Earlier this week, Trump publicly wrestled with the weighty question of whether to “bomb the shit out of” longtime US ally Oman. Oman’s apparent sin is, it appears, simply being located geographically near Iran and thus having no choice but to engage with the Islamic Republic over the Strait of Hormuz. At the same time, his authoritarian ally in the Middle east, Israeli National Security Minister Itamir Ben-Gvir publicly advocated killing “thirty to forty” Palestinians per day in the Gaza Strip, saying there were some people not worthy of life; some people, in fact who weren’t even human. It was as quintessential a statement of fascist intent as anything to come out of the Netanyahu administration, yet not a single member of the Trump administration mustered even a peep in protest at this heinous proposal. And why would they? It was quite in keeping with the stuff that comes out of Trump’s mouth on a regular basis.

To be fair, Trump had other things on his mind. He had just ordered the Pentagon to scale back military exercises with longtime ally South Korea, made it clear this was punishment for the country not jumping into Trump’s Iran War quagmire, and then began a bizarre days-long, and one-directional, love-fest with North Korea’s dictatorial leader Kim Jong Un, repeatedly heaping praise on the tyrant even as that tyrant remained notably close-lipped in return.

In 2017, as Kim and Trump verbally sparred over North Korea’s accelerated program, and after Trump threatened to “totally destroy” the country, Kim memorably denounced Trump as a “frightened dog,” a “gangster fond of playing with fire,” and pledged that “I will surely and definitely tame the mentally deranged US dotard with fire.” Nine years on, Kim seems to have realized his promise, as his rapidly growing nuclear arsenal serves to conjure up nothing but awe in the eyes of his erstwhile adversary. That “frightened dog” has rolled over, pedaled his legs in the air submissively and, even while he makes more empty, bludgeoning, threats to other countries around the world, has let it be known that he sees who the alpha male in the room really is. But that’s how it always is with bullies, isn’t it? They talk tough until their bluff is called, and then, whining, they slink away, tail between their legs, or cozy up to the nearest genuine tough guy.

Take what happened in Minneapolis earlier this year. Trump unleashed hellfire on the city in the form of armed and deadly ICE agents occupying the streets. And then, when by the tens of thousands, Minnesotans came out to push back against this de facto military occupation, he withdrew in defeat.

Now, six months after Trump’s defeat in Minneapolis, it’s becoming even clearer just how all-pervasive, and antidemocratic, the Trumpist assault on a great American city was, and what its ambitions were. As the conflict escalated, the Department of Homeland Security rapidly created a spy network that, in many ways, was modeled on the COINTELPRO assault on progressives from the 1950s and 1960s.

The monitoring of Minnesotans, dubbed Operation Puppet Master, involved sending undercover agents to union meetings, to church gatherings, to planning sessions in which neighborhood groups strategized on how to push back against ICE. It involved infiltrating civil rights and immigrant rights organizations and gathering data that could be, and now is being, subsequently used in conspiracy trials against activists.

Given that we are now in a “National Security Presidential Memorandum 7 moment”—NSPM7 was signed by Trump as a way to direct government energies into investigating and neutering progressive individuals and groups—in which the vast intelligence and law enforcement apparatuses of the federal government are focused on discovering and rooting out alleged leftist plots against the United States, we should expect evermore Operation Puppet Masters to be unleashed against Americans. The more Americans successfully push back against Trump’s authoritarian agenda, the more DHS and DoJ forces will be activated in efforts to tip the scales against Trump’s perceived enemies.

Indeed, in ways large and small, the administration is accelerating a politics of fear and of intimidation. This week, ICE agents attempted a raid on immigration law firm offices in the northern Sacramento suburb of Natomas, run by attorney Raissa Morris. Allegedly, they were on a search for beds in which undocumented immigrants sleep, since many clients use the office as their mailing address. In reality, since immigrants, especially those fleeing violence, routinely use their attorneys’ offices as mailing addresses, there was no real reason to assume the immigration office was running a flophouse. This was, quite simply, a fishing expedition intended to sow fear in immigrant communities and force law firm clients to put their home addresses on official documents, making it easier for ICE to track them down and arrest them.

Raissa Morris, who has practiced immigration law in the region for years, wasn’t in the office when the four black SUVs, with tinted windows, drove up to the office parking lot Thursday morning. The first she knew of what was going on was when a legal assistant phoned to tell her an armed agent was at the front door asking for a “walk-through” to double-check that there were no beds on the premises. He didn’t have a warrant, and the staffer wanted to know what to do. Morris told her employee to refuse them entry and then she rushed over to the building. By the time she arrived, the agent, and the four cars parked in her lot, were gone, leaving behind a verbal threat with the staff: that they might come back in the middle of the night and break into the building to check on whether there were immigrants sleeping there. “I think they were just there to intimidate,” Morris told me. “They were trying to intimidate us so we don’t put our address as a safe address for our clients. My clients are scared, scared to come in and drop off documents.”