September 18 Friday roundup

The latest podcast episode explores how surveillance powers authoritarianism—and how, in the twenty-first century, that means a fusion of corporate and government spying. You can watch it on YouTube or listen on Apple, Spotify, and elsewhere. If you’d like to check out the links in the written version, you can read Tuesday’s post.

Today, I want to address the ways that big things continue unfolding, for bad and for good. Just because the situation in your neck of the woods might seem quieter doesn’t mean the whirlwind has diminished.

I’ll go through a few entries from the bad side of the ledger, because it’s easy to tune out just how much evil our government is inflicting around the world and at home. (But I’ll keep it brief, so as not to overwhelm anyone.) Several detainees the U.S. has sent to Equatorial Guinea are languishing in isolation, with the New York Times sharing witnesses’ reports about men who’ve been “hooded, bound, beaten with guns and shoved down a flight of stairs recently by police officers at a remote hotel where immigrants are being held indefinitely.”

Turning to the Caribbean, after a sudden end to Temporary Protected Status for hundreds of thousands of people, more than four hundred Haitians have been deported into tremendous danger and instability. Trump and his allies are also detaining a group of several Somali immigrants without criminal records at Guantanamo Bay, which—according to detainee accounts of guards’ explanations—is the result of nothing more than a generalized animosity toward Somali people at the highest levels of the current administration.

One of those men held at Gitmo is Adam Abdullah, who came to the U.S in 2023 seeking asylum. He’s a legal U.S. resident with no criminal history. (I point this out only to show how far removed the rhetoric of the Trump administration is from the reality of what they’re doing.)

Trump’s war on Iran remains a disaster, whether considered through the lens of rising gas prices, the damage to military bases, or—the most important metric—the loss of human lives. Today, Bloomberg reported that Palantir’s Maven AI was used as a tool earlier this year in the decision to bomb a school, killing 120 schoolchildren. 

Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent recently testified that he doesn’t know anything about the billions of dollars that the U.S. has taken from Venezuela as a result of the coup launched by the administration and the corrupt agreement on oil with interim Venezuelan President Delcy Rodríguez.

The list goes on. It can seem like everything is hopeless. And yet… we’re hearing about some of these abuses through public Congressional testimony. This week, Congress also voted to block Trump from taking further military action on Iran for the third time. The Senate has, so far, not been followed suit. But I would argue these votes are still critical, providing cover for a shift in support away from Trump and setting the stage for post-election action.

Along those lines, Republican Congressman Thomas Massie even surprised his party leadership this week, introducing eight articles of impeachment calling for the impeachment of Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth. Names are being taken, and markers put down. A trail for future accountability is being laid.

Trump was yet again foiled in his attempt to put his name on the Kennedy Center in recent days, with a judge blocking any significant renovation or demolition on the building, and demanding thirty days’ notice of any plans to do work. And earlier this week, a group of researchers filed a class-action lawsuit over the use of political or arbitrary censorship to reject or cut grants from the National Institutes of Health on any number of forbidden topics. These researchers are risking their careers and potentially even their current grants to fight to correct the gross abuses of the system which determines so much about the health and welfare of Americans.

The call terrifying Trump and his allies is now sometimes coming from inside the house. Even the Department of Homeland Security’s own Office of the Inspector General did a report on the concentration camp in the Everglades officially known as Alligator Alcatraz, acknowledging some of the mistreatment witnesses have been alleging for more than a year.

I talked a little about the report with Gillian Brockell, a journalist who’s partnering with the American Prospect to cover immigrant deportation (and who has made a name for herself tracking deportation flights this year). While the IG’s report does not reflect even a fraction of the abuses that have been mentioned by detainees at the camp, it is a first step, and opens the door to Congressional hearings and probes that can serve the public by unearthing the whole story. “Alligator Alcatraz” has been shut down. But its turn in the spotlight should not end until everything is known.

A new poll on immigration from Fox News (!) shows that a majority of Americans thinks Trump’s approach to immigration enforcement has gone too far. If this seems like the most obvious conclusion ever, keep in mind how staggering the shifts have been of late in immigration policy. Millions of people have no fixed opinion at all or any commitment to human rights, let alone gratitude for the critical role immigrants have played and are playing nationwide.

It’s terrible that issues so critical to the safety of U.S. residents and so crucial to the future of the country were able to shift so rapidly in ways that helped Trump before the 2024 election. And it’s a relief that these attitudes have swung back toward a more humane approach.

Yet it’s obvious that Americans who supported the current draconian approach could shift back again in a matter of months the other way. However, the Trump administration is running out of time. In the second half of the second Trump administration, its own criminality and disregard for humanity across the board is finally catching up to it. With their neighbors rounded up and the conditions of life made harder and harder even for those who supported Trump, some of his followers can no longer delude themselves.

Courts are taking more serious stances as well. Just today, a U.S. Court of Appeals ruled that the Trump administration’s claim of receiving guarantees of safety for immigrants deported to third countries are insufficient protection of the rights of detainees.

A lot of people are putting all their hopes in the November elections. But they can’t be the only answer, because our problems are deep-seated and will require bigger solutions than a single vote. At the same time, they are the next big hurdle. Free and fair elections remain our biggest cudgel and lever at the moment—the process whereby the public can show up and make itself heard most powerfully.

Over the last two years, so many people have written me asking what they can do to make a difference. Many of those people went on to work against ICE facilities coming to their counties, against data centers for which their community had been given no say, and against agreements supporting collaboration between their town’s law enforcement and ICE.

Others have told me they’ve been hesitant about getting involved, for fear of being arrested or losing their jobs. If you are one of those people, this is your moment. An election is a perfect project for those who are risk-averse or trapped by family circumstances.

Find a candidate you can really support at any level of office, and get involved at this critical time. We have just over six weeks left until November 4.

Trump is unbelievably unpopular, to the point that some allies facing reelection are now fleeing their association with him. The tide is already turning. Help get the accountability train rolling. Phone bank, knock on doors, raise money. But be sure to get something in return, as well. Tell the people you’re supporting that you expect them to stand up, stop the nightmare, and deliver some justice.

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