Expanding and consolidating the police state

On Friday, the Trump administration quietly designated the entire Customs and Border Protection (CBP) agency, which polices US borders, as a “Security Agency,” according to an internal memo obtained by The Nation. This follows repeated attempts by federal immigration authorities to dramatically expand their reach in recent years.

The memo, which was signed by CBP’s Acting Commissioner Mark Morgan and dated January 31, places CBP under the same designation as highly secretive intelligence and law enforcement agencies like the FBI and Secret Service. This grants CBP greater secrecy by exempting certain records from disclosure to the public.

[...]

"This policy change now protects all CBP employee names from subsequent responses to Freedom of Information Act requests or other public disclosures for CGP employee data.”

  the Nation

Whistleblowers, however, don't get that courtesy.

The memo was provided to The Nation by a CBP contractor who requested anonymity to avoid professional reprisal. The contractor was critical of CBP’s new classification, saying, “Designating all of CBP a Security Agency exempt from OPM’s disclosure policy is simply absurd. There’s no need for the average CBP employee to have their name and position redacted from FOIA requests. This is another example of the current administration making it even more difficult to obtain pertinent information via official channels and claiming it’s related to security in some way.”

Careful, you might be outed yourself.

Under President Trump, immigration agencies have pushed for expanded powers and secrecy. For example, in February, The Daily Beast’s Betsy Swan reported that Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) sought to join the US Intelligence Community, which would grant them extraordinary new privileges like spying powers and secrecy measures. While the effort was ultimately rebuffed, as Swan reported in a subsequent article, ICE was granted enhanced intelligence capabilities.

And that was just the first stab at it.

Democracy may have had its run. Unless voters take away the GOP's power in November, fascism is here - perhaps to stay.

Fourteen Characteristics of Fascism

1. Powerful and Continuing Nationalism
2. Disdain for the Recognition of Human Rights
3. Identification of Enemies/Scapegoats as a Unifying Cause
4. Supremacy of the Military
5. Rampant Sexism
6. Controlled Mass Media
7. Obsession with National Security
8. Religion and Government are Intertwined
9. Corporate Power is Protected
10. Labor Power is Suppressed
11. Disdain for Intellectuals and the Arts
12. Obsession with Crime and Punishment
13. Rampant Cronyism and Corruption
14. Fraudulent Elections

From The Anatomy of Fascism by Robert Paxton (via Vox):

Fascism may be defined as a form of political behavior marked by obsessive preoccupation with community decline, humiliation, or victimhood and by compensatory cults of unity, energy, and purity, in which a mass-based party of committed nationalist militants, working in uneasy but effective collaboration with traditional elites, abandons democratic liberties and pursues with redemptive violence and without ethical or legal restraints goals of internal cleansing and external expansion. (p. 218)