Creeping into the fifth month of the second Trump era, I'm starting to identify patterns in how the Pork Reich operates to prosecute the regime's fascist agenda. While it's certainly true that the administration's assault on judicial oversight, civil rights legislation, and efforts to consolidate power in the executive branch are being conducted at blinding speed, there are still a couple of key elements of deception they're relying on to accomplish their odious goals.

First, the majority of written orders from this administration, be they executive orders from the President, or internal guidance and instructions within departments in the government, are written in an intentionally vague manner that allows for a broad interpretation of who the government can target for repression and how. This creates plausible deniability for a Trump regime and larger fascist Republican Party that has no problem openly lying into a camera about what they're trying to do, and seemingly paralyzes a corporate media that remains uncomfortable drawing the obvious broader conclusions brought up by everything Trump and his minions do and say.

The second method of deception deployed by the regime to forward its fascist agenda, is to break up schemes, plots, and proposals that would likely generate a tremendous amount of public outrage, into a number of smaller rules, edicts, or guidelines that when taken together, still accomplish the same level of fascist repression and state targeting. A good example of this process in action can be found in the way the Trump regime has effectively justified a mass surveillance program targeting foreign students and scholars, while simultaneously seizing control of the student visa process at the embassy level to conduct fascist ideological screening away from the prying eyes of critics.

https://www.commondreams.org/news/us-visa-crackdown-international-students

Trump Administration Orders Pause on All New Student Visa Interviews

"The State Department cable does not specifically state what the expanded social media screening will look for, although it alludes to President Donald Trump's executive orders aimed at combating terrorism and antisemitism.

Trump's January 29 order titled "Additional Measures to Combat Antisemitism" authorizes the deportation of noncitizen students and others who took part in protests against Israel's war on Gaza, which has killed more than 54,000 Palestinians and is the subject of an International Court of Justice genocide case.

Last month, the Department of Homeland Security announced the launch of a task force to surveil immigrants' social media posts, including those of around 1.5 million foreign students, for alleged antisemitism. While DHS did not say how antisemitism would be defined, critics note that the Trump administration has adopted the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance working definition, which conflates opposition to Zionism—the settler-colonial movement for a Jewish homeland in Palestine—with hatred of Jews.

Earlier this year, the State Department also launched a controversial artificial intelligence-powered "catch and revoke" program to cancel the visas of international students deemed supportive of the Palestinian resistance group Hamas.

Rubio has invoked Immigration and Nationality Act of 1952 to designate for deportation pro-Palestine international students who the government admits committed no crimes."

I think this story is the perfect example of the paint by numbers process Trump is employing to install a fascist dictatorship in America because it touches on both types of deception the regime is employing to do so. The announcement that US embassies would halt student visa interviews in anticipation of a vastly expanded social media screening and vetting process of all foreign student applicants must be understood as part of a larger process by which the regime has established a digital panopticon for foreign students studying and residing in the US; ostensibly to "fight antisemitism" which we know means targeting critics of US foreign policy, Israel's genocide in Gaza, or the Trump regime more broadly. If you're a foreign student on US soil, you're already living under a form of surveillance state fascism and reactionary ideological policing.

Which brings us to the vague wording, and potentially broad applications of this ideological screening. As we've learned to watch for from studying the Heritage Foundation's Project Esther, and the Trump administration's clear adherence to its doctrines, there is nothing in any of the administration's orders targeting dissidents that essentializes being pro-Palestine, or anti-genocide. The regime has already asserted the power to define anything as terrorism, or material support, and even casual criticism as being a threat to US national security, so why would they stop at anti-genocide protestors or foreign students at all for that matter?