The message from the second night of the Republican National Convention was clear — and brutal: Elect Donald Trump this November or the United States will be overrun with brown people and drugs that will kill you, your family, and everyone you care about.
The GOP trotted out an array of lawmakers throughout the night’s programming, dubbed “Make America Safe Again,” to deliver their well-worn lines about migrant crime and the need to build a border wall, but the gist of the evening was best captured in an interstitial video rife with garish imagery — including stock footage of a cadaver in a morgue, a family crying at a funeral, and, for some reason, a nuclear bomb exploding.
“This is the man responsible for your family’s safety,” the video began, showing a string of unflattering clips of President Joe Biden. “And he’s failed you — terribly.”
The video keyed on comments Biden made during a 2020 Democratic primary debate about how the United States is ready and willing to accept migrants seeking asylum. Clips of crowds of migrants played as an ominous narrator warned of drug gangs, sex traffickers, and ISIS terrorists. It’s all “putting America on high alert for an attack and your family at great risk” — and it’s all the “weak” and “incompetent” Biden’s fault.
As the crowd watched the video and listened to the series of Republican speakers dishing out lurid, horrifying details, many of the assembled delegates, audience members, and conservative luminaries whooped, hissed, chanted, and at times fist-pumped. Everyone appeared conditioned and desensitized to the tales of terror, having heard versions of these tales of out-of-control bloodletting numerous times before on Fox News and elsewhere. Meanwhile, attendees waved signs that read “STOP BIDEN’S BORDER BLOODBATH.”
Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) seemed inspired during his speech to the convention, which immediately followed the video. “Americans are dying,” he said. “Murdered, assaulted, raped by illegal immigrants that the Democrats have released.”
Cruz highlighted the deaths of Laken Riley, Rachel Morin, and Kate Steinle — whose stories are fixtures in right-wing fear-mongering about migrant crime — asserting they “happened because Democrats cynically decided they wanted votes from illegals more than they wanted to protect our children.”
Studies have shown that immigrants are significantly less likely to commit crime than Americans born in the U.S., including in Cruz’s home state of Texas.
Most of the night’s speakers referenced the border. House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) said we “cannot allow the many millions of illegal aliens they’ve allowed across our borders to harm our citizens, drain our resources, or disrupt our elections,” nodding to the Great Replacement conspiracy theory that Democrats are deliberately trying to flood the nation with immigrants to win elections. So did Johnson’s fellow Louisianan lawmaker Rep. Steve Scalise (R-La.). “Biden and Harris want illegals to vote now that they’ve opened up the border,” he said.
Rep. Elise Stefanik (R-N.Y.) lamented Biden’s “wide-open border” and the “sanctuary cities” in her state. Sen. Tim Scott (R-Fla.), who wants to be the next Senate majority leader, joked about how in his “nightmare,” Biden erased the border and “flew in so many illegals into our country that Mexican cartels started getting frequent flyer miles.” Sen. Tom Cotton (R-Ark.) spoke of a “third-world invasion” and detailed his own real-life nightmare of a flight he was on being “full of these migrants.”
It wasn’t just lawmakers, either. Michael Coyle, who runs an Instagram page that chronicles drug use in Philadelphia, spoke about the opioid epidemic in the city. “Joe Biden and Kamala Harris are the ones who opened our southern border and allowed Chinese fentanyl to pour in unconditionally,” he said, before describing how some “tranq” addicts “smell of rotting flesh,” and how Trump “will end the urban nightmare.”
Republicans projected migrant-fueled doom and gloom all night, but they also looked ahead to what will happen to them should Trump win another term in November. “We’ll start by securing the border. If you came here illegally under Joe Biden you’re going back to where you came from under Donald Trump,” said Rep. Jim Banks (R-Ind.). Vivek Ramaswamy, Trump’s primary opponent turned lapdog, said that electing Trump is the only way to “seal” the border and “restore law and order in this country.”
Somehow, Trump’s plan to crack down on immigration is even more terrifying than the Republicans who spoke on Tuesday night let on. He wants to round up undocumented migrants across America and toss them in detention camps until they can be kicked out of the country. He’ll do away with due-process hearings to make it easier to do so, and will even contract the military to help with the eradication effort. He told Newsmax earlier this year that he’ll also give local law enforcement “immunity” to crack down on migrants however they see fit.
Trump has also spoken in far more denigrating terms about undocumented immigrants than most of his minions would dare. He has echoed Adolf Hitler by saying migrants are “poisoning the blood of our country,” describing them throughout the campaign as violent criminals — just as he did in the summer of 2015 when he appalled America by kicking off his first presidential campaign by saying Mexico was sending “rapists” across the border.
Tuesday night at the Republican National Convention was yet more proof of what has long been obvious: that Republicans have not only embraced Trump’s disgusting rhetoric about immigrants over the past decade, they want it to define the party.
The grisly programming of the convention’s second night was perfectly in line with Trump’s B-movie-grade, gory vision of what “law and order” should look like in modern America.
“In conversations I’d been in the room for, President Trump would explicitly say that he’d love a country that was totally an ‘eye for an eye’ — that’s a direct quote — criminal-justice system, and he’d talk about how the ‘right’ way to do it is to line up criminals and drug dealers before a firing squad,” a former Trump White House official previously told Rolling Stone.
“You just got to kill these people,” Trump would often say while in the White House, this ex-official recounted.
“He had a particular affinity for the firing squad, because it seemed more dramatic, rather than how we do it, putting a syringe in people and putting them to sleep,” the former official said. “He was big on the idea of executing large numbers of drug dealers and drug lords because he’d say, ‘These people don’t care about anything,’ and that they run their drug empire and their deals from prison anyways, and then they get back out on the street, get all their money again, and keep committing crimes … and therefore, they need to be eradicated, not jailed.”
People bicycle along the water in Manhattan, New York, on April 16, 2026.
It Doesn’t Get Much Dumber Than Trump’s War on ‘DEI Bike Lanes’
Out of all the sins of the Trump administration — wars, ICE raids, anti-vax lunacy and the return of measles, the empowering of Kash Patel and Stephen Miller, and so much more — Secretary of Transportation Sean Duffy declaring war on “DEI bike lanes” is surely a small thing. But it’s also such a monumentally stupid act, so counterproductive, so anti-MAHA as to be completely maddening. NPR recently reported that staff at the Federal Highway Administration have been asked to purge any references to bikes and bike lanes from the agency’s website.
Additionally, Duffy, a former Real World and Road Rules participant, retired member of Congress, and devoted Donald Trump sycophant, wrote: “We urge Congress to restrict competitive and formula grant funding for bicycle lanes and other bicycle infrastructure that reduce travel throughput [sic] for motor vehicles and support removal of existing bike lanes that contribute to congestion.”
Despite protests, the feds moved to dismantle a beloved D.C. bike lane earlier this year, but that action was halted when a judge, in response to a lawsuit brought be a local bicycling group, paused the destruction, writing in a 61-page opinion: “The Court’s review of the record reveals the absence of a reasoned explanation.”
Logical arguments are out but irrational attacks are a constant feature of the Trump administration. And in this case, Duffy and Trump are going after something that is widely popular and spinning it into partisan nonsense. According to a 2025 YouGov poll, three quarters of Americans support having bike lanes. Broadly speaking, Americans think bike lanes increase quality of life and safety for drivers and cyclists alike. Bike paths and rail trails also bring tourism to places in rural America hungry for visitors and are a huge boost to local economies. The Empire State Trail in New York stretches from Manhattan all the way to Canada and generates a whopping $1.87 billion in economic activity, according to a recent study. Some 9.75 million visitors have ridden parts of the trail.
Nor are bike lane projects particularly expensive, especially along urban routes. Certainly not compared to, say, lobbing more than 850 Tomahawk cruise missiles into Iran at a cost of some $2 million a shot. For an administration that claims to want to make people healthy again, the declaration of war on bike lanes may be as bizarre as spending billions to attack Iran. Biking is an excellent low-impact cardio endeavor. Riding a bike helps to clear the mind, brings people outside, and is a fun family activity. Moreover, in the winter, cross country skiers and snowmobilers can enjoy those same paths in rural areas.
What bike lanes have to do with DEI is unclear. Likely this is the Biden administration’s fault for some admittedly political language touting the infrastructure bill’s grants. The Biden team announced they would “consider how projects can address climate change, ensure racial equity, and remove barriers to opportunity.” Which could be seen as lofty goals when many Americans were desperate for pot hole and bridge repairs. But that’s not really the issue here. If the Biden people were for something, then the Trump people must always be against it. This is a ridiculous calculus, counterproductive, and why voters are so sick and tired of our broken political system.
In a maneuver worthy of a North Korea apparatchick, Duffy apparently ordered data showing that bike lanes make driving safer scrubbed from a federal website. Time and again, like the pharaohs of Egypt, the administration will simply excise information that doesn’t fit its agenda. Duffy, the former pro-lumberjack turned MAGA cheerleader, is also leading the charge to rename New York’s Penn Station after Trump, and using access to much needed federal funding for a necessary renovation as leverage to make his case.
Not surprisingly, Duffy and Trump’s hostility extends to high-speed rail or really any kind of investment in public transport. The very successful congestion pricing program in New York City was declared an enemy by the Trump folks — even after data showed 27 million fewer cars entered Manhattan after just one year of the program. After all, if we can’t all be stuck in Midtown traffic while riding in a giant gas-guzzling SUV then what’s really the point of being American?
None of this makes any sense. Surely we can have roadways for our cars and our cyclists. Recently, my childhood best friend was visiting New York and I took him on a Citibike ride around lower Manhattan, on the same city streets where we grew up during the 1970s and 1980s. Back then, biking those streets was the kind of high-risk activity many parents simply wouldn’t allow. Or in our case, they closed their eyes and prayed. There were virtually no bike lanes at the time. For kids, it was extra dangerous because you are smaller and less visible. Speaking of busted infrastructure, I learned to ride on the abandoned elevated West Side Highway, dodging broken bottles, garbage, and much worse. On our ride this year, my friend was amazed. Perhaps it was the beauty of riding on a protected path watching a Manhattan sunset along the Hudson River, or maybe he was seeing a city so completely reborn while gliding along on two wheels. Sometimes when you are on a bike, your eye just catches the world passing by differently.
During the early 2000s, it was Michael Bloomberg, the billionaire Republican mayor of the city, who pushed for hundreds of miles of bike paths, making the city infinitely safer for bikers and alleviating pressure on mass transit. It’s one of Bloomberg’s most positive legacies. And yes, there are plenty of cyclists who ride like jerks and don’t obey traffic laws — but we can and should police that just like we do reckless driving. Of course there’s an inherent risk in riding a bike, but dedicated bike lanes make our country safer and better.
Two exceptional but wildly different people have said things about riding a bike that have always stuck with me. Albert Einstein used cycling as a metaphor for existence: “Life is like riding a bicycle. To keep your balance, you must keep moving.” Truer words were never spoken. And basketball legend LeBron James has made the case for biking as an equity engine of sorts, recalling how his first bike changed his life: “[My bike] gave me the freedom to not only get to places, but to access things that otherwise would have been out of reach. Even now, riding a bike makes me feel like a kid again. There’s nothing like feeling the air on your face and that freedom to just ride.”