The Trump administration’s declaration of war on American cities is a logical escalation of the white supremacist project. This is not a policy shift but a clearer revelation of the settler state's inherent violence against Black and Brown communities.
“….I will state flatly that the bulk of this country’s white population impresses me, and has so impressed me for a very long time, as being beyond any conceivable hope of moral rehabilitation. They have been white, if I may so put it, too long; they have been married to the lie of white supremacy too long; the effect on their personalities, their lives, their grasp of reality, has been as devastating as the lava which so memorably immobilized the citizens of Pompeii. They are unable to conceive that their version of reality, which they want me to accept, is an insult to my history and a parody of theirs and an intolerable violation of myself." (James Baldwin “The Price May Be Too High,” appeared in The New York Times on February 2, 1969.)
“Chicago about to find out why it’s called the Department of WAR,” (Donald Trump)
There is a historical and social context that must ground our understanding of the policy formations emanating from the Trump administration. And what is that context?
It is the denial on the part of elements in the Trump administration and the U.S. ruling class that the world has entered a transitional period where hegemonic power has shifted away from the U.S. and the “collective West.”
This detachment from reality has resulted in contradictory policies emanating from the Trump administration that have been both reckless and counterproductive to the interests of the U.S. desire to maintain global dominance. The overreliance on the use of coercive measures and various forms of state violence and subversion by the elements of the capitalist ruling class who represent the most aggressive elements of that class has failed to reverse the imperial decline accelerated over the last three administrations.
The inability to come to terms with the ongoing economic crisis that began in 2007-08 and only slighted mitigated during the first few years of Trump’s first administration brought the Trump forces back to power in 2025 after the disastrous policies of the Biden administration that created the Ukrainian war, 1970s style “stagflation” and the genocide in Gaza. But with the return of Trump there was another aspect of the Biden administration that the Trump forces would build on. And that was the naked use of state power to suppress opposition domestically with the attacks on students who opposed the U.S. supported genocide in Gaza and the criminalization of opponents to the Ukraine war being two dramatic examples of those policies. But U.S. lawlessness in the international arena was also something Trump continued and took to a new level.
War and repression were instrumentalized as the weapons of choice. Full spectrum dominance globally with a military first strategy and enhanced policing, including with the federalization of the national guard and the Immigration and Custom Enforcement (ICE) both strategies rationalized by the need to control and contain the racialized others in order to maintain natural racial hierarchy.
This commitment represented the complete abandonment of the liberal rights framework and the structures and institutions of the liberal international order established after the second imperialist war in 1945.
This turn requires the suppression of all internal opposition.
In order to pay for this turn, it is necessary to impose austerity as social policy. This is reflected in the 2026 budget. As Dr. King reminded us more than 50 years ago, a budget is a statement of the moral choices by a state.
The 2026 budget is a full-frontal attack on Medicaid, food security with cuts to the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP), health subsidies, education, housing and the environment in order to pay for the U.S. imperialist project. The class interests and moral and political choices represented in the budget graphically demonstrates the division between the masses of people and the white supremacist colonial/capitalist class.
Yet, the rulers understand the precariousness of this turn with the U.S. experiencing a 36 trillion-dollar debt, budget deficit and a servicing of the debt costing the U.S. tax payer over a trillion dollars a year.
Therefore, the intimidation tactics with the Trump administrations’ threat to invade Chicago and New Orleans are meant to shift consciousness toward the normalization of repressive state power and intimidate all opposition into non-opposition. It is also a dangerous escalation in white identity politics because everyone understands that the targets in those urban areas are not only the undocumented Latinos but the “Niggers.”
But the laws of contradictions prevail here:
The arrogance engendered by impunity in Gaza and the Biden induced war in Ukraine has resulted in imperial overreach but also resulted in finally exposing the real nature of the Western civilizational project, a project based on the dehumanization of the other.
As a result, new coalitions of the oppressed are once again being considered. The Black Alliance for Peace campaign to bring attention and organized opposition to the militarization of U.S, society and the imperialist policy of the U.S. abroad is receiving new interest. Campaigns like the Zone of Peace for the Americas, the U.S. Out of Africa efforts and the programs that have resulted in the militarization of the police are being looked at again with new eyes.
In response to the threats of federal takeover in those cities with large Latino and African/Black populations, BAP is moving to establish Community Self-defense Coalitions to oppose all national repressive structures, including ICE by building multi-national, anti-colonial, pro-working class, local community power.
For white supremacy there is no shared humanity, no common ethical framework with non-whites, unless those non-whites demonstrate their full assimilation of “whiteness.”
The constant references to October 7, 2023 are to reinforce that the sufferings of Palestinians as deserved. This is the frame for the justifications for the invasions of cities where there is “Black” political control.
The inherent criminality of Black folks, the supposed chaos of our communities and even our social-economic conditions reaffirm our intractable “otherness” and justifies the non-recognition of our rights.
As a social problem at the heart of the white nation, extraordinary measures of control and containment are framed as commonsense responses to this domestic threat.
Trump's declaration of war on Chicago was in reality a very concrete declaration of war on the Black and Brown residents of that city. The fact that this threat emanated from the U.S. national government against individuals, who in the case of Black people are supposed to have constitutional rights represents an ominous but not surprising new level of repression.
Like the Palestinians who in the minds of Zionists are all terrorists or potential terrorists, Blacks are criminals or potential criminals in the imagination of not only Trump and his backers but the broader white society. Therefore, appeals to empirical evidence of a diminished threat of crime emanating from the Black community does not counter the subconscious beliefs, fears and existential threat to white society that Blacks represent. Unlike Latinos from Central and South America seen as new invaders bringing crime and violence, Blacks are the “original gangsters” in the minds of so many whites. Look at the framing of the murder of a Ukrainian woman coming from the white house. All of the racist tropes are being deployed.
Unfortunately, violence from the U.S. settler state will not dissipate. Violence is at the core of the settler project. The Trump administration is merely setting the state for more lawlessness that will be the foundation for the next administration, no matter the party in power. Democrat party strategists are already advising potential candidates that they must narrow the gap between the democrats’ positions on crime and those of Trump. Despite the fact that democrats stances on crime have been as draconian as republicans, the message here is that the party must continue its trajectory to the right to be competitive.
What that means for the colonized and exploited peoples of the South trapped in the confines of this settler state is more violence and war. This analysis is not to bemoan this inevitability but to suggest that we can have no illusions. Preparations to defend our fundamental human rights have already started. We want peace. But we understand that for peace to prevail we must defeat the warmongers, the killers of dreams and cultures, the barbarians who can remain silent on Gaza.
Ajamu Baraka is an editor and contributing columnist for the Black Agenda Report. He is the Director of the North-South Project for People(s)-Centered Human Rights and serves on the Executive Committee of the U.S. Peace Council and leadership body of the U.S.-based United National Anti-War Coalition (UNAC).
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