Next Comes What

The data center revolt and the pushback against detention camps have something in common. The public is realizing it has power.
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This week, "Next Comes What" considers how the oligarchs driving the AI boom and the president of the United States are all driven by a desire not just for wealth but for unlimited power that gives them control over humanity itself. Andrea Pitzer looks at Donald Trump's attempt to use the entire apparatus of the federal government to make reality whatever he says it is, with disastrous consequences for the country and the world. The CEOs pushing the AI boom portray themselves as the saviors of humanity, but in reality are inflicting tremendous damage by steamrolling communities and workers with new tools of technology that cannot deliver on the disingenuous promises being made by the tech titans. Meanwhile, both the president and the CEOs are warping the global economy.
 
Yet what they demand is not inevitable. Just as with the local--and occasionally even bipartisan--pushback on ICE's attempt to convert existing warehouses into concentration camps nationwide, the data center revolution is now facing resistance from unhappy Americans across the political spectrum. Andrea looks at what it means when people wake up to the power that they have, considers the risks of any big social reaction, and explains why it's important for the anti-data center movement to become bigger than simple backlash. Before the current momentum can get diverted to benefit those who seek only more exclusion and control, supporters of self-governance need to harness this revolt and build a coalition that embraces democratic values, linking the health and stability of local communities to a bigger concept of what kind of country we ought to be.

00:00 - The Illusion of Power and Real-World Harm
03:45 - Manufactured Reality: Renaming Lake Ontario to Erasing Public Health Data
07:12 - Billionaire Philanthropy, Tech Oligarchs, and the Drive for Absolute Control
11:05 - The Reactionary Playbook: How CEOs and Politicians Conflated Cultural Grievances
14:50 - Gil Duran on The Nerd Reich, The Sovereign Individual, and Tech Governance
18:30 - The Grassroots Anti-Data Center Movement: A Cross-Partisan Populist Revolt
22:15 - Risks of Unchecked Resistance: Avoiding Scapegoating and Isolationism
26:00 - Corporate Encroachment, Public Resistance, and the Fight for Democratic Accountability

As elections loom, resist the calls to throw away your moral compass.
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With so many pundits calling for meeting Republicans and independent voters where they're at before the midterms, this week's "Next Comes What" considers what that means. Andrea Pitzer discusses how the days in which fringe candidates could be dismissed as irrelevant are long gone. The fringe extremists are running the country now. Andrea looks at the ways that Trump and his advisers are vile actors committing heinous acts, and notes that it's impossible to compromise on the very issue of every person's right to exist without being terrorized by the government and their neighbors. There's no way to compromise on these issues without doing harm to vulnerable people and our political system itself.
 
Walking listeners through a different approach, she suggests finding a political stance based on values, and then trying to bring other people toward that by addressing needs that they themselves can understand—and emphasizing the policies they, too, will benefit from. The good news, Andrea suggests, is that Trump's agenda is deeply unpopular, and becoming more so. The challenge before us is to offer a better vision of what government, and we ourselves, can be.
 
00:00 - Midterm Elections and the Threats to Democracy
02:15 - Natalie Harp and Donald Trump's Inner Circle
05:40 - The Rise of Extremist Rhetoric in US Politics
08:20 - Misinformation, Bad Advisors, and Political Control
12:10 - Anti-DEI Backlash and Structural Discrimination
15:35 - Global Impacts: USAID Cuts and Foreign Military Actions
19:50 - The Evolution of the War on Terror and Extrajudicial Power
24:15 - Historical Compromises and the Erosion of Democratic Values
27:30 - The Risks of Unchecked AI and Corporate Influence
30:10 - Why Moral Politics Matter: Staying Grounded Against Extremism

To help keep concentration camps from becoming a permanent feature, figure out who's in the torturers' club and who sells the barbed wire.
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This week's episode looks at what it means to be in the middle stages of a concentration camp regime—which is where the United States is at now. Andrea Pitzer discusses how the shift from performative incidents of violence and terror at the beginning gives way to a more institutionalized and methodical approach, one in which the bureaucracy of the police state becomes more entrenched and self-sustaining. This explains the transition from theatrical street actions, like those of Gregory Bovino, former face of the Border Patrol, to the lower-profile, more methodical approach of (relatively) new DHS head Markwayne Mullin.
 
To consider how this quieter entrenchment and creation of a self-sustaining concentration camp machine unfolds, Andrea looks at who makes the physical means of detention and harm, and how the ideas on how to harm are spread. She focuses on two historical examples--that of Oliver Brothers of Pittsburgh, the company that made barbed wire for the first concentration camps in Cuba, and the evolution of the tactic of la parrilla—"the grill"—a form of electrical torture used under dictatorship in Chile a half-century ago. She then turns to modern appliances that aid in atrocities: electroshock gloves, ankle monitors, and omnipresent surveillance cameras. She notes a new airline contract supporting ICE deportations—possibly involving running detention facilities as well. The episode ends with a look at ways to stall, block, and shut down the torturers' club and the businesses that profit from the deliberate infliction of human misery.
 
00:00 - How Concentration Camp Regimes Actually Form
02:18 - The 1890s U.S. Tech Supply Line Behind Reconcentración
05:14 - The Evolution of Extrajudicial Torture Tactics
07:15 - How Police State Systems Move from Malice to Institutionalization
10:13 - Inside the Modern Private Detention & ICE Expansion
12:12 - High-Tech Surveillance: Flock Cameras & Electric Shock Gear
14:55 - How Local Resistance is Shutting Down Detention Sites
17:42 - Grassroots Tactics: Organizing, Protests, & Documenting Abuse
21:30 - Ending Human Rights Violations at the Local Level

A panoramic review of immigrant persecution under Trump 2.0 so far and a look at where we are now.
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This week, Andrea Pitzer reviews what has happened with the Trump administration's strategic violence against immigrants in the U.S. during the year and a half since his return to office. Andrea mentions three crises that the government hopes people will simply ignore, but which are causing tremendous suffering: cuts to USAID, climate change, and the systemic persecution of immigrants. All three are critical to attend to, but for this episode, she focuses on what has happened since January 2025 on the immigration front.
Running through the Trump administration's attempts to use wartime laws to deport detainees to a gulag in El Salvador, and Stephen Miller's longstanding dream of building tent cities, she shows how those dreams played out in reality. Those deported to El Salvador faced horrific abuse, and two tent-style concentration camp projects led to Camp East Montana at Fort Bliss in Texas, and the Everglades camp in Florida that the administration named "Alligator Alcatraz." Both camps have inflicted tremendous suffering on detainees. The Florida camp has been shut down, but Camp East Montana still holds thousands of detainees.
The tent-city project went badly enough that the government has pivoted repeatedly to other approaches, including a short-lived attempt to use Navy overseas contracting architecture to build concentration camps domestically. This also hit roadblocks. Next, Trump and his allies turned to trying to acquire existing warehouses and retrofit them for Amazon-style mass detention in a nationwide network of concentration camps. Local resistance to these sites was fierce and fast. Now the government is pivoting to building new facilities at sites it already owns or controls, which will make pushing back against them a more complicated and challenging effort. Andrea closes the episode with a few thoughts on how people have resisted thus far, and the innovating spirit that has inspired everyday people to find novel and effective means to put sand in the gears of the deportation machine.
00:00 - Introduction & The Three Growing Crises
03:15 - Day One: Early Moves & Expanding ICE Power
06:42 - Tent Cities & The Everglades Detention Infrastructure
10:15 - Federalizing Police & Los Angeles Deployments
13:50 - Border Operations & Community Resistance Tactics
17:30 - Minneapolis Crackdown & Gregory Bovino's Removal
21:10 - Warehouse Expansion: ICE's Strategic Shift
25:05 - Local Movements Stopping Detention Centers
28:40 - The History of Camp Resistance & Lessons Ahead

India and Albania reveal how small protests can transform into big movements, creating possibilities for massive change.   
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This week's Next Comes What considers what can be learned from overseas movements for political change. Andrea Pitzer reviews a few big examples she's discussed before, from Brazil and South Korea to Hungary. But she points out that these countries, which were able to prosecute and or expel corrupt authoritarians from power, are examples of the end stages of political movements. For today's episode, she looks instead at countries that are earlier in the same process. In Albania, she traces political protests and dissatisfaction that rose in the wake of parliamentary elections last year. This generalized anger found a flash point and a symbol with the attempts of Jared Kushner and Invanka Trump this year to develop an environmentally fragile part of the country as a high-end resort. Anger over what appears to be government corruption in opening the region to development has galvanized the people and led to what is being called the Flamingo Revolution: massive protests of a kind not seen in the country in decades.
 
In India, student anger of a lack of jobs and opportunities for the country's young adults exploded after a chief justice described them as cockroaches. Seizing on the nickname, the students formed a Cockroach People's Party. The online movement expanded into physical protests in New Delhi. After police violence against protesters, demonstrations multiplied across India, eventually securing the resignation of the education minister and other promised concessions.
 
Both movements are still in the early stages, but Andrea highlights the examples they offer for everyday people on ways to make a stand against authoritarian government. The episode closes by outlining how a focus on local issues can be a potent force for fighting Trumpism here in the U.S.
 
00:00 – Everyday Resistance & The Limits of Authoritarian Power

03:30 – Defeating ICE: How Local Communities Blocked PA Detention Facilities

06:45 – Dismantling Authoritarian Infrastructure: The Closure of Alligator Alcatraz

10:00 – Albania's Flamingo Revolution: Resisting Jared Kushner's Island Development

15:30 – India's Cockroach Janata Party: Youth Uprising Against Exam Scandals & Modi

20:45 – Student Activism Under Fire: ICE Arrests, Columbia Expulsions & UMich Indictments

25:00 – Symbols of Resistance: Lessons from Serbia's Otpor! Movement

28:30 – Organizing for Long-Term Political Change