Chuds on Parade: Meet Trump’s Cabinet
Washington, D.C. — The second Trump administration has embraced authoritarian, racist, and Christian nationalist ideologues as core members of its cabinet, more so than in 2016 or 2020. This escalation in far-right, white-male politics is raising alarms and causing fear all over the country as it quickly becomes part of Trump’s governing strategy for the next four years and beyond. Most people in Trump’s orbit have made their motivations abundantly clear while being shamelessly vocal about their bigotry.
When Steve Bannon did a Nazi salute at the 2025 Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) — something he denies doing — it came off as the logical next step for the party. Trump’s willingness to embrace bigoted ideologies has shifted the Republican Party so far to the right that even avowed neo-nazi Nick Fuentes said, “It’s getting a little uncomfortable even for a guy like me! I feel like that guy in that picture who wouldn’t heil Hitler.”
Jordan Bardella, leader of the National Rally, a far-right French political party, canceled his appearance at CPAC calling Bannon’s salute a “gesture referring to Nazi ideology.”
While CPAC can provide insight into what the future of conservative politics looks like, more concerning are the people (and their ideologies) in Trump’s cabinet, because they wield dangerous power. Trump is surrounded by people who have used terms like “woke,” “DEI” (diversity, equity, and inclusion), and “CRT” (critical race theory) pejoratively in place of slurs and exhibiting traits of white nationalism in their targeting of immigrants, Black people, Latinos, the LGBTQ community, and women.
The administration’s first months exposed how it intends to use its power. Moves like replacing highly decorated four-star general Lloyd Austin as Secretary of Defense with someone with little experience, such as Pete Hegseth, highlight this trend. So does firing the highly decorated chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Air Force Gen. CQ Brown Jr., and replacing him with retired Air Force Lt. Gen. Dan Caine, who requires presidential waivers to do the job.
Brown was only the second Black general to serve as chairman. Other recent firings include Air Force Vice Chief of Staff James C. Slife, Chief of Naval Operations Adm. Lisa Franchetti, and the Judge Advocates General (JAG) for the Army, Navy, and Air Force. Hegseth previously referred to Franchetti as a DEI hire, saying she was selected as the Chief of Naval Operations in 2023 because she is a woman.
These actions fall in line with comments made by Hegseth before becoming Secretary of Defense saying, “Any general that was involved… in any of the DEI woke shit has to go.”
From the White House to the Departments of State, Defense, Homeland Security, and more, Trump’s lackeys are exerting enormous control while gleefully announcing they plan to use their power to endanger various marginalized communities, journalists, and dissidents in general. It’s worth taking note of the appointees in Trump’s cabinet who say they want everything to be white and male under the guise of saying they want everything to be “merit-based.”
That hate groups and far-right extremists will be taking their cues from administration officials makes them even more dangerous. To give readers a better idea of how deep this is and to provide insight into how dangerous this will be for marginalized communities, particularly Latinos, Black people, Indigenous people, and trans people, we’ll break them down by agency.
Department of Homeland Security
The Department of Homeland Security is responsible for the security of the United States. Its purview includes agencies such as Customs and Border Protection (CBP), Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), Homeland Security Investigations (HSI), U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS), the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA), Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA), Transportation Security Administration (TSA), the Coast Guard, Secret Service (USSS) and more. This makes the agency one of the most troublesome when considering infestation by Christian nationalists and authoritarian racists.
Kristi Noem
Kristi Noem is the current Secretary of the Department of Homeland Security (DHS). Noem has long been known for many bigoted comments toward various communities. She has often espoused racist and anti-immigrant rhetoric tied to the neo-nazi-originated “Great Replacement” conspiracy theory. Noem has also embraced adopting broad anti-LGBTQ policies. She once claimed that the Indigenous tribal leaders in her state of South Dakota were working with drug cartels, and wrote in her memoir that she once shot and killed her family’s puppy.
Currently, at DHS, Noem seems equally concerned with propaganda as she is with eliminating programs meant to help refugees from violent, war-torn countries, arresting non-criminal migrants, and detaining them in facilities under abusive and inhumane conditions.
Tom Homan
Tom Homan is the Trump administration’s “Border Czar” under DHS. Homan is in charge of managing the mass deportation efforts and is the founder of Border 911, an anti-immigrant website that spreads misinformation about migrants. He also espouses many racist ideas and uses racist authoritarian rhetoric. Homan wanted to be in control of mass deportations under Trump, who has given him the green light to direct policy and oversee what they claim will be the largest mass deportation operation in U.S. history.
Homan has suggested that the solution to preventing family separations is to deport entire families while making no distinction between citizens and noncitizens. His policies are behind Venezuelan deportees being classified as gang members based on dubious claims, including seemingly random tattoos. His strategies have led to the detention of U.S. citizens and migrants with pending cases, who inevitably had to be released.
“Individuals are confirmed as gang members if they admit membership in a gang; have been convicted of violating Title 18 USC 521 or any other federal or state law criminalizing or imposing civil consequences for gang-related activity; or if they meet certain other criteria such as having tattoos identifying a specific gang or being identified as a gang member by a reliable source,” reads the ICE website.
Homan has recently threatened lawmakers with criminal charges for their awareness efforts that teach immigrants and citizens what their rights are should ICE confront them. Homan is also a fellow at the Heritage Foundation, which calls for immigrant detention camps.
James Rodden
James Rodden is the current Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) Assistant Chief Counsel for DHS. Steven Monacelli at the Texas Observer recently uncovered that Rodden was linked to a Twitter/X account named GlomarResponder. Not only was he posting anti-immigrant content, but he was also posting outright racist commentary. Rodden represents ICE in immigration court, where immigration judges decide whether migrants are removed from the country.
Paul Ingrassia
Paul Ingrassia is the White House Liaison to the Department of Homeland Security. He was recently reassigned from the Department of Justice (DOJ) to DHS after clashing with Attorney General Pam Bondi’s chief of staff by pushing to hire people with “exceptional loyalty” to Trump at the DOJ. Ingrassia, who was present for the release of January 6 insurrectionists, was also the co-host of a far-right podcast.
Ingrassia once referred to far-right misogynist and accused rapist Andrew Tate as the “ancient ideal of excellence” and once penned a Substack post titled “Free Nick Fuentes,” supporting the reinstatement of the avowed neo-Nazi’s accounts on Twitter (now X). He also once referred to Trump’s former ambassador to the United Nations, Nikki Haley, as an “anchor baby” and an “insufferable bitch.”
Department of Defense
The Department of Defense (DOD) provides military force through various commands globally and is responsible for coordinating and supervising the five U.S. armed services: Army, Navy, Marines, Air Force, Space Force, and Coast Guard. While normally not involved with the U.S.-Mexico border or immigration aside from providing some support services, the DOD will be used beyond that for DHS and its agencies under Trump.
Along with tackling DEI initiatives and “wokeism,” the militarization of the border is a top priority for the second Trump administration.
Pete Hegseth
Pete Hegseth is Trump’s new Secretary of Defense. Hegseth’s white Christian nationalist ideology sitting atop the Pentagon hierarchy is uniquely dangerous. What makes this exceptionally hard to deny is that he keeps Christian nationalist ideas and talking points at the core of everything he does, and he’s not quiet about it.
Hegseth’s obsession with the border and making it a priority above all things except DEI and wokeism raises many questions about U.S. military posture at home and abroad. His prioritizing of eliminating anything that doesn’t put white men at the forefront makes his motivations impossible to deny. Like others mentioned here, Hegseth is dangerous because of the power he’s been granted and how he intends to use it domestically.
Hegseth’s connection to Christian nationalism is evidenced by his countless bigoted comments about the Muslim community, his anti-immigrant commentary, and his tattoos, which stress why he promotes aspects of the racist “Great Replacement” conspiracy theory. Hegseth has made comments equating today’s white Christian man’s “struggle” with that of the 11th-century Crusades against Muslims.
Alexander J. Velez-Green
Alexander J. Velez-Green is currently the Under Secretary of Defense for Policy. He previously worked for Republican Senator Josh Hawley for four years and later became a senior policy advisor at The Heritage Foundation. His research focused on defense, deterrence, and alliance management affecting U.S. forces globally. He was also the lead author of Heritage’s special report on U.S. defense strategy titled “The Prioritization Imperative: A Strategy to Defend America’s Interests in a More Dangerous World.”
In his report, Velez-Green argued that the U.S. could no longer thwart China and proposed a new defense strategy centered around U.S. borders. When mentioning the southern border, he suggested migrants entering the United States were “foreign nationals who could threaten U.S. national security.” Velez-Green also recommended that the DOD “should provide forces as part of a broader effort to secure America’s borders.”
John Ullyot
Until recently, John Ullyot was the Principal Deputy Assistant to the Secretary of Defense for Public Affairs. He is a U.S. Marine Corps veteran who worked for the previous Trump administration as Assistant Secretary of Veterans Affairs (VA). Ullyot resigned after coming under fire in 2018 when emails surfaced showing he dissuaded the VA’s former chief diversity officer from publicizing a forceful denunciation of white supremacists and neo-Nazis who participated in the deadly August 2017 “Unite the Right” rally in Charlottesville, Virginia.
Ullyot referred to Former Vice President Kamala Harris as a “DEI hire” and was promptly told he sounded “like a racist” during an appearance on Newsmax over the summer. On April 20, after resigning from the Pentagon, Ullyot wrote that Hegseth’s Pentagon is descending into “total chaos” and he should step down.
Sean C. McAndrews
Sean C. McAndrews is the Confidential Assistant to the Secretary of Defense. McAndrews is the former Deputy Director of the Conservative Partnership Institute (CPI). Founded by Trump acolytes Jim DeMint, Mark Meadows, and Ed Corrigan, CPI is affiliated with groups like the Center for Renewing America and Stephen Miller’s America First Legal – all are linked to the Heritage Foundation’s Project 2025.
Department of State
The Department of State (DOS) advises the President on foreign policy issues, negotiates treaties and agreements with foreign entities, and represents the United States at the United Nations. While the DOS isn’t typically involved with domestic immigration, it is responsible for negotiating with other countries to help manage irregular migration. However, under the Trump administration and with Rubio at the helm, the DOS will be more involved at home than ever.
Marco Rubio
Marco Rubio is the current Secretary of the Department of State. His positions on policy toward Cuba, Venezuela, and other countries in the southern hemisphere, coupled with his selective historical memory about them, speak to his colonialist ideology. A Latino embracing nationalist ideas and associating with members of that community made Rubio the perfect choice for the administration. It gives Trump plausible, yet flawed, deniability against accusations of a racist, authoritarian policy agenda.
In 2019, after a mass shooting in Texas, Rubio denounced white nationalists and said they needed to be crushed, calling them un-American, saying, “…we should never do anything to remotely legitimize anything that they stand for.” Meanwhile, he’s gleefully working for an autocratic administration with similar ideologies at a very high level, hired a promoter of white nationalist ideas, Darren Beattie (see below), and is enacting a policy agenda that targets nonwhite, non-cis-male communities in every department.
Darren Beattie
Marco Rubio selected Darren Beattie as the Undersecretary for Public Diplomacy and Public Affairs at the Department of State. It’s worth noting that Beattie was fired from the first Trump White House in 2018 for speaking at a white nationalist conference hosted by the H.L. Mencken Club two years earlier. At the event, he sat on a panel with white nationalist Peter Brimelow.
Beattie is known for his racist social media posts, saying things like, “Competent white men must be in charge if you want things to work,” and has railed against “identity politics,” which he says, “encompasses gender relations, gay rights, and so forth.” Beattie has made no apologies for promoting these ideologies.
Peter Marocco
Peter Marocco served as Director of the Office of Foreign Assistance at the Department of State (DOS), until he was fired by Rubio in mid-April. He also served as Deputy Administrator-Designate for the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) since it is now under DOS control. Marocco and his wife allegedly took part in the January 6, 2021, insurrection but have never been charged.
In 2018, as Deputy Assistant Secretary of State of the Bureau of Conflict and Stabilization Operations during the first Trump administration, Marocco secretly met with Bosnian Serb ethnonationalist leaders – including pro-Putin Milorad Dodik who was under U.S Treasury Department sanctions at the time for opposing peace efforts in the region.
During a 2023 CPAC conference in Hungary, Marocco appeared on a conservative U.S. radio talk show and lambasted USAID for “undermining the family and indoctrinating children,” and supporting gay pride, abortion, terrorism, and undocumented migrants while funding health care, democracy, and gender equity abroad. He later declared that the Trump administration would take inspiration from Hungary’s “family-friendly” policies to rein in USAID.
Under Prime Minister Viktor Orbán, Hungary has embraced anti-immigrant, ethno-nationalist policies.
Department of Justice
The Department of Justice (DOJ) enforces federal law, serves as a centralized agency for federal law enforcement, and handles all criminal prosecutions and civil suits where the U.S. government has an interest. The DOJ includes agencies such as the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives (ATF), the Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA), the U.S. Marshals Service, and the Bureau of Prisons.
Pam Bondi
Pam Bondi is currently serving as U.S. Attorney General, the head of the DOJ. She previously worked for the Trump administration to help with his first impeachment hearings and supported many of Trump’s claims of voter fraud in the 2020 election. Her anti-immigrant views have been well-known for more than a decade.
In 2012, as Florida’s Attorney General, Bondi joined 15 other Republican attorneys general in support of Arizona’s SB 1070, an anti-immigrant bill with many provisions that were ultimately struck down by the Supreme Court. Bondi also chairs the America First Policy Institute and has supported Trump’s history of targeting political opponents. Now, as head of the Department of Justice (DOJ), she has the power to follow through on Trump’s threats.
Earlier this year, the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) Legal Defense Fund spoke out against Bondi’s appointment over her history of suppressing the votes of nonwhite communities in Florida saying, “Ms. Bondi has a record of limiting voting rights, baselessly undermining faith in U.S. elections, and encouraging politically motivated prosecutions as an act of vengeance.”
Kash Patel
Kash Patel is the current Director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) and until early April, was acting Director of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives (ATF). Patel has made clear how he plans to weaponize the agency against Trump’s perceived enemies. The weaponization has raised many questions about the future of civil rights and the growth of programs like COINTELPRO, which was used to infiltrate and wreak havoc within civil rights organizations and movements in the 1960s and 70s.
Equally concerning is the administration’s dismissal of threats posed by hate groups and far-right extremists. Patel’s appointment appears to have created an uptick in hate group activity online, with The Base, one of the most violent neo-nazi groups, attempting to make a comeback. Patel has praised January 6 insurrectionists, supported their pardons, and peddled QAnon conspiracy theories.
Patel admitted in his Senate confirmation hearing that he has been the victim of racism and racial slurs. This makes his association with known racists and antisemites rather interesting. But, like Rubio being Latino, Patel seems to be another prime candidate for that flawed plausible deniability bigots often use when they point to the nonwhite people who promote their beliefs.
Patel has some DOJ and national security experience, but no law enforcement background. Coupled with his beliefs, this validates the many suspicions about his politically motivated appointment.
Dan Bongino
Dan Bongino is currently serving as the Deputy Director of the FBI. Bongino has a long history of peddling racist and bigoted talking points, honing his skills on Fox News, NRATV, Infowars, and most recently on his podcast, The Dan Bongino Show. He is most famous for saying things like, “I wouldn’t inject race” into the conversation around the killing of George Floyd, dismissing any discussions about racism in policing or the justice system, demeaning Black Lives Matter protesters, and claiming the 2020 civil rights protests were hijacked by “Antifa terrorists.”
Bongino is a former New York City police officer and Secret Service agent. While his law enforcement experience gave him instant credibility with other conservative media personalities, Bongino has been widely criticized for spreading misinformation, much of it born in racist circles on social media. He was permanently banned from YouTube in 2022 for posting COVID-19 misinformation and has recently referred to DEI as a “cancerous curse.”
Back in 2018, Bongino threw a fit after comedian Vic Berger pointed out that in a video in which he claimed to be making lemonade, he was blending whole lemons — peels and all — in a blender:
Department of Agriculture
Brooke Rollins
Brooke Rollins is serving as Secretary of Agriculture. She has spent 15 years at the Texas Public Policy Foundation (TPPF) and served on Trump’s 1776 Advisory Commission during his last term. The commission was created in response to the 1619 Project, a book by Nikole Hannah-Jones which focused on the role slavery played in American history. The supposed idea behind the commission was to promote a “patriotic education” that whitewashes certain aspects of American history such as slavery, colonization, and the genocide of Indigenous people.
After the first Trump presidency, Rollins partnered with Trump acolyte Larry Kudlow (who once hosted a white nationalist author at his birthday party) to start the far-right think tank America First Policy Institute (AFPI). She was a staunch proponent of the false notion that “Critical Race Theory” was being taught in public schools (it isn’t). Rollins also has a history of speaking out against celebrating prominent “firsts” for marginalized groups.
Intelligence
The intelligence community (IC) in the United States is headed by the Director of National Intelligence (DNI), who oversees the National Intelligence Program and is the principal advisor to the president. The Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI) is one of only two “independent intelligence agencies.” The other is the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA).
Every intelligence agency falls under the DNI’s oversight. This includes nine defense agencies.
Seven other elements of separate agencies fall under the DNI including, the Department of Energy’s Office of Intelligence and Counter-Intelligence, the Department of Homeland Security’s Office of Intelligence and Analysis and U.S. Coast Guard Intelligence, the Department of Justice’s Federal Bureau of Investigation and the Drug Enforcement Administration’s Office of National Security Intelligence, the Department of State’s Bureau of Intelligence and Research, and the Department of the Treasury’s Office of Intelligence and Analysis.
Tulsi Gabbard
Tulsi Gabbard is now Trump’s Director of National Intelligence (DNI). Gabbard has a history of promoting problematic ideas, such as the fabled anti-white racism trope she invoked when talking about why she left the Democratic Party. She has also been quite vocal about her Islamophobic beliefs, alongside many others who argue that terrorism is a product of Islam.
Gabbard has also spoken out against gay marriage and made several anti-LGBTQ comments at one point, saying, “As Democrats, we should be representing the views of the people, not a small number of homosexual extremists.” However, she claims that she also believes this “is not an area where government should be involved.” Gabbard has apologized for comments made but has never clarified if her views have changed.
John Ratcliffe
John Ratcliffe is serving as the director of the CIA. Ratcliffe contributed to Project 2025 and served as one of Trump’s national intelligence directors in the previous administration. Despite rarely discussing religion publicly, during the first Trump administration, he promoted what the Freedom From Religion Foundation calls “an environment that frequently appealed to Christian nationalist themes, such as prioritizing ‘religious freedom’ and invoking Christian imagery in political messaging.”
Joe Kent
Joe Kent is currently the frontrunner to lead the National Counterterrorism Center. Kent is a twice-failed political candidate who sought votes from antisemites and white supremacists in violent far-right groups like Patriot Prayer and the Proud Boys. During his campaign, Kent appeared in an interview with known neo-Nazi Greyson Arnold, who has praised Hitler-era Germany and advocated for murdering immigrants and refugees.
Kent’s affiliations with hate groups run deep, as evidenced by his hiring a member of the Proud Boys as a campaign consultant, along with many of the things he has said. Kent has also supported the racist “Great Replacement” conspiracy theory, claims the 2020 election was rigged against Trump, and called the January 6 insurrection a “phony riot,” saying that none of it was Trump’s fault and blaming an “absolute intelligence operation” instead.
During his failed campaigns, Kent emphasized introducing and supporting legislation to build a border wall and deprive sanctuary cities of federal funding. He vowed to push back on another made-up issue, “blanket amnesty” for immigrants. Kent also promised to enforce strict employer verification requirements for employees to end the demand for non-U.S. citizen labor.
Kent has experience in U.S. Army special operations and is a former CIA officer. However, he seems to have some unresolved grievances with intelligence agencies, previously calling for the defunding of the CIA, FBI, and ATF.
Kent was a participant in the infamous Signal chat that was used to discuss classified details of an impending U.S. attack on Yemen; he brushed off answering questions about it during his Senate confirmation hearing in April.
Department of Transportation
Sean Duffy
Sean Duffy is currently the U.S. Transportation Secretary. Once a cast member of the reality TV show The Real World: Boston and other reality TV shows, he has served in Congress and has made many media appearances. Known for his comments maligning Indigenous people, downplaying the threats of white supremacist mass shooters, calling the Quebec City mosque shooting a “one-off” while denigrating Muslims, and making disparaging comments about the Congressional Black Caucus, Duffy seems to revel in using racist talking points.
On the first day of Black History Month, Duffy canceled observations at the agency, saying, “Celebrations based on immutable traits or any other identity-based observances do nothing to keep planes in the air, trains on the tracks or ports and highways secure.” On January 29, he signed a memo rescinding the “Biden-Harris Administration’s ‘Woke’ Politics,” eliminating “climate change activism, Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) initiatives, racial equity, gender identity policies, and environmental justice.”
Office of Management and Budget
Russ Vought
Russell Vought is the current director of the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) and served in the same position in Trump’s previous administration. He is a self-avowed Christian nationalist who founded the Center for Renewing America (CRA) based on those ideals. CRA is listed as an advisory group in Project 2025, and Vought played a major role in the Heritage Foundation’s project to reshape and consolidate the federal government’s executive power.
As part of Project 2025, Vought injected a Christian nationalist idea of governance and ensured it stayed on track. Now, as head of the largest executive branch office, he is responsible for creating its annual budget, a key component found throughout the 900-page document. Vought also supports prioritizing Christian immigrants over people from other religions and has called the Democratic Party increasingly evil for embracing secularism.
Vought’s targeting of Critical Race Theory (CRT) and promoting the lie that it is taught in public schools provides insight into his views on race and ethnicity. Like DEI, CRT was the acronym previously used pejoratively and was a tool employed on a broader scale to target Black and other nonwhite communities. Vought has not been shy about using these or other racist talking points as a means to an end.
Environmental Protection Agency (EPA)
Lee Zeldin
Lee Zeldin is serving as the administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency. Zeldin began attracting wide attention in 2017. Then, in 2022, he garnered more attention for running a racially charged campaign ad during his run for New York Governor, a race he nearly won. The ad ran footage of a fatal police encounter that killed 34-year-old Saheed Vassell. Vassell was holding an object that 911 callers thought might be a gun but turned out to be a pipe. While Vassell’s family called the ad racist and implored Zeldin to remove it, he refused.
Billed by the Times of Israel as a Jewish ally, many Jewish organizations have demanded that Zeldin speak out against white supremacy on several occasions, which he has not done. In 2018, Zeldin spoke at the Long Island chapter of the Oath Keepers along with nine other Republicans. Zeldin has also held fundraising events with Steve Bannon.
Ambassadors
Mike Huckabee
Mike Huckabee is the current U.S. ambassador to Israel. Huckabee is a self-described Christian Zionist and opposes a two-state solution in Palestine, arguing that there’s plenty of land in surrounding countries for Palestinians. Throughout his political career, Huckabee has made connections with white supremacists, has made many disparaging comments about the LGBTQ community, and tied his evangelical faith to Israel. In 2008, he called the existence of Palestinian identity into question, saying, “There’s really no such thing as a Palestinian.”
Elise Stefanik (nomination withdrawn)
Elise Stefanik was selected as the U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations (UN). Stefanik’s nomination was withdrawn due to the thin Republican majority in Congress and fears of losing the seat to a Democrat. Stefanik came under fire for invoking racist “Great Replacement” language in the wake of the 2022 mass shooting in Buffalo, New York — a belief the shooter also adhered to. She dismissed Elon Musk’s Nazi salutes during her confirmation hearing saying, “No, Elon Musk did not do those salutes.”
In 2022, local media highlighted the xenophobia in Stefanik campgian ads, claiming Democrats were orchestrating “a permanent election insurrection by granting amnesty to millions of illegal immigrants.” Many of her ads at the time employed key aspects of the “Great Replacement” theory. She was also denounced by the New York Immigration Council for advancing anti-immigrant lies while ignoring the racism behind the Buffalo mass shooting.
Before nearly heading to the UN as America’s ambassador, Stefanik has served as the U.S. representative for New York’s 21st congressional district and chair of the House Republican Conference from 2021 to 2025, the fourth-highest-ranking Republican in the party.
The Rest of the Crew
Much of the rest of Trump’s administration’s Christian nationalist and racist authoritarian ties are understood. The vast majority of people who have followed the Trump administration’s ascent are aware of Stephen Miller’s white supremacist, Klan-like beliefs. Even Robert F. Kennedy Jr., who had a “visceral reaction” against the removal of a Robert E. Lee monument and still promotes eugenics, has made his beliefs known.
Elon Musk’s views have been highly publicized as well, covering everything from Musk’s Nazi salute and promoting antisemitic ideas to hiring racists to work in his Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), there’s no question of what the man who grew up benefiting from South African apartheid and inheriting a stolen emerald mine believes.
This list highlights how clear the Trump administration’s motivations are. Pushing ahead with a reactionary and largely Christian nationalist agenda is a top priority, as the current news cycle shows all too well.
Cover image composition by Dan Feidt, featuring ‘The Garden of Earthly Delights’ by Hieronymus Bosch (1490-1500).
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