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hate crimes
In Trumplandia, Peace Ain’t What It’s Cracked Up to Be
Has anyone noticed how much peace has broken out in the USA ever since Donald Trump descended that golden escalator onto the stage of American politics?
Feb 04, 2026
This past January 15, the 2025 Nobel Laureate for Peace, Maria Corina Machado, took her prize medal, encased in a gold (of course) and glass frame, to the White House and presented it to our president. Beneath the medal, Machado had inscribed these words:
Presented as a Personal Symbol of Gratitude on behalf of the Venezuelan People in Recognition of President Trump’s Principled and Decisive Action to Secure a Free Venezuela. The Courage of America and its President Donald J. Trump, will Never be Forgotten by the Venezuelan People.
While our “peacemaker-in-chief” was no doubt gladdened by Machado’s unprecedented gesture, he still sounded a bit pouty by claiming that having “put out eight wars, in theory, you should get [a Nobel Peace Prize] for each war” in which he boasted that he had “saved millions and millions of lives.”
The eight “wars” he takes credit for ending—Israel-Hamas, Israel-Iran, India-Pakistan, the Democratic Republic of Congo-Rwanda, Armenia-Azerbaijan, Cambodia-Thailand, Serbia-Kosovo, and Egypt-Ethiopia—on the one hand, were all short-lived ceasefires or border skirmishes rather than the end of formal wars and, on the other, are places where tensions persist and conflict continues. Bottom line regarding all these faux wars is that Trump is as entitled to claim Machado’s Nobel Peace Prize as he is to take credit for walking on the moon long before Neil Armstrong did.
Where are our patriots—progressive patriots, five, eight, ten-million strong—called to the nation’s capital, like the “patriots” of January 6, willing to take our stand and storm the White House?
Closer to home, has anyone noticed how much peace has broken out in the USA ever since Donald Trump descended that golden escalator onto the stage of American politics?
In his very first very “presidential” campaign speech, he launched his first anti-immigration salvo: “When Mexico sends its people, they’re not sending their best… They’re bringing drugs. They’re bringing crime. They’re rapists. And some, I assume, are good people.”
Since Trump entered politics, a 2020 report from the FBI revealed that hate crimes increased by just under 20% in America.
According to CNN (January 26, 2026), the Obama years (2009-2016) saw 213 mass shootings at schools, churches, or shopping areas—an average of 26.6 shootings per year. Since Trump (2017-2025), the total number has risen to 556 and an average of 61.8 per year.
At Charlie Kirk’s memorial service, Trump contrasted his approach to campaigning to that of Charlie Kirk—himself no saint in the political arena:
He did not hate his opponents. He wanted the best for them. That's where I disagreed with Charlie. I hate my opponent, and I don't want the best for them… maybe they can convince me that that's not right, but I can't stand my opponent.
Since Trump, instances of school bullying and antisemitic attacks have risen precipitously. These included the mass shootings in the Tree of Life Synagogue in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, and in a Walmart supermarket in El Paso, Texas, conducted by white supremacists who embraced racist “Great Replacement” conspiracy theories popular in their circles. As to instances of bullying, just after Trump’s 2024 election victory an elementary school teacher in Georgia reported, “This is my 21st year of teaching. This is the first time I’ve had a student call another student the N-word.”
In 2022 a deranged attacker broke into the San Francisco home of then-Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.). Finding her husband at home, he asked, “Where’s Nancy?” Learning she was in Washington DC, he began assaulting Paul Pelosi, beating him with a hammer and fracturing his skull. Several days later, a number of Republicans, including the president, made light of the attack.
The president’s official coin commemorating the 250th anniversary of the American Revolution bears the face of Trump on one side and on the other his post-assassination image of a bloodied but defiant Trump admonishing his fellow Americans to “Fight! Fight! Fight!”
During his 2016 campaign rallies, he urged his followers to punch protesters in the mouth, promising to pay their lawyers’ fees.
In his first term, on immigration he wondered why the US could not get more migrants from, say, Norway instead of from “shithole countries” in Africa or elsewhere.
In his first off-year election (2018) Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY), Ilhan Omar (D-Minn.), Ayanna Pressley (D-Mass.), and Rashida Tlaib (D-Mich.) were all elected to the US House of Representatives and became known as “The Squad.” On July 14, 2019, Trump publicly advised them to “go back and help fix the totally broken and crime infested places from which they came. Then come back and show us how it is done.”
Rep. Adam Schiff (D-Calif.) led the fight(s) to impeach Trump, one of whose followers left Schiff a warning in the congressman’s voice mailbox: “I’m gonna f-ing blow your brains out,”
As his first term was ending, Trump encouraged some 2,500 of his closest friends to march on Congress and “fight like hell” on January 6, 2021. Later, very early in his second term he pardoned them and awarded some of them the Presidential Medal of Freedom. When informed that the “patriots” had hung a noose from makeshift gallows on Capitol grounds to “hang Mike Pence,” as the chant admonished, Trump, the defender of evangelical Christians, replied, “So what?”
All through his second campaign for the presidency (2024) he centered his message on anti-immigration, frequently referring to immigrants as “not even human. They’re animals.” He warned that these newcomers would increase crime in the streets and, in a quotation from Hitler’s Mein Kampf, “poison the bloodstream” of America.
All the while, America’s megalomaniacal monster waved an imaginary Christian flag and promised to fight for it. That is one reason evangelicals were less than unenthusiastic about a potential Mike Pence presidency. As sociologists of religion Phillip Gorski and Samuel Perry explained, “[T]he fight was more important than the faith… Pence had the faith, but Trump had the fight. And the fight was really all they cared about.” (The Flag and the Cross: White Christian Nationalism and the Threat to American Democracy, 3.)
All of which has brought us through several weeks of clashes between masked Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents and American citizens using their First Amendment right of free speech to protest Trump’s dragnet of blue states, searching and destroying Black and brown families—some illegal, some documented, some American citizens—that have brought the nation to the boiling point.
Nowadays we have no “Crosby, Stills, Nash, and Young” lamenting “four dead in Ohio.”
But we do have a president who makes Richard Nixon look like a Boy Scout. And we have Bruce Springsteen:
King Trump's private army from the DHSPeace, it would seem, is not what it’s cracked up to be. In Trumplandia, it appears, P-E-A-C-E spells MURDER.
Guns belted to their coats
Came to Minneapolis to enforce the law
Or so their story goes
Against smoke and rubber bullets
In the dawn's early light
Citizens stood for justice
Their voices ringing through the night
And there were bloody footprints
Where mercy should have stood
And two dead, left to die on snow-filled streets
Alex Pretti and Renee Good
Oh, our Minneapolis, I hear your voice
Singing through the bloody mist
We'll take our stand for this land
And the stranger in our midst
Here in our home, they killed and roamed
In the winter of '26….
Now they say they're here to uphold the law
But they trample on our rights
If your skin is black or brown, my friend
You can be questioned or deported on sight….
Oh, our Minneapolis, I hear your voice
Singing through the bloody mist
Here in our home, they killed and roamed
In the winter of '26
We'll take our stand for this land
And the stranger in our midst
We'll remember the names of those who died
On the streets of Minneapolis...
But where are our patriots—progressive patriots, 5-, 8-, 10-million strong—called to the nation’s capital, like the “patriots” of January 6, willing to take our stand and storm the White House?
In 1970, massive numbers of protesters marched to Kent State University. Millions of others showed America that nonviolent protest could work. So where are those of us willing to chant; spill some of our own blood, if necessary; and chant, “Hey, hey, Donald J, how many protesters did you kill today?” until “We the People” come face to face with Mr. Trump, call on Congress to invoke the 25th Amendment, and tell them all: “NO MORE KINGS!?”Keep ReadingShow Less
DHS Strips Security Grants From Muslim Nonprofits Based on Report From Islamophobic 'Hate Group'
The Council on American-Islamic Relations says the Muslim groups being targeted "were smeared as 'Hamas-aligned'... because of their opposition to Israeli human rights abuses."
Aug 20, 2025
The Department of Homeland Security announced Wednesday that it has suspended more than $8 million in grants to Muslim organizations it claims have "alleged terror ties" following a report from a notorious anti-Muslim group.
The money comes from FEMA's Nonprofit Security Grant Program (NSGP), which provides aid to religious groups at risk of hate-based terrorist attacks, including security alarms, cameras, and armed guards.
DHS said it made the decision following a report from the Middle East Forum (MEF), a pro-Israel group, which alleged that DHS had given $25 million to "terror-linked groups" between 2013 and 2023. According to DHS, it has already suspended the funds to 49 different projects based on this report.
The Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) describes MEF as an "anti-Palestinian and anti-Muslim hate group" and its leader, Daniel Pipes, as "racist."
The foreign policy commentator was nominated to the board of the United States Institute of Peace by former President George W. Bush in 2003 despite a long history of anti-Muslim rhetoric.
This has included referring to Muslims as "brown-skinned peoples cooking strange foods and maintaining different standards of hygiene" and blaming the 1995 Oklahoma City bombing, which was committed by a US-born white supremacist, on Muslim "fundamentalists."
In 2004, after being nominated to the position, Pipes said he did "support the internment of Japanese Americans in World War II," and suggested it as a model for dealing with Muslims.
In the report, MEF described CAIR, which it says received $250,000 from FEMA, as a "Hamas-aligned" group. But the only evidence it cites is the organization's naming as an "unindicted co-conspirator" in the 2007 trial of the Holy Land Foundation for allegedly funnelling money to Hamas.
CAIR was never charged with a crime, but that case has nevertheless been used to tie it and many other Muslim nonprofits to terror groups with little to no evidence of wrongdoing.
MEF also singled out other organizations like the Islamic Society of Baltimore, merely because it was once "previously under FBI surveillance."
Others MEF singled out for their harsh rhetoric towards Israel. For instance, it described Michigan's Islamic Institute of Knowledge as an "outpost for Iran's revolutionary brand of Shi'a Islamism" because its leaders have allegedly "echoed Iranian regime rhetoric regarding Israel, including comparing Israel to the Nazis and blaming it for October 7."
It also suggested that other mosques and organizations have terrorist affiliations because leaders have family members who were, at some point, Iranian clerics or government officials.
According to DHS, merely "alleged" terrorist ties are enough for funding to be pulled, and that includes the allegations made by the MEF.
While DHS said it is conducting its own review to determine which groups to strip funding from, it told Fox News: "We take the results of the MEF report very seriously and are thankful for the work of conservative watchdog groups."
MEF previously told the New York Post that it is working with DHS to "rescind grants to extremist groups."
CAIR says the groups being targeted "were smeared as 'Hamas-aligned' by MEF because of their opposition to Israeli human rights abuses."
During his second term, Trump and congressional Republicans have aggressively targeted nonprofit organizations that criticize his policies, particularly those critical of Israel.
Trump has attempted to coerce universities, including Harvard, into cracking down on pro-Palestinian speech by students by threatening their nonprofit status.
In May, Republicans also snuck a provision into their giant reconciliation bill that would have given the treasury secretary unilateral authority to strip the nonprofit status of any organization he deemed to be supportive of a terrorist organization, which, to the Trump administration, often simply means voicing solidarity with Palestinians. However, that "nonprofit killer" measure was struck from the final version of the law.
This month, DHS updated its terms for providing grants to nonprofits. One new section now requires nonprofits to cooperate with Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE). Another requires them to swear off boycotts of Israel, which CAIR describes as "a political test targeting supporters of Palestinian rights."
"Our civil rights organization has no active federal grants that the Department could eliminate or cut," a CAIR spokesperson told Fox. "The government cannot ban American organizations from receiving federal grants based on their religious affiliation or their criticism of Israel's genocide in Gaza."
CAIR also condemned DHS Secretary Kristi Noem for "making decisions based on the ravings of the Middle East Forum, an Israel First hate website."
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Illinois Man Gets 53 Years in Prison for Vicious Hate-Crime Killing of 6-Year-Old Wadee Alfayoumi
"No sentence can restore what was taken, but today's outcome delivers a necessary measure of justice. Wadee was an innocent child. He was targeted because of who he was—Muslim, Palestinian, and loved."
May 02, 2025
A judge told an Illinois man Friday that his hate-fueled murder of six-year-old Wadee Alfayoumi in October 2023 was "brutal and heinous" as she sentenced him to 53 years in prison.
The sentence was handed down three months after Joseph Czuba, 73, was found guilty of murdering the Palestinian-American kindergartner, who lived with his family in two bedrooms they rented from Czuba in Plainfield Township, Illinois.
Prosecutors found that Czuba became "paranoid and violent" after Hamas attacked Israel on October 7, 2023 and as Israel's bombardment of Gaza's population of 2.3 million Palestinians began in retaliation.
Alfayoumi's mother, Hanan Shaheen, testified during Czuba's trial that he had attacked her first before moving on to stab her son 26 times. Czuba told Shaheen before the attack that the family had to leave their home because they were Muslim.
Mahmoud Yousef, an uncle of Alfayoumi's father, told the court at the sentencing that no prison sentence for Czuba would lessen the family's pain.
"Together, we must build a society where no one lives in fear because of who they are, and no family mourns a loved one lost to hate."
"That's more than just hate, that went way beyond that," Yousef said of the murder. "We're talking about a 6-year-old kid whose father had plans for him."
Yousef also looked directly at Czuba and demanded that he say something to the family "for peace of mind," but Czuba did not speak during the hearing.
"Wadee Alfayoumi should still be alive today," said Rep. Bill Foster (D-Ill.). "While justice has been served, nothing can bring Wadee back. Together, we must build a society where no one lives in fear because of who they are, and no family mourns a loved one lost to hate."
During the trial, the jury heard Shaheen's frantic 911 call and saw crime scene photos that were so harrowing the judge agreed not to show them to the audience, where Alfayoumi's family was sitting.
"No sentence can restore what was taken, but today's outcome delivers a necessary measure of justice," said Ahmed Rehab, executive director of Chicago's chapter of the Council on American-Islamic Relations. "Wadee was an innocent child. He was targeted because of who he was—Muslim, Palestinian, and loved."
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