Photograph by Nathaniel St. Clair

In the U.S. these are days of dread. The air is filled with uncertainty. What comes next? Who can tell?

The states increasingly divide, signified by the gerrymandering wars. Texas redistricts to eliminate Democratic congressional seats. California responds with a plan to eliminate Republican seats. Red states including Ohio, Missouri, Florida and Indiana, and blue states including Virginia and New York, may follow suit. Computer-driven gerrymandering has distorted redistricting for years. This takes it to a new level.

Trump sends troops into Los Angeles and Washington, D.C., and threatens to send them to Chicago. He illustrates this with his graphic post on his Truth Social network evoking the movie “Apocalypse Now.” “I love the smell of deportations in the morning. . . Chicago is about to find out why it’s called the Department of WAR.”

Attorney General Pam Bondi threatens legal action against public officials who uphold sanctuary status for immigrants. “Individuals operating under color of law, using their position to obstruct federal immigration enforcement efforts and facilitating or inducing illegal immigration (in other words anything tied to sanctuary status – my note)may be subject to criminal charges,” she writes in an August letter to Washington Governor Bob Ferguson. He shoots back, “You seem to believe that cavalierly citing criminal statutes and personally threatening me, a democratically elected governor, will result in compromising the values of my state. Never.”

The Bondi letter sets up the prospect of seeing local and state officials perp walked by federal law enforcement agents for upholding state laws and policies limiting cooperation with immigration enforcement. Truly a way to intensify divisions.

Kirk – A pretext for war?

To this clash between the states, and between state and federal governments, is added another vast uncertainty, threats to war on an ill-defined left following last week’s killing of conservative activist Charlie Kirk. Elon Musk, posts that “the Left is the party of murder” and adds “if they won’t leave us in peace, then our choice is fight or die.” Says Steven Bannon, “Charlie Kirk is a casualty of the political war . . . We are at war in this country and you have to have steely resolve.” Alex Jones echoes him. “We’re at war.”
All this even as the motivations of the prime suspect, Tyler Robinson, are as yet uncertain. Nonetheless, Republicans and rightist voices are insistent that he did it because he is a leftist. It is as if Charlie Kirk’s death is a convenient pretext for a war they want anyway. And what form does this war exactly take? More killings of Democratic leaders such as the June assassination of Minnesota Statehouse Representative Melissa Hortman? Because violence begets violence, nobody should celebrate the death of Charlie Kirk.

Another reason is that violence gives cover to political repression, as presidential advisor Steven Miller makes clear. “The last message that Charlie Kirk gave to me before he joined his creator in heaven is that we have to dismantle and take on the radical left organizations in this country that are fomenting violence, and we are going to do that.” He threatened racketeering and terrorism charges for a variety of actions, some of which seem to be in the area of free speech such as calling people fascists. Will organizing peaceful protests and nonviolent civil disobedience be rebranded as “terrorism?”

Perhaps the most over-the-top call for repression came from far-right influencer Laura Loomer who posted on X, “I do want President Trump to be the ‘dictator’ the Left thinks he is, and I want the right to be as devoted to locking up and silencing our violent political enemies as they pretend we........

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