Policy

The State of the States

This week brought an absolute cavalcade of headlines, so let's take a sec to dig through a few

Endeavorance

Endeavorance

— 13 min read
The State of the States

Stateside

Today I'm gonna do things a little different. I'll be using the Stateside section to take stock of the cavalcade of bullshit coming out of the Trump administration. This week was a nonstop flurry of absurdity, so here's some of that.

I promise I deliver a bit of hope at the end, but there's really no sugar coating it: things are rough.

First up, let's talk about Kilmar Abrego Garcia. Kilmar has been a political prisoner of the Trump administration for a while now, after the Administration "accidentally" deported him to the CECOT torture facility in El Salvador. The Administration maintained—strongly—that he was completely out of our jurisdiction and would not be returned to the states, ever.

He was then returned to the states, where the Department of Justice slapped him with human trafficking charges based on a traffic stop from 2022 for speeding. The officer from the stop noted Garcia had a lot of people in his car, and gave a warning for an expired license. It wasn't until after the DOJ used his deportation as a political football that investigators dug up said traffic stop.

At time of writing, he has been released from ICE custody in a facility in Tennessee and finally reunited with his wife and child back home in Maryland. Though, the Administration has since informed him that they will now try to deport him to Uganda.

The Administration pushed Abrego Garcia to "take a deal" to be deported to Costa Rica and agree to plea guilty to the human trafficking charges. He didn't take the offer, so they're punishing him by trying to deport him to an entirely different continent than before.

Reminder: Abrego Garcia has still not been found guilty of a crime.

As an added bonus, Kristi Noem—one of the heads of the deportation efforts—bitched about the judicial order to allow Kilmar to go home, claiming it was an order from an "activist liberal judge" in Maryland, despite the order coming from a Tennessee judge.

The ongoing efforts from the Department of Homeland Security to forcibly deport millions of migrants from the states continues to be a massive waste of time, money, and human energy.

Trump has a fixation with branding things, and that very much includes the migrant concentration camps which are quickly becoming a major cornerstone of his presidency.

You've likely heard of what they call "Alligator Alcatraz," a Florida-based concentration camp built in an otherwise abandoned structure in the Everglades. Ron DeSantis and other major Trump supporters bragged about how quickly they slapped together the camp, despite the obvious logistics issues and massive environmental implications in what is supposed to be a protected ecosystem.

Remember: thousands of human beings in one location means thousands of human beings worth of waste.

Now, there was a brief moment of hope for some folks, as a federal judge granted a request for the Florida concentration camp to be shuttered amidst a lawsuit alleging that the government failed to produce environmental impact reports for the facilities. Not the whole, "caging thousands of people in inhumane conditions" thing, though. That's apparently Cool And Good.

Of course, this is the era of the MAGA cult not giving the remotest shit about the law, so Florida governor Ron DeSantis has already stated he will be "undeterred" by the ruling—referring to the judge who gave the order as… you guessed it! An "activist judge." He went on to imply that there is "demand" for more concentration camps.

While that's all happening, yet another camp with yet another branded name from the MAGA world has opened up: the "Lone Star Lockup," joining the ranks of "Alligator Alcatraz" and the "Speedway Slammer" because isn't naming jails just the funnest lil pastime?

This facility isn't actually new, but a repurposing of facilities in Fort Bliss, which—wouldn't ya know it—was also used during World War II as an internment camp for Japanese Americans. Glad we've got the pedigree there.

Oh, one last lil bonus thing on immigration: they also said they're going to "review all 55 million visas" to see who they can deport, including scouring the social media profiles of visa holders and applicants to look for dissenting speech.

The Supreme Court is in the news again with another in their long line of deeply awful court decisions, this time granting the Administration the right to cut nearly $800,000,000 of medical research in the name of "fighting DEI."

Now, eight hundred million dollars seems like a lot, but recall that Trump has cut around $12 Billion in research projects overall.

Cutting funding to scientific research has been a core component of this administration, seeing the removal of grants as a form of retaliation against "the libs" and "the elites" in control of research facilities. In reality, it just means that critical research which could help discover medicine, improve quality of life, or find a cure for cancer just… is gone now.

Yep, this is still all just this week. Continuing on…

Alina Habba is a former lawyer for Trump, and has been serving as the interim federal prosecutor in New Jersey since March of this year.

Habba is deeply, deeply unqualified and disliked, which makes her a perfect choice for being placed in a high level judicial position. Trump nominated her as interim prosecutor, after which she noted her excitement to "turn New Jersey red," which is not a thing that a federal prosecutor does.

Habba was temporarily unseated from her position when local officials worked to oust her as her appointed term ended, only for her to be un-ousted at the direct order of Attorney General Pam Bondi who put Habba back into her position. However, a judge has now ruled that her term did indeed end in July, so any official acts she has done since then should be voided.

However, as of now, that order is on hold as the Justice Department works to appeal the case for Habba—described by public defender orgs as having no listed prosecutorial experience—to be a federal prosecutor.

Trump announced that the US will purchase a stake in Intel, which is quite a lot like the socialist nations that they love to hate on. So much so that Bernie Sanders is in support of it.

Shortly after publicly bullying the CEO of Intel (which, lol), reporting has come out that the US is purchasing a 10% stake in Intel to hold a state interest in the company. Though, notably, the interest is a non-voting stake, so the government will not weigh in over the board.

Trump's plan is to take money which would have been a grant under the CHIPS Act and instead just use the money to buy a stake in the company. While I'd prefer for that nearly $10 Billion to go towards feeding and housing my countrymen, it's I guess at least slightly better than just giving Intel $10 Billion in the hopes that they'll use it for something that benefits the country.

Still, maybe instead of purchasing non-voting stock in a company, we could regulate them???????

As Los Angeles and Washington, DC continue to push back against thousands of deployed national guardsmen and federal agents, the Trump administration is working on plans to deploy more military to more cities.

19 states have been marked for additional deployments, most of them Republican controlled states, presumably because there will be less or no legal pushback from those state legislatures and governors. The activated Guard will be technically operating under state control with the allowance to assist in federal operations.

Additionally, the Washington Post has reported on apparent plans from the Pentagon for a military deployment to Chicago, a city that remains one of the top punching bags for conservatives despite again having declining crime stats.

The Administration states that these deployments will be to assist in supporting ICE operations, not for law enforcement. Notably, the Administration states a lot of things that are lies.

Then we have everyone's favorite topic: partisan gerrymandering!

For those who live in sane places, lemme explain what's happening here. In the US, it's legal and normal for state legislatures to draw their own district maps for their states. These maps determine what chunks of a state are considered one unit for representation in the government.

"Gerrymandering" is when this process is used to intentionally skew representation from a state towards one party. This happens by strategically drawing districts to ensure that certain categories of people are underrepresented, split apart, and disenfranchised.

While both Democrats and Republicans do this, it's noteworthy that Texas is pushing for a redistricting to happen at a time where it isn't really meant to be done. Redistricting is typically a thing that happens after a census, which happens once a decade. This is a very good example of just how fragile the American system is. This move is not illegal for the state legislature, it's just unusual, and so much of this country hinges on officials simply being chill and not trying to abuse the system.

They're also being very, very loud about the redistricting being an intentional move to specifically reduce representation for minorities. USUUUAAALLLLYYYY, they are quiet about that part so as to avoid a court ruling the map to be unconstitutional. But uh, I mean, what is even a constitution at this point.

ANYWAY, Texas has passed their deeply fucked congressional map, which will cut representation for Hispanic and Black residents to absolute shreds and further skew the state—which has more Democrats than Republicans—towards hyper conservatism.

The big foil to this has been California, where governor Gavin Newsom has been pushing for California to redistrict itself to push back on the changes to Texas. Texas' redistricting will likely net Republicans an additional 5 seats in the House of Representatives, meaning that if Democrats want to have any chance of winning a majority in the midterm elections, they'll need to do redistricting of their own.

This is all very cool and great and of course has what's best for the country and her people at heart.

Let's wrap this up with a touch on the ongoing absence of a release of the Epstein Files.

While all of this madness is happening, we're still not holding the unredacted, full "Epstein Files" that were promised by so many officials in the current administration.

There's been some movement, mostly in the "desperately trying to cover this shit up" space, such as released recording of testimony from Ghislaine Maxwell stating that a list "doesn't exist," which we already knew. Maxwell has been slowly inching towards a potential pardon from Trump, while she has been telling officials that she never saw Trump doing anything bad. Totes fine.

Additionally, a Republican-controlled oversight committee in the House has received a batch of documents from the Epstein case to review—and possibly—selectively release. They only have a small subset of the files though, and we have no idea what kind of criteria they've got for "release or not."

I wanna be clear that we always knew there wasn't a literal "list." The notion that Jeffrey Epstein had a book with a bunch of names and addresses in it listed under a big title that reads, "These People Fuck Children On My Island" was never something that was really in play. That doesn't mean the information isn't out there from other paper trails.

I'll end this section with this: shit is wild right now. It's going to continue to be wild, and it's going to continue to get more out of control.

While a lot of what's happening is terrifying and feels as though we're inevitably careening towards a destructive end, I also want to point out that Trump is a dying old man whose approval ratings across every front have cratered. Despite what the myriad accounts on social media with default profile pictures want you to believe, the average person in the US is not happy with this shit.

Those in power know this, which is why they're working so hard to do as much destruction as they can. While it can be easy to take the doomer stance of "it's all over we'll never have an election again they're all rigged etc etc," I would note the gargantuan amount of money and political influence being burned right now in a desperate attempt to try to make the house easier to maintain in the coming election.

This will—eventually—pass. Those in power who we are currently watching lie with glee in their eyes to the people they swore to protect will have to live with their actions for the remainder of their pathetic lives. Trump is probably weeks from shuffling off this mortal coil, and while I know we shouldn't expect his death to fix anything, I think we can also expect his death to throw the current regime into absolute chaos.

Lemme put it this way: do you truly believe J.D. Vance has the fortitude to stave off the sharks circling the MAGA throne?

Not a couch's chance in hell.

Let's Take a Quick Break

Let's take a quick breather, yeah? That was a lot, like a lot a lot.

There's still more to come but I mean, we can just take a moment to stand and stretch, maybe look out a window for a few minutes. Hell, you may even find yourself inclined to visit https://isupport.dev and support me on Patreon, Ko-fi, or YouTube and get access to bonus content, behind-the-scenes updates, and early access to Proscenium playtesting opportunities.

Or like, touch your toes or something.

Elsewhere

UK Palestine

While there is now an officially declared a famine on top of genocide in Gaza, cops in the UK have been arresting protestors for simply wearing shirts referencing "Palestine Action," a pro-Palestinian group which the UK government has labeled a terrorist organization.

Hundreds of protestors have been arrested in the past few weeks, creating a social media firestorm of embarrassing videos of cops arresting 80-year-olds for sitting silently to make a statement.

Throughout all this, one man stood out as his cause of choice was ever so slightly different: Plasticine Action.

Miles Pickering designed a shirt that says, "Plasticine Action" with a subtitle of "We oppose AI generated animation." The shirt design also features a stop-motion animation character to solidify the point. While "Plasticine Action" is not a real organization, it's also not a "Palestine Action" shirt. This resulted in the arresting officer informing Miles that he would be "de-arrested."

So the question then becomes: if you just change a few letters, can they wear the shirts without being arrested? Though it also leaves one other question: what the fuck are we even doing anymore?

Luffy Flag

Grab your straw hat and prepare to take on the World Government: the famous sigil of One Piece has become an Indonesian independence icon.

Over in Indonesia, citizens are growing increasingly frustrated with the state of their country, lamenting that the government isn't providing a meaningful life and hope for a future. As a sign of solidarity in resistance to the government's inaction, residents have been flying the iconic flag from the anime One Piece, featuring a skull and crossbones with a straw hat.

The flag began from a broad student protest after the government of Indonesia cut spending to education by 25% while increasing authoritarian control.

Pictured: Indonesian solidarity

One Piece follows a "pirate crew" captained by Monkey D. Luffy, an outrageous yet kind-hearted guy who wishes to become the King of the pirates, though notably, his take on piracy focuses more on helping people and seeking adventure than, like, piracy.

To that end, the flag symbolizes a desire for a better world for all, pushing back against authoritarianism (there is literally a "World Government" in the show), and demanding a better future.

Hilariously, government officials in Indonesia tried to claim that the flag was a danger to society, and that the groups flying the flags are secretly paid for, going as far as to imply that the flag was a national security threat. This went about as well as you'd expect, and now the flag is even more ubiquitous.

Let's just hope any movement towards a better life has faster pacing than the anime.

Science & Tech

UK Apple Data

I talked a while back about a move from the UK seeking for Apple to essentially add a government backdoor into encrypted data, to which Apple refused. After a few months of negotiation, the UK government has withdrawn the request.

This isn't the first time that a government has asked for this, and it's not the first time Apple refused and ultimately won. The FBI has been gunning for the same thing for a while, infamously asking Apple to help unlock a suspect's iPhone, which Apple did not do.

Governments have a bit of a tsundere approach to encryption. They always talk a big game about how awful it is when other governments encroach on privacy, then turn around and talk shit about apps that allow their own citizens to have private communication.

Bluesky and Mississippi Law

Bluesky has fully blocked access to their social network from the US state of Mississippi, citing a recent age verification law that went into effect in the state.

The law would require Bluesky to verify the identity of everyone using their network. As we're already seeing in the UK, that's not a particularly wonderful thing for pretty much anyone involved. Obvious security issues aside, it's a direct reduction in free speech from the government under the guise of "protecting the children."

Grok Chat Leaks

Just a few weeks ago, we learned about how there were a bunch of publicly visible ChatGPT conversation logs. Pretty funny, but if you instead use Grok for some reason, perhaps chuckle a little less.

Turns out, whenever someone clicks the "share" button on a Grok chat, the share link that it creates can then be publicly indexed by Google, resulting in hundreds of thousands of thought-to-be-private Grok chats just being straight up Google-able.

Here's the Weather

Source: VentuSky

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