How It Works. How They Work.

How it works: Republican megadonors get megacontracts to run ICE concentration camps;
How they work:
- Republicans are even less pluralistic than they’ve ever been;
- Robert Reich on the familiar reasons authoritarians suppress education, and what “conservative ideas” might possibly be;
- Short items about prison costs, Christians who want to execute gays, and the White House invoking Satan.

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See how this works? (As usual, follow the money.)

JMG, 3 Jul 2025: Republican Megadonors To Get Tens Of Millions In Federal Contracts To Run Florida’s Concentration Camp

From Associated Press.

In a matter of days, an isolated training airport in the Everglades where endangered Florida panthers roam became a sprawling immigration detention center christened “Alligator Alcatraz,” modeled after the state’s frequent responses to hurricanes and built in part by companies whose owners have donated generously to Republicans.

Some GOP donors whose companies helped build and will assist in running the facility are being given seven-figure sums.

This piece begs the question, when were Republicans ever *for* inclusion? Conservatives, almost by definition, are insular and tribalistic. See above item.

Washington Post, Philip Bump, 3 Jul 2025: The Republican shift against American pluralism, subtitled “From race to same-sex marriage, Republican voters are turning against inclusion.”

There is a common aesthetic in elementary schools, one centered on rainbows and stars. The world is grueling and cruel, but we generally let that reality sink in only once kids get a bit older. Until then, our presentation is optimistic, cheery and equal.

You can understand, then, why sixth-grade teacher Sarah Inama would have been surprised to learn that a banner hanging in her classroom was triggering an outcry. Showing a range of heart-holding hands, each in a different hue, the banner read, “Everyone is welcome here.” It’s an anodyne sentiment, at worst, but also a celebration of multiracial community. And for that reason — and explicitly that reason, as a school official explained in an interview in March — the banner was determined to be unacceptable.

Saying that “everyone is welcome” has become a political statement in the way that “science is real” has become one. Not because these statement themselves are political or even particularly controversial. No, they are now tainted with politics because they reject the right’s rejections of both objectivity and pluralism.

With charts of trends.

This has been said before, recently. But it’s worth repeating.

Robert Reich, 3 Jul 2025: Why They Hate Education, subtitled “What Trump, Vance, Stefanik, and Viktor Orban have in common”

Noting appeals from the right for universities to include “conservative ideas.” Reich responds:

Yet what, exactly, constitutes a “conservative idea?” That dictatorship is preferable to democracy? That white Christian nationalism is better than tolerance and openness? That social Darwinism is superior to human decency?

The claim that higher education must be more open to such “conservative ideas” is dangerous drivel.

So what is the reason? A familiar idea.

Because the greatest obstacle to dictatorship is an educated populace. Ignorance is the handmaiden of tyranny.

That’s why slave owners prohibited enslaved people from learning to read, fascists burn books, and tyrants close universities.

In their quest to destroy democracy, Trump, Vance, and their cronies are intent on shutting the American mind.

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Short items from my favorite aggregate site.

JMG, 3 Jul 2025: FCC Drops Rule On Capping Cost Of Prison Phone Calls After Private Prison Groups Bestow Trump With Millions

This aligns with the first post above, of course. And it recalls Cory Doctorow’s book THE BEZZLE, which was in part about how the privatization of prisons has driven up costs for anyone from outside trying to contact prisoners.

And this is why you don’t want to privatize government services. Everything would cost more.

If this is an outlier, why don’t other “Christian” churches condemn this guy? Or would that simply not make the news?