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/

All of this is why I get uncomfortable with a certain kind of focus on the murders of Renee Good and Alex Pretti, and the mistaken narrative that focus can create.

Don’t get me wrong: we •should• focus on those murders. We should mourn them. Alex was one of the nurses who cared for my father-in-law when he was in intensive care at the VA. My wife remembers how gentle he was, what a good listener. They were my neighbors. Please remember them both.

17/

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
From the wonderful post https://degenerateart.beehiiv.com/p/into-the-abyss you cited:
"…nobody sane now thinks the answer to abuses at Dachau was to give the guards more training."

"…the U.S. is currently holding three times as many people in immigrant detention as were detained in the Nazi concentration camp system in spring 1939—six years into the Third Reich and just before the start of World War II."

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 Well said! #iceout

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/

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/

@inthehands

That's a graph of the funding of Trump's personal army. Welcome to fascism.

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/

@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.

@thesquirrelfish @inthehands

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/

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/

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)

https://www.desmog.com/2024/10/25/project-2025-trump-mapped-how-6-billionaire-family-fortunes-fund-climate-denial/

Just a moment...

(idahocapitalsun.com)

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

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 Mayer

Captured : The Corporate Infiltration of American Democracy
Sheldon Whitehouse, Melanie Wachtell
Harvard Business Review Press

Dark Towers: Deutsche Bank, Donald Trump, and an Epic Trail of Destruction
David Enrich

Rockbridge 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)

nytimes.com

(www.nytimes.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/

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/

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/

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/