—which is anybody who opposes his policies or toxic rhetoric. The “enemy within” designation was widely used by Hitler’s Nazi regime to denigrate Jews. The similarities between the propaganda and legal distortions of that regime and those of the Trump administration are chilling. (See, Hitler’s Justice: The Courts of the Third Reich, by Ingo Müller). Trump has also announced that he will use the military to enforce the criminal laws throughout the country—despite the prohibitions contained in the Posse Comitatus Act of 1878.

What hope can we have that the Supreme Court of the United States will put the brakes on Trump’s fascist policies?

Will the Republican majority on the Supreme Court—embracing the unitary executive theory—eventually approve of Trump’s twisted and vindictive use of political prosecutions to silence his political foes?

The starting point toward venturing an answer to this question has to be the court’s 2024 decision in Trump vs.........

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