Trump’s big beautiful police state is here

 Al Jazeera English

On July 4, United States President Donald Trump signed into law his so-called “One Big Beautiful Bill”, which will reduce taxes for the rich, punish the poor, and otherwise propel American plutocracy to ever more noxious heights.

Just days earlier, Trump’s Vice President JD Vance took to X to underline the key component of the legislation: “Everything else — the CBO [Congressional Budget Office] score, the proper baseline, the minutiae of the Medicaid policy — is immaterial compared to the ICE money and immigration enforcement provisions.”

Indeed, the bill allocates the unprecedentedly ludicrous sum of $175bn to anti-immigration efforts, approximately $30bn of which will go directly to the notorious federal law enforcement agency ICE, known in long form as US Immigration and Customs Enforcement. Another $45bn is earmarked for the construction of new immigration detention centres, which, as the American Immigration Council notes, “represents a 265 percent annual budget increase to ICE’s current detention budget”. 

Thanks to these budgetary machinations, ICE now occupies the position of the largest US federal law enforcement agency in history, with more money at its annual disposal than the military of any country in the world apart from the US and China. 

Given that ICE agents have as of late made a name for themselves running around in masks and kidnapping people, however, one would be forgiven for seeing this sudden windfall to the agency as something less than, um, “beautiful”. READ MORE AT AL JAZEERA ENGLISH.

Massive Expansion of Trump’s Deportation Machine Passes With Little Press Notice

 FAIR

And so it has come to pass: US President Donald Trump’s “big, beautiful bill” has set the stage for tax cuts for the rich, slashed services for the poor, and a host of other things that qualify as “beautiful” in the present dystopia. Some cuts, like those to Medicaid, have been heavily covered by the corporate media. But one key piece of the bill has gotten much less media scrutiny: The preposterous sum of $175 billion has been allocated to fund Trump’s signature mass deportation campaign, which, as a Salon article (7/3/25) points out, exceeds the military budget for every single country in the world aside from the US and China.

Approximately $30 billion of that is destined directly for US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), the goons who have recently made a name for themselves by going around in masks and kidnapping people. This constitutes a threefold increase over ICE’s previous budget, and propels the outfit to the position of the largest US federal law enforcement agency in history. $45 billion will go toward building new ICE detention centers, including family detention centers.

Prior to the signing into law of the sweeping bill on July 4, US Vice President JD Vance took to X to highlight what really mattered in the legislation: "Everything else—the CBO [Congressional Budget Office] score, the proper baseline, the minutiae of the Medicaid policy—is immaterial compared to the ICE money and immigration enforcement." READ MORE AT FAIR.

Who better than Trump for the Nobel Peace Prize?

 Al Jazeera English

In the latest instalment of the “can’t-make-this-sh*t-up” contest in global politics and diplomacy, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has nominated United States President Donald Trump for the Nobel Peace Prize.

In other words, the person currently presiding over the genocide of Palestinians in the Gaza Strip has proposed that the world’s top peacemaking prize be awarded to the primary enabler of that genocide – the man who in March announced that he was “sending Israel everything it needs to finish the job” in Gaza. That “everything” has entailed billions of dollars in lethal weaponry and other assistance.

From October 2023 to the present, nearly 60,000 Palestinians have officially been slaughtered in the diminutive territory, although the true death toll is no doubt far higher considering the surplus of bodies lost under the pervasive rubble. More than 700 Palestinians have been killed in recent weeks while seeking food at aid distribution sites run by the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation, an organisation backed by both the US and Israel. . . .

Of course, it should go without saying that anyone who positively invokes the nuking of hundreds of thousands of civilians should be categorically ineligible for any sort of serious peace prize. But in a world in which the supposed pursuit of peace is so often utilised as an excuse for more war, Trump’s nomination might very well be meaningful, indeed. READ MORE AT AL JAZEERA ENGLISH.

Did God want Trump to bomb Iran?

 Al Jazeera English

After ordering the United States military to bomb Iran last month, US President Donald Trump made a brief address at the White House to laud the “massive precision strike” that had allegedly put a “stop to the nuclear threat posed by the world’s number one state sponsor of terror”.

The speech, which lasted less than four minutes, ended with the invocation of God’s name no fewer than five times in a span of seven seconds: “And I wanna just thank everybody and in particular, God. I wanna just say, ‘We love you God, and we love our great military – protect them.’ God bless the Middle East, God bless Israel, and God bless America.” . . . .

This, to be sure, was not the first time that Trump relied on God to sign off on worldly events. Back in 2017, during the man’s first stint as president, the deity made various appearances in Trump’s official statement following a US military strike on Syria. God, it seems, just can’t get enough of war. READ MORE AT AL JAZEERA ENGLISH.