Over the past decade, there’s been a lot of talk about “ideological extremism” on both the left and right, and the government has often claimed that warped political beliefs are encouraging Americans to commit violent acts. However, under the new Trump administration, the government now seems prepared to go after people who don’t believe in anything at all.
Independent journalist Ken Klippenstein writes that the government has a new target in its war on extremism: nihilists—more specifically, Nihilist Violent Extremists, or NVEs. The government has reportedly come up with this designation as a kind of catchall for the culprits behind various violent incidents, and the term has shown up in several recent court cases.
Who is a true NVE? That’s a good question, and the answer is: anybody. Klippenstein aptly notes that the term has a conveniently loose definition that could be applied to all sorts of different groups that the government considers undesirable. He writes that the NVE term…
…has the beauty of being elastic enough to apply to individuals and groups who are the focus of the administration’s war on all kinds of Americans. Nihilism also avoids all of the rusty and problematic words of the past: subversive, dissident, insurrectionist, revolutionary, or even “anti-government” (the Biden term).
Klippenstein writes that the term was recently used in the legal proceedings of Nikita Casap, a teen from Wisconsin who was arrested in February and charged with murdering his parents. Law enforcement claims Casap also planned to assassinate President Trump to spur a civil war in the U.S. But there are plenty of people who have been accused of committing violent crimes for vaguely anarchistic reasons, be it people like Luigi Mangione, or the gaggle of people of who have recently been arrested for vandalizing and firebombing Teslas, or the Zizians.
The road to this new low in law enforcement terminology has been long. While “ideological extremism” has always existed in the U.S., it became a political (and, eventually, policy) issue in the modern era during the Clinton years, when incidents like Ruby Ridge and the Oklahoma City bombing brought fears of the rightwing militia movement into the mainstream. During the Bush years, 9/11 spurred a war on Islamist extremism—both in the U.S. and all over the world. Then, during the Biden years, the specter of January 6th encouraged the government to declare a war on “domestic terrorism.”
In short, the government has always found reasons to justify its federal police powers, though few of them have ever been as sloppily constructed as the current government’s newest fearmongering buzzword. (snip)
The American people cannot understand why this administration is fighting so hard to prevent correcting its own mistake and returning this resident to the USA. Given the notorious nature of the prison, an intentional choice by this administration, one can only conclude that Mr. Garcia has been killed and the administration is engaging in a coverup.
As a bare minimum, if he is alive, the administration is afraid of his return, because he will be able to truthfully testify to conditions of his illegal deportation and subsequent actions by the prison that the US contracted with to house US detainees.
We know standard Trump procedure is to attack me. That does not answer my or America’s concerns. The only possible response is to return Mr. Garcia.
Today, Mohsen Mahdawi, a legal resident of Vermont, walked into an immigration office to complete a final step for citizenship. Instead, he was arrested by plain-clothed, armed individuals with faces covered. This is immoral, inhumane, and illegal. He must receive due process and be released.
Let’s make one thing clear. The immigrants the Trump regime seized off the street and sent to a Salvadoran prison were NOT deported. To be deported, you have to go through due process. Immigrants who are deported usually have to face a judge. The people sent to the prison in El Salvador never faced a judge before being shipped off or received due process. They were not deported. They were kidnapped.
And this prison in El Salvador, where the president referred to himself as the “coolest” dictator, isn’t so much a prison as it is a concentration camp or a gulag.
Mona Charen wrote, “We are outsourcing torture and murder. What kind of president, what kind of political party, can look at that with satisfaction?” And what American can not at least wonder about their own security?”
Speaking to the “cool” dictator while he was visiting the White House yesterday (and you thought it got weird when Zelensky visited), Donald Trump told President Nayib Bukele (He deserves a “sic” too. Sic) that “home growns” should be next. He said, “The home growns. You gotta build about five more places. It’s not big enough.” By the way, the cool dictator didn’t wear a suit and tie either. See what you started, Elon?
But what does Trump mean by “home growns?” He’s referencing American citizens, even those born in the United States, that he deems to be criminals, and they should be sent to rot in a Salvadoran super-max prison where human rights are not a thing.
Then Trump told reporters, “I just asked the president — it’s this massive complex that he built, jail complex — I said, ‘Can you build some more of them please?’ As many as we can get out of our country.”
He added, “If they’re criminals, and if they hit people with baseball bats over the head that happen to be 90 years old, if they rape 87-year-old women in Coney Island, Brooklyn, yeah, yeah that includes them.” Or, if they testify against you, or do their jobs in the Justice Department in prosecuting people who start insurrections and steal classified documents, or they draw mean cartoons about you, yeah, yeah, that includes them.
The prison Trump is referring to and that he wants duplicated several times over is a so-called “terrorism confinement center” (CECOT). Prisoners are kept in their cells for at least 23-and-a-half hours a day. They are starved and beaten. There’s no fresh water. People are tortured. There have been 368 deaths in the prison, and it’s only been around since 2022.
Trump said, “They’re great facilities. Very strong facilities. They don’t play games.” You know, games like due process, civil rights, and human rights…”games” like that.
Trump claims all the bad people he sent there without due process are gang members. Still, there’s a new report that claims 90 percent are not gang members, including Abrego Garcia, 29, a Maryland father who was sent to El Salvador on March 15, despite a 2019 court order prohibiting the return to his home country for fear of persecution by a gang there.
The Supreme Court has ordered the Trump regime to bring Garcia back home. The regime has admitted Garcia was mistakenly sent to this gulag, but the regime doesn’t want to bring him back. The dictator, El Salvador’s dictator, not ours, refuses to send Garcia back to the US. The decision by SCOTUS was unanimous. In case you’re a Republican, “unanimous” means all of them. Do you know how rare it is for all nine members of the Supreme Court to agree on anything? They can’t agree on lunch. There was a near revolt the time it was Clarence’s turn to choose, and he picked Blimpies.
So, if the regime can snatch legal residents off the street, then why can’t they do the same to US citizens? You may believe the Constitution protects you, and yeah…it’s supposed to. But the Constitution didn’t protect Abrego Garcia, Rumeysa Ozturk, Mahmoud Khalil, or Mohsen Mahdawi, who was arrested yesterday during an interview as part of his application for US citizenship. Ozturk, Khalil, and Mahdawi were arrested and then detained in Louisiana for protesting Israel’s bombardment of Gaza.
If you do get snatched up and sent away, you won’t be able to argue for your constitutional rights from a concentration camp in Central America that doesn’t even have toilets. The people who would argue for your rights may not even know you’re missing until you’re swatting at flying buzzy stingy things in a gulag in a Salvadoran mangrove swamp. They have jungles, snakes, giant spiders, crocodiles, gang bangers, and Blimpies down there. You won’t like it. I have two friends from El Salvador, and neither wants to go back…ever. And they weren’t in a concentration camp.
You know how people look at Indiana and say, “I don’t wanna be stuck there.” It’s kinda the same with Latin America and El Salvador. It’s the Indiana of the Americas.
Douglas Dunn, a friend of mine, posted on this cartoon at Facebook, “You are only as legal — you are only as much a U.S. citizen — as the nearest ICE agent (or his boss) says you are, if they can take you WITHOUT DUE PROCESS so you never get the chance to prove you are a citizen.” Doug is a great writer. He writes gooder than I do.
Trump has made it clear that he won’t bring you back, even if a federal court orders it, even if that court is the Supreme Court voting 9-0. Even Clarence and Sammy ordered Trump to bring Garcia back…with some Blimpies.
They can’t really start deporting American citizens, can they?
Last Friday, Nicole Micheroni, an American immigration lawyer born in Massachusetts, received a letter from the Department of Homeland Security (dog-killer Kristi Noem’s agency), saying her parole status has been revoked and she must self-deport within seven days. The letter (which was snail-mailed with a legal stamp and everything, so you know they’re serious) also said if she doesn’t self deport, then the government will take action. The letter ended with, “Again, DHS is terminating your parole. Do not attempt to remain in the United States – the federal government will find you. Please depart the United States immediately.”
Micheroni made calls and found out the letter was legitimate but intended for someone else. Maybe DHS is practicing for when they do start kicking Americans out of America. But still, if I was Ms. Micheroni, I’d sleep with one eye open for the next seven days, or four years, give or take.
Creative note: I’m never comfortable drawing myself, so consider this kinda-sorta me. When I put myself in a cartoon, I’m afraid I’ll come off as having delusions of grandeur, as though I think I’m important enough that the regime is paying attention to me. I also don’t want to be too kind to myself or even make myself too ugly. I’m still not happy with the self-caricature GoComics is using now (and I never sent this to them. I sent it to Cartooning for Peace. But maybe I should leave it alone in case the regime uses it like a mugshot when they come looking to snatch me off the street and send me to El Salvador.
Music note: I listened to The Beatles and The Rolling Stones. Are you a Beatles or Stones person? Tell me in the comments. I’m more Beatles than Stones.
Drawn in 30 seconds (Sorry for the earworm): (snip-Go see)
Rep. Jack Kimble tweeted that “President Trump is now 6’3” 224 pounds with 4.8% body fat. We might lose him to the NFL draft.”
Captain Barbarella, the physician to the president (sic), failed to hide in his memorandum about Donald Trump’s physical that he’s a Trump sycophant. Or at least he failed to hide that he was controlled by a member of the cult.
His doctor’s name is actually Captain Sean Barbabella and NOT Barbarella, the title of the 1968 Jane Fonda space sex movie (I’ve never seen it). If congressman Kimble can accidentally refer to the El Salvadore President Nayib Bukele as President Bukake, I can use Barbarella. Also, I don’t know what “bukake” means because I’m a good boy.
While the report of the exam looks like it was written by a real doctor in most of the details, there are still little bits included to make it political and cultist.
For example, when the memorandum mentions his hearing, it mentions “scarring on the right ear from a gunshot wound,” reminding us that Trump was shot is a superhero to survive it (unlike that sucker standing behind him). The doc also wrote that Trump’s “active lifestyle continues to contribute significantly to his well-being,” with one of those activities being his “frequent victories in golf events,” which makes him “fully fit” to be president (sic).
So it’s not the golfing that makes him physically fit to be president, but the golf victories. See what he did there? It’s like the champion is a Greek Adonis, but all the losers are donut-eating hose beasts. Have you seen John Daly? He also claims he’s 215 pounds.
Just how physically active is golfing when you don’t walk the course? Trump doesn’t even like stairs. Yes, there are elevators in the White House, and fortunately for Trump, one of them is a freight elevator. That brings us to Trump’s weight.
Captain Barbarella reports that Captain Big Mac only weighs 224 pounds. He also reports that Trump is 75 inches tall, which is six feet and three inches. I call bullshit.
Here’s what the White House released:
Unless you care about the president’s (sic) health (and I do not), it doesn’t matter to you or me what he weighs or how tall he is. What is important is that they’re dishonest. What’s important is the depth into which this regime sinks the cult into the government.
Trump, who is 78, needs to appear as a Superman to his cult. I’m shocked the memo mentions he takes aspirin for cardiac prevention. As we’ve learned, they lie about everything.
Right now, the regime is lying to the Supreme Court by claiming they can’t have a man they illegally snatched off the street and sent to a prison in El Salvador brought back to this country.
When Trump was running for president in 2016, Dr. Harold Bornstein stated that Trump would be the “healthiest individual ever elected to the presidency.” A couple of years later, we learned that Trump had dictated that letter, which didn’t surprise anyone. A doctor should lose his medical license over that. And it wouldn’t surprise us to learn he dictated “224” and “75 inches” to Captain Barbarella and wouldn’t allow him to mention that Trump’s cholesterol is just Big Mac Secret Sauce. His first White House physician was a lying alcoholic lunatic, Dr. Ronny Jackson, who doesn’t practice medicine anymore and is now in a place where he can’t hurt anybody, Congress.
Ronny Jackson claimed that Trump could live to be 200, and judging from the way our luck works, that might be true.
The memo does show that despite spreading debunked lies about vaccines, like his Health Secretary does, Trump is up to date on vaccines.
The part we should care about, and is more absurd than claiming he weighs 224 pounds, is the claim he scored 30 out of 30 on a cognitive test. I checked to be sure the memo didn’t state that he also has hands that are not tiny.
Anyone who believes Trump, the shark boat battery guy, scored 30 out of 30 on a cognitive test needs to take a cognitive test. I don’t believe this doctor would let us know if Trump scored less than 30.
Trump’s last presidential physical had him at 244 pounds. His 2023 arrest in Georgia listed him at 215 (they don’t weigh the prisoners but take their word for how much they weigh), and this exam says he’s 224.
If Trump does weigh 224 pounds, then that’s 224 pounds of walking/talking bullshit.
The one number that’s accurate about Trump is 34, as in 34 felony convictions.
Creative note: I still have a few other ideas I wrote last week that I want to get to, but I knew last night that I needed to cover this today. This idea hit me shortly after I woke up.
Music Note: I listened to The Beatles.
Drawn in 30 Seconds (with music): Sorry for the earworm. (Snip-go see/listen!)
So what is the goal here, to save money, or ultimately to kill unhealthy Americans that Republicans think are a drag on their wallets? Inside U.S. health agencies, workers confront chaos and questions as operations come ungluedflip.it/3rz_Ee
April 15, 1947 Jackie Roosevelt Robinson became the first African American to play in a major league baseball game in the 20th century. His stepping onto Ebbets Field in a Brooklyn Dodgers uniform broke the “color line,” the segregation of professional teams. The International League in 1887 began a wave of League-wide black exclusion, and it had been complete since 1899, when Bill Galloway became the last African-American player in white organized ball (Woodstock, Ontario). Though hitless in three at-bats, Robinson started at first base, and the Dodgers beat the Boston Braves that day, 5-3. “Jackie, we’ve got no army. There’s virtually nobody on our side. No owners, no umpires, very few newspapermen. And I’m afraid that many fans will be hostile. We’ll be in a tough position. We can win only if we can convince the world that I’m doing this because you’re a great ballplayer, a fine gentleman.”
April 15, 1967 King and Dr. Benjamin Spock lead an anti-war march to the United Nations, 15 April 1967 Amidst growing opposition to the war in Vietnam, large-scale anti-war protests were held in New York, San Francisco and other cities. In New York, the protest began in Central Park, where over 150 draft cards were burned, and concluded at the United Nations with speeches by Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr. and others. King’s opposition to the war, excerpts of his speeches and reaction throughout the country
In the time since the first European man stepped foot on the soil of these shores, we have done the cringeworthy all too often, but now and again we do that which allows us to still stand tall. My father’s Uncle Dutch went to fight in WW2 and brought back pictures of the horrors of the concentration camps. We stopped that! We stood against the Fascist Nazi. And we should be proud of that.
I am sure that there were people then who believed the Jews, Gypsy’s and Gays were criminals deserving of their internment in concentration camps. I’m sure there were some who believed that Jews had no right to live in Germany. I’m sure that there some who believed that Gypsy’s were inherently criminal, whether they had a criminal record or not. I’m sure that there were some who convinced themselves that anyone who was gay was deserving of all abuse. I’m sure there were some. And, unfortunately, too many others went along with it.
Just like these German men, we will one day be forced to come face to face with what we have done, what we have allowed, because some charismatic charlatan said we should.
Karla Jay remembers joining the second night of street protests during the 1969 Stonewall uprising in New York City. For her, and for so many other LGBTQ+ people, something had shifted: People were angry. They didn’t want things to go back to normal — because normal meant police raids. Normal meant living underground. It meant hiding who they were at their jobs and from their families. They wanted a radical change.
Radical change meant organizing. Jay joined a meeting with the Gay Liberation Front, which would become the incubator for the modern LGBTQ+ political movement and proliferate in chapters across the country. At those meetings, she remembers discussing what freedom could look like. Holding hands with a lover while walking down the street, without fear of getting beaten up, one person said. Another said they’d like to get married. At the time, those dreams seemed impossible.
Jay, now 78, is worried that history will repeat itself. She’s worried that LGBTQ+ people will be put in the dark again by the draconian policies of a second Trump administration.
“Are things worse than they were before Stonewall? Not yet,” she said. “It’s certainly possible that people will have to go back to underground lives, that trans people will have to flee to Canada, but it’s not worse yet.”
The 19th spoke with severalLGBTQ+ elders, including Jay, about what survival looks like under a hostile political regime and what advice they would give to young LGBTQ+ people right now.
“We have forgotten that the laws are written to protect property and not to protect people. They’re written to protect White men and their property, and historically, women and children were their property,” she said. “To expect justice from people who write laws to protect themselves has been a fundamental error of the lesbian, gay, bisexual, trans community.”
To fight back, LGBTQ+ Americans need to organize, Jay said. That starts with thinking locally — supporting local artists, independent stores and small presses, as well as LGBTQ+ organizations taking demonstrable political action and protecting queer culture.
“See what you can do without going crazy. If you can focus on one thing and you can spend one hour a week, or you can spend one day a week, that’s much better than being depressed and doing nothing,” she said. “Because the person you’re going to help is yourself. This is the time for all of us to step up.”
Renee Imperato (far right) poses with other demonstrators during a protest outside the Stonewall Inn, after the word transgender was erased from the National Park Service’s webpage, in New York, on February 14, 2025. (Courtesy of Renee Imperato)
Renata Ramos feels obligated to share her experiences with young people.As a 63-year-old trans Latina,she wants young people to know that so many of their elders have already been through hard times — which means that they can make it, too, including during this moment.
“I’m not scared in the least. Because we have fought so many battles — the elders. We have fought so many battles, with medicine, with HIV, with marching on Washington, with watching our friends die,” she said. “It’s been one war after another in our community that we have always won. We have always been resilient. We have always stood strong. We have always fought for our truth, and we’re still here. They haven’t been able to erase us.”
As Ramos watches the Trump administration use the power of the federal government to target transgender Americans and erase LGBTQ+ history, she’s not afraid for herself. She’s afraid for young LGBTQ+ people, especially young trans people who now find themselves at the center of a growing political and cultural war. If someone transitioned six months ago, she said, they now have a target on their back — and little to no experience with what that feels like.
“They don’t know what it is like to be a soldier going into war, as far as social issues. So I fear for them,” she said. “Who wouldn’t be scared?”
Criss Christoff Smith has seen firsthand what that fear can look like. On January 28, at 3 a.m., he received a phone call from an LGBTQ+ person who was considering taking their own life. This was a stranger —someone who admired from afar Smith’s advocacy as a Black trans man and Jamaican immigrant. This was someone who had been considering a gender transition for years, Smith said, who was now feeling broken. He spoke with them for two hours.
“It’s been quite dark,” Smith said. The onslaught of policies targeting marginalized people and the turbocharged news cycle are working to keep Black and trans people in a constant state of fear and uncertainty, he said.
“I tell everyone in my community, you have to stop responding to those alerts and just try to go inward,” he said. “Find a space of peace and spirituality.”
To Smith, who is 64, looking inward can mean reflecting on what’s still here. Although the Trump administration is going to make daily life harder for LGBTQ+ people, he said, laws can’t be undone with the stroke of a pen on an executive order. LGBTQ+ Americans need to find whatever source of strength and peace they can find right now — and try to remove themselves from the daily fray as much as possible — while still finding ways to take action.
“This is the time when we really have to find community, where we really have to hone in on our spiritual feelings and try to talk to someone. Don’t keep it to yourself,” he said. Joining protests or lobbying days at state capitols are great ways to find community in-person, Smith said — to be around like-minded people and to not feel so alone.
“That’s the best space to be in, not home alone and in your feelings and in your mind, because we can get lost there thinking negatively. So we have to stay positive and stay with like-minded people, and have those people constantly around you to reassure you and just hold you tight in that space,” he said.
Protests against the administration’s hostile LGBTQ+ policies have been ongoing — including outside the Stonewall National Monument. In at least one way, history is already repeating itself.
The National Park Service deleted all references to transgender and queer people from its web page honoring the 1969 Stonewall uprising — the most well-known moment from LGBTQ+ history in the country — leaving references to only lesbian, gay and bisexual people. Hundreds gathered in New York City to protest. Among them was Renee Imperato, a 76-year-old trans woman and New York native.
“Protests like this are our survival,” she told The 19th over email. “The rhetoric of this administration is driving a violent onslaught against our community. The Stonewall Rebellion is not over. We are at war, and we are still fighting back. What other choice do we have?”
Jay, herself an old hand at joining protests and demonstrations, said that she’s been afraid before every one of them. She’s lost sleep the night before and feared for her safety — but she did it anyway.
“I’m afraid I’ll be beaten. I’m afraid I’ll be arrested. But if you don’t do something even though you’re afraid, they win,” she said.
Jonathan says that when he asked a border agent to repeat a question, the reply was, “Are you deaf or just retarded?” He adds that he was then told, “Trump is back in town, we’re doing things the way we should have always been doing them.” Hit the link for much more. No paywall.
