New governance
The first weeks of May 2025 mark an escalation in actions by the Trump administration toward fascist rule. The White House deputy chief of staff, Steven Miller told reporters that they are “actively looking at” suspending habeas corpus, the centuries old right of individuals to challenge detentions in court. Miller described basic human rights to due process as a “privilege.”
These comments are not confined to news interviews designed to grab headlines. They are fueling outrageous and illegal actions designed to create terror and intimidate those who challenge the consolidation of power by Trump and his wealthy pals.
On May 9, Ras Baraka, the mayor of Newark, was arrested outside of an immigration detention facility and held by ICE agents for 5 hours. Now the three congress people who accompanied Mr. Baraka, and who attempted to shield him from over twenty ICE agents, are facing possible arrests and investigations.
The Nation, commenting on this incident explained the gravity of the situation. They wrote:
Under Trump’s regime, there is no land Trump cannot claim under his dominion, which renders every American his subject. If Trump can plunder land in Newark, New Jersey, and arrest a publicly elected official on public property in broad daylight, in front of witnesses, in front of cameras, is there safety for anyone anywhere at any time?
“We can’t acquiesce to that,” Baraka told The Nation. “I think this is an opportunity for states to become labs of democracy to try everything that we have not tried before. We need to figure out a way to build a democracy outside these folks and their push to dismember democracy in this country.”
Indeed, the Trump administration’s full-scale desecration of due process and evisceration of the separation of powers between the American government’s federal, executive, and judicial branches will require nationwide collaboration among state legislatures. Governors, mayors, and members of Congress need to harness financial and legal resources to resurrect and repurpose “states’ rights” tactics to defeat our tyrannical federal government.
The consolidation of power and the use of federal agents is not only an assault on the individuals involved. It is an assault on the self-determining powers of local and state governments. Federal agents arrested the mayor on local public land after he left the privately owned jail.The GEO Corporation operates the facility within the legal ordinances and laws of the city of Newark and the State of New Jersey. It stands to benefit from increasing deportations and has a $60 million contract with ICE.
Mayor Baraka routinely visits the facility, which is currently challenging a state law that “prohibits state and local entities and private correctional facilities from entering into agreements with federal immigration authorities to detain noncitizens.”
The congressional delegation accompanying Mr. Baraka was exercising their legal oversight responsibilities. The delegation included Congressmembers Bonnie Watson Coleman, LaMonica McIver and Rob Menendez, Jr., all Democrats representing districts that include or are near Newark.
The State of New Jersey and the City of Newark have every right to regulate businesses within their jurisdiction. Private corporations, even with federal contracts, and not free from responsibilities to the local communities where they exist.
The federal agents who surrounded and detained Mayor Baraka should be charged with unlawful detention. They cannot be allowed to function above the laws and normal practices that we have evolved together over the centuries.
While we are witnessing the escalation of Trumpian attacks, we are also clarifying the basis of resistance to them. Mayor Baraka concluded his interview in the Nation saying
“The reality is we’ve been fighting for a long time to, as Dr. King said, to make America live up to what is written on paper. That’s really what this is about. And there are people who want to renege on that promise because it doesn’t benefit them individually. There are many of us in this country who disagree with that.”
This is a moment when resistance requires the reinvention of what we mean by democracy. It is a time to establish new forms of governance based on individual rights and local sovereignty and to limit the powers of destructive empire.