Hope in slim pickings
Can the constitutional oligarchy reassert itself against the aconstitutional broligarchy?
See update for July 8, 2025, at end of post.
I don’t comment on the Immigration and Customs Enforcement raids as often as I should.[1] They are sickening, plainly illegal, clearly about race rather than law enforcement, and they continue as the agency seeks to reach a goal of 3,000 arrests per day.[2] Within the U.S., they are the most visceral evidence that we now live under a fully fascist regime.
It is a bipartisan fascist regime as, for all of Donald Trump’s noise, migrant removals reportedly remain below the record set by Joe Biden,[3] Democrats largely remain silent about when not supportive of the raids, and as both administrations have supported Israel’s genocide to such a degree that Israel can only be said to act as an agent of the U.S.[4] Neither administration has faced up to the role the U.S. has played in the “push factors” that drive migrants from their homes, including the climate crisis, so-called “free” trade, and the “War on Drugs.”[5]
Law, whether domestic or international, is irrelevant as the Trump administration flaunts court orders.[6] And justice, let alone real justice,[7] is nowhere in sight.
We are left to hope that the energy that drives these policies will expend itself and that the previous constitutional oligarchy[8] will reassert itself against the present aconstitutional broligarchy.[9] Where at least there was a war that could bring down Adolf Hitler, our immediate hope rests in slim pickings as the Democrats failed to protect voting rights[10] and as Republicans have reduced themselves to Trump’s supplicants.[11]What remains in a longer term, perhaps not in time for the 2026 midterms, is the hope that the Republican monolith[12] will crack.[13]
There are signs that might happen: Trump inevitably will deport some of his own supporters and his tariffs will exacerbate inflation (and, yeah, I’m noticing the price of gasoline while my food costs have about doubled). The question is how soon, if at all, and whether it does a thing to stop the raids and the support for genocide.
Update, July 8, 2025: The Miami Herald is reporting that conditions inside ‘Alligator Alcatraz’ (some say we should insist on calling it ‘Alligator Auschwitz’), where Immigration and Customs Enforcement will be detaining some migrants, are truly horrific, with non-working toilets, grasshopper-like creatures the size of a human hand, huge mosquitos, extreme cold, heat, and humidity, and no means for confidential conversations with attorneys or consular officials: “‘Why would we treat a human like that?’ a woman whose Venezuelan husband is housed in Alligator Alcatraz told the Miami Herald. ‘They come here for a better life. I don’t understand. We are supposed to be the greatest nation under God, but we forget that we’re under God.’”[14]
Florida state officials (who administer the site) and the Donald Trump administration deny everything but it is also clear that they lied about a detainee being taken to the hospital.[15]
[1] But see David Benfell, “War in Southern California neighborhoods,” Not Housebroken, June 13, 2025, https://www.disunitedstates.org/p/war-in-southern-california-neighborhoods
[2] Rachel Uranga, Brittny Mejia, and Christopher Buchanan, “L.A. ‘under siege’: Brown-skinned people targeted, tackled, taken, and it must stop, federal suit says,” Los Angeles Times, July 2, 2025, https://www.latimes.com/california/story/2025-07-02/federal-lawsuit-targets-trump-administration-immigration-raids
[3] Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse, “Trump Immigrant Removals Now 10 Percent Below Biden’s Record,” March 25, 2025, https://tracreports.org/reports/756/
[4] David Benfell, “We are culpable,” Not Housebroken, August 28, 2024, https://www.disunitedstates.org/p/we-are-culpable
[5] David Benfell, “Conservative Views on Undocumented Migration” (doctoral dissertation, Saybrook, 2016). ProQuest (1765416126).
[6] Peter Charalambous, “6 times the Trump administration has clashed with opponents over court orders,” ABC News, April 15, 2025, https://abcnews.go.com/Politics/6-times-trump-administration-clashed-opponents-court-orders/story?id=120846599
[7] Wanda D. McCaslin and Denise C. Breton, “Justice as Healing: Going Outside the Colonizers’ Cage,” in Handbook of Critical and Indigenous Methodologies, eds. Norman K. Denzin, Yvonna S. Lincoln, and Linda Tuhiwai Smith (Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage, 2008), 511-529.
[8] James Madison, “Federalist No. 10,” in The Federalist Papers, ed. Garry Wills (1982; repr., New York: Bantam, 2003).
[9] Gil Duran, “How the 'Broligarchs' plan to use Trump,” Nerd Reich, November 25, 2024, https://www.thenerdreich.com/how-thebroligarchs-plan-to-use-trump/; Brooke Harrington, “What the Broligarchs Want From Trump,” Atlantic, November 24, 2024, https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2024/11/broligarchy-elon-musk-trump/680788/; Lynn Parramore, “How to Disguise Racism and Oligarchy: Use Economics,” Evonomics, n.d., https://evonomics.com/how-to-disguise-racism-and-oligarchy-use-the-language-of-economics/
[10] Mike DeBonis, “Senate Republicans block voting rights bill, dealing blow to Democrats’ effort to overhaul election laws,” Washington Post, January 19, 2022, https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/democrats-brace-for-likely-defeat-of-voting-rights-push-due-to-gop-filibuster/2022/01/19/2f9a734c-792d-11ec-bf97-6eac6f77fba2_story.html; Greg Sargent, “Joe Manchin finally makes it plain: He is in favor of minority rule,” Washington Post, January 19, 2022, https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/01/19/joe-manchin-filibuster-voting-rights-minority-rule/
[11] Jonathan Martin, “In Today’s GOP, There Is No Choice at All,” Politico, July 4, 2025, https://www.politico.com/news/magazine/2025/07/04/republicans-megabill-vote-jonathan-martin-column-00439333
[12] Leigh Ann Caldwell, “BBB’s Path of Least Resistance,” Puck, July 2, 2025, https://puck.news/how-the-big-beautiful-bill-made-it-out-of-the-senate/
[13] David Benfell, “Will ‘The Big Beautiful Bill’ crack Donald Trump’s white Christian nationalist monolith?” Not Housebroken, July 4, 2025, https://www.disunitedstates.org/p/will-the-big-beautiful-bill-crack
[14] Ana Ceballos , Alex Harris, and Claire Healy, “Giant bugs, heat and a hospital visit: Inside Alligator Alcatraz’s first days,” Miami Herald, July 8, 2025, https://www.miamiherald.com/news/local/immigration/article310130645.html
[15] Ana Ceballos , Alex Harris, and Claire Healy, “Giant bugs, heat and a hospital visit: Inside Alligator Alcatraz’s first days,” Miami Herald, July 8, 2025, https://www.miamiherald.com/news/local/immigration/article310130645.html