McCarthyism has returned to the United States, and it's even more dangerous than before. The parallels between the first McCarthy era and Trump's campaign of political repression are striking. Both regimes crafted a monster of quasi-facts and innuendo, fueled by fear of an enemy within, well-organized and financed, secretive and violent, allied with evil foreigners and bent on overthrowing capitalism, democracy, and Christian morality. Both used unconstitutional means to cleanse the nation of this spectral menace.
In the first McCarthy era, federal employees were targeted first. President Harry S. Truman's Federal Loyalty Program screened 5 million workers for communist affiliation, leading to the loss of jobs for 2,700 and resignations for 12,000. Schools, unions, and Hollywood fell in line, with blacklists lasting long after their creators were gone. The Trump administration has purged federal agencies of its equivalent of Cold War communists, the 'woke'. Applicants for civil service jobs are asked to identify their favorite administration policies and explain how they would advance them if hired. The federal employees' union calls this a 'loyalty question'.
Law firms, media companies, and universities have all been intimidated, with law firms resisting government intimidation, media companies capitulating, and universities collaborating. Artists and performers, like Zero Mostel and Jimmy Kimmel, were exiled from film and television. The attorney general compiled lists of supposedly subversive organizations, including groups from the National Negro League to the Nature Friends of America, alongside communists and socialists. Trump's justice department is investigating progressive non-profits, including ActBlue, the Southern Poverty Law Center, and the Open Society Foundations, funded by George Soros.
Both eras had standard-bearers full of ideological passion. McCarthy thundered to the Senate in 1950, claiming the time for a showdown between the democratic Christian world and the communist atheistic world. Trump believes in nothing but himself, but his advisors are true believers. Stephen Miller, Trump's policy adviser, said in a speech that leftists who don't believe in freedom, civil rights, or justice are lying to persuade people that some injustice has been perpetrated against them. Trump's administration must stay the course and be completely unflinching in the pursuit of justice against these enemies of civilization.
The scope of this administration's ambitions, its armies of enforcers inside a gargantuan carceral state, the technological and legal tools at its disposal, and the dearth of principled government actors to obstruct it make this McCarthyism far more dangerous. The administration's global ambitions are evident in its efforts to enlist foreign governments in a coordinated fight against 'far-left terrorism'. Trump issued an executive order designating 'antifa' as a 'domestic terrorist organization' and held a summit to counter domestic terrorism and organized political violence.
The administration's extreme policing tactics are also evident in the charges brought against protesters, often based on misconduct by federal agents. The New York Times reviewed hundreds of cases involving charges of assaulting or impeding federal immigration officers and found that most unraveled due to federal agents' misconduct. The prison sentences received by participants in a 4 July 2025 action outside an ICE facility in Texas were extreme, with 100 years for one defendant and 50-70 years for the others.
Technological surveillance plays a significant role in this repressive regime. ICE has a contract with a subsidiary of Thomson Reuters to provide 'continuous monitoring' of potential government fraud and the arrival of unaccompanied immigrant minors. The agriculture department has contracted with Palantir to provide an AI-empowered return-to-office tracking tool, which can be used for other forms of employee surveillance. The White House has mandated the installation of an app on federal workers' phones, giving all Americans access to administration news alerts, social media posts, and policy announcements.
The administration's submissive Washington is evident in the Republican Congress's relinquishment of its powers and the Supreme Court's majority upholding the president's prerogative to reshape the federal government. The recent ruling that allowed Trump to dismiss the Federal Trade commissioner Rebecca Slaughter and overturned a 91-year-old decision limiting such executive authority reverberates throughout the federal workforce, politicizing the public sector and reopening the door to the ruinous inquests of the McCarthy era.
The next frontier of political repression remains uncertain. Will the postal inspector be deputized to open packages in search of abortion pills bound for red states? Will Trump send ICE or the national guard to intimidate voters at the polls? A president without a moral compass and advisers whose true north is the extreme right, helming a government with unparalleled legal, technological, and financial resources, can implement a regime of political repression that Joe McCarthy or Big Brother could not have imagined.
