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An illuminating segment on MSNOW’s Weekend Primetime examined how the Trump administration has refined what can only be described as the art of the label—an exercise in branding human beings as threats and then using that label alone to justify the application of overwhelming military force. Host James Sample walked viewers through how this practice operates in real time: individuals or groups are branded with ominous-sounding designations, and those designations, largely untested and unchallenged, become sufficient grounds for detention, deportation, or death. The alarming part is not merely the labeling itself, but how seamlessly these hollow classifications are converted into acts of state violence, often without any discernible legal foundation or meaningful oversight.
For a country that endlessly invokes the rule of law and treats “due process” as a sacred principle, it is chilling to watch how easily government officials can, on little more than assertion, affix a label to a person and render that individual a legitimate military target. Once the label is applied, the usual safeguards—evidence, hearings, accountability—simply vanish. Even more disturbing is the near-total absence of resistance from Congress or sustained scrutiny from the media, allowing the executive branch to operate as judge, jury, and executioner based on nothing more than its own say-so.
Sample illustrated how this tactic has evolved and expanded. It began, he explained, with migrants being labeled as members of the dangerous gang Tren de Aragua, a claim often unsupported by evidence, and then using that unvetted designation to justify sending them to CECOT, where they were subjected to brutal conditions and torture. The label alone did the work; no adjudication was required, no proof demanded. From there, the administration escalated, branding people aboard boats in the Caribbean as “narcoterrorists” and then using that designation to justify blowing the vessels out of the water, killing those on board. Beyond the invocation of the narcoterrorism label itself, the administration offered little to persuade the public that the people killed actually met that definition.
According to Sample, the most recent and perhaps most dangerous iteration of this practice has emerged in Africa, where the administration has labeled certain regions in Nigeria and Somalia as ISIS-controlled areas and then relied solely on that characterization to carry out military strikes. In Nigeria, one such attack reportedly occurred on Christmas Day, underscoring the moral numbness that accompanies this kind of empty labeling. When entire regions can be reduced to a single word—“ISIS”—and that word becomes a license to kill, the line between lawful military action and lawless violence all but disappears.
At some point, Congress must intervene and reclaim its constitutionally mandated role. That intervention should begin with demanding answers about these labels: how they are defined, what evidence supports them, and what legal reasoning is used to transform them into justifications for lethal force. The military lawyers who sign off on these actions should be required to testify publicly and explain their rationale to the American people. Only sustained oversight and transparency can halt the dangerous slide toward governance by label, where words replace law and accountability is an afterthought. One can only hope Congress acts before more lives are lost to this reckless and hollow exercise of power.