100 days into President Donald Trump’s second term, it is objectively true to say the United States is captive to a fascist regime.
But there is a silver lining — the more blatantly illegal acts Trump commits, the more opposition to his regime solidifies, increasing the likelihood that he will soon no longer have compliant majorities in Congress to help him enact his agenda. And as the American public continues to publicly stand up to the administration, Trump’s grip on power will eventually slip.
Trump may wish to be a dictator like Vladimir Putin in Russia or Viktor Orban in Hungary, but autocracy takes time to cement, and Trump’s window to consolidate power is closing. Orban — who is viewed as Trump’s European counterpart — was elected as prime minister for a second time in 2010, and it took him more than a decade to fully seize the levers of power in a country of less than 10 million people.
At 78 years old, Trump is attempting the Orbanization of a country of more than 340 million residents. In the process, he has ignited a wave of public outrage that the regime has been unable to contain due to its geographically diffuse nature, its practice of nonviolent tactics, and its decentralized organizing structure. And he is notably stacking up losses in the courts — even at the hands of judges he himself appointed in his first term.
It’s critical to understand that while Americans are up against a tyrannical regime that has open disdain for the Constitution and is actively using the federal government as a cudgel to beat institutions into submission, Trump is nonetheless overplaying the hand he was dealt to his own detriment. And both he and his Republican enablers in Congress can be defeated if we continue to point out their flagrant abuses of the law, stand against them in the streets, and commit to using our electoral power to oust them in next year’s midterm elections.
Trump is exactly the kind of fascist we thought he would be
Retired general and former Trump chief of staff John Kelly said last October that Trump “falls into the general definition of fascist.” He expanded on this by describing fascism as “a far-right authoritarian, ultranationalist, political ideology and movement characterized by a dictatorial leader, centralized autocracy, militarism, forcible suppression of opposition, [and] belief in a natural social hierarchy.” General Mark Milley — who Trump appointed as Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff in 2019 — called Trump “fascist to the core” in an interview with journalist Bob Woodward. And still, Trump won reelection and was the first Republican to win the popular vote in 20 years.
During the first 100 days of Trump’s second term, he has acted exactly as the fascist autocrat Kelly and Milley warned he would be. Trump believes this wholeheartedly, calling himself a “king” and entertaining talk of an unconstitutional third term to the point where would-be Republican candidates are reportedly shying away from seeking the presidency in 2028.
He has threatened the conquest of Greenland, Canada, Gaza, and the Panama Canal. He has used executive orders to intimidate some of the nation’s biggest law firms into contributing nearly a billion dollars worth of free legal services to advance the regime’s goals. The administration even threatened to launch an autism registry, sparking comparisons to Nazi Germany’s registry of autistic people that it later used for mass extermination (that plan was later retracted). Federal agents even arrested a county judge in Milwaukee, Wisconsin and charged her with two felonies after she refused their illegal attempt to interrupt an ongoing hearing.
He is actively seeking to rewrite American history on multiple fronts, including removing Black history artifacts from the Smithsonian, purging government websites of important Black history like the Tuskegee Airmen and baseball icon Jackie Robinson’s military service record. His Department of Defense has purged the Naval Academy library of books celebrating the Black experience like Maya Angelou’s “I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings,” while keeping racist and white supremacist books in circulation like Adolf Hitler’s “Mein Kampf” and Jean Raspai’s “The Camp of the Saints.”
The regime has also followed through on its campaign promise to carry out widespread deportations of undocumented immigrants, though it has included legal immigrants and even some US citizens in its deportation efforts. And the administration is openly admitting that it is revoking visas for explicitly political reasons.
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In court documents, an assistant US attorney is said to have targeted 21 year-old Columbia University student Yunseo Chung — who participated in pro-Palestinian demonstrations on campus — for deportation despite having a valid visa “due to the situation with the protesting.”
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Secretary of State Marco Rubio said that Tufts University student Rumeysa Ozturk, who was abducted off the street in broad daylight by plainclothes federal agents and put in an unmarked van, was had her visa revoked due to her pro-Palestinian activism.
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Georgetown University postdoctoral fellow Badar Khan Suri was arrested at his Virginia home and put into federal custody in March despite being in the United States legally on a valid visa. His attorney told Politico that his client was being targeted due to his US citizen wife’s pro-Palestinian activism and their outspoken opposition to US foreign policy.
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Columbia University graduate student Mahmoud Khalil — who is married to a US citizen who just gave birth to their child — remains in federal custody, with the administration plainly saying he was put in deportation proceedings explicitly because of his political views.
Singling out legal immigrants over their politics is something that top Trump advisor Stephen Miller openly promised to do during a February 2024 speech to gun rights activists. Miller told National Rifle Association members that in addition to undocumented immigrants, he wanted to deport “people who were let in on visas but whose views, attitudes, and beliefs make them ineligible to stay in the country.” Miller is also the person who suggested that Trump send immigrants to El Salvador’s notorious maximum security CECOT prison — which a French journalist described as a “tropical gulag” and has been flagged for rampant human rights abuses — after former Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-Florida) brought the idea to Miller in 2024.
The regime is now paying El Salvador at least $6 million per year to detain deportees at CECOT, which has an estimated capacity of 40,000 people. Inmates are prohibited from calling family or attorneys, are kept in windowless, constantly-lit cells with 80 other inmates for 23 hours per day, and sleep in metal bunks with no mattresses or pillows. They are only allowed outside of their cells for 30 minutes of tightly supervised exercise and/or Bible study, and no inmates have ever been released from the prison.
“The conditions had zapped the inhabitants of any will to fight,” Gaetz told TIME magazine. “It’s tough to see the human condition drained of hope.”
Trump’s Department of Justice has admitted that Maryland resident Kilmar Abrego Garcia, who has been in the United States for 13 years and has no criminal record, was sent to CECOT by mistake. Abrego Garcia is also protected by a 2019 court order that expressly prohibits him from being sent to El Salvador due to the high likelihood of persecution. However, the regime is actively ignoring a 9-0 Supreme Court order to “facilitate” Abrego Garcia’s return, and argues that it lacks the jurisdictional authority to undo its own error.
238 Venezuelan immigrants have already been sent to CECOT without any due process after Trump invoked the Alien Enemies Act of 1798, which has only been used three times since it was signed into law. The regime alleged that those deportees were members of violent gangs like MS-13 and Tren de Aragua, though the New York Times looked into the individual cases of those deported and found that almost none of them had any known gang affiliations or criminal records. Trump even expressed to El Salvadoran President Nayib Bukele during his April visit to the White House that he wanted to send US citizens to CECOT, and asked Bukele to build five more facilities modeled after the mega-prison. The ACLU is now sounding the alarm that Trump’s regime is now even deporting US citizens as young as two years old.
The American people are speaking out—and the regime is nervous
One bright spot in the midst of so much blatant evil is that vast swaths of the American public are actively refusing to be under the boot of the regime. And the administration is showing its weaknesses as the people strategically push back.
In the first public opinion polls gauging Americans’ view of the administration 100 days in, there is near-universal consensus that the regime is overplaying its hand — even on the issues where Trump has historically been the strongest.
In a poll conducted by the Economist and YouGov, Americans said Trump’s actions were more likely to hurt the United States than help by a 24-point margin. The most recent New York Times-Siena College poll (which poll aggregator FiveThirtyEight regarded as the most accurate in the United States) found that Americans were opposed to Trump withholding federal funds from universities by a 24-point margin, and against his imposition of broad tariffs without Congressional approval by a 33-point margin.
While Trump was largely elected due to Americans’ perception that he was the best candidate on issues like immigration and the economy, the latest polls have likewise found that a majority of Americans oppose his management of those issues in particular. A Washington Post-ABC News-Ipsos poll found Trump underwater on immigration, along with an Associated Press-NORC poll. Even the outwardly pro-Trump Fox News network found that a plurality of respondents in its late April poll disapproved of his handling of immigration. That same Fox News survey also found that nearly two-thirds of those polled opposed Trump’s record so far on the economy, tariffs, taxes, and inflation.
Most importantly, this opposition is manifesting in the form of loud, public demonstrations in the streets. According to CNN, people in more than 1,400 cities both in the US and around the world participated in April’s “Hands Off” protests against the Trump regime. Activist group Indivisible found that approximately 600,000 people nationwide registered for anti-Trump protests in all 50 states. And organizers with the “50501” movement — which signifies its goal of 50 protests in 50 states on one day — say that each subsequent day of action has seen significantly higher attendance than each previous protest, suggesting that public opposition to the administration is intensifying by the day.
“It’s gone from a trickle to a tidal wave very quickly,” 50501 national press coordinator Hunter Dunn told the Guardian.
The growing national consensus against the Trump regime has coincided with a wave of staggering losses in court and the abrupt rolling back of one of Trump’s most divisive policies. After losing more than 50 cases in 23 states, the administration has reversed its revocations of immigrant students’ visas, exposing a key vulnerability for the regime as it seeks to centralize power.
If grassroots opposition continues to build throughout 2025, it could very well manifest in staggering losses for the Republican Party in the 2026 midterm elections. Even just ending Republican control of the House of Representatives next November could prove to be the beginning of the end of the regime’s attempt to replace our Constitutional republic with a fascist autocracy. Sen. Jon Ossoff (D-Georgia) promised to impeach Trump should Democrats win back control of the House next year, saying his regime has “already exceeded any prior standard for impeachment.”
The first 100 days of Trump’s second term has proven that a bold opposition campaign led by the people will influence elected officials and institutions to follow their lead, as Harvard University has demonstrated in its own firm stance against Trump’s attempts to subvert it to his will. And while numerous law firms have cut deals with the administration to avoid being targeted by Trump’s executive orders, other top law firms like Perkins Coie, Janner & Block, and WilmerHale have fought back and won. When people and institutions refuse to obey in advance and stand up to fascists, the fascists will eventually back down.
Carl Gibson is a journalist whose work has been published in CNN, USA TODAY, the Guardian, the Washington Post, the Houston Chronicle, the Louisville Courier-Journal, Barron’s, Business Insider, the Independent, and NPR, among others. Follow him on Bluesky @crgibs.bsky.social.
