The Trump administration’s ongoing efforts to violently intimidate all political opposition escalated last week. On May 28, Department of Homeland Security (DHS) agents stormed the Manhattan congressional office of New York Representative Jerry Nadler (Democrat) and detained one of his congressional aides.

The seizure of Nadler’s aide is the latest in a series of politically motivated attacks launched by the Trump administration aimed at kowtowing all opposition, no matter how meager, against his dictatorial agenda.

The chaotic and harrowing incident was captured on video and first reported by Gothamist. The video begins with one of the DHS police agents placing the female congressional aide in handcuffs. Another woman is heard telling a different DHS agent, “No, she did not. That is not what happened.”

The DHS cop is heard responding, “She pushed him back.” The baritone voice filming the video responds, “That is not what happened.”

The congressional aide being detained starts sobbing as the agent continues to manhandle her, prompting someone to exclaim, “What the fuck?!”

The video pans to show another woman standing in a doorway, possibly another aide to Nadler, demanding to see the DHS cop’s contact information, telling the agent, “This is not your office.” The cop refuses, “I’m a federal officer; we are here checking on something. We have the right to check it.”

The woman in the doorway again asks to “see a warrant.” At the same time, the detained aide continues to sob, prompting the fascist cop to yell, “Stop resisting,” a typical tactic used by cops to justify their violence.

The other DHS agent accuses the woman in the doorway of “harboring rioters in your office.” She responds, “I have no idea what you are talking about.”

The cop demands she go with him as they “inspect” the representative’s office without a warrant or probable cause. As the cop shuts the door behind him, the video ends with the congressional aide still detained and sobbing.

As a matter of fact, there was no “riot” at the courthouse or any level of the federal building on May 28. No arrests were made inside Nadler’s office, and his aide was not charged with a crime.

The federal building where Nadler’s office is located also houses an immigration court on the floor below. According to Robert Gottheim, Nadler’s chief of staff, the Homeland Security thugs were “angry” because Nadler’s staff had witnessed the immigration Gestapo kidnapping immigrants outside their court hearings. Gottheim told the Times that advocates at the building advising immigrants on their rights were invited into Nadler’s office after the immigrants were detained.

According to Gottheim, the DHS cops threatened to arrest the advocates for “loitering” outside the courtroom, at which point the congressional aides invited them into the office to de-escalate the situation and avoid a confrontation.

In the initial report on the thuggish arrest, Gothamist wrote that Nadler’s office “would not comment on what led up to the chaotic incident.” But following the publication of the story, Nadler posted a statement on X which read:

President Trump and the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) are sowing chaos in our communities, using intimidation tactics against both citizens and non-citizens in a reckless and dangerous manner. In the most recent and deeply troubling incident, DHS agents forcefully entered my Congressional office and handcuffed a member of my staff.

From the outset, my number one concern was for the safety of my staff. While no arrests were made and the situation was quickly deescalated, I am alarmed by the aggressive and heavy-handed tactics DHS is employing in New York City and across the country.

The decision to enter a Congressional office and detain a staff member demonstrates a deeply troubling disregard for proper legal boundaries.

If this can happen in a Member of Congress’s office, it can happen to anyone—and it is happening.

In an impotent appeal to the would-be Führer, Nadler ended his statement by calling on “President Trump and DHS to halt the use of these dangerous tactics and to abandon use of the expedited removal process which denies due process to immigrants and citizens alike.”

Far from backing down, the Trump administration appears to be accelerating and intensifying the use of armed agents of the state against political opponents. Last month, DHS agents arrested the Democratic mayor of Newark, New Jersey, Ras Baraka, while he was on public property outside a massive immigrant detention facility. After dropping charges against Baraka, the newly appointed US attorney for northern New Jersey, Trump sycophant and his lawyer Alina Habba, charged Congresswoman LaMonica McIver with “assaulting” law enforcement during the same incident.

On April 25, Milwaukee County Circuit Court Judge Hannah Dugan was arrested by the FBI on federal charges of obstructing a federal proceeding concerning an immigrant. Fascist FBI Director Kash Patel tweeted following the arrest that Dugan’s “obstruction created increased danger to the public.” Dugan is set to go on trial in July and has pleaded not guilty.

Nadler’s district encompasses a significant portion of Manhattan. Trump reserves special animosity towards Nadler, who as chairman of the House Judiciary Committee in 2019-2020 played a central role in drafting and advancing the first articles of impeachment of Trump, over Ukraine.

Following the January 6, 2021 coup, Nadler co-sponsored the second article of impeachment against Trump, charging him with inciting the insurrection.

In an interview with New York Times published this past Saturday, Nadler spoke on the political character of the arrest. “The Trump administration is trying to intimidate members of Congress,” he told the paper. “They’re behaving like fascists.”

Nadler added, “The Trump administration is really using totalitarian or even authoritarian practices,” He concluded, “We have to fight them. We don’t want to be a fascist country.”

Fascism must be fought, but the rise of Trump and American-style fascism over the last decade demonstratively proves that the Democratic Party is incapable of waging such a fight.

The Democrats, no less than the Republicans, are a party of Wall Street and US imperialism. Their shared class agenda, aimed at enriching the financial oligarchy and ensuring US military supremacy above all, paved the way for the oligarchy that birthed Trump and, with it, the growth of fascist attitudes throughout the US and internationally.

Far from “fighting fascism,” the Democrats have served as sponsors of fascist movements around the world. This is most prominently expressed in their support for neo-Nazi elements in the Ukrainian government and military as part of the US-NATO war against Russia.

And it is the Democratic administration of Joe Biden that armed and financed the Israeli genocide against the Palestinian people in Gaza, an historic crime which has continued under Trump, as both capitalist parties provide unstinting support to Zionism as the instrument of American imperialism in the Middle East.

The fight against fascism cannot be waged through the Democratic Party or by tinkering around the edges. Appeals to Republicans or perspectives based on“reforming” capitalist institutions of class rule and enforcement, such as the police, Supreme Court or ICE, to serve the class interests of the working class are useless.

As the World Socialist Web Site explained in our 2025 New Year statement:

The only viable response to the crisis confronting mankind is the revolutionary mobilization of the working class. The oligarchic character of society testifies to the urgency of the demand raised by Trotsky in the founding program of the Fourth International for the “expropriation of separate groups of capitalists.” This must be fought for through the mobilization of the working class, on a world scale, in opposition to the capitalist oligarchy.