As Trump enjoys the pomp of the Royal Family, America is in uproar

WASHINGTON – As President Donald Trump embarked upon his second state visit to Britain, the America he left behind was rapidly becoming a seething cauldron of uproar that could leave Keir Starmer struggling to find common ground with the US leader.

America is frothing, and in the months since the Prime Minister first invited Trump to make a second state visit to the UK, the philosophical and cultural gulf between the Trump administration and the Prime Minister’s Labour Government has become a widening chasm.

On Tuesday, less than a week after the assassination of conservative influencer Charlie Kirk in Utah, Trump’s Attorney General Pam Bondi upped the ante in the White House battle against “radical left terrorists”.

“There’s free speech and there’s hate speech,” she told right-wing podcaster Katie Miller, even though American laws make no distinction between the two. Of the latter, she indicated “there’s no place, especially now … in our society. We will absolutely target you, go after you, if you are targeting anyone with hate speech,” she indicated.

Kirk would not have agreed. In May 2024, he observed on social media that “hate speech does not exist legally in America. There’s ugly speech. There’s gross speech. There’s evil speech. And ALL of it is protected by America’s First Amendment. Keep America Free.”

But Bondi is now a woman on a presidential mission, ready to root out Democrats – the Labour Party’s traditional political allies in the United States – and supporters whom Trump has characterised as “radical-left lunatics”. His deputy White House chief of staff, Stephen Miller, is even threatening to send them “into exile”.

On Monday night, the Attorney General instructed private companies and publicly-funded institutions to fire anyone whose opinions the White House deems beyond the pale. “Employers, you have an obligation to get rid of people who say horrible things,” she insisted. “They should not be working with you.”

Many employers are bending the knee, despite the likelihood of fired workers launching unfair dismissal lawsuits that cite blanket free speech protections enshrined in the First Amendment to the US Constitution.

Hundreds of people have been sacked since the weekend, including journalists, airline pilots, flight attendants, hospital workers, members of the military and university staff, all of whom were accused by a crowd-source online campaign of saying “horrible things” about Kirk and his widow, Erika. Corporate America appears largely to have decided that it’s better to risk lawsuits from fired workers rather than endure possible consumer boycotts endorsed by the White House.

The President’s enemies list is now being populated at the White House where officials are compiling details of foundations and other “left-wing organisations” that Trump claims are connected to political violence. He indicated that both the Ford Foundation and George Soros’ Open Society Foundation may soon be accused of funding and supporting “terrorism” in America.

Democrats fear that Trump is about to criminalise dissent, even as members of his inner circle continue to chide Starmer over his handling of free speech in the UK. California’s Governor, Gavin Newsom, noted on social media that Stephen Miller has “already publicly labeled the Democratic Party as a terrorist organization”.

“This isn’t about crime and safety,” he argued. “This is about dismantling our democratic institutions.”

Elsewhere, masked agents with Trump’s Immigration and Customs Enforcement Division (ICE) continue hauling people away and threatening them with deportation. As they embarked upon “Operation Midway Blitz” in the Midwest this week, one group of agents was accused of pulling a mother and father out of their vehicle at a busy intersection in Chicago, driving them away at high speed, and leaving their two underage children to fend for themselves in the family’s car. Local community activists are now warning immigrants living in Chicago to have a “family preparedness plan” to deal with Trump’s agents.

The Department of Homeland Security says its raids are targeting “criminal illegal aliens who flocked to Chicago”, and accused Illinois governor J.B. Pritzker, a prominent Democrat, of “sanctuary policies [that] would protect them and allow them to roam free on American streets”.

Departing the White House on Tuesday, Trump indicated that he still intends to deploy National Guard troops to Chicago, despite Pritzker’s objections. “Pritzker’s nothing,” argued Trump, dismissing the elected governor as an irrelevance. “I’m going to go to Chicago,” he added, repeating that only troops can control crime in the Windy City.

Should Starmer be stuck for a conversational gambit, foreign policy also offers few areas of alignment.

The President’s continuing failure to punish Vladimir Putin for refusing to agree to any kind of truce in Ukraine has now been compounded by his insistence that Nato countries (Hungary and Slovakia) must stop purchasing Russian oil before he will take any action.

Israel’s air strike on Hamas officials in Qatar last week has been far more vocally condemned in London than Washington, and Trump has dismissed as “irrelevant” Starmer’s decision to recognise Palestinian statehood at the United Nations General Assembly next week in New York.

Aboard Air Force One, Trump indicated that the next two days will allow him to kick back and relax. “Enjoy yourselves,” he told reporters travelling with him. “You’re going to have some great pictures … have a good time.”

Many Americans have good reason to wonder whether the next couple of days are simply the calm before yet another storm.