Alan Zendell, January 15, 2026

Every time I see ICE agents swarm through an American city, I feel like someone stuck an ice pick in my back. It always evokes the same image, my memory of visiting the Anne Frank house in Amsterdam. In the bare, stark room in which she slept during the years she hid from the occupying Nazis, there’s a window that looks down on a wide boulevard. Prinsengracht. Next to the window hangs a photograph of that same window, with Nazi troops marching outside. It’s impossible to watch what ICE is doing in Minneapolis and not cringe at the obvious association.

Most Americans don’t seem to need that memory to stoke their anger and fear at what Trump and his lackey, DHS Secretary Kristi Noem are attempting to do. A CNN poll released yesterday showed that Americans disapprove of the way Trump is handling immigration by a sixteen point margin, after approving what he said he would do during the 2024 election campaign by a small margin of three points. As polls go, that’s remarkable.

The thing Trump should really be concerned about is that a substantial majority of Independents also disapprove of ICE’s tactics. Those are the same Independents who will determine which party controls Congress next November. Outside of Trump’s MAGA base, which is less than a third of the electorate, every American is becoming uncomfortable with the administration’s unmistakable march toward a fascist oligarchy. It’s no wonder Trump has been reduced to begging Republicans to maintain his majority in Congress to keep him from being impeached for a third time.

If you think that’s an exaggeration, I’d direct you to Trump’s history with right-wing podcaster Joe Rogan, who has a huge following, especially with young men. In October of 2024, Trump sat for a three-hour interview with Rogan, who heartily endorsed him. Despite Trump’s absurd claim that he won in a landslide, the election was actually close enough that Rogan alone might have changed the outcome if he’d supported Harris. That should scare the Hell out of Trump and all those who hope he’ll be around to pardon them after their disregard of rules, laws, and their defiance of Congress come home to roost.

In 2024, most observers granted Rogan the status of a canary in a coal mine. If he turned on Trump, the result could be toxic. Lately, Rogan has been less than enamored with the president, joining a loud chorus of Americans who are thinking, “This is not what I voted for.” When vocal Trump critics Rob and Michelle Reiner were murdered, Trump exploded on his Truth Social platform, claiming that the Reiners died “due to the anger {Rob Reiner] caused through his massive, unyielding, and incurable affliction with a mind-crippling disease known as TRUMP DERANGEMENT SYNDROME [sic].”

Many people, even those who have been desensitized by ten years of Trump’s inappropriate comments, were shocked by his self-serving lack of empathy, which Rogan likened to the right-wing blaming Antifa and the Deep State (whatever they are) for the murder of Charlie Kirk. Not surprisingly, the usual suspects, like disaffected Republicans Thomas Massie and Marjorie Taylor Greene came down hard on Trump’s blatant cruelty. But eyebrows were raised when Rogan joined the damning chorus. “The Rob Reiner thing is not funny, right?… [W]hen you see it with no empathy, that’s when it’s hard to like [Trump]…[I]t just shows you how crazy it is the way Trump thinks and talks.”

Rogan has been even more critical of Trump’s use of ICE, echoing what a growing number of Americans are expressing out loud. “Are we really gonna be the Gestapo, ‘Where’s your papers?’ Is that what we’ve come to?” That really says it all. A majority of Americans now believe Trump is attempting to expand ICE into a federal police force that usurps the authority of local and state law enforcement. The comparison to Hitler’s Gestapo is so stark, even the dimmest among us who remember World War II see it clearly. When Joe Rogan uses the term “Gestapo,” Trump ought to be quaking in his boots. There’s no clearer sign that the tide is turning against him.

There’s no way to sugarcoat this. Trump’s attempt to evolve ICE into his own secret police force is the logical conclusion of everything Project 2025, the thousand-page document written by the ultra-Conservative Heritage Society that’s driving this administration, is leading to. It was always going to come down to this, inevitably. When Americans see with their own eyes, that Trump is willing to terrorize whole cities simply because they voted for his opponent, when they see storm troopers harassing thousands of Americans and violating their civil rights, when they see a young mother murdered for the crime of being part of an ICE watch group documenting their activities, they get angry and they fear what we’ve been warning them about.

If this is allowed to continue, we might as well demolish the Statue of Liberty and convert Liberty Island to a playground for perverted billionaires and pedophiles.