This analysis came out earlier this month, and it’s the mother of all wake-up calls. Trump’s “Big Beautiful Bill” would appropriate $200 billion to ICE, which the Cato Institute has called an “unimaginable sum.” Some relevant quotes:
The Congressional Budget Office (CBO) estimates the bill will direct an astounding $168 billion of the budget to immigration and border law enforcement, and there is even more for agencies that indirectly support immigration law enforcement.
The $168 billion is, by itself, an unimaginable sum. Without H.R. 1, Congress had already appropriated twice as much money to America’s border police as all other federal law enforcement combined. In FY 2025, immigration and border enforcement accounted for at least two-thirds of all federal law enforcement.
In FY 2025—again, before H.R. 1—Congress allocated nearly $34 billion to immigration and border enforcement agencies. That’s 36 times more than what is provided for tax and financial crimes enforcement (IRS-Treasury), 21 times more than funding for firearms enforcement (ATF), 13 times more than drug enforcement (DEA), and 8 times more than the FBI budget to enforce effectively everything else. The level of border police spending is already so extreme that it has swamped nearly all other criminal law enforcement priorities for the federal government.
The House plans to distort this wildly out-of-whack law enforcement system beyond recognition. H.R. 1 appropriates $168 billion to agencies whose primary purpose is immigration enforcement. It adds $1.2 billion to all other law enforcement for the Secret Service. This sum comes on top of the $33 billion, meaning that if this bill passes, about $200 billion will be made available for immigration enforcement starting in FY 2025.
$200 billion dollars is equivalent to 1/5th of our entire military budget ($960 billion). It’s more than Russia’s entire military spending in 2024 ($149 billion). To say that Trump would be creating a 7th branch of the military operating on US soil would be neither an overstatement nor a conspiracy theory.
For context, this article was published by the Cato Institute, a libertarian think tank originally founded by Charles Koch (among others). The fact that these guys are ringing the alarm bell should be a warning unto itself. You can read the full text of the bill (H.R. 1) here.
All of which is going to be funneled directly into the pockets of Trump’s tech bro friends via contracts with data companies like Palantir.
Acquire weapons. Melt the ice.
That’s actually one of the better scenarios.
Currently; it looks like MAGA is building the world’s third largest military force that’s greenlit to operate on US soil kidnapping and disappearing ANYONE without given reason, no legal process, and 0 recourse.
You’ll be fucking lucky if that money just disappears into some billionaires pockets.
Spoiler alert: they’re going to enforce a lot more than immigration.
If ICE was a military, it would be the third most funded military in the world with this budget. Right behind US and China and about $50 billion more than Russia.
We are looking at concentration camps for real.
I’ve seen MAGAs post gleeful memes at the idea of immigrants being eaten by alligators. It’s sick.
I’m not even happy about having to kill mice to protect myself
I feel like what the rest of the world doesn’t understand (I am from the "rest of the world), is that the USA is VASTLY more powerful than the Nazis ever were. Barely any country is sounding the alarm seriously. Just “oh we’re concerned about what’s happening”.
We are truly fucked.
And we’re under the US’ thumb (Australia).
At least we’re majority white… maybe that’ll keep us safe, temporarily.
I hate this timeline, so very much.
I think (and hope) that one key difference here is that the US is much more divided politically and culturally then Nazi Germany was. At least right now, there is no way the US declares a war of aggression against a former Ally and doesn’t fall into Civil War. It will take a hell of a lot of internal suppression for that to change, the act of which will likely ignite the Civil War itself.
My hope is that the next few years will be less “What if the Nazi’s controlled the most powerful nation in history?” and more “What if Francisco Franco controlled the most powerful nation is history?”
Europe and China likely have time to prepare, and they really fucking need to. If they’re smart they’re already covertly looking into ways to arm and fund internal opposition in America.
At least right now, there is no way the US declares a war of aggression against a former Ally and doesn’t fall into Civil War. It will take a hell of a lot of internal suppression for that to change
A $200 billion army explicitly created to suppress US citizens ought to fix that.
the US is much more divided politically and culturally then Nazi Germany
Is it? Hitler couldn’t even win an election before his rise to power. He siezed power after being appointed to a position of power. Trump won the popular vote, if we can believe election results
I think Nazi Germany looked more unified than it was because we focus of the WW2 years, well after Hitler had consolidated power
This take makes a lot of sense, fair enough.
I guess I’m just expecting the worse because of all the norms they’re breaking. Maybe not a war, but I would not be surprised if the CIA leans on us a little more heavily than they already have (allegedly, but let’s be honest, very likely).
The Gestapo.
Oh… it’s already there
Yeah, that is SS funding money, complete with a Waffen SS branch.
Fucking bingo.
doubleplusungood; refs unpersons; rectify
Lies are truth
Imagine if we allocated that much money to housing people. Ha, right?
They are.
Well done America, you had a pretty decent country with some major issues (healthcare, cost of living) but you’ve all decided you need a bit more racism and hate in your lives. Congratulations on your incoming authoritarianism.
But eggs were getting expensive
The issue some of us take with that is no, we did not all decide we needed more racism and hate. In fact, more and more evidence is being found that shows the entire thing was rigged, and the true majority decision was not acknowledged by the folks who had mostly been behind the scenes before.
America has been sliding further and futher away from being a democracy for decades, eroding rights and corporate lobbys have put business over people, he was elected TWICE even if there was voter rigging. The democratic party is dead and your political system is broken. The Heritage foundation has long been planning this and none of this was a secret. While YOU may note have voted for this, this is what the face of America is to us foreigners,
I can’t get over that they put out a book basically announcing the holocaust 2.0 and it is still being allowed to happen
america is truly an exceptional place, just not the kind of exception that i’d like to ever encounter
Then you’re only looking at one side of the coin and saying it’s double sided.
Not really, one side uses the laws, one side by passes them, and has done for a while.
Trump said it was rigged when he won (Elon fixed the machines in Penn)
What violence against him have you seen from these presumed non-supporters?
Why was nothing done about it? I don’t understand how that statement didn’t immediately invalidate his win
When Gore was found to have won they just said it would be unfair to change the result afterwards
Sure ok but that’s pretty meaningless at this juncture.
Rigged machines aren’t going to save us
To be fair, right around 50% of us are vehemently opposed to this sort of thing. Far from all America
Unfortunately that doesn’t seem to make a difference, even winning a popular vote isn’t enough, the system is broken. Your voices are drowned out by corporate and political lobbies, as we just saw in the big beautiful bill.
i can literally imagine an american sitting at the kitchen table and thinking “hmm, what do we need in our lives? more spice”
well, here’s the bill.
Just for comparison: NASA got $25 billion per year for the last 10 years or so. source
Tax strike. Immediately.
Aushwitz can’t pay for itself… Gas chambers are expensive
They got alligator security working for free
What if we could do it cheaper and even more inhumane?
-Some GOP nut, probably - or not probably too many polysyllabic words.
MAGA is building its own secret police SS force. What a surprise that absolutely no one could see coming /s.
At least some people are beginning to realize what I (and you probably) have been saying for months, and we aren’t just crazy.
Try years…
I dunno, “secret” doesn’t seem to be exactly the word.
7th branch of the military operating on US soil
Seventh National Army
It’s just a pun. Nothing to worry about.
But nothing for healthcare, of course. That would be communism, or some such bullshit.
Cato probably agrees with that statement, but at least they have some actual principles about small government rather than small government for good things and big government for bad things.
In German, these people and groups are called “Steigbügelhalter”.
If your meaning is that Cato institute somehow laid the path for Trump to come to power, then I’d say that from the outside it looks like the liberal-centrist Democratic Party made much more of that, and also from the outside it looks like the consequences of all actions seem to be, in this case, just how they’d evaluate those, and also it wouldn’t seem clear why would you even claim it.
See, being against people\things you consider “good” is not supporting people\things you consider “bad” any more than you yourself are doing that.
It doesn’t only refer to those laying the path, but also to those that enable and make alliances with fascists because it’s the convenient thing to do or some of the goals align. E.g. our centrist or rather formally centrist party is sometimes referred as that because they shift the discussion to the right and enact anti-social policies that drive people to the extremist parties though they don’t coalise.
OK, then I’m not sure if it’s even possible to see a society most of politics in which weren’t “stirrup holders”.
I’d say the current Spanish government is pretty progressive, at least from what I can tell
The Democrats are already drafting up a cutting, sternly worded letter.
I bet Susan Collins will be concerned about it (but still vote 100% for everything)
What does this have to do with the Democrats? Or did you just want to shoehorn them in?
They helped pass budget bills for Trump before.
They attack politicians who want to do something tangible about Fascism like Mamdani and Sanders, instead of fighting fascism.
They could filibuster the bill and shut down the government, which would be an objectively better outcome than allowing the gestapo to sweep through the nation. They won’t though.
It is not possible to filibusterer this. Republicans are specifically using techniques to avoid having to deal with the filibuster under Senate rules. The whole thing is DOA if they do.
They funded ICE because of the scary brown people for the last 25 years.
Can’t have food for starving infants but we’ll spend a fifth a trillion on the masked, jeaned gestapo to kick the American gulag and genocide project into high gear.
Well they’re gonna need a lot of new brown shirts, I assume
Naw. That’s just what they’re saying to appease the slavering, gnashing teeth of American conservatives. Virtually all of that money is just going into a black hole, and right into the offshore bank accounts of Trump’s cronies.
It’s what Russia did — why would Trump run the playbook any differently?
Because Putin was popular enough to build status quo fascism. Trump doesn’t have such luxury, so he needs to get his act in order before domestic opposition finally wakes up. Federal forces, and specifically ICE, are woefully underprepared for enforcing authoritarian rule in a country as big as America, even setting aside the possibility of a civil war.
He wasn’t. He was very busy with creating appearances and atomizing the society, but Putin wasn’t very popular after his first term. He managed to ride the skyrocketing oil prices as if it was his own economic restoration, but that wasn’t the fascism-building kind of popularity, that was “maybe it’s for the better that we don’t drain this swamp yet, we are starting to live better” kind of popularity.
These numbers seem pretty high, though.
that was “maybe it’s for the better that we don’t drain this swamp yet, we are starting to live better” kind of popularity.
Exactly. My point is that Putin had no reason to worry about being overthrown within a year of taking power because Russia simply did not and does not have that kind of popular energy. Therefore, he could sit on his ass and be a rightwing oligarch. Meanwhile Trump is closer to the Hitler model of a fascist taking over a country with strong popular resistance. There’s currently no strong popular resistance to Trump don’t get me wrong, but sooner or later there will be, so he (or rather whoever is pulling the strings in the White House) needs to have Nazi levels of preparation if he wants to enforce fascism on America. It goes without saying that there will be no “we are starting to live better” under Trump. Basically I’m doubting the black hole theory because now that Trump is in power he needs to create his own SS to crush whatever resistance will pop up; right now he simply doesn’t have the resources to respond if all blue states become LA.
Hitler took over in a country where his browshirts could already kill people they didn’t like on the streets and the state was weak.
Strong popular resistance was driven by Nazis not even trying to take it slow, they loved demonstrative violence.
I think Trump is still more like Putin than like Hitler. He’ll try to avoid significant resistance and make changes gradually. If he needs, he’ll use violence, but very sparingly. Not because of being better, just because that’s more effective.
There’s one problem with this prediction though: Widespread violence already is part of Trump’s program. He needs to deport all so-called rapists and criminals and clamp down on filthy liberals once and for all. The situation Trump put himself in gives him no option but indiscriminate violence, which will inevitably cause public uproar and galvanize resistance. At this rate a Boston Massacre is likely inevitable.
If you mean anti-migrant violence, that was so normal for Russia in the 00s that nobody batted an eye. It seems to already have become normal enough in the US. He just has to show it’s still happening. No need for any further buildup.
Clamping down of filthy liberals … it depends if doing it very slowly is acceptable for him. But he’s old and demented, I don’t think he’ll be around for most of this process regardless if it’s fast or slow.
gives him no option but indiscriminate violence
That’s where you are wrong, we live today in a world where all processes seemingly requiring indiscriminate violence work just fine with precision violence.
And when it’s indiscriminate, it’s not because they need it for the stated goal, but because they need, say, to ruin half a city for some future riches from contracts from people close to power. And they don’t need the population around to resist or register plunder by occupying troops. Similar with murder of civilians - that’s too sort of plunder, a huge proportion of the population feels something erotic from murders.
It’s a bit like William the Conqueror gave lands to his Norman nobles.
Today they give plunder and future construction contracts to their herd of cronies and corrupt officials and acquaintances.
It’s like in criminal groups they sometimes try, or so I’ve heard, to have everyone involved in a few serious enough crimes, so that they couldn’t just try to leave.
In this case the general population is made dirty by economic integration with some occupied parts and making it normalized, like triangle trade. The military is made dirty by allowing and even ordering plunder and murder for fun. The “elite” is made both dirty and interested by sharing in the spoils (but notice how that’s a post-success activity, so first the general population and the military are made dirty, and then people actually profiting and making the decisions ; a win-win situation). The foreign elites are too made dirty and interested by their share in the power offering of a victory (some kind of it at least).
It’s sort of an unholy hybrid of cartels and feudalism.
I think that’s a fair point. But I still don’t think that King Grifter is going to do anything other than grift — the precarious position of his regime really would only seek to encourage graft, as he knows he won’t be punished for it and he knows it can’t last forever.
Apparently they’ll be getting the money for it
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“Responsible Spending” 🤣
You heard it wrong. You thought they said “here’s responsible spending” however they actually said “irresponsible spending”
In fascism, you don’t need disabled, Sick, old, or excessively poor people. No need for Medicare or Medicare when they can be shipped off to the concentration camps and disappeared. One big beautiful final solution.
And eventually, nobody will get sick or old anymore! Miraculously, they’ll just stop appearing entirely!
Because we’ll all be dead.
