Loretta Ross and Jackson Katz—two feminist academics with decidedly different backgrounds and identities—discuss how U.S. federal agents became the enforcement arm of the nation’s racism and misogyny.
Speaking in early February, while the nation was still reeling from the killings of Minneapolis residents Renee Good and Alex Pretti by federal agents, Jackson Katz, a leading voice in gender violence prevention and masculinity studies, and Loretta Ross, a celebrated Black feminist scholar and cofounder of SisterSong, examined the deadly ways misogyny and racism intersect in Donald Trump’s America.
The two of them had a nuanced exploration of how government institutions, cultural narratives and political movements shape—and weaponize—issues of gender and race. Their candid exchange critiques the forces behind U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement and right-wing populism, and challenges us to rethink empathy, identity and our strategies for building a more inclusive feminist movement.
This article originally appears in the Spring 2026 print issue of Ms. The following is an excerpt of their conversation. To read the interview in full, along with more fearless feminist journalism, join the Ms. community today and get every issue delivered straight to your mailbox.
Camille Hahn, Ms.: At colleges like Texas A&M and Kennesaw State University, we’re witnessing the elimination of women’s and gender studies and Black studies programs at a time when they’re crucial to explain what’s going on—to put current events into a historical context. One example is the recent killings of Renee Good and Alex Pretti by U.S. federal agents. I’m wondering, how would you explain their deaths to your students?
Loretta Ross: I tend to see ICE as a well-financed, government-funded Ku Klux Klan, because this is the best dream the Klan ever had, which was to get government support and funding to go around terrorizing people. I don’t know how else to describe it.
Jackson Katz: Right on. The attempt to dismantle the whole intellectual architecture and academic study of gender and race and American history in an honest way is all connected. Because studying feminism, intersectional feminism, gives us great insight into what’s going on. … If you don’t learn about it, you’re just jumping from one event to the next without understanding how they’re connected.
Ross: The only way [this administration] can successfully manipulate people is to keep them ill-educated and scare them into advanced compliance and obedience. … It is not an accident that they’re attacking all forms of education and knowledge that don’t fit their political agenda. It is necessary, it is vital that they do so.
I’m particularly concerned [by] not only the physical attack on brown and Black bodies that is so clearly structured and orchestrated, but the fundamental attack on white women getting knowledge. Educated white women are least likely to fall for their racial and gender fantasies about maintaining white male dominance, and so it is very systematic. It is not accidental.
The subtextual appeal of MAGA and ICE recruitment and DHS recruitment to white men is not just, ‘We want to give you a good job.’ It’s, ‘We need you. You’re necessary. You matter.’
Jackson Katz
Katz: A term emerged … “AWFUL”—affluent white female urban liberal—to mock and ridicule educated white women as the source of so many of the problems in our society. … You need white women to have the babies of the conservative white men who are looking to procreate. But also, electorally, they need the votes of those white women.
If you understand those movements as direct challenges to white heterosexual male authority and cultural centrality, it makes sense that the backlash would be so vociferous. Violence—the use of state violence, the coercive power of the state to enforce white male control—is what’s happening. … The vision of the Klan made manifest in the federal government.
Ross: One of the things that is coming out in fragments is how the economic pain of many of our people is being manipulated and sucked into ICE to serve as an arm of this repression. … We have to see all of this [as people] in economic pain being manipulated and weaponized against all of us to serve the needs of billionaires and white supremacists.
But I don’t want to demonize … all the people whose economic circumstances are catching them up in the maw of this repression. … Our message also has to speak to their pain and take it as seriously as we take our own, even though their solutions are very problematic and wrong.
Do not make people believe that simply because of their identity that they don’t belong in the human rights movement. It’s big enough for everybody.
Loretta Ross
Katz: The subtextual appeal of MAGA and ICE recruitment … is not just, “We want to give you a good job.” It’s, “We need you. You’re necessary. You matter.” … The meaning and purpose that it has is we need strong men to defend this country from invasion. … That’s an incredibly seductive appeal to a certain subset of the population.
When it comes to Latino men … it’s more complicated.
Ross: Within any group of people, there’s a left, a center and a right … There is always a vulnerable sector who buys into the ideology of white supremacy. … Getting proximity to white supremacist ideology is a rational choice for them, even though it sounds crazy to the rest of us. … They’ve been offered an array of very awful choices, and in their minds they’re making the best choice for their particular circumstances.
Ms.: Jackson, you listen to men’s podcasts. What, for instance, is Joe Rogan now saying about Trump?
Jackson Katz: Well, it’s very interesting. There are many dimensions to the position that Joe Rogan finds himself in, because he went all in for Trump. He appeared at the inauguration. In a sense, he put his credibility on the line in support of Trump. But over the past year, a number of things have happened that Joe Rogan is clearly uncomfortable with. He hasn’t broken with Trump dramatically, but he’s signaling that he’s trying to pull away a little bit, distancing himself from certain policies of the Trump administration—like aggressive ICE attacks at Home Depot—without completely dissociating himself from Trump.
One of the narratives that’s appeared in right-wing circles, in the podcast sphere, as well as other places, is, “I didn’t vote for that.” In other words, they say, “I didn’t vote for that” as a way to evade moral accountability for supporting Trump—saving face instead of admitting that they were, in a sense, manipulated.
And that’s to Loretta’s point: The masculinity politics of Trump, or right-wing populism, is a way to generate foot soldiers for their agenda. Because how do you get white working-class men to vote for the interests of billionaires and tax cuts for the wealthy? Well, one of the ways you do it is through identity and through story, as opposed to specific issue-by-issue policy choices.
Ms.: Loretta, what about the harms done by ICE against undocumented women and women of color who face compound vulnerability?
Ross: [Women facing] domestic violence, sexual assault, financial violence are now also dealing with immigration violence, compounding their problems. … Pregnant people without documentation fear going to a doctor for their routine medical care for fear that they may get arrested.
There’s so much harm being done, we almost have to invent new words to describe it. … The routine functioning of human life is being intentionally ruptured by this assault on them and the assaults on the norms of human rights.
This is what we saw that led up to the Holocaust, where you demonize people, you isolate them, you make them afraid … Then you start denying them food … and then you end up consigning them to death. … So much is happening that is unacceptable, and anyone who cares about human decency and integrity should be protesting in every way possible.
Katz: Stephen Miller—who many identify as once of the most influential architects of Trumpism in Trump 2.0, said to Jake Tapper, “We live in a world … that is governed by strength, that is governed by force, that is governed by power.” … Why wouldn’t that apply to interpersonal politics? … If the way of the world is force, and the strong get their way, why is that not a justification for abuse in relationships?
Ross: The other thing that we need to describe at this moment is the very publicly stated war on empathy and compassion. … They’re actually fighting human nature, and saying that “might makes right” is more important than that natural human interdependency we get from childhood.
Katz: What’s playing out … is a really gendered dialogue about what does it mean to be a man. … Is empathy part of being a strong man? Or is that a sign of weakness?
Ross: That’s why I wrote … about the philosophy of calling in. … The best way to fight fascism is to weaken their base. Do not make people believe that simply because of their identity that they don’t belong in the human rights movement. It’s big enough for everybody.
People think that [calling in] is just a lesson in civility. No—it is a strategic thrust into the soft underbelly that is being manipulated by the fascist state. We need to pull away those people who have not forgotten that they want to be good people, that they want to serve society and not exploit it.
