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By Joshua Scheer
While many of us are celebrating the New Year with family and friends, the White House and its allies are doing the same—but seemingly partying as if it were 1930s Germany. Among the most reprehensible people in the administration—which, admittedly, isn’t saying much—are DHS Secretary Kristi Noem, aka “ICE Barbie,” and White House Deputy Chief of Staff Stephen Miller. The two were seen dancing to Vanilla Ice’s “Ice Ice Baby” at a New Year’s Eve party at Mar-a-Lago, in a video shared on social media by Miller’s wife, Katie Miller.
Vanilla Ice, @KristiNoem, @StephenM
— Katie Miller (@KatieMiller) January 1, 2026
ICE ICE Baby 🧊 pic.twitter.com/QskZUehP1I
Miller wears a strange grin, while Noem appears to be enjoying herself—though nothing less would be expected from someone who seems to relish dressing up in combat gear and posing with her troops.
This is not unexpected; however, it continues a troubling downward trend toward fascism. Miller is also a key figure behind the administration’s obsession with oil and its pursuit of regime change in Venezuela. His is the belif that the oil in their country is actually ours saying on X.com “American sweat, ingenuity and toil created the oil industry in Venezuela. Its tyrannical expropriation was the largest recorded theft of American wealth and property. These pillaged assets were then used to fund terrorism and flood our streets with killers, mercenaries and drugs.”
In a recent New Republic piece, columnist Michael Tomasky frames Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem as emblematic of a broader shift within the GOP toward what he dubs “ostentatious fascism,” arguing that her actions and rhetoric reflect a hard‑right pivot in Trumpworld that normalizes cruelty and undermines democratic norms. Citing instances such as aggressive immigration enforcement and provocative political imagery tied to Noem’s department, a tweet from Ben Norton underscores the unavoidable reality that the country is being led by fascists and highlights the administration’s use of such political imagery.
Ben writes “This is absolutely insane Nazi propaganda, posted by the US government. It makes it clear that the Trump admin’s mass deportation drive is not actually about “illegal immigration”. There are estimated to be 14 million undocumented immigrants in the US. But the fascist DHS wants to deport 100 million people. This is a call by the US regime for ethnic cleansing of racial minorities, to create a white-supremacist regime without anyone with “third world” heritage. There are around 68 million Latinos in the US. This means the Nazis at DHS are not so subtly hinting that they want to deport every single Latino US citizen, plus tens of millions more racial minorities. The genocidal US empire truly is the Fourth Reich. What the US empire is doing to Palestinians is what it eventually wants to do to its own non-white citizens.”
Not to bury the lead—this was the tweet that started all of this, because it is so heartless and cruel that it would boggle the mind. Yet what has happened to this country is that we have a failed two-party system and a current administration that simply blames the other. I would argue that we need to blame the billionaires instead, because they have infected both parties and failed to deliver for the average person.
Also, just to point out this holiday season, this is not the first time in recent weeks that the Department of Homeland Security has posted something sickening on social media. For example, on their Instagram account, they shared a Christmas greeting stating, “YOU’RE GO HO HO HOME.”
To further highlight the current systemic failure—or what some might call a plan of calculated cruelty—consider the story of Lucy, a 3-year-old in U.S. immigration custody. She was forced to appear alone in court, unable to understand or speak for herself, because U.S. law does not provide government-appointed attorneys for children in civil immigration proceedings. Nonprofit programs that once supported children like her have lost funding, leaving toddlers without representation. Across agencies, children in DHS and ORR custody often face prolonged detention, poor conditions, and minimal oversight. The system treats children as administrative cases rather than vulnerable humans in need of protection.
Lucy’s experience exposes a broader moral failure: the U.S. enforces immigration law at the expense of child welfare, forcing the powerless to navigate life-altering proceedings alone. This is not a mere procedural flaw—it reflects national character and the abandonment of moral responsibility. But what should we expect from a country that has a history of committing atrocities abroad and seizing other nations’ resources with impunity And that history is unfolding again, right before our eyes.
The judge in this case said “I hope Lucy gets to safety,” and moved the hearing to the spring of next year. Yet I would imagine if funding is cut Lucy and her teddy bear might be in for another unfair fight.
I would add that Lucy is part of the group of unaccompanied minors who left their homes seeking safety and hope in the U.S. This highlights one of the striking failures of the two-party system. In 2014, Hillary Clinton referred to undocumented child migrants, saying, “just because your child gets across the border, that doesn’t mean the child gets to stay,” and suggested that children who can be safely returned to responsible adults in their home countries should be.
Though by 2016 she clarified that she would not deport children and supported halting certain raids. The shift in messaging is confusing and disorienting. Meanwhile, Trump won with tough, consistent rhetoric, while his opponents often appeared wishy-washy, or in the case of Biden and Harris, incompetent on immigration. Or, in the case of Barack Obama—whom she refers to in the clip below— became the ‘Deporter-in-Chief,’ enforcing brutal policies of “secure communities”
Yet today Noem was dealt a small setback when a federal judge in San Francisco struck down her attempt to end Temporary Protected Status (TPS) for immigrants from Nicaragua, Honduras, and Nepal. The judge ruled that her decision was “preordained” and unlawful because it ignored proper procedures and failed to objectively assess conditions in those countries, as required by law. The court found that the administration had deviated from long-standing practice and may have been motivated by discriminatory intent. As a result, the order vacates the terminations and restores protections for thousands of TPS holders, allowing them to continue living and working legally in the United States.
According to reporting from Courthouse News, the judge said: “Unilateral power has never been American. Nor has this country ignored the importance of humanitarian relief. By complying with the Constitution and enforcing the purpose of the Temporary Protected Status statute, this nation’s economy is strengthened and our society is united.”
At the end, a little good news. However, the shock and awe campaign of rattling the racist underbelly of this country will be far more powerful than small Democratic‑norm victories—but it will build, because there are still laws in this country… for now.
Happy New Year, and stop ICE—I mean, Vanilla.
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