Our American Values

Concentration camps are in. Healthcare is out.

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A federal budget reflects a nation’s values. In passing the Big Beautiful Bill, the United States Senate has clearly articulated what it values: concentration camps are in. Healthcare is out.

The legislation that the senate passed yesterday guts healthcare for 17 million Americans, while allocating over $100 billion to ICE over the next several years to build more detention facilities in order to lock up migrants and whomever else Trump decides to incarcerate. (As I wrote yesterday, it won’t just be rapists and murderers who arrived in this country illegally.)

This week, Trump toured Alligator Alcatraz, the swamp prison built in just eight days in the remote Florida Everglades. The facility, which will cost $450 million annually to run, is designed to incarcerate up to 5,000 detainees in rows of metal bunk beds inside chain-link fencing and tent. It was erected in just eight days, raising alarms about inadequate infrastructure, sanitation, and preparation for extreme heat and hurricane season. The conditions in which prisoners will be housed are inhumane. If a hurricane hits the camp, as so often happens in Florida, the facility may become a death trap.

Reveling in the cruelty of this makeshift gulag is the point for Trump. Here’s The Times:

Departing the White House for Florida on Tuesday morning, Trump was asked if immigrants who tried to flee the detention centre would be eaten by alligators.

“I guess that’s the concept,” he said, adding that snakes were “fast” but anyone trying to flee an alligator should not “run in a straight line”. “Run like this,” he said, making a zig-zag motion with his hand. “And you know what? Your chances go up about 1 per cent.”

Wildlife experts recommend sprinting in a straight line directly away from an alligator.

MAGA has gotten the message. The Department of Homeland Security issued a social media AI meme of alligators placed in front of a prison, wearing ICE baseball hats. The Florida Republican Party is selling “Alligator Alcatraz” T-shirts, hats and coolers.

Meanwhile, Trump’s Big Beautiful Bill will gut healthcare for 17 million Americans by cutting over $1 trillion from Medicare, Medicaid and the Affordable Care Act. It will kick seniors and the disabled out of nursing homes, 63% of whom rely on Medicaid. 22 million seniors will be affected by the budget cuts in this bill. It will drastically cut food assistance for parents, children, seniors, veterans and Americans with disabilities.

Meanwhile, DHS will have billions more to build a whole system of concentration camps across the country that will house whomever Trump decides to put there — often without any due process.

(Why? Because the Supreme Court of the United States has allowed Trump to become a dictator, without fear of any consequences, and it has looked the other way as he has ignored court orders and empowered his minions to work his will.)

If the Big Beautiful Bill becomes law, it will transform the United States in ways from which most Americans will recoil once its provisions take effect. Republicans know this. That’s why its most noxious measures don’t kick in until 2027 — after the midterms. In the event that Democrats win control of at least one house of Congress, MAGA will then blame them for the pain that will be unleashed on their watch.

But what’s worse is what this legislation says about our values as a nation. And here is what that is: