Immigrants squeezed, ballots seized, fascists rising—and the press isn’t watching
From bureaucratic exclusion to ballot seizures to press silence, the machinery of authoritarian consolidation is operating in broad daylight.
If it sounds like authoritarianism in motion, that’s because it is. Immigrants are being systematically squeezed out of the economy through bureaucratic means. Ballots are being seized. Fascists gathered openly while major newsrooms looked away. And far-right candidates are winning elections across Latin America. Here’s what’s happening as the midterms approach.
Stephen Miller’s quiet war on immigrants
The Trump administration has stopped talking about raids. Instead, it’s using the federal bureaucracy like a vise. According to The New York Times, officials have methodically pulled every lever possible to cut immigrants—documented and undocumented—from jobs, health care, housing, financial services, and tax credits. A woman with legal work status was fired from her airport job because the administration determined that her visa category no longer qualifies as “authorized residency.” Asylum seekers are about to lose work permits. Undocumented immigrants are being pushed out of community health clinics. American-born children of undocumented parents just lost access to the child tax credit. The goal is not just to deport people; it’s to make living in the United States economically impossible. So far, more than 116,000 people have voluntarily left. Many more are hiding.
The ballot seizures have already begun.
In January, FBI agents raided Fulton County, Georgia, and seized ballots from 2020. In March, the DOJ demanded ballots from Arizona, and in April, it demanded them from Michigan. In March, a California sheriff obtained warrants to seize 600,000 ballots from a redistricting election. According to WIRED, election experts are alarmed. The seizures cite past election fraud claims that have already been investigated, debunked, and dismissed. The warrants were obtained on the basis of problematic evidence and faulty assertions. But what’s more chilling is the precedent: if the courts fail to scrutinize these requests, the administration could begin seizing ballots during or immediately after elections—the one moment when federal seizures would have only one possible purpose: interference. “There is just no legitimate rationale for interfering while there is an active vote tally,” one election law expert said.
The remigration summit and the missing headline.
Two days ago, the former head of U.S. Border Patrol attended a summit in Portugal alongside Europe’s leading fascists. They called it the “Remigration Summit 2026.” The speakers included an Austrian extremist famous for promoting the “great replacement” conspiracy theory, a Belgian politician convicted of Holocaust denial, and the founder of a Swiss neo-Nazi group. A New York Young Republican Club leader was there, too. They gave Nazi salutes and talked about ethnic cleansing. And according to The Redoubt, no major English-language news outlet covered it. The American press—captured by right-wing ownership, cowed by litigation threats, or simply indifferent—has decided that when Republicans do fascism, it’s not news. Only when Democrats disappoint does the headline appear.
The far-right is winning across Latin America.
Colombia held its presidential election on Sunday. A far-right lawyer and Trump admirer named Abelardo de la Espriella won the first round with 43.7 percent of the vote, shocking most analysts who had him trailing. He will face off against a left-wing senator in a June runoff. Meanwhile, in Mexico, President Claudia Sheinbaum is escalating her rhetoric against the United States, accusing far-right sectors of orchestrating attacks on her government. She’s not entirely wrong, though. The pattern across Latin America is now unmistakable: Argentina, Chile, Ecuador, Bolivia, Honduras, and now Colombia are trending in this direction. Mexico and Brazil remain the region’s last remaining governments. The momentum is all in one direction.
One more thing to keep in mind this week.
Congress is quietly advancing a bill that would bind the U.S. and Israeli militaries closer than ever, integrating their weapons industries and defense technologies. It appears as a routine provision in the annual defense bill. But what it actually does is embed Israel into America’s military supply chain so deeply that, as one former State Department official put it, “it’s impossible to root it out.” When one government’s military becomes dependent on another’s technologies, leverage flows in unpredictable directions. The bill has bipartisan support. It will likely pass.
That is where we are. Immigrants pushed underground, elections are being rehearsed for seizure, fascists are mainstreaming themselves, while the press looks away. And a hemisphere tilting rightward while America deepens its military dependence on a country waging war under genocide allegations.