Is the United States becoming a police state? The answer seems to be yes because many of the features of police state–such as widespread surveillance of citizens, censorship and suppression of free speech, ideological indoctrination in schools and the media, and political targeting of dissidents, and political prisoners—are now present and observable in the United States.
 
Indeed, both sides of the political aisle agree that America is in danger of losing its democracy and its liberty. The only difference is that each accuses the other of seeking to establish a police state. Who’s right? The film resolves the question by defining what a police state is, and showing how it got started and how it operates, both behind the scenes and out in the open.
 
The film shows how the police state emerged out of the ashes of 9/11, when citizens gave their government a whole new set of police powers, intending that those be used against Islamic terrorists from abroad. Over time, remarkably, those same powers were turned against American citizens—patriots, Christians and conservatives—who are accused of being domestic terrorists.
 
The film also identifies Donald Trump as the primary target of the police state, and the January 6 protesters—some serving long sentences for peacefully entering the Capitol to make their voices heard–as the first political prisoners in peacetime U.S. history. Working in collaboration with Dan Bongino—former NYPD officer, Secret Service Agent, and now political commentator—Dinesh D’Souza burrows deep into the bowels of the police state, interviewing insiders and whistleblowers, and also ordinary citizens who have been hounded, raided, and targeted by an expansive police state apparatus that stretches across the public, private and nonprofit sector.
 
This is Dinesh D’Souza’s scariest and timeliest film—an urgent warning to all Americans to protect our basic liberties, before it’s too late.