Last Week in US Imperialism
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US Bombs Syria in a “Declaration of Vengeance”
The US has carried out yet another bombing campaign in Syria, with Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth calling it “a declaration of vengeance” in response to the recent killing of two US soldiers and an interpreter. The attacker behind the soldiers’ deaths is said to have been a member of Syria’s Internal Security service; the US believes he was working on behalf of ISIS, though there has been no confirmation from ISIS of any responsibility.
The US Central Command boasts the use of 100 munitions in the retaliatory attack that targeted 70 sites the US claims are tied to ISIS. The Jordanian Armed Forces joined the US military fighter jets and attack helicopters in carrying out the violent response, proudly announcing their involvement in the strikes, in the interest of “combatting extremist terrorism”.
Over the past several months, the US military and its cronies—often including the Syrian Security Service itself—have carried out 80 military operations targeting ISIS. 10 more recent operations have resulted in around 23 alleged “ISIS militants” having been killed or detained, according to a US official. Captured electronics from these operations were then used to assist in locating the 70 targets struck during “Operation Hawkeye”, the name of the December 19th attack—in classic US fashion, the operation name is patriotic in nature, as both US soldiers killed were from Iowa, the “Hawkeye State”.
President Ahmed al-Sharaa, the current leader of Syria—and a friend of Trump—visited the White House not long ago to sign an agreement pledging to cooperate with the US and its partners-in-crime, as they continue to stake their claim in the area; there are close to 2,000 US troops currently stationed in Syria, having been deployed this year.
Sources:
https://www.cnn.com/2025/12/19/politics/us-strikes-isis-targets-syria
Trump Pushes to Denaturalize Hundreds of US Citizens
The Trump administration issued a guideline to the US Citizenship and Immigration Services field offices last week demanding they “supply [the] Office of Immigration Litigation with 100-200 denaturalization cases per month” for the 2026 fiscal year. This move is an ambitious uptick from Trump’s last term, where he averaged 25 denaturalization cases per year.
And ambitious it is. The huge logistical burden on the courts aside, the grounds to denaturalize a citizen are very slim, limited to application fraud and rare politicized “war crimes” cases (says the world’s biggest war criminal). Trump intends to broaden the scope of the federal law to prosecute people associated with gangs or cartels or those who have committed financial fraud against the government or private individuals or entities—which, of course, fit the description of his racist caricatures of immigrants. He has also threatened to deport and denaturalize political dissidents such as New York City mayor-elect Zohran Mamdani, who, as Trump himself later admits, agrees with him on the important points, like defending US imperialism.
But this campaign is not some exceptional fascist moment in US history. US citizenship has always been a tool to manage who gets to reap the benefits of imperialism, on the one hand, and who’s stuck as a permanent underclass living in precarity, on the other. The possibility of moving from the latter to the former is the illusion of the American Dream. With his latest decision, Trump has fractured this illusion even more. It’s a show of weakness, not strength, that the category of citizenship is being stripped of its protective power. In an attempt to provoke fear, US Imperialism lashes out at its own citizenry, its own servants and soldiers of empire. We need courage in the face of these attacks, rooted in our rejection of the permanence and strength of US Imperialism. We need to stand with immigrants facing deportation and citizens facing denaturalization.
CBS Buries 60 Minutes Segment on US Deportations to CECOT
This week, CBS News pulled a 60 Minutes investigation into US deportations to El Salvador’s CECOT prison, a mass detention site used to remove people from circulation and hold them beyond visibility after expulsion by US border policy.
CECOT, the Terrorism Confinement Center, is built for indefinite detention. Prisoners are held in overcrowded cells under constant artificial light, denied access to lawyers or family. Detention is based on accusation, appearance, or alleged affiliation, with no timeline for release. Abuse is routine.
According to the Associated Press, migrants deported from the United States have been transferred straight into this system, often without charges or hearings. U.S. custody ends; legal disappearance begins. Constraints that still nominally apply inside the United States are shed at the border.
The 60 Minutes segment, Inside CECOT, included interviews with men deported from the United States and then confined inside the prison, describing the abuse that followed removal and their subsequent disappearance: beatings by prison guards, no contact with family, no access to lawyers, no clear path to release. The reporting documented the handoff from US custody to CECOT’s cells and was cleared by CBS attorneys and the network’s internal Standards and Practices department.
Just hours before Sunday’s broadcast, CBS abruptly removed the segment from the scheduled episode— an unusually late intervention for a program whose reporting typically takes months. The segment featured Venezuelan men deported by the Trump administration and imprisoned in what 60 Minutes described as a “brutal” facility in El Salvador. CBS said the piece would air at a later date and cited the need for “additional reporting.”
In a private note to colleagues later reported publicly, veteran correspondent Sharyn Alfonsi said the segment had been screened five times and was factually correct. “In my view, pulling it now—after every rigorous internal check has been met—is not an editorial decision, it is a political one,” she wrote.
The call was made by CBS News editor-in-chief and right-wing zionist freak Bari Weiss.
The Trump administration declined to comment. Bari Weiss treated that refusal to comment—unusually and against established practice—as grounds to halt a segment that had already cleared legal and editorial review. The result was collaboration in effect: the administration withheld participation, and CBS leadership adjusted its standards to suppress reporting on the administration’s own policy.
The segment did not air.
Sources:
https://apnews.com/article/el-salvador-trump-prison-immigrants-4ab3fc3c0474efb308084604b61f8a37
https://apnews.com/article/60-minutes-trump-weiss-cecot-56c68d45c3d6bc7183f23aa285a70719
https://www.nytimes.com/2025/12/21/business/60-minutes-trump-bari-weiss.html
https://www.politico.com/news/2025/12/22/cbs-pulls-60-minutes-el-salvador-prison-00702617
Last Week in US Imperialism
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