Many Americans who have begun their lives in a country run by authoritarian leaders see many warning signs of Trump’s actions.
Gavin Newsom fears there will be no 2028 presidential election
Gov. Gavin Newsom warned that the US might not see the presidential election in 2028, explaining the authoritarian behavior of the Trump administration.
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As a child in Cuba, Mike Fernandez saw teachers being replaced by government instructors.
Now, as President Donald Trump is taking the same steps he saw under Fidel Castro, home-built billionaires and longtime Republican campaign donors are uncomfortably surveillance from South Florida.
Like many people who fled the authoritarian regime to the United States, Fernandez says the United States appears to be at a turning point.
“There’s something wrong, and we all know that,” Fernandez told USA Today. “A lot of people want it to disappear on its own and it won’t disappear on its own.”
billionaire Emigre added:
Trump argues that the 2024 election he won represents a mission from American voters who supported his muscular leadership approach. Trump justified the actions necessary to secure the United States from both the “aggression” of immigrants and what he disrupts visible homelessness, halts certain types of crime and what he describes as unwillingness to Democrat officials to prevent civil disability.
Historical analysis by Gallup shows that his approval rating in Trump’s first few years of office – both the 45th and the 47th presidents are lower than other modern presidents at the same time in power. In Gallup’s vote, around 40% now approve Trump’s duties.
Despite the unfavorable polls, Trump has repeatedly suggested he will serve his third term as president — the constitution prevents him from being elected again — and openly thought about how other countries canceled elections during war or other state emergency.
Authoritarian warning sign
Those who fled the authoritarian regime say that this is a combination of actions that is currently causing concern, especially after Trump declared he “hate” his enemy at activist Charlie Kirk’s funeral. Those interviewed by USA Today raised many similarities seen between the authoritarian leadership of their home country and Trump’s actions over the past eight months.
- The daily use of the military to disperse anti-government protests, especially over opposition from local officials, as happened in California and Washington, D.C.
- A declaration that certain rights of certain groups must be reduced due to national emergency, such as due process hearings for undocumented immigrants.
- Often under old law, they are single from minority groups due to harsh and selective prosecution. The White House argues that its immigration crackdown primarily reflects a return to enforcement of existing laws that have been ignored by past presidents in a row.
- It reduced access to lawyers, particularly targeted minority groups.
- Nationalisation of businesses that are deemed important to government success. Trump announced on August 22 that he would buy a 10% stake in chipmaker Intel, a struggling federal government, and has also expressed interest in purchasing from other companies.
- By frequently reminding the power and role of government and controlling public life, there are monuments and banners, in part dedicated to leaders. Earlier this year, three federal buildings in DC were decorated with giant images of the president.
- The lack of free and fair elections for leaders to operate the system and maintain power. Trump has pressured several Republican-led states, including Texas, to redeem Republicans to make it easier for Republicans to win seats in Congress. He also said to the popular mail-in vote without evidence that they are ripe for fraud.
- He used government power to punish and silence enemies and journalists, and declared them as he did with his late-night host Jimmy Kimmel.
The Trump administration argued that each of these actions coincided with making America great again, and that the Biden administration was also a crime of many seemingly authoritarian measures.
As common tank as ice cream trucks
For Eddie Flores, growing up in El Salvador meant seeing military tanks that rolled around the neighborhood as often as ice cream trucks. Flores’ family fled the country’s devastating civil war when he was seven years old.
Last year he was elected mayor of San Francisco as the first immigrant born in Salvador.
Now, balancing the city’s biotech cluster and creeping gentrification, he also helps coordinate neighborhood groups against Trump’s mass immigration sweep. More than a third of the city’s residents are Hispanic, and despite concerns ahead of the city’s popular cultural fest in August, no confusion occurred.
In the Los Angeles area, Trump’s ice agents wipe out thousands of undocumented immigrants and sometimes chase the streets and farms. The protests against the ice attack became violent, and then Trump deployed active-duty Marines and members of the California State Guard on the streets of the city over objections of local officials.
Trump also threatened to deploy the National Guard in Washington, DC and release the newly renamed “The Department of War” into Chicago.
“We constantly tell staff that we must actively maintain and install systems before any harm can arrive,” Flores said. “It’s about showing up consistently for your neighbors, not just when they’re in need. So they don’t have to live in the shadows.”
He added: “Authoritarianism has no place in a country built on pluralism. We must protect that promise.”
Recognize patterns of behavior
For 41-year-old immigrants from the Middle East, the United States has long been a fortress of freedom, where the right to criticize the government is written in the country’s founding documents. Several members of his family have been detained in his home country for years to speak out against their leaders.
“We came here to express ourselves and found ourselves in this dilemma that we didn’t expect to face,” said the man who agreed that USA Today wouldn’t identify.
The male legal researcher who lives legally in the United States is worried that speaking freely will lead to federal targets. “It’s very ironic to suggest now to people visiting us from outside the US to delete the app, remove text conversations and delete images despite being completely innocent.”
The man, who is also a human rights expert at a nonprofit, said he watched for fear that Trump would attack the rule of law, pick out minority groups for harsh prosecutions, declare a state of emergency or justify some of his actions by accusing terrorism. He said Americans should be aware of warnings from refugees like him who live under oppressive regimes and are able to recognize repeated patterns.
It’s easy for people in society to think that what’s going on with minority groups will never happen to them, he said, adding that more Americans have disappointed that they haven’t tried to stop Trump, given the nation’s establishment system brought about by courts, Congress and the free press.
“I’ll contact you at some point and when it happened, there’s no one there for you because you weren’t there for them,” he said.
Echoing memories from childhood
Many other people who sought safety in the United States, Griselda Gonzalez, resident of Davis, California, said the federal forces patrolling Los Angeles reminiscent of painful childhood memories.
Salvadora’s native can be vividly remembered when she was 10 years old, as guerrilla fighters attacked San Salvador, the capital of her hometown, San Salvador. Her country’s complicated and brutal civil war killed thousands. The vision of explosions and constant shootings sometimes come to mind, even in the smallest areas.
Today, she is a married mother of three, and has a successful family-run commercial moving company. However, she said she was shocked at how similar she looked to the country she had now fled. A constant threat of military deployment, along with ice attacks targeting people who look like her.
“Five years ago, we were all fighting for our lives alongside Covid-19,” said Gonzalez, who became a naturalized citizen in 2014.
I spent quietly
Cuban refugee and American-made billionaire, Fernandez became a US citizen after serving as the Army’s Air Tro unit. He said he has long been pleased with the impact on American politics by funding political candidates, most Republicans.
But after seeing how Trump and the people around him behaved, he included Secretary of State Marco Rubio, who once strongly supported him – Fernandez said he was staying quietly.
He has begun funding an immigrant protection campaign, buy anti-Trump ads in newspapers, and prepares to fight what he sees as authoritarianism and tyranny in the United States.
“When I return to zero, I will do so because there was nothing here, and I owed to reinvestment to protect this country from within,” Fernandez said. “I think I owe it to the country. I owe it to my children and grandchildren to return to where legitimate procedures are important.”
Americans have more power than they think, Fernandez said.
“The more we talk as a group, the less likely we are to be targeted. I think we are already targeted. Will I stop? No,” he said.
“America was once a great country,” he added. “It’s not like it’s anymore, as designed by the current administration.”
Trevor Hughes and Terry Collins are national correspondents for USA Today.
