This is How the U.S. Government Will End the Antiwar Movement Before it Can Get Started (a Follow Up)

When Math Meets Malice

ICE is burning through a billion dollars it doesn't have, B-2 bombers are circling back from Tehran, and I’m supposed to not drink as much.

Jesus fuck.

Well, look.

Three months ago, I warned you about a trap being set that would ensnare us all, and I told you how they'd build the legal architecture during peacetime and spring it during a war with Iran.

Horrifyingly, I got a lot of things right on in that article. Go read it for yourself if you don’t believe me.

Crucially, I got one thing wrong: the timeline.

I thought it it would be faster, cleaner, and I certainly didn't anticipate the money running out first.

So, what happens when an agency addicted to mass deportation suddenly needs to go on a diet? The pivot.

Time to pay attention.

The State of Things - as of 06/22

Everyone having a good weekend? Because I’m about to ruin it by talking about math.

ICE is hemorrhaging money. They are one billion dollars over budget with more than three months left in the fiscal year.

Meanwhile, the Trump administration is demanding ICE arrest 3,000 people per day. Every. Single. Day. That’s about 1.1 million people per year if they could achieve that. Except here's the thing about immigrations detention facilities: they only have 41,000 beds. So where do you put 90,000 people per month when your facilities are already bursting?

You don't. You can't.

…

Unless you start getting creative about who's worth the price of a cell.

This leads us to Congress's "Big Beautiful Bill". If passed, it would inject about $75 billion more into ICE over five years. Perhaps this could fund the creation of more beds? Well, maybe, but the problem is this bill is stuck in committee hell while lawmakers haggle over tax cuts. So, with this being the current case, let’s imagine you’re ICE’s leadership and you have this sinking feeling: the money isn't coming and the cavalry isn't riding over the hill, but you’re still getting hounded by the President for more arrests. So what do you do? What's left?

You try and get an emergency declaration. Because emergency declarations = fund transfers. DHS knows this. ICE knows this. And most importantly, the White House knows this.

Now, while ICE counts pennies, something else entirely is happening in the Persian Gulf.

On June 21, 2025, B-2 Spirit bombers dropped bunker busters on Fordow, Natanz, and Isfahan.

In essence, we carpet bombed the Rubicon.

Almost immediately, DHS issued warnings about "independent actors" motivated by anti-Israel sentiment potentially committing violence. Translation: we just gave every would-be domestic terrorist a reason, and now we need to look busy finding them before they act. Except finding real terrorists is expensive, time-consuming, and often unsuccessful.

You know what's cheap and easy, though? Rounding up the people who warned this would happen.

Now, remember: only 16% of Americans support military intervention in Iran. That means 84% of the country just became, in the eyes of an ailing security state at war, potentially sympathetic to the enemy. That's 277 million Americans who might post something critical, share something subversive, or attend something protesters organize.

Of course, you can't arrest 277 million people.

…

But you can arrest just enough to make the other 276,999,900 think twice. Think this is impossible?

Well, this is where I need to remind you that none of this is new. The infrastructure for some kind of targeted silencing of dissidents has already been activated.

Remember: Mahmoud Khalil wasn't detained for committing crimes. The legal precedent was already set - the machine knows how to run.

And I probably don’t need to remind you that DHS already removed protections for "sensitive locations" like churches, schools, hospitals. If they'll grab you from a library, what makes you think your newsroom is safe? Your protest? Your home?

The infrastructure is complete. The war provides the justification. The budget crisis provides the imperative.

All that's missing is the pivot.

The Pivot

So what is the pivot? Simple: the federal government will abandon its mass deportation campaign and pivot to hunting anti-war journalists, professors, and influencers.

Not because it's just. Not because it's right. But because it's cheap, it's technically legal, and it sends a message that mass arrests never could: shut up or you're next.

Why do I believe this?

Well, let’s start with the money (because in America, it always starts with the money.)

DHS is staring down the barrel of Antideficiency Act violations if they overrun their budget. You think Trump wants his DHS Secretary in handcuffs explaining to Congress why she burned through a billion dollars chasing dishwashers of all people?

They need wins. They need them cheap. And workplace raids are not cheap.

A workplace raid requires weeks of surveillance, dozens of agents, processing facilities, transportation, detention space, immigration judges, and deportation flights.

Cost per arrest? Thousands of dollars. Multiply that by 3,000 arrests per day and you're burning through millions before lunch.

Now consider the alternative: one journalist.

Two agents. One van. One holding cell. One plane ticket. Maybe $10,000 all in. And the impact? Priceless. Because when you arrest a line cook, his family cries. When you arrest a journalist, a million people self-censor.

Nothing is cheaper than fear, after all.

“But wait,” you say, “surely they can't just pivot to journalists without new funding?” That's what emergency declarations are for, my guy. That's what Pentagon transfers are for. That's what the magical accounting of "national security priorities" is for.

When Iranian "cyber threats" are invoked, when "domestic terrorism" is whispered in the right ears, money appears like loaves and fishes.

And remember when I wrote about the foreign policy deportation provisions they tested on Mahmoud Khalil? Well, activating them only requires one thing: the Secretary of State's opinion that your presence has "adverse foreign policy consequences."

What counts as adverse foreign policy consequences? Whatever they say it does.

Organizing a protest against the war? Adverse.

Writing an article questioning the bombing of nuclear facilities? Adverse.

Teaching a class on American imperialism? Adverse.

And, of course, we cannot count on the courts to be a proper stop gap to this madness. Sure, they released Mahmoud Khalil - but only after he spent three months of detention. A whole lot of war can happen in three months if organizers, dissidents, and journalists are too petrified to fight back. Simply put: the courts are too slow to be allies, even if they do the right thing.

Above all, I beg you to see how, when war powers are invoked, when an emergency is declared, when the safety of the realm is supposedly at stake, your constitutional rights become negotiable.

Watch how the narrative shifts over the summer.

‘We're not failing at mass deportations because we're out of money. We're succeeding at protecting America from Iranian-influenced subversives.’

‘We're not abandoning our 3,000-a-day target. We're focusing on high-value targets who pose real threats.’

Every arrested journalist will be offered as proof of the Iranian threat. Every detained professor will validate the emergency. Every deported influencer justifies the next one. The beauty is that the targets themselves become the evidence. Their opposition to the war proves their alignment with the enemy. Their criticism demonstrates their danger. Their words convict them.

And look around: anti-war protests are already organizing nationwide. Beautiful. That's what we call a self-sorting mechanism. The dangerous dissidents identify themselves, gather in convenient groups, and create photo opportunities for arrests. The surveillance is crowdsourced. The evidence is livestreamed. The targets paint bullseyes on their own backs.

Private groups like Betar have already have lists, they’ve got addresses, and they have created bounty systems. The volunteer Stasi is already operational, so now all the government has to do is accept their intelligence donations. Why spend millions on surveillance when fascist volunteers will do it for free?

The pivot isn't coming.

The pivot is here.

And if you think your press pass, your tenure, or your blue checkmark will protect you, you're about to learn the hardest lesson in American history:

When the money runs out, the targeting gets precise. And precision in the hands of a desperate state is the most dangerous thing in the world.

The State of You to Come

Here's what they fear most: all of us, together, refusing to be picked off one by one. So, let us show them their fear.

The Palestinian organizers know how the foreign policy deportation machine works. The labor organizers know how workplace raids operate. The migrant solidarity networks know how to move people, hide people, protect people.

Connect with them. Connect them. NOW.

Not in some bullshit liberal coalition meeting with Robert's Rules and working groups. Real connection. Shared safe houses. Common legal funds. Unified communication channels. Rapid response teams that don't ask which movement you're from before they show up.

When ICE hits a newsroom, the farmworkers need to be there. When they raid a union hall, the journalists need to livestream it. When they grab an organizer, everyone moves. That's how we break their math: by making every arrest cost them more in response than they save in execution.

We must build databases of who's been targeted, who's been threatened, who's been disappeared. Make it public. Make it searchable. Make it undeniable. Every name must be a beacon. Every case a rallying cry. Every disappearance a debt to be collected.

They're counting on our exhaustion, isolation, and the narcissism of small differences that keeps movements apart. They're counting on journalists thinking they're different from organizers, on citizens thinking they're safe from what happens to migrants, on everyone thinking it can't happen to them.

Fuck. That.

Your byline won't save you. Your tenure won't save you. Your citizenship won't save you. The only thing that saves any of us is all of us, moving as one, too big to disappear, too loud to silence, too connected to break.

They've built a machine that runs on fear and isolation.

Time to jam the gears with solidarity.

We must move fast. We must move together. We must move now.

Or we will not move again.