Show Notes
A panoramic review of immigrant persecution under Trump 2.0 so far and a look at where we are now. Support Next Comes What + Get Andrea's posts FIRST: https://degenerateart.beehiiv.com/subscribe Read the post: https://degenerateart.beehiiv.com/p/breaking-ice WATCH YouTube: https://youtu.be/cJ-puSPNlHs TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@degenerateartnews LISTEN Everywhere: https://pod.link/1779885475
This week, Andrea Pitzer reviews what has happened with the Trump administration's strategic violence against immigrants in the U.S. during the year and a half since his return to office. Andrea mentions three crises that the government hopes people will simply ignore, but which are causing tremendous suffering: cuts to USAID, climate change, and the systemic persecution of immigrants. All three are critical to attend to, but for this episode, she focuses on what has happened since January 2025 on the immigration front. Running through the Trump administration's attempts to use wartime laws to deport detainees to a gulag in El Salvador, and Stephen Miller's longstanding dream of building tent cities, she shows how those dreams played out in reality. Those deported to El Salvador faced horrific abuse, and two tent-style concentration camp projects led to Camp East Montana at Fort Bliss in Texas, and the Everglades camp in Florida that the administration named "Alligator Alcatraz." Both camps have inflicted tremendous suffering on detainees. The Florida camp has been shut down, but Camp East Montana still holds thousands of detainees. The tent-city project went badly enough that the government has pivoted repeatedly to other approaches, including a short-lived attempt to use Navy overseas contracting architecture to build concentration camps domestically. This also hit roadblocks. Next, Trump and his allies turned to trying to acquire existing warehouses and retrofit them for Amazon-style mass detention in a nationwide network of concentration camps. Local resistance to these sites was fierce and fast. Now the government is pivoting to building new facilities at sites it already owns or controls, which will make pushing back against them a more complicated and challenging effort. Andrea closes the episode with a few thoughts on how people have resisted thus far, and the innovating spirit that has inspired everyday people to find novel and effective means to put sand in the gears of the deportation machine. 00:00 - Introduction & The Three Growing Crises 03:15 - Day One: Early Moves & Expanding ICE Power 06:42 - Tent Cities & The Everglades Detention Infrastructure 10:15 - Federalizing Police & Los Angeles Deployments 13:50 - Border Operations & Community Resistance Tactics 17:30 - Minneapolis Crackdown & Gregory Bovino's Removal 21:10 - Warehouse Expansion: ICE's Strategic Shift 25:05 - Local Movements Stopping Detention Centers 28:40 - The History of Camp Resistance & Lessons Ahead
More from Next Comes What
People are waking up to the profiteering at the heart of the administration. We can use the resulting fury to build a movement. Support Next Comes What + Get Andrea's posts FIRST: https://degenerateart.beehiiv.com/subscribe Read the post: https://degenerateart.beehiiv.com/p/the-corruption-umbrella LISTEN Everywhere: https://pod.link/1779885475 WATCH TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@degenerateartnews YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@DegenerateArtNewsletter This week's episode looks at the many ways that corruption underpins every part of Trump administration policies. Andrea Pitzer considers the deliberate choice to inflict suffering in the U.S. and abroad, which has been done across the board for direct personal or political gain. She notes that the catastrophic shifts in U.S. policy that set the stage for much of what is happening today took place in response to the 9/11 attacks, but that Trump 2.0 does not even have that flimsy fig leaf of a justification, given that the president has intentionally created the crises now engulfing the country. All this has led to illness, hunger, war, and death.
FIND A NO KINGS OCTOBER 17 VOTE EARLY EVENT NEAR YOU: https://www.nokings.org/ We can send the people pushing fascism on us back into their holes without buying into hate. Support Next Comes What + Get Andrea's posts FIRST: https://degenerateart.beehiiv.com/subscribe Read the post: https://degenerateart.beehiiv.com/p/the-clampdown-continues LISTEN Everywhere: https://pod.link/1779885475
The roots of everything that ails the country go deeper than Trump, so we need to think beyond November 3rd. Support Next Comes What + Get Andrea's posts FIRST: https://degenerateart.beehiiv.com/subscribe Read the post: https://degenerateart.beehiiv.com/p/killing-zombie-trumpism LISTEN Everywhere: https://pod.link/1779885475 WATCH
Authoritarians reveal themselves, even to followers who prefer not to see. And that leaves an opening for change. Support Next Comes What + Get Andrea's posts FIRST: https://degenerateart.beehiiv.com/subscribe Read the post: https://degenerateart.beehiiv.com/p/opening-the-blinds LISTEN Everywhere: https://pod.link/1779885475 WATCH TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@degenerateartnews/video/7692115338934127885 YouTube: https://youtu.be/p8YBYcAtXxs This week, Next Comes What looks at the disillusionment that eventually takes place for most people who succumb to the cult of personality in an authoritarian society. Andrea Pitzer looks at events in recent weeks that are providing the spark for that awakening among many Trump supporters. With higher gas prices driving the point home, we also see everyone from next-door neighbors to judges and Republican politicians beginning to stand up against Trump, or at least to edge away from association with him. Andrea compares this growing repudiation of the president and his policies to the case of Mitsuye Endo, a Japanese American U.S. citizen who was fired from her state job in California and detained in camps with her family during World War II. In other cases brought by Japanese Americans, a majority of justices on the Supreme Court rubber-stamped the bigotry of the day while rationalizing actions they understood were wrong. But when it came to Endo—a U.S.-born Christian with no ties to Japan or even the Japanese language—the judges could find no pretext at all to provide cover for what was, at root, a detention program based simply on racial exclusion. Seeing many recent examples of people recognizing that their faith in Trump was wrongheaded or even immoral, Andrea suggests that we've come to a similar moment in which Americans are being forced to choose. Not everyone will walk away from Trumpism, but many will, for reasons that may be ethical or practical—or both. The episode ends with suggestions on how to respond to those who do. 00:00 Introduction: Shifting Public Opinion & Political Dynamics 02:48 The Rising Costs of Living and Cracks in the GOP Coalition 05:36 Institutional Capitulation and the Defense of Democratic Norms 08:24 Leaving MAGA: Personal Realities and Disillusionment Stories 11:12 Human Toll: Immigration Crackdowns, ICE, and Affected Families 14:00 Legal Pushback: How Judges Are Challenging Federal Overreach 16:48 Historical Echoes: The Mitsuye Endo Case and Wartime Detentions 19:36 The Midterms and the Ripple Effects of Raging Unpopularity 22:24 Complicity, the Thanksgiving Table, and Long-Term Cultural Shifts 25:12 Conclusion: Guardrails for the Future and Continuing the Fight
Corrupt power will always inflict more harm if it can benefit from that additional suffering. But we don't have to let it happen. Support Next Comes What + Get Andrea's posts FIRST: https://degenerateart.beehiiv.com/subscribe Read the post: https://degenerateart.beehiiv.com/p/there-is-always-a-box LISTEN Everywhere: https://pod.link/1779885475 WATCH TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@degenerateartnews/video/7689199426488831246