American Prestige Bonus - Homeland Empire and Trump 2.0 w/ Nikhil Pal Singh (Preview)
Feb 15, 2026
Nikhil Pal Singh, historian of race, empire, and US political thought, discusses his 'Homeland Empire' analysis and Trump 2.0. He explains expanding zones of rightlessness and links them to the war on terror and carceral institutions. The conversation surveys mass deportation, continental expansionist rhetoric, frontier nostalgia, and the consolidation of executive power.
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War Powers Brought Home
- Nikhil Pal Singh argues Trump’s “Homeland Empire” collapses the spatial divide between war zones and domestic policing.
- It treats people inside the U.S. as citizens or subjects and brings war powers into the homeland.
Built On War On Terror Infrastructure
- Singh traces Homeland Empire onto existing institutions like the war on terror and the carceral state.
- He shows ICE-local police deputization forms a capillary network enabling expanded state power.
Reviving Continentalist Vision
- Singh links Homeland Empire to older continentalist ideas, reviving pre-WWII expansionist imagery.
- He notes Trump draws on archaic rationales to recast the U.S. as a hemispheric power.
