Minneapolis showed us why Trump and his fascists will lose

Trump’s Stupidity Czar, Tom Homan, announced today that the “surge” in Minneapolis is over. It lasted just over two months. The Department of Homeland Security sent more than 3,000 agents from the Border Patrol and Immigration and Customs Enforcement, five times as many as the number of police in Minneapolis. They murdered two U.S. citizens and terrorized the entire city. They claim to have arrested 4,000 immigrants, but DHS has refused to issue a list of the arrestees, so that number is probably a lie.

Was what they called “Operation Metro Surge” a success for Trump? By any measure, no. Trump’s poll numbers plummeted since last November, before the surge began. He is underwater on every issue he cares about, starting with the issue he believes put him in the White House, immigration. He has lost the support of people who flipped from Joe Biden to Trump between 2020 and 2024. He has lost the support of Latinos. He has lost the support of people between 18 and 35. He lost the support of young white men. He has even lost among so-called “low information” voters, people who don’t pay much attention to politics and do not vote regularly.

All so he could arrest 4,000 immigrants he claims are in this country illegally. That is a very, very high price.

The problem with fascism is that it always ends up where it starts, because fascists don’t have any new ideas. They are inflexible. They think because they have power, they can just keep doing what they’re doing. The leaders Trump appointed to run DHS and ICE and Border Patrol are just like him. Trump wants what he wants when he wants it, he wants it the way he wants it, that is his beginning, and it’s where he ends up. ICE and Border Patrol didn’t change anything after the murder of Renee Good by one of their agents because they thought they didn’t have to. They were the ones with the power, and they were going to keep doing things their way, no matter what happened.

This led directly to the murder of Alex Pretti a few weeks later. It led to increased resistance by the citizens of Minneapolis. Ultimately, it led to where Tom Homan ended up today, two weeks after Trump sent him to Minneapolis to try to salvage things. Instead, he announced that ICE and Border Patrol are leaving.

For fascists, flexibility is failure. If something isn’t working, they just keep doing things the same way they started. Look at what happened with Trump and his obsession with Greenland. He said right from the beginning that he would make Greenland part of the United States no “matter what it takes.” Denmark and Greenland stood up to him. The European Union stood up to him. Several European nations deployed troops to Greenland. Trump kept making the same idiotic statements, the same demands, until finally at Davos, he had to back down.

Kristi Noem and DHS could have done the whole thing differently. They could have sent ICE and Border Patrol agents to Minneapolis and sought to work with local and state police to identify those they called “the worst of the worst” and arrested them. But that is not the way fascists work. They thought we’re in charge, so we’re doing things our way.

When the citizens of Minneapolis rebelled and resisted peacefully by following ICE patrols and reporting to each other where the patrols were going and showing up in numbers greater than the number of agents carrying out the patrols, Noem and Bongino and the rest of ICE and Border Patrol commanders just kept up the same tactics. When it turned out that immigrants were staying off the streets and keeping their children out of school to avoid arrests, ICE kept to the same tactics. When citizens of Minneapolis pitched in and brought food to immigrants so they could continue hiding, ICE kept to the same tactics. When two citizens who were peacefully resisting were murdered, ICE didn’t change what they were doing. Noem and Trump and Miller doubled down.

Trump and his fascists refused to change their tactics because fascists don’t do that. They just keep pushing. Trump could have studied history to see what happened to Hitler and the Nazis in World War II. They murdered civilians wholesale. They bombed civilians in Great Britain. They took and occupied way more territory than they had the forces to hold. When the U.S. and Allied forces started moving successfully against Hitler, he kept doing what he had been doing. Hitler didn’t change. Fascists were inflexible, predictable.

Trump could have paid attention to what has happened in Ukraine. Putin attacked a much weaker country with a much smaller army. They managed to take some land, but when Ukraine pushed back forcefully and cleverly, the Russians got stalled. So, Putin started bombing and killing civilians, and he just kept doing what he was doing. Putin was inflexible. He had no new ideas. He and his fascist forces are in the same place they were three years ago.

Trump is in the same place he was three months ago. The only difference between Trump and Putin is that the citizens of Minneapolis didn’t fight back with guns and artillery. Instead, Trump has been defeated on the battlefield of Minneapolis by an army of peaceful civilians using their will, their cohesiveness, their cellphones, their whistles and their flexibility. When ICE moved from one neighborhood to another, the citizens of Minneapolis moved right along with them.

Minneapolis made it as difficult as possible for ICE and Border Patrol to do their jobs. They posted photos and videos showing the world what ICE was doing – beating people, throwing women to the ground, arresting little children, separating parents from their children, gassing and beating and even killing peaceful civilians.

It worked. Trump’s numbers began to take a beating. Everything his people said to the press was a lie. Good and Pretti were not “urban terrorists.” They were peaceful protesters. When Trump’s lawyers went into court and told lies, they were found out and admonished by judges, who began to ban some of the tactics ICE was using, such as using tear gas and pepper spray on peaceful protesters.

What is Trump having his fascist forces do now? They are readying assaults into red states like Kentucky and Tennessee, where local and state police are signing cooperation and partnership agreements. But not everyone in Tennessee and Kentucky and Louisiana is MAGA. There are pro-immigrant organizations everywhere. There are lawyers who can file the same sorts of lawsuits that worked in Minneapolis and Chicago.

When Trump’s fascists encounter resistance in other states, they will keep doing what they do, because they don’t have any new ideas. They are inflexible because Trump is inflexible. He thinks that because he has power, he can do things any way he wants.

The citizens of Minneapolis proved that fascism didn’t work in their streets. Citizens in other cities in other states have been watching. Trump’s fascists will keep making mistakes because they don’t have any other way of doing things. More people will be killed. Trump is under 40 percent in some polls, and his numbers will continue to go even lower than they are now.

This is an election year. More than 50 Republicans have already announced they are retiring from Congress. There will be more. Trump’s fascist gerrymandering tactic isn’t working. Fifteen state legislatures that were once safely Republican are now up for grabs. What he is doing in the streets of America to immigrants and to American citizens is not working, and it’s not popular. Minneapolis showed us that.

MAGA or no MAGA, this is not a fascist country. Trump is going to turn some red states blue in November. He’s going to push and push and push with his stupid tactics on immigration, and he’s going to push and push and push with his stupid tariffs, and prices are going to keep going up, and he is going to continue to shed support, and he’s going to lose both houses of Congress in November.

Fascism doesn’t work. Trump’s refusal to learn this is going to cost him dearly.