Rebecca Gordon, “The American Gulag”
Concentration camps exist to support and expand the power of an authoritarian regime. They make everyone afraid of being treated like the current targets of the regime. Like state torture programs, concentration camps accelerate the process of dehumanizing groups of people in the public imagination. Such a process often begins by describing the target group as non-human, as “vermin” or “garbage” (as Trump has, of course, done). Ironically, the very act of placing people in inhumane conditions can amplify the public’s perception of their inhumanity. After all, would genuine human beings submit to such treatment? Would our good nation treat genuine human beings that way?
Radley Balko, “You can’t hide your lying ICE”
For me, it became clear that we were in a uniquely dangerous era after the shooting of Marimar Martinez and the killing of Silverio Villegas-Gonzalez in Chicago. I’m pretty jaded about these things, but I was jarred at how the administration openly gloated and shamelessly lied about the use of lethal force by DHS against people who posed no threat. It only got worse after the murders of Renee Good and Alex Pretti in Minneapolis. The lies the administration told after those killings aren’t the lies you tell to cover something up. They’re the lies you tell when you want to project to the country that you can get away with anything. The lies themselves are their own display of authoritarianism. The government is telling us, “You know we’re lying. We know that you know we’re lying. And there isn’t a goddamn thing you can do about it.”
Karen Park, “Why Trump’s ‘Praise Be to Allah’ Easter Taunt Should Be Immediately Recognizable to U.S. Christians”
When the Roman state executed Jesus, according to John 19:19, it placed above his head a sign that read Iesus Nazarenus Rex Iudaeorum: Jesus of Nazareth, King of the Jews. That sign, INRI, was formalized mockery; a piece of imperial theater that turned a claim about Jewish kingship into a cruel joke and attached that joke to an executed criminal. It wasn’t only Jesus who was being ridiculed in that moment, but—regardless of whether one believed he was or not—the very idea of a Jewish messiah; the hope of a people reframed as absurdity and defeat. INRI says: Here is your king. Look at him. Where is your God now?
The president’s use of “Praise be to Allah” on Easter morning turns Islamic prayer into mockery and in so doing repeats Pilate’s mockery of the crucified Jesus. For Muslims, “Praise be to Allah” expresses reverence toward God. But Trump’s Truth Social post lifts the prayer out of that context and redeploys it as spectacle and derision; as a way of asserting dominance over those for whom the prayer carries deep significance.
Marianne Szegedy-Maszak, “How to Defeat a Very Trumpy Authoritarian Leader”
For many Americans, of course, Orbán’s Hungary is a miniature version of Trump’s US—indeed, in some ways, it may have served as a role model for MAGA in its crusade to dismantle democratic institutions and crucial elements of civil society. When Trump first ran for election in 2016, Orbán had already “built the wall”—in his case, an electrified razor wire fence constructed by prisoners—on Hungary’s southern border, attempting to staunch the flow of Syrian refugees who, to be sure, were more likely to use Hungary as a transit point than a final destination. This also allowed Orbán to declare a “state of emergency,” which has not been lifted since. Sound familiar?
In quashing dissent, extravagantly rewarding his allies, enriching himself and his family, despairing over the dilution of the purity of the Hungarian blood line, marginalizing and oppressing the LGBTQ community—well, it’s all there really. The Orbán playbook is channeled in various ways by the Heritage Foundation’s Project 2025, the right-wing blueprint for Trump’s second term. So understanding how the Fidesz machine might be defeated could hold some lessons for MAGA’s foes.
Rebecca Solnit, “The United States is destroying itself”
But trying to understand motives is something of a hobby when the focus needs to be on consequences. We do not need to understand these criminals in order to try to contain and ultimately remove them. They will not last for ever, and we need to think about what happens when they’re gone – to talk about the kind of reconstruction the US will face for the first time since the civil war, the reconstruction a ravaged and corrupted country has to go through to return to functionality. But not to return to the way things were.
Timothy Schraeder Rodriguez, “Conversion therapy is soul-crushing — and it doesn’t work”
Meanwhile, back in 2014, nine former leaders of the so-called ex-gay movement, including a co-founder of Exodus International, one the largest organization in the world promoting conversion therapy, signed a statement denouncing the practice. “We know first-hand the terrible emotional and spiritual damage it can cause, especially for LGBT youth,” they wrote, urging parents to love and accept their LGBT children as they are, and challenging churches to embrace and affirm LGBT persons with full equality and inclusion.
But their voices were ignored, and others took up their mantle. Today’s practitioners would be quick to distance themselves from the conversion therapy ministries of the past, discrediting the former leaders as having been deceived and survivors like me as not having tried hard enough or not being true believers. But the truth is, today my relationship with God is the strongest it’s ever been. And I believe I am loved by God, just as I am, as a gay man.
Hanna Horvath, “You don’t have to gamble for gambling to ruin your life”
It started with DraftKings and FanDuel, which spent huge sums lobbying states to legalize sports betting apps. Sports leagues and media companies legitimized the whole thing because they wanted the revenue and ad dollars.
Polymarket and Kalshi then took that model and removed the last guardrails — now you can bet on which countries Iran will launch missiles against on the same app where you bet on an NBA game or the Best Picture winner. …
And no one seems to be very interested in regulating it. Donald Trump Jr. is a strategic advisor to Kalshi and an investor in Polymarket. His father’s Commodity Futures Trading Commission appointee, Michael Selig, has said he hopes prediction marketswill “flourish” under his watch. The CFTC’s new Innovation Advisory Committeeincludes the CEOs of Polymarket, Kalshi, Coinbase, Robinhood, FanDuel, and DraftKings — with zero representation from consumer advocates or public interest groups.
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