It helps not to know me!!!
The Growing Thirst for Cruelty
- Thread starter The Thriller
- Start date
It helps not to know me!!!
Red
Well-Known Member
The Thriller
Well-Known Member
Hmmm
I’d normally say that this is an insane thing for a leader to say especially a leader of a large democratic nation with nukes, but the demmycrats haven’t given me the perfect candidate with a message I agree 100 percent on so I guess I’m gonna roll with crazy *** fascism instead!
Again, is this country even worth fighting for when most of the population either doesn’t give a **** that their leader speaks like this daily or they like that he speaks like this daily?
Perhaps America will end up like most red states where those of us with talent and means just leave for blue states (in this case, blue countries like Canada or Western Europe)? My wife and I would definitely take a loss but we both have degrees, connections, and means to escape this insane asylum. Every day I question why we stay here. Is this a place we’d choose to raise a family in if we could choose to go elsewhere? I think more and more those of us with talent and means are going to decide NO. The longer this goes on without a significant part of the country that voted for him turning against him, tells me that this isn’t a good place to be.
Self governance requires that the electorate possess some level of virtue. And sadly, every day I see examples that the people here are so ****** that we’re likely destined for a period of authoritarianism. They don’t care about character or policies; they care about hurting fellow human being and being entertained by their daddy. Until people start caring again that they’re led by an insane person, we’re gonna be ****ed no matter how Democrats resist (or don’t resist).
The Thriller
Well-Known Member
I do wish the media did just a basic job of informing people.
Alcatraz actually held criminals.
This place described as Alligator Alcatraz just holds unwanted brown people that Trump and his masked agents want to do away with. It’s a textbook concentration camp. And will definitely possess the same few horrific characteristics that all concentration camps have. But most Americans won’t care, it doesn’t affect them plus alligator Alcatraz is so funny. Brown people who don’t speak English getting eaten by gators! All because they came here for a better life! Haha hilarious take that brown people!
Red
Well-Known Member
Certainly looks the part, from the clips of the interior I’ve seen today.
Comparing this to past episodes in history, too many fail to recognize evil, other than in retrospect. It’s jaw dropping to me that this actual encouragement of, and welcoming of, our dark angels, is not seen for what it is.
Red
Well-Known Member
The Lancet.
Funding cuts to the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) by the Trump administration could lead to more than 14 million additional deaths globally over the next five years, according to a new study, as the toll of the government’s dismantling of one of the largest aid agencies worldwide unfolds.
The study, published Monday in the Lancet, estimates that 91 million deaths in low- to middle-income countries were prevented between 2001 and 2021, owing to USAID, whose programs have played a vital role administering humanitarian and developmental assistance to vulnerable populations around the world.
Through projection models assessing two scenarios — one in which 2023 funding levels continue and another that reflects the cancellation of 83 percent of USAID’s programs announced by the Trump administration — researchers estimated that more than 14 million preventable deaths could occur by 2030, including 4.5 million deaths among children under 5, if cuts continue.
The report captures the potential ripple effect of the United States’ shifting posture globally under an administration that is seeking to reshape the federal government and has quickly stripped funding for long-established programs and agencies it deems unnecessary.
The sudden halt of USAID programs is “deeply undermining the image of the United States around the world,” Davide Rasella, a research professor at the Barcelona Institute for Global Health and coordinator of the study, said in an email.
“The magnitude of USAID’s impact over the past two decades cannot be overstated,” he added, pointing both to USAID’s role in advancing global health and its investment in improving food security, water and sanitation, education and economic opportunities. “These broader interventions have strengthened the resilience of communities, enabling them to thrive well beyond the scope of any single program. The dismantling of these programs now threatens to reverse decades of progress.”…..
…….In the Lancet report, researchers write that higher levels of USAID funding were associated with a 15 percent reduction in “all-cause” mortality worldwide over 21 years. The strongest association between levels of USAID funding and mortality was in deaths from HIV/AIDS, which were reduced by 65 percent, the report said. Malaria mortality was also reduced by 51 percent and neglected tropical disease by 50 percent, it said.
……James Macinko, a health policy professor at the University of California at Los Angeles and an author on the paper, noted in a statement that U.S. citizens contributed about 17 cents per day to USAID.
“I think most people would support continued USAID funding if they knew just how effective such a small contribution can be to saving millions of lives,” he said.
Funding cuts to the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) by the Trump administration could lead to more than 14 million additional deaths globally over the next five years, according to a new study, as the toll of the government’s dismantling of one of the largest aid agencies worldwide unfolds.
The study, published Monday in the Lancet, estimates that 91 million deaths in low- to middle-income countries were prevented between 2001 and 2021, owing to USAID, whose programs have played a vital role administering humanitarian and developmental assistance to vulnerable populations around the world.
Through projection models assessing two scenarios — one in which 2023 funding levels continue and another that reflects the cancellation of 83 percent of USAID’s programs announced by the Trump administration — researchers estimated that more than 14 million preventable deaths could occur by 2030, including 4.5 million deaths among children under 5, if cuts continue.
The report captures the potential ripple effect of the United States’ shifting posture globally under an administration that is seeking to reshape the federal government and has quickly stripped funding for long-established programs and agencies it deems unnecessary.
The sudden halt of USAID programs is “deeply undermining the image of the United States around the world,” Davide Rasella, a research professor at the Barcelona Institute for Global Health and coordinator of the study, said in an email.
“The magnitude of USAID’s impact over the past two decades cannot be overstated,” he added, pointing both to USAID’s role in advancing global health and its investment in improving food security, water and sanitation, education and economic opportunities. “These broader interventions have strengthened the resilience of communities, enabling them to thrive well beyond the scope of any single program. The dismantling of these programs now threatens to reverse decades of progress.”…..
…….In the Lancet report, researchers write that higher levels of USAID funding were associated with a 15 percent reduction in “all-cause” mortality worldwide over 21 years. The strongest association between levels of USAID funding and mortality was in deaths from HIV/AIDS, which were reduced by 65 percent, the report said. Malaria mortality was also reduced by 51 percent and neglected tropical disease by 50 percent, it said.
……James Macinko, a health policy professor at the University of California at Los Angeles and an author on the paper, noted in a statement that U.S. citizens contributed about 17 cents per day to USAID.
“I think most people would support continued USAID funding if they knew just how effective such a small contribution can be to saving millions of lives,” he said.
Last edited:
Red
Well-Known Member
USAID officially closes, attracting condemnation from Obama and Bush
As the US agency officially winds down foreign aid operations, former presidents hit out at Donald Trump.
www.bbc.com
Bush and Obama delivered their messages of condemnation in a video conference they hosted with U2 singer Bono for thousands of members the USAID community.
Bush, a fellow member of Trump's Republican Party, focused on the impact of cuts to an AIDS and HIV programme that was started by his administration and subsequently credited with saving 25 million lives.
"You've showed the great strength of America through your work - and that is your good heart,'' Bush told USAID workers in a recorded statement, according to US media. "Is it in our national interests that 25 million people who would have died now live? I think it is, and so do you."
Meanwhile Obama, a member of the opposition Democratic Party, affirmed the work that USAID employees had already done.
"Gutting USAID is a travesty, and it's a tragedy. Because it's some of the most important work happening anywhere in the world," Obama was quoted as saying.
Long-time humanitarian advocate Bono spoke about the millions of people who he said could die because of the cuts.
"They called you crooks, when you were the best of us," he told attendees of the video conference.
Bush, Obama and Bono bid farewell to USAID as 14m more deaths forecast without it
Departing staff thanked by two former presidents and a rock legend as new study reveals human cost of Trump administration’s decision to axe global humanitarian agency
www.independent.co.uk
Bono, well known for his advocacy for developing nations, chose to deliver his message in rhyme and said: “They called you crooks – when you were the best of us, there for the rest of us. And don’t think any less of us, when politics makes a mess of us.
“It’s not left-wing rhetoric to feed the hungry, heal the sick. If this isn’t murder, I don’t know what is.”
Red
Well-Known Member
The cruelty is the entire point….
www.thebulwark.com
Will July 1, 2025 be a date that will live in infamy?
Probably not. There are too many competitors, too many other dates in recent months and years that have been signposts on our descent toward authoritarianism and indecency, too many other markers of national decline, for this one day to stand out all that much.
Still, yesterday packed quite a one-two punch.
The Senate passed a massive budget reconciliation bill that stands out, probably more than any other recent piece of legislation, for comforting the very comfortable while afflicting the afflicted. “Let’s not kid ourselves,” Alaska’s Republican Sen. Lisa Murkowski hastened to say after the bill passed. It’s “not good enough” for our nation, and it’s the product of “an awful process—a frantic rush to meet an artificial deadline.”
Of course Murkowski told us this after having cast the deciding vote for the bill.
In addition to cutting health care for the poor and providing tax relief for the rich, the legislation provided massive funding increases for the federal agencies carrying out the Trump administration’s anti-immigrant obsession. The bill adds a total of $170.7 billion to immigration enforcement. It roughly triples the annual detention and enforcement budgets for the masked men of Immigration and Customs Enforcement over the next four years.
And according to our vice president, JD Vance, this was the point of it all: “Everything else—the CBO score, the proper baseline, the minutiae of the Medicaid policy—is immaterial compared to the ICE money and immigration enforcement provisions.”
View: https://x.com/JDVance/status/1939889575108686070
How to Turn the U.S. Into an Immigration Police State in One Big Bill
Medicaid cuts? Trillions in new debt? All immaterial, MAGA insists, as long as we get to jail the foreigners.
www.thebulwark.com
Will July 1, 2025 be a date that will live in infamy?
Probably not. There are too many competitors, too many other dates in recent months and years that have been signposts on our descent toward authoritarianism and indecency, too many other markers of national decline, for this one day to stand out all that much.
Still, yesterday packed quite a one-two punch.
The Senate passed a massive budget reconciliation bill that stands out, probably more than any other recent piece of legislation, for comforting the very comfortable while afflicting the afflicted. “Let’s not kid ourselves,” Alaska’s Republican Sen. Lisa Murkowski hastened to say after the bill passed. It’s “not good enough” for our nation, and it’s the product of “an awful process—a frantic rush to meet an artificial deadline.”
Of course Murkowski told us this after having cast the deciding vote for the bill.
In addition to cutting health care for the poor and providing tax relief for the rich, the legislation provided massive funding increases for the federal agencies carrying out the Trump administration’s anti-immigrant obsession. The bill adds a total of $170.7 billion to immigration enforcement. It roughly triples the annual detention and enforcement budgets for the masked men of Immigration and Customs Enforcement over the next four years.
And according to our vice president, JD Vance, this was the point of it all: “Everything else—the CBO score, the proper baseline, the minutiae of the Medicaid policy—is immaterial compared to the ICE money and immigration enforcement provisions.”
View: https://x.com/JDVance/status/1939889575108686070
The Thriller
Well-Known Member
Maybe that ******* should’ve spoken out last summer?USAID officially closes, attracting condemnation from Obama and Bush
As the US agency officially winds down foreign aid operations, former presidents hit out at Donald Trump.
Bush and Obama delivered their messages of condemnation in a video conference they hosted with U2 singer Bono for thousands of members the USAID community.
Bush, a fellow member of Trump's Republican Party, focused on the impact of cuts to an AIDS and HIV programme that was started by his administration and subsequently credited with saving 25 million lives.
"You've showed the great strength of America through your work - and that is your good heart,'' Bush told USAID workers in a recorded statement, according to US media. "Is it in our national interests that 25 million people who would have died now live? I think it is, and so do you."
Meanwhile Obama, a member of the opposition Democratic Party, affirmed the work that USAID employees had already done.
"Gutting USAID is a travesty, and it's a tragedy. Because it's some of the most important work happening anywhere in the world," Obama was quoted as saying.
Long-time humanitarian advocate Bono spoke about the millions of people who he said could die because of the cuts.
"They called you crooks, when you were the best of us," he told attendees of the video conference.
Bush, Obama and Bono bid farewell to USAID as 14m more deaths forecast without it
Departing staff thanked by two former presidents and a rock legend as new study reveals human cost of Trump administration’s decision to axe global humanitarian agency
Bono, well known for his advocacy for developing nations, chose to deliver his message in rhyme and said: “They called you crooks – when you were the best of us, there for the rest of us. And don’t think any less of us, when politics makes a mess of us.
“It’s not left-wing rhetoric to feed the hungry, heal the sick. If this isn’t murder, I don’t know what is.”
Republicans who whine about their programs going to hell after they stay silent during campaigns can go **** themselves. George W Bush has had multiple opportunities to take a stand against Trump and he’s failed to do so literally every ****ing time. He knew or should have known that Trump was going to **** all over Bush’s legacy if put back into power yet, silence. I guess remaining part of the country club is more important than standing for something. Even dick Cheney did more to defeat Trump last summer than George W Bush. Dick. ****ing. Cheney.
Our capitalist class, most religious leaders, and “conservative” leaders have done nothing to push back against fascism over the last decade. Especially American Christianity, which has embraced this evil. In a way, it’s shown itself to be the empty husk many liberals always called it out to be; it doesn’t give a **** about Christ’s teachings, all it cares about is money, power, and being able to **** naive women and innocent children (not necessarily in that order either).
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Red
Well-Known Member
View: https://www.democracynow.org/2025/7/2/ice_abductions_masked_men_andrea_velez
In an effort to fulfill the Trump administration’s daily immigration arrest “quotas,” federal agents and deputized local law enforcement are racially profiling and snatching people off the streets without due process. These arrests, carried out by armed and masked agents, are sowing terror and confusion in communities across the United States. Stephano Medina, a lawyer with the California Center for Movement Legal Services, shares how ICEregularly denies that it has taken people into custody, leading to family members scrambling for information about their loved ones. “It’s arrest now, ask questions later,” adds Dominique Boubion, an attorney representing Andrea Velez, a U.S. citizen who was taken by ICE last month in what Velez has since described as a “kidnapping.”
The Thriller
Well-Known Member
What’s the point of loser “moderates” like Murkowski? They don’t ever vote against Trump on anything that matters. Might as well elect a full MAGA true believer. Murkowski and Collins count the votes, make sure that legislation has enough votes to pass, then they take turns voting “No” so they can pretend to take a stand yet know that the legislation is going to pass regardless of how they vote. It’s a silly game that has gotten so old over the last decade. Again, I wish states like Alaska and Maine would just vote a full MAGA candidate who’s all in on the racism, misogyny, and pedophilia than continue to elect the same moderate crap.
Red
Well-Known Member
Red
Well-Known Member
The big, beautiful bill is the foundation for a police state. It won’t be long before we are the envy of the Chinese government. Hey, but it beats a uniparty, right?
www.thenation.com
Amid all the frenzied MAGA agitprop and bald-faced lying that have marked the final stages of Donald Trump’s signature domestic policy bill, it’s been easy to lose sight of its transformative policy agenda. Much of the controversy spurred by the sweeping legislation concerns its evisceration of healthcare coverage—a stunning $1 trillion in combined cuts to Medicaid, the state-based program funding healthcare access for low-income Americans, and allied coverage to poor patients under the Affordable Care Act. But the bill, which emerged out of its Senate reconciliation session in a blizzard of votes to amend it on Monday, also erects a permanent immigration police state. With more than $150 billion in outlays to expand the horrific surveillance, detention, and rendition regime created under the Laken Riley Act, the measure will carry out Trump’s pledge to make the terror wreaked by masked Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers, alongside federal and National Guard troops, in Los Angeles the standard operating procedure for immigrant roundups going forward.
The scale of the proposed increases in ICE funding alone make for grim dystopian reading. As Don Moynihan notes, ICE’s annual budget for detentions would skyrocket from $3.4 billion in the present fiscal year to $45 billion until the end of the 2029 fiscal year—a 365 percent increase, and a figure that outstrips the combined funding of all 50 federal prisons. Here, per Moynihan, are some additional spending comparisons:
Building out the detention capacity of US immigration enforcement by nearly a fourfold factor would elevate the ghoulish white-nationalist policy mandates of Miller into a permanent federal legacy—at the precise moment that the Trump spending bill rolls back basic social-democratic protections from healthcare to food security, to education. And other arms of the federal government are already moving ahead with plans to turbocharge the MAGAfied model of immigration enforcement as a glorified form of political terror and disfranchisement. A recent NPR exposé found that the Department of Homeland Security has joined forces with the data-thugs-without-porfolio at the Department of Government Efficiency to create the federal government’s searchable national citizenship data system. The ostensible mission behind the database is to provide state and local election officials with confirmation of the citizenship status of prospective voters, in line with Trump’s evidence-free claims of rampant immigrant election fraud. The new data network draws on immigration records and Social Security data to produce the country’s first-ever registry of citizens. (Because, as we all know so well by now, combining DOGE and Social Security has been a resounding success in assessing government priorities thus far.)
But the real damage here, as NPR reporters Jude Joffe-Block and Miles note, concerns the creation of a national surveillance state on steroids—without any public debate or consultation with Congress. “This level of integration among federal agencies handling sensitive personal data has never existed before,” they write, “and experts call it a sea change that inches the U.S. closer to having a roster of citizens—something the country has never embraced. A centralized national database of Americans’ personal information has long been considered a third rail—especially to privacy advocates as well as political conservatives, who have traditionally opposed mass data consolidation by the federal government.”
Such concerns are far from theoretical—the Electronic Registration Information Center, the lead federal agency charged with compiling voter citizenship data, has seen several red states terminate participation in the programover privacy concerns. Meanwhile, David Jennings, the DHS administrator in charge of the federal Safeguard Voter Eligibility initiative—the Trumpified version of the electronic registry still awaiting final congressional approval—telegraphed its true aims last month when he hosted a briefing with Cleta Mitchell, a leading election-denying attorney who sought to overturn the results of the 2020 election on Trump’s behalf. When you combine the new surveillance regime for citizenship claims with the dramatic enforcement and detention capacities created for DHS and ICE under the spending bill, you have a formula for the untrammeled expansion of American authoritarianism in all directions, under the bogus directive to clamp down on an immigrant crime wave that simply doesn’t exist.
Trump’s Big Bill Is Building a Big Police State
Meanwhile, the Democratic Party’s floundering over immigration leaves it without an opposition strategy.
www.thenation.com
Amid all the frenzied MAGA agitprop and bald-faced lying that have marked the final stages of Donald Trump’s signature domestic policy bill, it’s been easy to lose sight of its transformative policy agenda. Much of the controversy spurred by the sweeping legislation concerns its evisceration of healthcare coverage—a stunning $1 trillion in combined cuts to Medicaid, the state-based program funding healthcare access for low-income Americans, and allied coverage to poor patients under the Affordable Care Act. But the bill, which emerged out of its Senate reconciliation session in a blizzard of votes to amend it on Monday, also erects a permanent immigration police state. With more than $150 billion in outlays to expand the horrific surveillance, detention, and rendition regime created under the Laken Riley Act, the measure will carry out Trump’s pledge to make the terror wreaked by masked Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers, alongside federal and National Guard troops, in Los Angeles the standard operating procedure for immigrant roundups going forward.
The scale of the proposed increases in ICE funding alone make for grim dystopian reading. As Don Moynihan notes, ICE’s annual budget for detentions would skyrocket from $3.4 billion in the present fiscal year to $45 billion until the end of the 2029 fiscal year—a 365 percent increase, and a figure that outstrips the combined funding of all 50 federal prisons. Here, per Moynihan, are some additional spending comparisons:
These massive giveaways are earmarked for an agency that’s shown a decidedly cursory regard for the fundamental protections afforded to all Americans by the rule of law. In conducting their expansive raids on workers and families that are not suspected of any overt criminal activity, ICE agents have masked themselves to shun responsibility for their actions—an illegal abuse of power commonly associated with Eastern Bloc police states. Reviewing the agency’s recent arrest record, it’s not hard to see why agents don’t want their identities known: On an unprecedented scale, they are rounding up and detaining immigrants who aren’t accused of any criminal activity. ICE’s apprehension of immigrants facing criminal charges are up 128 percent over last year—but the agency’s detention of immigrants without criminal records has increased by more than 1,400 percent. Customs and Border Patrol agents had previously stopped most immigrants without criminal records as they turned them away from the border, by a ratio of 30 to 1. Now that ICE is carrying out White House deputy chief of staff Stephen Miller’s new directive to round up anyone who might vaguely resemble an immigrant, that ratio has disappeared. As The Washington Post’s Philip Bump notes, each agency is now apprehending roughly equal numbers of immigrants without criminal records. And ICE, of course, is going far out of its way to pursue its Miller-authorized directives to detain and rendition its corps of noncriminal suspects.
Building out the detention capacity of US immigration enforcement by nearly a fourfold factor would elevate the ghoulish white-nationalist policy mandates of Miller into a permanent federal legacy—at the precise moment that the Trump spending bill rolls back basic social-democratic protections from healthcare to food security, to education. And other arms of the federal government are already moving ahead with plans to turbocharge the MAGAfied model of immigration enforcement as a glorified form of political terror and disfranchisement. A recent NPR exposé found that the Department of Homeland Security has joined forces with the data-thugs-without-porfolio at the Department of Government Efficiency to create the federal government’s searchable national citizenship data system. The ostensible mission behind the database is to provide state and local election officials with confirmation of the citizenship status of prospective voters, in line with Trump’s evidence-free claims of rampant immigrant election fraud. The new data network draws on immigration records and Social Security data to produce the country’s first-ever registry of citizens. (Because, as we all know so well by now, combining DOGE and Social Security has been a resounding success in assessing government priorities thus far.)
But the real damage here, as NPR reporters Jude Joffe-Block and Miles note, concerns the creation of a national surveillance state on steroids—without any public debate or consultation with Congress. “This level of integration among federal agencies handling sensitive personal data has never existed before,” they write, “and experts call it a sea change that inches the U.S. closer to having a roster of citizens—something the country has never embraced. A centralized national database of Americans’ personal information has long been considered a third rail—especially to privacy advocates as well as political conservatives, who have traditionally opposed mass data consolidation by the federal government.”
Such concerns are far from theoretical—the Electronic Registration Information Center, the lead federal agency charged with compiling voter citizenship data, has seen several red states terminate participation in the programover privacy concerns. Meanwhile, David Jennings, the DHS administrator in charge of the federal Safeguard Voter Eligibility initiative—the Trumpified version of the electronic registry still awaiting final congressional approval—telegraphed its true aims last month when he hosted a briefing with Cleta Mitchell, a leading election-denying attorney who sought to overturn the results of the 2020 election on Trump’s behalf. When you combine the new surveillance regime for citizenship claims with the dramatic enforcement and detention capacities created for DHS and ICE under the spending bill, you have a formula for the untrammeled expansion of American authoritarianism in all directions, under the bogus directive to clamp down on an immigrant crime wave that simply doesn’t exist.
The Thriller
Well-Known Member
LMFAO
Our media…
View: https://bsky.app/profile/atrupar.com/post/3lswk2ncg3b26
Why is it Democrats’ job to inform people of what republicans just did? You’re a ****ing News agency, it’s your job! It shouldn’t be partisan to tell facts. “Republicans diverted $1 trillion of Medicaid funding to pay for tax cuts for millionaires and billionaires.” That’s just what happened. It should be like reporting the sunrise or sunset. It happened.
Our media…
View: https://bsky.app/profile/atrupar.com/post/3lswk2ncg3b26
Why is it Democrats’ job to inform people of what republicans just did? You’re a ****ing News agency, it’s your job! It shouldn’t be partisan to tell facts. “Republicans diverted $1 trillion of Medicaid funding to pay for tax cuts for millionaires and billionaires.” That’s just what happened. It should be like reporting the sunrise or sunset. It happened.
The Thriller
Well-Known Member
65 million? So like all immigrants? Interesting how a major player in maga world who’s very close to the president is calling for genocide. Imagine the outrage if a close advisor to Obama or Biden had called for killing off all the worthless rural rubes in America.The big, beautiful bill is the foundation for a police state. It won’t be long before we are the envy of the Chinese government. Hey, but it beats a uniparty, right?
Trump’s Big Bill Is Building a Big Police State
Meanwhile, the Democratic Party’s floundering over immigration leaves it without an opposition strategy.
Amid all the frenzied MAGA agitprop and bald-faced lying that have marked the final stages of Donald Trump’s signature domestic policy bill, it’s been easy to lose sight of its transformative policy agenda. Much of the controversy spurred by the sweeping legislation concerns its evisceration of healthcare coverage—a stunning $1 trillion in combined cuts to Medicaid, the state-based program funding healthcare access for low-income Americans, and allied coverage to poor patients under the Affordable Care Act. But the bill, which emerged out of its Senate reconciliation session in a blizzard of votes to amend it on Monday, also erects a permanent immigration police state. With more than $150 billion in outlays to expand the horrific surveillance, detention, and rendition regime created under the Laken Riley Act, the measure will carry out Trump’s pledge to make the terror wreaked by masked Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers, alongside federal and National Guard troops, in Los Angeles the standard operating procedure for immigrant roundups going forward.
The scale of the proposed increases in ICE funding alone make for grim dystopian reading. As Don Moynihan notes, ICE’s annual budget for detentions would skyrocket from $3.4 billion in the present fiscal year to $45 billion until the end of the 2029 fiscal year—a 365 percent increase, and a figure that outstrips the combined funding of all 50 federal prisons. Here, per Moynihan, are some additional spending comparisons:
These massive giveaways are earmarked for an agency that’s shown a decidedly cursory regard for the fundamental protections afforded to all Americans by the rule of law. In conducting their expansive raids on workers and families that are not suspected of any overt criminal activity, ICE agents have masked themselves to shun responsibility for their actions—an illegal abuse of power commonly associated with Eastern Bloc police states. Reviewing the agency’s recent arrest record, it’s not hard to see why agents don’t want their identities known: On an unprecedented scale, they are rounding up and detaining immigrants who aren’t accused of any criminal activity. ICE’s apprehension of immigrants facing criminal charges are up 128 percent over last year—but the agency’s detention of immigrants without criminal records has increased by more than 1,400 percent. Customs and Border Patrol agents had previously stopped most immigrants without criminal records as they turned them away from the border, by a ratio of 30 to 1. Now that ICE is carrying out White House deputy chief of staff Stephen Miller’s new directive to round up anyone who might vaguely resemble an immigrant, that ratio has disappeared. As The Washington Post’s Philip Bump notes, each agency is now apprehending roughly equal numbers of immigrants without criminal records. And ICE, of course, is going far out of its way to pursue its Miller-authorized directives to detain and rendition its corps of noncriminal suspects.
Building out the detention capacity of US immigration enforcement by nearly a fourfold factor would elevate the ghoulish white-nationalist policy mandates of Miller into a permanent federal legacy—at the precise moment that the Trump spending bill rolls back basic social-democratic protections from healthcare to food security, to education. And other arms of the federal government are already moving ahead with plans to turbocharge the MAGAfied model of immigration enforcement as a glorified form of political terror and disfranchisement. A recent NPR exposé found that the Department of Homeland Security has joined forces with the data-thugs-without-porfolio at the Department of Government Efficiency to create the federal government’s searchable national citizenship data system. The ostensible mission behind the database is to provide state and local election officials with confirmation of the citizenship status of prospective voters, in line with Trump’s evidence-free claims of rampant immigrant election fraud. The new data network draws on immigration records and Social Security data to produce the country’s first-ever registry of citizens. (Because, as we all know so well by now, combining DOGE and Social Security has been a resounding success in assessing government priorities thus far.)
But the real damage here, as NPR reporters Jude Joffe-Block and Miles note, concerns the creation of a national surveillance state on steroids—without any public debate or consultation with Congress. “This level of integration among federal agencies handling sensitive personal data has never existed before,” they write, “and experts call it a sea change that inches the U.S. closer to having a roster of citizens—something the country has never embraced. A centralized national database of Americans’ personal information has long been considered a third rail—especially to privacy advocates as well as political conservatives, who have traditionally opposed mass data consolidation by the federal government.”
Such concerns are far from theoretical—the Electronic Registration Information Center, the lead federal agency charged with compiling voter citizenship data, has seen several red states terminate participation in the programover privacy concerns. Meanwhile, David Jennings, the DHS administrator in charge of the federal Safeguard Voter Eligibility initiative—the Trumpified version of the electronic registry still awaiting final congressional approval—telegraphed its true aims last month when he hosted a briefing with Cleta Mitchell, a leading election-denying attorney who sought to overturn the results of the 2020 election on Trump’s behalf. When you combine the new surveillance regime for citizenship claims with the dramatic enforcement and detention capacities created for DHS and ICE under the spending bill, you have a formula for the untrammeled expansion of American authoritarianism in all directions, under the bogus directive to clamp down on an immigrant crime wave that simply doesn’t exist.
