Its title had been staring out from the bedside table for some time, a bookmark jutting out from pages closed years ago — ‘How to Overthrow the Government’ by Arianna Huffington, released in 2000, in retrospect a much simpler time. Pre-9/11, pre-Iraq War, pre-COVID19, pre-internet as we know it today — ancient history almost. Despite its sinister-sounding title, the book is hardly a ‘Mein Kampf,’ or even a ‘Project 2025’ manifesto. All those years ago, Huffington wrote, “Entering the political field has become less appealing than visiting a proctologist with a hangnail,” and citing Sean Connery’s character’s line from the movie ‘The Untouchables’: “The other guy pulls a knife, you pull a gun…he sends one of yours to the hospital, you send two of his to the morgue. That’s how you win an election. That’s the American Way!” She termed it the “survival of the unfittest,” as we are subjected to political ads that “are styled as Early Sledgehammer,” which is clearly where we are today, only much more so with the advent of the internet with innumerable podcasts, social media, texts and emails…all of which the GOP/MAGA forces used to their distinct advantage over the Democrats in the last presidential election. In that period when Huffington wrote her book, ‘Campaigns and Elections’ magazine said that 81% of political candidates surveyed believed that press scrutiny keeps qualified people from running for office. Huffington said, “By spotlighting our political leaders’ private weaknesses, we’re in danger of limiting our pool of potential leaders to a group of men and women with no private weaknesses — or, indeed private thoughts or ideas. We’ll eliminate any number of potential Jeffersons or Lincolns and what we’ll get instead will be a parade of smiling, handshaking automatons, programmed with the requisite poll-tested policies and focus group-approved sound bites…personally, I’m willing to countenance a little infidelity in order to expand the field.” And a veritable cornucopia in her wished-for expansion is exactly what we’ve experienced over the past several years!

Huffington laments, “Just as our two-party system is showing unmistakable signs of exhaustion, and the public’s suppressed discontent is ready to be tapped, a disaster in reform’s clothing stands poised to take advantage. Like the townsfolk in an old Western, the millions who feel shut out of our ‘unprecedented prosperity’ may thrill at the sight of a masked man riding to our rescue — until it turns out he isn’t the Lone Ranger, but a racist gunslinger bent on turning them against one another.” Yikes! The racist gunslinger we ended up with is doing his utmost to divide us along racial lines, but also politically as seen by his diatribe in Iowa against Democrats who voted against his ‘Big Beautiful Bill,’ and who don’t really count, being the minority in the chamber — in his estimation. He claims they didn’t support his bill because they hate him, but he hates them right back “because they hate our country!” We must remember  that candidate Trump described Americans he disagreed with as “evil…the enemy within.” His Independence Day comments are worth noting because past elected leaders have never voiced public “hatred” for those who dare disagree with them. Steve Benen of MSNBC writes, “There’s another angle to this that arguably matters more. Different political scientists define the nuances of authoritarianism in different ways, but I think most would agree that a hallmark of any despotic regime is the delegitimization of political opposition. It’s against this backdrop that the incumbent president, using language foreign to American ears, wants the public to believe that his partisan opponents literally don’t count, are inherently unpatriotic, and are worthy of hatred.” Trump may view himself as the Lone Ranger riding to the rescue, but he is unmasked, telling us exactly who he is and how he wants to remake the US into the dream of every tinhorn dictator who ever lived. The masking duties he has left to his Homeland Security Barbie to see that her ICE secret police are outfitted properly to not only hide their faces, but to instill fear in those who are victimized by the un-American raids and kidnappings — los desaparecidos.

President Trump is thrilled at the new facility in Florida being built with $450 million in FEMA funds to imprison more than 3000 immigrants, in reality a concentration camp meant to frighten fearful immigrants into self-deporting to their countries of origin. Ahead of a visit to the detention camp by Trump and Kristi Noem, the Florida Republican Party gave the place the nickname of ‘Alligator Alcatraz’ and began merchandising t-shirts and other items to capitalize on the Everglades location among the “gators and pythons” (“The moral bankruptcy knows no bounds,” – Emily Singer’s Daily Kos post) which supposedly will thwart any attempted escape by prisoners. The name was soon corrupted to ‘Alligator Auschwitz’ by those who see it bearing a resemblance to the Nazi detention centers of WWII. White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt touted the facility as, “An efficient and low-cost way to help carry out the largest mass deportation campaign in American history. The only way out is a one-way flight. It is isolated and surrounded by dangerous wildlife.” Trump is known to love inhumane prisons and has a fantasy about using wildlife to dissuade immigrants from entering this country, and as he showed his excitement during a Fox News interview, he said of the possibility that immigrants might be eaten by alligators, “I guess that’s the concept. This is not a nice business. I guess that’s the concept.” Many experts are at odds with Leavitt’s summation of the camp being cost effective. “As someone who has studied the costs of detention centers, I can tell you for a fact that this facility will run at a cost substantially higher than average,” Aaron Reichlin-Melnick posted on X. The senior fellow at the American Immigration Council wrote, “Detention tent camps are always more expensive to operate than brick and mortar facilities with permanent infrastructure.” Trump’s deportation agenda is unpopular with voters, who view him as being too harsh, but ‘Alligator Alcatraz’ fills the bill for the president and his MAGA gang as they seek to be even more cruel to immigrants with their torture tactics.

Inaccurately, concentration camps are compared to prisons but in the US, inmates arrive in penitentiaries after being convicted of serious crimes, under processes determined by the US Constitution. Cases begin with probable cause, not skin tone, followed by an arrest during which one has a right to remain silent. Actual voluntary pleading…no coercion…leads to a formal trial with defendant choosing a bench trial or a jury trial, based only on admissible evidence, all stages under Constitutional constraints. If a court falters, appellate courts stand to intervene. Prior to Donald Trump, wrongful, sloppy, or vengeance-driven criminal convictions of the innocent were the product of flawed men, not a flawed system. Establishment of concentration camps is a reflection of an illegal system — detainment is independent of judicial review — no conviction of any crime, simply pointing to incarceration for political reasons. A human roundup based on maniacal whims doesn’t represent the rule of law, only an autocrat’s lust for power. Father Federico Capdepón, a retired priest from the Miami Archdiocese who has been watching this development, describes both the camp and the inhumanity it reflects as, quite simply, “Sinful.” But hey, Father, what do you say of the six Roman Catholic Supreme Court Justices who paved the way for the Trumpian cruelty with their complicity? Those six justices are aware of the statistics that show immigrants account for low crime rates, comprising 14% of the non-US citizen population with data showing only 3% being jailed. The six are also aware of the sinister methods Trump has devised to dismantle the US Constitution; yet, on June 27, the court outlawed nationwide injunctive relief, removing people’s protection from the president’s lawlessness. So whaddya know…hard to believe that three days later, Trump visited the completed ‘Alligator Alcatraz,’ with more on the way?

Andrea Pitzer, author of ‘One Long Night: A Global History of Concentration Camps,’ writes, “the words ‘concentration camp’ evokes another country, another time, describing a facility operating in the dark of night, away from the prying eyes of an outraged public,” but we now have a camp in Florida’s Everglades that’s hardly a secret. We’ve all seen the video of Trump, Noem, and Ron DeSantis laughing in front of the cages which will hold human beings; and, Pitzer relates that she visited four continents in writing her history — and this one fits the purpose of the classic model for holding masses of civilian detainees. Detainees consisting of vulnerable groups for political gain based on ethnicity, race, religion or political affiliation rather than for crimes committed, all without trials as it points to serious dangers ahead for the country. Projected capacity of 5,000 beds is several times the average detention center occupancy, though billed as a ‘temporary’ camp theorized as a seamless processing center with rapid-fire judicial hearings conducted by National Guardsmen performing as immigration judges — an unlikely fluid process. Some defenders of Trump’s policy claim that arbitrary detention or abuse of foreigners doesn’t resemble Hitler’s treatment of citizens, but the Fuehrer’s goal of stripping Jews of legal protections and having no more rights than aliens, and therefore eligible for his encampments, echo an uneasy refrain from our current administration. The Nazis imagined their targets would self-deport with the tighter restrictions, but when that myth dissolved, their uglier and more punitive measures were initiated. And Kristi Noem said it out loud, if immigrants aren’t frightened enough to self-deport, “You may end up here.”

So, what can we expect? Already, aggressive moves against those residing legally in the US are seen, with legal status of half a million Haitians in the crosshairs. The Department of Justice is fast-tracking cases involving possible revocation of citizenship, working to undo birthright citizenship, and earmarking the citizenship of political enemies. MAGA wants to define who can be an American in ways that appear profoundly racist, with immigrants the most politically advantageous large population to target. US history has precedents and parallels for such abuse of populations not viewed as citizens, as we examine centuries of Native American removal and genocide, or courts wielding the weight of law or executive authority to prop up slavery, allowing cross-border trafficking and detention of humans who are denied lawful rights. The confiscation of property and removal of Japanese Americans to concentration facilities at the outbreak of WWII is just one of the most egregious of such actions, with Trump himself praising the ‘Operation Wetback’ deportations of the Eisenhower years, which included camps noted for their abuse and lethality. As the administration looks toward expanding its concentration camp legacy, we are seeing police-state tactics on our streets, as masked agents who refuse to show their IDs, travel in unmarked cars to sweep people from churches, their homes, their work places, from schools, and Home Depot parking lots — some reemerging after their ordeal, others simply ‘disappeared.’

MSNBC reports that the American Immigration Council believes the budget reconciliation bill is likely to make Immigration and Customs Enforcement “the largest investment in detention and deportation in US history,” an expansion which makes ICE the center of gravity for state overreach. And, Trump seems to lean in that direction as he espouses a multi-state network of sites like ‘Alligator Auschwitz,’ having already sent detainees to El Salvador, Panama, Rwanda, and Libya, with deals in-the-making with other countries — the imposition of a global concentration camp network. Members of the Seminole Tribe of Florida have opposed and are protesting the Everglades camp as a threat to their sacred lands, but five Democratic state lawmakers were turned away recently as they tried to inspect the facility. The MSNBC report neatly sums up an untidy situation: “The history of this kind of detention camp underlines that it would be a mistake to think the current cruelties are the endpoint. America is likely just getting started.”

That starting point is seen by Hayes Brown, MSNBC writer and editor, as the $150 billion cash infusion toward immigration enforcement which Republicans handed Trump in last week’s ‘Big Beautiful Bill,’ which he needs to carry out his mass deportation policy. Brown writes, “The intended result is as aggressive as it is likely transformative: Immigration and Customs Enforcement is slated to become the largest law enforcement agency in the country as dozens of new detention centers spring up to hold hundreds of thousands of immigrants awaiting expulsion.” Despite all the arrests from the sweeps, White House deputy chief of staff Stephen Miller is still unsatisfied, insisting that he needs more resources to meet his goal of 3,000 arrests per day. To put this into perspective, the budget reconciliation bill funds $45 billion EACH toward the southern border wall, and expansion of immigration detention capacity — thirteen times the current annual ICE budget for detention, and five times more than the entire annual budget of the Federal Bureau of Prisons. The American Immigration Council estimates the money allocation would be enough for ICE to maintain 116,000 beds annually, compared to current support for 41,000 detainees — if one is lucky enough to get a bed. As of June 15, reported inhumane conditions at detention centers now holding around 56,000 immigrants, show the need for rapid escalation in building more facilities — monies which will be spent as quickly as possible with little oversight. Already, ICE has asked contractors for “proposals to provide new detention facilities, transportation, security guards, medical support and other administrative services over the next two years.” Full well we know, that much of that money will go to private companies which have been major political backers of Trump and the MAGA/GOP.

Travis Gettys writes on Raw Story that even though Stephen Miller has become a powerful, and empowered, adviser in Trump’s second term, his ambitions to become national security adviser may be jeopardizing his place in his current lofty position. He has remained in Trump’s inner circle by casting aside former allies like Steve Bannon and Jeff Sessions as they have fallen into the president’s disfavor, while striking up new alliances, as he attempts turning the president against others in his orbit, according to The New York Times’ Jason Zengerle. “At the same time, Mr. Miller is a world-class brown-noser. In an administration that puts a premium on sycophancy, he stands out for just how much he sucks up to his boss,” reports Zengerle. “And yet, Mr. Miller’s power could ultimately unravel because of something far more profound than office politics. Translating Trumpism into a coherent ideological doctrine can be a vexing proposition, as MAGA’s isolationist wing recently experienced with the US airstrikes on Iran,” writes Zengerle. Miller has translated Trumpism into public policy as well as anyone by showing a willingness to embrace the president’s contradictions and reversals, yet he isn’t viewed as indispensable because no one his circle ever was, but Trump can’t imagine Miller not working for him at present. Zengerle concludes, “For the moment, though, it seems Mr. Miller and Mr. Trump are aligned — and that means Mr. Miller has achieved a level of success, and satisfaction, that he never dreamed of during Mr. Trump’s first term.”