CounterPunch Exclusives

CounterPunch Exclusives

Roaming Charges: State of the Empire in Extremis

Flooded snag, Svensen Slough, lower Columbia River, Oregon. Photo: Jeffrey St. Clair.

Reality in our century is not something to be faced. – Graham Greene

Reality in our century is not something to be faced.

I’m sorry to report that reality has not become any more faceable in the succeeding century, Graham.

Fidel’s five-hour harangues on agricultural production in rural Cuba seemed shorter and livelier than Trump’s bitchy, repetitive, and leaden performance at the State of the Empire. I guess he should be congratulated for not dozing off to the hypnotic scroll of the teleprompter. I did.

The relentless exploitation of victims of tragedies and their families to advance his fascist policies is one of the most grotesque set-pieces in Trump’s long-running political schtick. Last night, he once again invoked the story of a young girl (Dahlia Coleman) who was critically injured in a crash with a semi-truck driven by an immigrant from India, who was likely speeding through a construction zone to meet his employer’s quota. It was a car crash, like thousands of others that happen every day. You’re much more likely to be killed or seriously injured by an all-American macho man driver weaving his way home from the bar after getting shitfaced while watching the men’s hockey Olympic game or get beaten to a pulp by your drunken spouse after he lost a prop bet on the Super Bowl.

Joseph Heller, Catch-22: “When I look up, I see people cashing in. I don’t see heaven or saints or angels. I see people cashing in on every decent impulse and every human tragedy.”

Trump unwittingly provided a visual metaphor for the Gaza genocide that left mass graves of a hundred Palestinian bodies for each Israeli:

Believe it or not, Hamas worked along with Israel and they dug, and they dug, and they dug. It’s a tough thing to do, going through bodies all over. Passing up 100 bodies sometimes for each one then found. Tough job. And uhh. They finally got it back to 27. And then they found all 28.

Believe it or not, Hamas worked along with Israel and they dug, and they dug, and they dug. It’s a tough thing to do, going through bodies all over. Passing up 100 bodies sometimes for each one then found. Tough job. And uhh. They finally got it back to 27. And then they found all 28.

Tom Nichols on Trump’s PT Barnum routine at the SOTU: “The only thing Trump did not do was explain his policies—especially about war and peace—to Congress or the American people.”

When Trump said he would not allow Iran to obtain a nuclear weapon (Iran has denied it wants a nuclear weapon), more than two dozen Democrats stood and applauded.

Matt Welch writing in Reason: “The electorate, as we have seen, can stomach gratuitous lying, just not so much about the quality and conditions of their own lives.”

Speaking of gratuitous lies that are exposed by the unpaid bills stacking up on the kitchen table….

Trump: “Incomes are rising fast, the roaring economy is roaring like never before.” In fact, incomes rose just 0.9% in 2025, down from 2.2% in 2024. The fractional increase in the first year of Trump’s second term is the slimmest since 2022.

Trump: “More Americans are working today than at any time in the history of our country.” There are more Americans than ever before, period. But the unemployment rate was lower when Biden left office.

Trump: “In one year, we have lifted 2.4 million Americans — a record — off of food stamps.” “Lifted” = “kicked off”….

Trump: “The cost of chicken, butter, fruit, hotels, automobiles, rent is lower today than when I took office, by a lot. And even beef, which was very high, is starting to come down significantly.” As most shoppers know, food prices are 2.9 percent higher than this time last year.

Trump: “Gasoline, which reached a peak of over $6 a gallon in some states under my predecessor and was, quite honestly, a disaster, is now below $2.30 a gallon in most states, and in some places $1.99 a gallon. And when I visited the great state of Iowa just a few weeks ago, I even saw $1.85 a gallon for gasoline, the lowest in four years, and falling fast.” According to AAA, the average price per gallon of regular in the US is $2.975, 6.5 cents a gallon less than last year. (In Oregon, the price is back up to $3.92 per gallon.)

David J. Bier: “The state of the union on immigration policy is that immigration policy is destroying our union by violating the Constitution, dividing our country, and making us poorer and less free. Every member of Congress should reject this pointless agenda and demand a better way.”

With Liz Cheney apparently unavailable to give the Democratic response to Trump, party leaders turned to the newly elected governor of Virginia, April Spanberger, who introduced herself to the country by saying, “After my career in law enforcement, I continued my service in the CIA…”

Vegas loves it when Democratic party gamblers come to town…

The ever-elusive “center” the Democrats keep chasing is now well to the right of the first Nixon administration.

Iran has not attacked the US. Cuba has not attacked the US. Venezuela did not attack the US. Nigeria did not attack the US. Gaza did not attack the US. Libya did not attack the US. Iraq did not attack the US. Serbia did not attack the US. Haiti did not attack the US. Panama did not attack the US. Nicaragua did not attack the US. Grenada did not attack the US. East Timor did not attack the US. Chile did not attack the US. Cambodia did not attack the US. Laos did not attack the US. Vietnam did not attack the US.

Donald Trump, July 19, 2025: “All three nuclear sites in Iran were completely destroyed and/or OBLITERATED. It would take years to bring them back into service.”

Steve Witkoff, February 22, 2026: “They’re probably a week away from having industrial-grade bomb-making material.”

Both of these statements are false.

Aside from Trump being mentioned more than 55,000 times in the Epstein files, a cratering economy, collapsing poll numbers and daily judicial rebukes for trashing the Constitution, have we been told one reason why we’re about to go to war with Iran? We certainly didn’t get any clue from Trump’s SoTU speech…

More than two dozen Democrats stood up and applauded every time Trump threatened Iran, roughly the same number that applauded every time he mentioned Israel. The Democrats aren’t against Trump’s pending attack on Iran. They’re against his lack of a “process” for attacking Iran.

The diagram for the ICE warehouse turned into a mega-prison in Georgia resembles the diagram of a slave ship…

Diagram of ICE warehouse prison in Georgia, 2026.

Diagram of the British slave ship, Brookes, 1787.

Blueprints of the proposed mega warehouse ICE jail show that the austere building is meant to confine 10,000 people, making it nearly 50% larger than America’s largest jail. ICE plans to pack 100 people into each room, in conditions designed to be so inhumane that the detainees are coerced into giving up their asylum claims.

“The court is not aware of another occasion in the history of the United States in which a federal court has had to threaten contempt — again and again and again — to force the United States government to comply with court orders.” So wrote Federal Judge Patrick Schlitz, chief judge in Minnesota, in a ruling on Thursday regarding the repeated violations of judicial orders by ICE in the state. In a review of 143 federal cases, Schlitz found 210 orders that ICE officials had failed to comply with. Schlitz, who was appointed by George W. Bush, vowed that “one way or another, ICE will comply with this court’s orders.”

In another case of ICE perfidy (if you believe Columbia’s duplicitous president, Claire Shipman), federal agents entered Columbia University campus under false pretenses and arrested Ellie Aghayeva, a senior majoring in neuroscience and political science, from her apartment on university grounds. The agents apparently told campus security they were searching for a “missing person” (not normally an ICE function) to gain entry into the building. The immigration officers had fake badges and showed security a fake missing persons bulletin for a 5-year-old girl. Aghayeva has an International student visa. All law enforcement agents must show a judicial (not administrative) warrant to access private areas on Columbia’s campus, including housing and classrooms. 

Update: Aghayeva was freed from ICE custody late Thursday after Zohran Mamdani met with Trump and complained about the illegal circumstances of her arrest: “Just got off the phone with President Trump,” Mamdani wrote on X.  “In our meeting earlier, I shared my concerns about Columbia student Elaina Aghayeva, who was detained by ICE this morning. He has just informed me that she will be released imminently.”

It looks like Zohran has officially replaced Kim as Trump’s favorite communist. 

Eduardo Tinajero Rodriguez was pulled over on a traffic stop in West Virginia, supposedly because the license plate on a trailer he was hauling had mud on it and the number was illegible to the cop, a frequent pretext for racial profiling stops. When the cop learned that Rodriguez spoke Spanish, he called ICE. When ICE arrived, they supposedly did a “records” check and arrested Rodriguez on the spot without a warrant. Rodriguez was not a gang member and had no history of violence or criminal activity. The only evidence the Feds presented for detaining and seeking to deport Rodriguez was an arrest for marijuana possession in 2009. But as Federal Judge Irene C. Berger pointed out in her ruling, Rodriguez was only four years old at the time: “The document was supplied by ICE and likely presumed to relate to the Petitioner [ie., Rodriguez] because the individual in those records had the same name, despite the differences in birthplace, birthrate, parents’ names, and immigrations status. This sloppiness further validates the Court’s concerns about the procedures utilized by the Respondents [ie, the Trump administration, depriving people present in the United States of their rights.” Judge Berger ordered Eduardo Rodriguez released from ICE custody and prohibited them from arresting him again.

Angel Camacho was hired by Border Patrol as an IT specialist. When he showed up for work, he was immediately detained by ICE, put in handcuffs and sent to Alligator Alcatraz, where he was imprisoned for the next month.

“I say, ‘Good morning. I’m Angel,” Comacho told a Miami news station. “They say, ‘Oh yes, we’re waiting for you.'”

Comacho said he was housed with violent criminals for 30 days, even though he is an asylum seeker with legal protected status and a work permit, who entered the US legally with a valid visa. He is married to a US citizen and is the father of American-born children. He has no criminal record. “I just went there to work, and it was too easy for them to catch me and say—’This is an immigrant.’ It’s the worst nightmare I’ve ever been in.”

Former ICE agent, Ryan Schwank: “I am duty-bound to report the legally required training program at the ICE Academy as deficient, defective, and broken. On my first day of training new cadets, I received secretive orders to teach them to violate the Constitution by entering homes without a judicial warrant. I watched ICE cut 240 hours of vital classes that teach our legal system, firearms training, the use of force, lawful arrests, proper detention, and the limits of officers’ authority.”

Remember Puppy Killer’s Tales from the Crypt scare story about ICE deporting a cannibal who began to eat himself on the deportation flight? You’ll be shocked to learn that this was a complete fabrication.

Big Tech works for Them: Internal documents show that ICE tripled its use of Microsoft products in the last six months,  storing a vast load of data on Microsoft’s cloud while using its AI tools to analyze videos and images.

Don’t stay in any hotel that rents rooms to ICE. You might get shot…

Aliya Rahman on being yanked out of her car and........

© CounterPunch