It’s been hard to celebrate anything this weekend. There’s a lot that I don’t like about the Big Beautiful Bill, but there is one part of it that genuinely scares me: the budget increase for ICE and huge amount of money going towards additional detention camps. This law turns ICE into the largest federal law enforcement agency in the nation, far larger than the FBI–but one that is currently NOT expected to follow constitutional due process rules. If you really think this power will be used only against criminals, or only against undocumented immigrants, and that it won’t be expanded with time to include other classes of people, I’ve got a golden Mar-a-Lago toilet to sell you.

Oh, and before you tell me I’m fearmongering: Trump himself called his political opponents “vermin” that he was going to “root out” of the country, and he said immigration was “poisoning the blood” of America. So I’m basing my expectations of what’s coming on the man’s own words.

My parents and I frequently joke that we survived Communism in the Soviet bloc, so we’ll survive this too. But really, who knows what we are facing? Every time authoritarianism comes back around, it wraps old ideas and hatreds in new styles and strategies.

So, this is going to be a rough few years for anyone who looks, thinks or lives differently than the MAGA-approved version of a “real American.” Time to buckle up. Find your people, help each other and push back together.

And don’t forget that regardless of what the Donald thinks, America is our home, too, and we still have a right to our independence and freedom. Wishing you all a great rest of No Kings weekend.