Change the Face, Keep the Evil:

By Rob C.

Art by Paul Duginski

TL;DR: Facing a nose-dive in public opinion and the inconvenient optics of federal agents executing an ICU nurse, the Trump regime is attempting a classic authoritarian pivot. By replacing the thuggish Greg Bovino with the “architect of cruelty” Tom Homan in Minnesota, the administration isn’t cooling the jets—it’s adding more fuel. Minnesota, a state that dared to withhold its electoral fealty, has become the laboratory for a retribution campaign masked as immigration enforcement. While propaganda from Fox to the NYT keeps the public terrified of a non-existent crime wave, the real violence is being committed by unvetted federal militias. It’s time to realize that the “new guy” isn’t a fix; he’s the final step of the American police state.

Trump has a problem. His poll numbers are cratering faster than one of his crypto-scams, and even the most dedicated Fox News viewers are starting to blink at the sight of actual U.S. citizens being ventilated by federal agents on video. So, in a move that surprises absolutely no one who has studied the history of failing juntas, the Department of Homeland Security is performing a little executive reshuffling. Out goes Greg Bovino—the man who treated Minneapolis like a personal firing range—and in comes Tom Homan. It’s a classic “band-aid on a gunshot wound” strategy, except the band-aid is soaked in kerosene and the doctor is a known arsonist.

Make no mistake: moving Tom Homan into the Minnesota theater is not an “upgrade” in professionalism; it is a massive escalation in cruelty. Bovino was a blunt instrument, a wanna-be soldier of fortune who allowed his “agents” to treat the Bill of Rights like a restaurant menu. But Homan? Homan is the guy who wrote the manual. As the architect of the Family Separation Policy during the first Trump term, he proved that he doesn’t just tolerate human suffering—he designs systems to maximize it. Bringing Homan to Minnesota isn’t about “restoring order”; it’s about perfecting the mechanism of state-sponsored terror in a state that committed the ultimate sin of not “bending the knee” in the last election.

The irony of this “retribution campaign” is that Minnesota isn’t even a top-five state for undocumented populations. This has never been about “securing the border” or “public safety.” If it were about safety, the administration would be looking at the actual data, which shows that crime—the kind tracked by people who don’t wear MAGA hats to work—is down significantly across the board.

For decades, Americans have been marinated in a propaganda stew about crime. From the New York Times’ breathless “law and order” framing to Fox News’ nightly panic porn, we’ve been trained to believe we’re perpetually one step away from Mad Max. The goal was never accuracy. It was fear. Fear votes. Fear justifies brutality. Fear convinces decent people to cheer policies that target the most vulnerable while doing nothing to address real harm.

In Copaganda, Alec Karakatsanis dismantles this myth brick by brick, showing how the state’s escalating violence is sold to the public as “safety,” even as it produces the very unrest it claims to fight. What’s happening in Minnesota didn’t come out of nowhere. Greg Bovino, Tom Homan, and the ICE thugs beating and shooting people in the streets are the end product of years of lies, and sensationalism. They have spent years selling a false narrative of a nation under siege, convincing average Americans to hand over their liberties in exchange for “protection”.

Here’s the inconvenient truth: the crimes actually tracked by law enforcement are down—significantly. But ask most Americans and they’ll swear the country is collapsing into chaos. That disconnect isn’t accidental. It’s manufactured.

The “good people” of Minnesota currently protesting in the streets are finally waking up to the reality of what this “protection” actually looks like. It looks like unvetted ICE thugs breaking into homes without warrants. It looks like “secret police” using facial recognition to target protesters. It looks like the blood of Alex Pretti on a sidewalk while the DHS issues a press release about “officer safety.” This entire fascist police state was born out of propaganda and a desperate desire for control, and Tom Homan is exactly the kind of man you hire when you want to stop pretending that “human rights” are important.

So no—changing the face doesn’t change the evil. It just makes it more palatable to cable news panels and press releases. They want us arguing over which federal agency gets to violate our rights so we don’t notice what would actually make us safer. They can put lipstick on the pig of the DHS, but the evil remains the same. It’s time to stop falling for the PR stunts and demand the total dismantling of the machines of repression.

While Trump and his toadies shuffle the deck chairs on the SS Autocracy, they are hoping we lose focus.

End ICE.
RELEASE THE EPSTEIN FILES!

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— Robert Cain, author of Democracy for Sale: How Corporate Greed Is Corrupting Democracy and Endangering the Planet.