Cassandra Rubs Her Hands With Glee

'Strap in': Expert warns of possible reason for Trump's 'shock and awe' Cabinet strategyhttps://t.co/MRWXs0WfYH

— Raw Story (@RawStory) November 18, 2024

“The Trump administration is going to plunge America into a cross between The Hunger Games and The Celebrity Apprentice, unfortunately at great expense to the future of our democracy and the humanity of millions of Americans who will suffer at the hands of this gallery of degenerates," she added. "The American electorate f---ed around and now they’re going to find out.”

Accountability for thee, but not for me!

Trump  is going to round up 10, 20, 30 million people (the number varies depending on what day it is in Trump’s head). And put them where? Congress would have to allocate funds for camps/centers first, and those will take time to build. And where do they go? Public lands? Hello, law suits! Environmental impact alone could tie it up long enough for Congress to change hands and cut funding. 

And who does the rounding up? The military?  Posse Comitatus Act has entered the chat. Yes, Trump thinks he can use the military. But he’s getting his legal advice from Tom Fitton:

Fitton had written on November 8: "GOOD NEWS: Reports are the incoming @RealDonaldTrump administration prepared to declare a national emergency and will use military assets to reverse the Biden invasion through a mass deportation program."

Using the Insurrection Act requires a bit more than: “SCARY BROWN PEOPLE!” Farm and construction laborers are not exactly an existential threat to civil order.

Even if the courts allow the military to engage in law enforcement (a HUGE “if”), you still need places to put them until their court hearings. Deportation requires a court order. Congress has to authorize the additional courts, the new judges, and the funding. Or you can wait on the bottleneck that is the immigration justice system now. Trump will be dead and forgotten by then.

Delays, delays, delays… Not to mention the suits challenging all the procedures Trump will try to use. Strap in, indeed.

And now the farmers enter the chat:

The idea of mass deportations is frightening and scary, just on a humane level," dairy farmer Jennifer Tilton Flood reportedly said. "With regards to our community, mass deportations could affect our entire dairy industry throughout the U.S." 

About 950,000, or nearly 45 percent, out of an estimated 2.2 million farm laborers in the U.S. are undocumented immigrants, Newsweek reported. 

Flood argued businesses and churches should expect a "catastrophic nightmare" to come as U.S. Customs and Border Protection came under Trump's control. 

"There is a great chance for families to be broken apart," said Flood. "A lot of my team are raising Americans at home, and so it's tough. There is a lot of concern and there's a lot of panic." 

Karoline Leavitt, the Trump campaign national press secretary, has reportedly said her boss' administration will dedicate itself to "the largest deportation operation of illegal criminals, drug dealers and human traffickers in American history." 

Experts warn such a mass deportation effort could come with a hefty price tag of up to $315 billion, according to the report. 

Restaurant owners say they're afraid of the cost to their businesses. 

"If these workers are deported, restaurants will close, leading to massive losses in revenue and a significant downturn in the economy," Sam Sanchez, a National Restaurant Association board member, told Newsweek.

I don’t assume all of these people voted for Trump, or deserve what could happen. This will hit all of us with the force of a slow-moving national natural disaster. Except farmers are second only to seniors in getting the attention of Congress. Even Ted Cruz would listen to farmers and ranchers who don’t want to lose their workers. Just the threat of it will be enough to make Congress close the purse. I’m old enough to remember when W had “political capital” (his term) and was going to use it to privatize Social Security. Remember when that happened? Yeah, because it didn’t. There was not even so much as a hearing in Congress.

I’m not saying things won’t be bad. I’m just saying they won’t be apocalyptic. But apocalypse sells, so expect to hear a lot more about it this December. Fitting, actually, since Advent is the closest thing the liturgical calendar has to a season about the revelation.