Republicans are quietly constructing a punishment regime to prepare for post-democratic governance. They just don’t want you to know about it yet.
That was our takeaway from a recent exchange with Republican Congressman Mike Lawler on the steps of Capitol Hill. We asked him why Republicans were proposing an additional $70 billion for Immigration and Customs Enforcement and Customs and Border Patrol—funding that the party eventually passed through a process called reconciliation, a maneuver that allowed them to bypass the filibuster in the Senate without Democratic support.
The funding, now approved, was proposed without any details. A perplexing omission, given that the Big Beautiful Bill had already bestowed an eye-popping $140 billion on the controversial immigration agencies, at least $100 billion of which remains unspent, according to a report by the Senate Budget Committee Democratic staff.
So, we asked him, “What was all this money for?”
“Are you for abolishing ICE?” Lawler shot back. We ignored his question and tried to push for specifics. He offered none.
But his non-answer was revealing. The lack of details could be written off as politics as usual, but our recent reporting suggests something more insidious.
That’s because the plan to provide nearly unlimited funding to ICE and CBP without explicit justification is just one part of a broader project that we have watched unfold on Capitol Hill. All together, it’s a push to construct the most expansive punishment regime in recent American history. And it’s a necessary component of the authoritarian overhaul pursued by the Trump administration.
The funding for ICE is just a down payment on critical infrastructure necessary to make it work.
Punishment, as we’ve observed, is currently at the root of most things MAGA and indicative of what’s to come: an anti-democratic push that has drastically disconnected policy from the needs of voters, whether it’s kicking people off healthcare, the aforementioned funding for expansive federal law enforcement, explosive growth of private prisons to pursue mass deportation, or the roughly 3.5 million people banned from nutritional assistance due to the Big Beautiful Bill.
Lawler’s evasiveness unwittingly revealed the broader implications of MAGA’s true plan: they intend to escalate the government’s power to punish individuals in anticipation of the evaporation of electoral accountability.
Punishment, as we’ve observed, is currently at the root of most things MAGA and indicative of what’s to come: an anti-democratic push that has drastically disconnected policy from the needs of voters.
Critical to seeing the logic behind transformation is acknowledging that democracy and autocracy are vastly different systems of governance, with conflicting imperatives.
That’s where the government’s ability to punish comes in. If your policy priorities are wars of choice, bloated defense spending, cuts to social programs, mass deportation, dismantling Obamacare, and passing tax breaks for billionaires, it should theoretically be hard to get elected.
But that assumption requires a healthy democracy. If our electoral system is thrown into chaos to the extent that voters are effectively neutralized, then all bets are off.
The extravagant ICE and CBP funding is a start. As Congressman Jamie Raskin recently told us, the unlimited cash hoard is intended to construct a federal police force at Trump’s command thoroughly insulated from accountability.
“If you talk to historians of fascism they will tell you what authoritarians try to do is build up a paramilitary force inside the government and outside the government,” he argued.
“ICE is acting like a paramilitary secret police force reporting to the President of the United States.”
But it goes deeper than just physical enforcement. Psychological punishment is also crucial to this regime, and the administration has been ratcheting it up at an alarming pace—confiscating ballots from past elections like the recent raid in Fulton County, Georgia. Cutting off Medicaid benefits amid allegations of fraud. Deporting immigrants over speech, cowing high powered law firms, investigating anit-war protesters, severing thousands of children from nutritional assistance.
The point is to criminalize participation in every civic process, segregate every citizen into categories of unworthiness, creating avenues that allow the administration to punish dissent. To essentially cast doubt on the freedom to participate, circulate, debate, and protest; the DNA of democracy itself.
And in the crosshairs of this effort is the liminal space between the present and the point in time in the future when the punishment regime becomes truly ascendant: the midterms.
It seems unlikely Trump will accept any outcome other than a Republican victory. And, if that does not occur, the punishment regime will dial up the pressure to ensure the most potent portal of dissent, the ballot box, is neutralized.
How this might occur is already apparent.
The US Postal Service has issued a rule that would prohibit delivery of ballots in states that have not turned over voter rolls. The Department of Justice has issued criminal subpoenas and initiated voter fraud investigations in California and Fulton County. All of this pretextual maneuvering could be accelerated should the Democrats win the midterms.
Protests would occur as a result. ICE and CBP will be sent in to sow disorder and crush dissent. Doubts would be cast with Justice Department subpoenas issued to jurisdictions where the results are close.
Eventually chaos would erupt and the ensuing instability would make a punishment regime seem desirable, even practical. We witnessed this first-hand in our city, Baltimore. When protests erupted over mass arrests and the death of Freddie Gray in police custody, civil rights were depicted as a nuisance, as impediments to safety.
The aftermath would be an unrecognizable country. A nation operating without the consent of the governed.
Recognizing the foundational reality Trump and MAGA are quietly constructing is paramount to surviving their authoritarian ambitions. Demanding answers when they try to evade accountability for it will be a critical tool for fighting back.
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