The astonishing thing is that we all knew; the signs were clearly evident. Trump’s character and past were all too visible but he was still voted in with a decisive majority. America’s wealthiest business leaders provided vocal and financial support for his presidential campaign, including Elon Musk who gave millions. But there is yet another emerging problem involving free speech and legitimate democratic freedoms in the USA under Trump and his acolytes. In the latter stages of the Gaza genocide American university students in particular staged protests against the genocide. The police intervened in these democratic and peaceful protests. A leader of one of the protests at his university was subsequently arrested and taken into an immigrant internment centre in preparation for removal from the country. The student leader Mahmood Khalil is an American citizen and has ben stripped of his legal rights.

Currently, his lawyers are trying to stop the deportation while protests on his behalf continue. Trump’s campaign to deport alleged criminal South American people has condemned many, without trial, to horrendous imprisonment in El Salvador. Justice Sonia Sotomayor issued a scathing dissent joined by Justices Elena Kagan and Ketanji Brown Jackson, and joined in part by Barrett. She called the majority’s legal conclusion “suspect” and accused the Trump administration of largely ignoring “its obligations to the rule of law.”

“The government’s conduct in this litigation poses an extraordinary threat to the rule of law. That a majority of this court now rewards the government for its behavior with discretionary equitable relief is indefensible. We, as a nation and a court of law, should be better than this,” Sotomayor wrote.

The prophesy has materialised.