Trump regime

New Republic - The other day, Stephen Miller went on Fox News and offered a plea that got surprisingly little attention given its highly toxic and unnerving implications. Miller urged politicians in GOP-run states to build their own versions of “Alligator Alcatraz,” the state-run immigration detention facility that officials just opened in the Florida Everglades.

“We want every governor of a red state, and if you are watching tonight: pick up the phone, call DHS, work with us to build facilities in your state,” Miller said, in a reference to the Department of Homeland Security. Critically, Miller added, such states could then work with the federal government by supplying much-needed detention beds, helping President Trump “get the illegals out.”

Keep all that in mind as we introduce you to one James Uthmeier.

Uthmeier, the attorney general of Florida and a longtime ally of Governor Ron DeSantis, is widely described in the state as the brains behind “Alligator Alcatraz.” Peter Schorsch, the publisher of Florida Politics, sums him up this way: “In Uthmeier, DeSantis found his own Stephen Miller.”

Uthmeier is indeed a homegrown Florida version of Miller: Only 37 years old, he brings great precociousness to the jailing of migrants. Like Miller, he is obscure and little-known relative to the influence he’s amassing. Also like Miller, he is fluent in MAGA’s reliance on the spectacle of inhumanity and barbarism.

“You don’t need to invest that much in the perimeter,” Uthmeier said of “Alligator Alcatraz” in a slick video he recently narrated about the complex, which featured heavy-metal guitar riffs right out of a combat-cosplay video game. “People get out, there’s not much waiting for them other than alligators and pythons. Nowhere to go, nowhere to hide.”...

The real-world “Alligator Alcatraz” is already gaining notoriety for its very real cruelties. After Democratic lawmakers visited over the weekend, they sharply denounced the scenes they’d witnessed of migrants packed into cages under inhumane conditions. Meanwhile, detainees and family members have sounded alarms about worm-infested food and blistering heat. And the Miami Herald reports that an unnervingly large percentage of the detainees lack criminal convictions.

But Uthmeier is getting feted on Fox News and other right wing media for this new experiment in spite of such notorieties—or perhaps because of them. There’s good reason to think more red state politicians will seek to create their own versions of “Alligator Alcatraz” or get in on this action in other ways—and that more young Republican politicians will see it as a path to MAGA renown and glory.

Eileen Sullivan, NY Times - The week after Martin Basch was fired from his federal job in February, he started applying for state unemployment benefits in Ohio, his home state, determined to find a new path.

But he soon found himself facing an unexpected snag: He kept receiving paychecks, beyond his official termination date of March 14.

This might not seem like a problem. But for Basch, it was a sign of the chaotic and costly limbo in which he and many other federal workers have found themselves as President Trump seeks to streamline the federal government.

I’ve been talking to federal workers for months about the mass firings’ impact on them, and one thing has been clear: The cuts have been anything but straightforward and efficient.

For many, the layoff was just the beginning. Workers have found themselves locked in a Kafkaesque cycle of getting fired and rehired, and some have struggled to track down the documentation they need to move on.