ICE is disappearing people.
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@inthehands Well said! #iceout
@Pollinators @inthehands
I will emphasize some of your points when I call my Senators. -
ICE is disappearing people.
This is a grim and difficult piece, but it is heartening to read it one particular way: the broader national and global conversation is finally, finally starting to pick up on what so many of us have been yelling for weeks and months: the Department of Homeland Security is acting as Trump’s secret police, a group of Brownshirts with a military-sized budget whose horrors extend far beyond two murders.
The Disappearances in Minnesota - emptywheel
Right now, all the focus is on competing videos of conflicts involving Alex Pretti and his murderers. But the bulk of kidnapping that proves this is a paramilitary occupation remains disappeared.
emptywheel (emptywheel.net)
1/
@inthehands just what #campofsaints Steven Miller
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Not just more of the same.
Note that this eye-popping graph only includes ICE, and not CBP, which saw a similar explosion.
How ICE grew to be the highest-funded U.S. law enforcement agency
ICE's budget hovered around $10 billion for years. But President Trump and the Republican-controlled Congress are taking the agency's funding to unprecedented levels.
NPR (www.npr.org)
13/
That's a graph of the funding of Trump's personal army. Welcome to fascism.
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That's a graph of the funding of Trump's personal army. Welcome to fascism.
Theoretically, if they got rid of all the immigrants, I wonder what they would do with all the money?
I guess they would just return it and the budget would shrink and everybody would go home.
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It was the murders of Renee Good and Alex Pretti that punctured the bubble of the comfortable and launched Minneapolis to the top of international news. I understand why that is: the whiteness of the victims combined with unbelievably damning, stomach-churning video were something that a whole lot of people who’d been tuned out simply could not ignore. And those murders alone are so horrific that either one •should• be sufficient to pop the bubble of comfort — but they’re just the tip of an iceberg here.
2/
Just the tip of the iceberg was enough to sink the Titanic.
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@inthehands for me, it's kind of... The Republicans & authoritarian leaning people in US govt have been preparing for this, laying the tracks etc, since W at least. And now they're running the trains. And so many people want to act like Trump is just the sole mover & actor doing this rather than admitting the complicity of those that laid the tracks (multiple decades of federal governments) and are running the train (current congress).
It's not that it's the same, it's just the expected extension of existing policy. Like first they pass the Patriot Act and it takes a while to normalize, but for the last decade you can expect your communications to be read by the government, and now the devices inspected during govt interactions and not long after you can be arrested for just trying to have secrets on your phone.When I look at the Republican budget, I see the anti-democracy billionaire bigots, foreign & domestic, who ran interference for Trump's ilk for decades to achieve this apotheosis for a #MadKing.
GOP budgets reward their rich fascist donors. Only.
We know the names of some of those funding democracy backsliding, but not all.
Go after the money:
Citizens United, courtesy Koch's ownership of a corrupt SCOTUS lets anyone, literally anyone, buy an ...
1/
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When I look at the Republican budget, I see the anti-democracy billionaire bigots, foreign & domestic, who ran interference for Trump's ilk for decades to achieve this apotheosis for a #MadKing.
GOP budgets reward their rich fascist donors. Only.
We know the names of some of those funding democracy backsliding, but not all.
Go after the money:
Citizens United, courtesy Koch's ownership of a corrupt SCOTUS lets anyone, literally anyone, buy an ...
1/
2/
....American election, from the fossil fuel industry to oligarchs in Qatar, Saudi Arabia, UAE, UK, Brazil, China, Russia, and OPEC.
Koch Network & the consequences of Citizens United.
These folks never explain how removing women's civil rights is going to reduce the price of gas.
David Koch’s Most Significant Legacy Is the Election of Donald Trump
Efforts made by Koch, largely ignored by the mainstream press, primed key states to elect a GOP president. Trump was simply the beneficiary.
The Intercept (theintercept.com)
Dark Money: Jane Mayer on How the Koch Bros. & Billionaire Allies Funded the Rise of the Far Right
Democrats and Republicans are expected to spend about $1 billion getting their 2016 nominee elected. There’s a third group that will spend almost as much. It’s not a political party, and it doesn’t have any candidates. It’s the right-wing political network backed by the billionaire Koch brothers, Charles and David Koch, expected to spend nearly $900 million in 2016. The Kochs’ 2016 plans come as part of an effort to funnel hundreds of millions of dollars to conservative candidates and causes
Democracy Now! (www.democracynow.org)
https://www.nytimes.com/2025/12/20/us/politics/koch-network-2024-election-trump.html
:quality(75)/https%3A%2F%2Fassets.lareviewofbooks.org%2Fuploads%2F202004tervo_cover.jpg)
New Grassroots Resistance People: Talking to Theda Skocpol and Caroline Tervo | Los Angeles Review of Books
Andy Fitch talks with Theda Skocpol and Caroline Tervo about polarization, effective organizing, and their book "Upending American Politics."
Los Angeles Review of Books (lareviewofbooks.org)
No Cost for Extremism - The American Prospect
Why the GOP hasn't (yet) paid for its march to the right.
The American Prospect (prospect.org)
Inside the Koch-Backed Effort to Block the Largest Election-Reform Bill in Half a Century
Jane Mayer writes about a leaked conference call in which leaders of dark-money groups and an aide to Mitch McConnell expressed frustration with the popularity of election-reform legislation—even among Republican voters.
The New Yorker (www.newyorker.com)
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I also see that misguided narrative in the people who still (but increasingly rarely) dredge up stats about how many Obama- and Biden-era deportations there were, thinking it’s some kind of mic drop, thinking that deportations are the whole of the evil here, an evil we can just tally up with a bean counter.
And to be clear: those deportations •were• inhumane and evil. US treatment of immigrants has been morally intolerable since long before I was born. I need you to know that I know that when I tell you that this is a whole other level.
9/
@inthehands What you say is true. Chump just ratcheted it up some notches. But the terrible treatment of immigrants has always been in the US.
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2/
....American election, from the fossil fuel industry to oligarchs in Qatar, Saudi Arabia, UAE, UK, Brazil, China, Russia, and OPEC.
Koch Network & the consequences of Citizens United.
These folks never explain how removing women's civil rights is going to reduce the price of gas.
David Koch’s Most Significant Legacy Is the Election of Donald Trump
Efforts made by Koch, largely ignored by the mainstream press, primed key states to elect a GOP president. Trump was simply the beneficiary.
The Intercept (theintercept.com)
Dark Money: Jane Mayer on How the Koch Bros. & Billionaire Allies Funded the Rise of the Far Right
Democrats and Republicans are expected to spend about $1 billion getting their 2016 nominee elected. There’s a third group that will spend almost as much. It’s not a political party, and it doesn’t have any candidates. It’s the right-wing political network backed by the billionaire Koch brothers, Charles and David Koch, expected to spend nearly $900 million in 2016. The Kochs’ 2016 plans come as part of an effort to funnel hundreds of millions of dollars to conservative candidates and causes
Democracy Now! (www.democracynow.org)
https://www.nytimes.com/2025/12/20/us/politics/koch-network-2024-election-trump.html
New Grassroots Resistance People: Talking to Theda Skocpol and Caroline Tervo | Los Angeles Review of Books
Andy Fitch talks with Theda Skocpol and Caroline Tervo about polarization, effective organizing, and their book "Upending American Politics."
Los Angeles Review of Books (lareviewofbooks.org)
No Cost for Extremism - The American Prospect
Why the GOP hasn't (yet) paid for its march to the right.
The American Prospect (prospect.org)
Inside the Koch-Backed Effort to Block the Largest Election-Reform Bill in Half a Century
Jane Mayer writes about a leaked conference call in which leaders of dark-money groups and an aide to Mitch McConnell expressed frustration with the popularity of election-reform legislation—even among Republican voters.
The New Yorker (www.newyorker.com)
3/
These folks' tax cuts come before the lives of Americans.
Koch Network Fuels Republican Push to Kill ACA Subsidies
As millions face higher premiums, Koch‑funded groups are pressuring Republicans to oppose Obamacare subsidy extensions.
Sludge (readsludge.com)
Charles Koch’s network launches $20m campaign backing Trump tax breaks
Revealed: fossil fuel billionaire’s Americans for Prosperity vows ‘herculean undertaking’ to renew and deepen tax cuts
the Guardian (www.theguardian.com)
Top Republicans rub shoulders with extremists in secretive rightwing group, leak reveals
Wealthy entrepreneurs and media moguls also named on membership list for influential Council for National Policy
the Guardian (www.theguardian.com)
Dark Money
Jane MayerCaptured : The Corporate Infiltration of American Democracy
Sheldon Whitehouse, Melanie Wachtell
Harvard Business Review PressDark Towers: Deutsche Bank, Donald Trump, and an Epic Trail of Destruction
David EnrichRockbridge Network
These folks never explain how attacking Somali immigrants is going to lower housing costs.
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Please remember them. Remember them, and then remember what they died for: fighting a much larger danger. Remember what they were fighting, •see• it, and •act•.
Do not let their deaths be in vain by making their deaths the only thing you see.
/end
It's kinda the same, in the way a hatching coccoon of a hideous bloodsucking monster is the same as its hideous bloodsucking larva. Same species, different stage.
It's been incubating. The larva was smaller, and not as often biting at white skin-- but it was a sign, proof, of awful things left unchecked and hungrily growing stronger. It's accelerating, getting bolder and testing where it has or hasn't built up enough political and social infrastructure to bring the hammer down in earnest.
And it has a great many nests and a great many stinging tentacles.
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3/
These folks' tax cuts come before the lives of Americans.
Koch Network Fuels Republican Push to Kill ACA Subsidies
As millions face higher premiums, Koch‑funded groups are pressuring Republicans to oppose Obamacare subsidy extensions.
Sludge (readsludge.com)
Charles Koch’s network launches $20m campaign backing Trump tax breaks
Revealed: fossil fuel billionaire’s Americans for Prosperity vows ‘herculean undertaking’ to renew and deepen tax cuts
the Guardian (www.theguardian.com)
Top Republicans rub shoulders with extremists in secretive rightwing group, leak reveals
Wealthy entrepreneurs and media moguls also named on membership list for influential Council for National Policy
the Guardian (www.theguardian.com)
Dark Money
Jane MayerCaptured : The Corporate Infiltration of American Democracy
Sheldon Whitehouse, Melanie Wachtell
Harvard Business Review PressDark Towers: Deutsche Bank, Donald Trump, and an Epic Trail of Destruction
David EnrichRockbridge Network
These folks never explain how attacking Somali immigrants is going to lower housing costs.
4/
For purported bigots, they sure take a lot of money from Asian oligarchs.
For apparent islamophobes, they sure like the cash of petrostate despots.
https://www.thedailybeast.com/secret-gop-cabal-with-vance-and-thiel-plots-eternal-maga-rule/
J.D. Vance Will Be a More Extremist Christian VP Than Mike Pence
J.D. Vance has deep ties to far-right Christian nationalists who want to impose a populist radicalism to the United States.
Rolling Stone (www.rollingstone.com)
The Shadowy Billionaire Network That’s Quietly Flipping States Red
Discover how the secretive Rockbridge Network, backed by billionaires like Peter Thiel and Rebekah Mercer, is quietly shaping the future of U.S. politics.
Baller Alert (balleralert.com)
Trump-linked Rockbridge Network sets up Korean arm with ex-PM, tycoons
The Korean division of the Rockbridge Network, a donor-backed political coalition closely aligned with US President Donald Trump, has launched in Seoul, drawing
The Korea Herald (m.koreaherald.com)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rockbridge_Network
The NRA & Konstantin Nikolaev
https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2018/06/the-nra-spent-dollar30-million-to-elect-trump-was-it-russian-money
Konstantin Nikolaev—the Putin ally behind Mike Johnson campaign donation
The Russian oligarch gave money to the Republican's 2018 congressional campaign via a U.S-based company in which he owned a majority.
Newsweek (www.newsweek.com)
Russians used a US firm to funnel funds to GOP in 2018. Dems say the FEC let them get away with it.
“Republicans disregarded decades of Commission precedent.”
Mother Jones (www.motherjones.com)
CoreCivic, Geo Corp
https://www.citizensforethics.org/reports-investigations/crew-investigations/private-prison-behemoth-is-first-corporation-to-max-out-to-trump/ -
4/
For purported bigots, they sure take a lot of money from Asian oligarchs.
For apparent islamophobes, they sure like the cash of petrostate despots.
https://www.thedailybeast.com/secret-gop-cabal-with-vance-and-thiel-plots-eternal-maga-rule/
J.D. Vance Will Be a More Extremist Christian VP Than Mike Pence
J.D. Vance has deep ties to far-right Christian nationalists who want to impose a populist radicalism to the United States.
Rolling Stone (www.rollingstone.com)
The Shadowy Billionaire Network That’s Quietly Flipping States Red
Discover how the secretive Rockbridge Network, backed by billionaires like Peter Thiel and Rebekah Mercer, is quietly shaping the future of U.S. politics.
Baller Alert (balleralert.com)
Trump-linked Rockbridge Network sets up Korean arm with ex-PM, tycoons
The Korean division of the Rockbridge Network, a donor-backed political coalition closely aligned with US President Donald Trump, has launched in Seoul, drawing
The Korea Herald (m.koreaherald.com)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rockbridge_Network
The NRA & Konstantin Nikolaev
https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2018/06/the-nra-spent-dollar30-million-to-elect-trump-was-it-russian-money
Konstantin Nikolaev—the Putin ally behind Mike Johnson campaign donation
The Russian oligarch gave money to the Republican's 2018 congressional campaign via a U.S-based company in which he owned a majority.
Newsweek (www.newsweek.com)
Russians used a US firm to funnel funds to GOP in 2018. Dems say the FEC let them get away with it.
“Republicans disregarded decades of Commission precedent.”
Mother Jones (www.motherjones.com)
CoreCivic, Geo Corp
https://www.citizensforethics.org/reports-investigations/crew-investigations/private-prison-behemoth-is-first-corporation-to-max-out-to-trump/5/
Everything about the attacks on Minnesota is intended to make money for a Republican donor, foreign or domestic.
Top private prison companies see profits amid administration's immigration crackdown
The country's largest private prison companies are reporting significant profits amid the Trump administration's immigration crackdown.
ABC News (abcnews.go.com)
The Private Prison Industry Looks Forward to Soaring Profits Thanks to Trump’s Budget
The $45 billion for immigration detention in the "Big, Beautiful Bill" represented a long-sought win for private prisons.
The Intercept (theintercept.com)
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The KKK but with a budget the size of Russia’s military. Running mass detention camps.
Think about that for a minute.
Think about what it could mean, what it •already is•:
Into the abyss
The correct response to Dachau was not better training for the guards.
Degenerate Art (degenerateart.beehiiv.com)
16/
@inthehands It's the people's duty...
"...
But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security."
..."
— Preamble of the United States Declaration of Independence — -
All of what’s happening in Minneapolis is deeply rooted in US history. And in Minneapolis and St. Paul history specifically: Read about the Rondo neighborhood, for example. It’s no accident the the flagship lake in the City of Lakes was named after the vice president of the Confederacy until just a few years ago. Don’t get too excited about making saints of us all here.
It’s crucial for us to recognize that historical precedent. It’s also crucial for us to recognize the extreme new danger of the present moment.
15/
@inthehands Thank you, I didn’t know about Rondo. I have been there but didn’t know what I was looking at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rondo_neighborhood
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I see that misguided narrative in the gutless business leaders who talk about “de-escalation” and “finding real solutions” — as if the problem is just that a few ICE murdered two people, not that all the ICE agents are an authoritarian secret police in the making.
I see that misguided narrative in the elected officials who decry ICE, but then talk about “better training” and “more oversight” — as if the secret police will become humane if they just get a few new rules to ignore and have to sit through a Powerpoint about them.
8/
Training a rabid dog, a rattlesnake, or an ICE goon could only ever be effective in making their bites worse.
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@Pollinators @inthehands
I will emphasize some of your points when I call my Senators.@knowattitude @inthehands Thank you.
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My neighbors definitely do not think this is more of the same. You don’t have to take my word for it. Look at how many Somali and Latin-American restaurants were thriving in November and now are closed, or getting almost no business if they are taking the risk of staying open. Look at how many kids are staying home from school — regardless of legal status, just because of the color of their family’s skin. Look at how many families are living in houses filled with dirty laundry because they won’t even take the risk of leaving the house to go to the laundromat.
My neighbors are living in •terror•.
If it’s more of the same, why did all of this suddenly change in the last two months?
14/
@inthehands one of my neighbors described the alex pretti murder as making her feel similiar to the second plane hitting nyc on 9/11 in that it was a clarifying inflection point where there was no mistaking we were in a new phase. i thought that was notable. people are on a war prep footing
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The KKK but with a budget the size of Russia’s military. Running mass detention camps.
Think about that for a minute.
Think about what it could mean, what it •already is•:
Into the abyss
The correct response to Dachau was not better training for the guards.
Degenerate Art (degenerateart.beehiiv.com)
16/
"The correct response to Dachau was not better training for the guards."
We have an IMPORTANT WINDOW HERE.
Things are getting bad enough that ordinarily complacent people are getting nervous. More people are starting to notice the signs and recognize concentration camps for what they are. This is not a drill.
We still have ENOUGH freedom and internet capability that we can reasonably look up and find information about how this works, and what other people have done about it before. The botslop hasn't eaten it yet. Our access is still there-- although the system is probably ALREADY trying to keep track of who's searching it up and who's reading what books/websites, they aren't fully stopping us from reaching the information. (Yet.)
There are TWO things that could happen next:
1-- Full Fash: Elections get canceled, the hammer comes down, things get really ugly really fast.
2-- Diet Fash: Republicans pratfall on their faces, some grinning limousine neoliberal Democrats swoop in smiling, they promise things will get back to "normal", and things simmer back down to the miserable grind where we watch our healthcare and wages shrivel while the sky gets angrier.
EITHER WAY, the concentration camps will keep getting built bigger, and our access to information will continue to get worse. Option 2 doesn't mean it's over-- it means they're going to catch their breath and try again.
We're not gonna get through to the other side of this until most of us get upset enough to get used to the idea of showing up the way Minneapolis has been doing lately. That's the level of involvement needed, the energy. The system is going to watch our reactions and be trying to get ready to counter it better next time, trying to figure out how to drain our energy and make it harder to muster or maintain it.
The Obama/Harris/Newsom types are NOT going to put the brakes on that power. They'd be in no more hurry to close Dachau than Guantanimo. Get it? And don't give me that, "aww but they're trying so hard" shit. No. See Minneapolis? That's what resistance looks like. It's not strongly worded letters, grandstanding, or handwringing excuses. The Democratic Party leadership aren't just cowards, but traitors actively collaborating with the nightmare.
Look at what the people in Minneapolis are doing. Figure how to carry that feeling of being FED UP close at hand and ready to deploy. Learn as much as you can while the information window is still open. The main lesson of history, as I see it, is: people should freak out and stand up for what's right harder, sooner, and more often.
@inthehands https://hachyderm.io/@inthehands/115991953783115796
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All of what’s happening in Minneapolis is deeply rooted in US history. And in Minneapolis and St. Paul history specifically: Read about the Rondo neighborhood, for example. It’s no accident the the flagship lake in the City of Lakes was named after the vice president of the Confederacy until just a few years ago. Don’t get too excited about making saints of us all here.
It’s crucial for us to recognize that historical precedent. It’s also crucial for us to recognize the extreme new danger of the present moment.
15/
@inthehands I appreciate: Precedented, but *not* the same.
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Please remember them. Remember them, and then remember what they died for: fighting a much larger danger. Remember what they were fighting, •see• it, and •act•.
Do not let their deaths be in vain by making their deaths the only thing you see.
/end
@inthehands Thank you for writing about these horrors. It’s important for all of us to get first-hand accounts, not pablum filtered into neutrality by MSM.
