The constitutional right that keeps you from disappearing—and why Trump wants to suspend it.

Read the post that inspired this episode: https://degenerateart.beehiiv.com/p/disappearing-bodies

Subscribe to Andrea Pitzer’s Degenerate Art newsletter to support Next Comes What: https://degenerateart.beehiiv.com/subscribe

What dives into the writ of habeas corpus and how it protects U.S. citizens and noncitizens alike. Andrea Pitzer considers Stephen Miller's comment that the administration would consider suspending habeas corpus depending on how U.S. courts rule on immigration cases underway now. She looks at how ruptures in these kinds of guarantees led to dictatorships lasting more than a decade in places like Chile and Nazi Germany.

Turning to events closer to home, Andrea walks listeners through the times habeas corpus has been suspended in the U.S., and how battles over it dominated key cases in War on Terror detentions at Guantanamo. The establishment of military zones along the border and the arrest of Newark mayor Ras Baraka compound the issue of who gets to detain people and who gets to contest those decisions. Andrea closes by looking at what people are doing to take action, and what you can do, too.

Who really invents the world we all live in? We do.

  Read the post that inspired this episode: https://degenerateart.beehiiv.com/p/who-invents-the-world Subscribe to Andrea Pitzer’s Degenerate Art newsletter to support Next Comes What: https://degenerateart.beehiiv.com/subscribe   This week, Next Comes What considers the shell game played by dictators and billionaires alike, as they seek to gain power over humanity. Andrea Pitzer explores the new twist in the story of millionaire-turned-lifestyle-guru Bryan Johnson, who's now trying to found a new religion based on optimizing and preserving the human body. She considers the case of Nayib Bukele in El Salvador, who's trying to prevent people from learning details of the secret deals he made with gang members to make him look like an effective leader. Andrea looks at Donald Trump's attempt to likewise appear omnipotent in ways he is not.   Then she turns to how AI is being pushed hard across the board in ways that make it difficult to avoid using. Each of the cases she reviews reveals powerful actors trying to make everyday people dependent or even helpless in the face of who really runs the world. But politicians ought to serve at the will of the people, and companies should provide technology that serves humanity instead of undermining it. The large mass of us, from ditch-diggers to artists, invent the world each day. We hold a power that we shouldn't surrender, despite those with bad motives trying their best to take it from us.

What matters more than money to Trump and his billionaire allies?

Read the post that inspired this episode: https://degenerateart.beehiiv.com/p/the-concentration-camp-tendency 

Subscribe to Andrea Pitzer’s Degenerate Art newsletter to support Next Comes What: https://degenerateart.beehiiv.com/subscribe

This week's episode looks at a common theme uniting the cruel policies of the second Trump administration: the concentration camp tendency, an attempt to remove whole groups of people from society. From the homeless to trans people and the mentally ill, from Black folks to immigrants, our current president is looking to erase people from daily life, or even to physically expel them from society altogether.

Andrea Pitzer discusses this approach, in which groups not complying with an authoritarian's idealized society get excluded in a widening circle. As a country we've allowed a billionaire class to rise, one that preaches a gospel in which they should never be inconvenienced or interfered with, no matter what cost that has for others. Andrea looks back to a book on young children that explains this phenomenon and shows how even preschoolers can understand it. Yet we've let an exclusionary impulse capture the nation. It doesn't have to be that way, and we can stop it.

Hate cultivated over time becomes a tool to destroy everything, and it's happening in America today. 

  Read the post that inspired this episode: https://degenerateart.beehiiv.com/p/the-window-dressing-on-hate-2-0-b153   Subscribe to Andrea Pitzer’s Degenerate Art newsletter to support Next Comes What: https://degenerateart.beehiiv.com/subscribe    This week's episode looks at the enduring bigotry of antisemitism, as well as how America's home-grown prejudices mirror and echo the damage done by antisemitism. Andrea Pitzer describes how the political usefulness of hatred of Jews in Europe became an all-encompassing conspiracy theory, in which Jews were both superhuman and defective, Marxists and capitalists.   She traces how that conspiracy theory spread around the world. While the United States as a nation is much younger than these hatreds, the country has its own bigotries and exclusions that have been with us for centuries. Andrea looks at full citizenship and who gets excluded from it as a way to understand who gets demonized in America today. The Trump administration is binding all our conspiracy theories into one vast one, openly stoking hatreds to gain more power. The episode closes with ways to talk to people in your life who may be susceptible to these hateful (but for some, powerful) false narratives.

By sending immigrants to a gulag in El Salvador, Trump is trying to seize the power to silence any American he wants.

  Read the post that inspired this episode: https://degenerateart.beehiiv.com/p/beyond-seas   Subscribe to Andrea Pitzer’s Degenerate Art newsletter to support Next Comes What: https://degenerateart.beehiiv.com/subscribe     Do you have a question about a particular Next Comes What? Do you have more of a comment than a question you'd like to send in? Do you have a local or a national success story? Email your thoughts to nextcomeswhat at gmail dot com. You can write it. You might record it. You could even videotape yourself or your actions.  ------  This week, Andrea Pitzer traces the arc of the kind of renditions the U.S. government is doing right now and looks at how a clean through-line exists from Nazi tactics to the methods used to disappear immigrants today. She explores why the U.S. is in such a dangerous moment, perhaps the most dangerous of the last half-century. The system of deportation and detention that Trump is trying to build parallels the use and structures of past concentration camps, and Andrea walks listeners through the similarities. Going back to the Declaration of Independence, a beautiful part of our flawed country has been the expansion of protection against arbitrary detention at the whim of a despot. It's worth standing up for. As always, at the end, Andrea includes suggestions about what actions to take, reminding everyone that there are many effective things they can do right now. Not being able to fix every crisis in a given moment doesn't mean you can't push back against the administration in countless concrete ways.

Trump's tariff mayhem fits a larger pattern. Death and destruction are the only things he's good at.

Read the post that inspired this episode: https://degenerateart.beehiiv.com/p/government-by-death-cult

Subscribe to Andrea Pitzer’s Degenerate Art newsletter to support Next Comes What: https://degenerateart.beehiiv.com/subscribe

Do you have a question about a particular Next Comes What? Do you have more of a comment than a question you'd like to send in? Do you have a local or a national success story? Email your thoughts to nextcomeswhat at gmail dot com. You can write it. You might record it. You could even videotape yourself or your actions.

------ 

This week, Andrea Pitzer looks at how Trump's actions devolve to doing the maximum harm to the most people. She goes down to the National Mall to see how D.C. observed the Hands Off protests that were held around the country on April 5. She meets a mother and daughter who are descendants of a French Resistance fighter. They remind everyone that if you wait until an oppressive government is already targeting you to act, it may be too late. Andrea considers the rising death toll from various Trump decisions, including cutting off support in key regions for the World Food Program.

Tying the administration's current efforts to punish nearly everyone it can to the idea of death cult, she considers the historical examples of the Khmer Rouge in Cambodia and cult leader Jim Jones. Andrea outlines how the American public got acclimated to mass death during the first Trump administration, when he launched the adversarial government response to Covid that would eventually deliver the deaths of more than a million Americans. The end of the episode outlines specific ways to fight back against the death cult seizing the country.

How taking on extreme wealth can fight the entire Trump agenda.

Read the post that inspired this episode:  https://degenerateart.beehiiv.com/p/playing-in-takedown-mode

Subscribe to Andrea Pitzer’s Degenerate Art newsletter to support Next Comes What: https://degenerateart.beehiiv.com/subscribe

Do you have a question about a particular Next Comes What? Do you have more of a comment than a question you'd like to send in? Do you have a local or a national success story? Email your thoughts to nextcomeswhat at gmail dot com. You can write it. You might record it. You could even videotape yourself or your actions.

 

------

 

For this episode, Andrea Pitzer checks out a local #TeslaTakedown protest last weekend just outside DC, where she considers who showed up and what effect protesting Elon Musk might have. Given the accelerating damage to Tesla's bottom line, Musk's public response, and mounting pressure on the administration to do something about him, these protests are a way for minimal public effort to have maximum impact.

A look at the ongoing boycott against Target and buycott to support Costo reveals that these efforts by consumers seem to be having the desired effect as well. Andrea reviews brand new research on what was accomplished by Black Lives Matter, and it might surprise you. Despite all the backlash and racism about the movement, the protests seem to have worked most effectively in the heart of Trump country.

The episode ends with a reminder about the HANDS OFF! protests nationwide planned for Saturday, April 5, aimed at protecting Medicaid, Social Security, libraries, and a lot more—while demanding civil rights for all.

A local community tackles Trump's destructive agenda and politicians who collaborate with it. 

Read the post that inspired this episode: https://degenerateart.beehiiv.com/p/anatomy-of-a-movement 

Subscribe to Andrea Pitzer’s Degenerate Art newsletter to support Next Comes What: https://degenerateart.beehiiv.com/subscribe

Do you have a question about a particular Next Comes What? Do you have more of a comment than a question you'd like to send in? Do you have a local or a national success story? 

Email your thoughts to nextcomeswhat at gmail dot com. You can write it. You might record it. You could even videotape yourself or your actions.

 

 ------ 

Andrea Pitzer returned to Roanoke, Virginia, where she spoke in the days after the 2024 election, to see how the community is organizing to protect itself against Trump. She visited the weekly Monday protest outside the downtown office of Congressman Ben Cline to find a collection of frustrated but energized people demanding answers. After the protest, over 100 locals attended an organizing meeting at the library, where Andrea spoke briefly about the many risks and opportunities facing all of us right now. This week's episode looks at parts of what she shared in that meeting, as well as the role of local action and learning to sit in the uncomfortable places where we might do the most good. Andrea explains how stability is contagious and finally answers the question of how to explain to others why they should care about other people.

 

The dismantling of our government has begun, which means fighting ignorance is critical. All of us are due for some education.

Read the post that inspired this episode: https://degenerateart.beehiiv.com/p/unbreaking-things

Subscribe to Andrea Pitzer’s Degenerate Art newsletter to support Next Comes What: https://degenerateart.beehiiv.com/subscribe 

Do you have a question about a particular Next Comes What? Do you have more of a comment than a question you'd like to send in? Do you have a local or a national success story? Email your thoughts to nextcomeswhat at gmail dot com.

You can write it. You might record it. You could even videotape yourself or your actions. 

This week's episode takes on what to do in the face of the ongoing lawlessness of the Trump administration. The courts are working to uphold their role; Congress is pretty inert for now. Yet even if both branches of government rise to meet the occasion by pushing back against the current administration, a lot will come down to us, to everyday people around the country. Andrea Pitzer talks about the weird dynamics created by online rage, and exactly how that nuclear-grade energy could be better used elsewhere. She considers the different kinds of ignorance we're facing and strategies for overcoming it. Building community groups and coalitions, understanding peoples' needs and what motivates them, and easing the suffering that's already been unleashed—addressing these harms will also help us get ready to take bigger actions as Americans.

Showing up in public can derail Trump's attempts to destroy the federal government. #TeslaTakedown is a great start.

Read the post that inspired this episode: https://degenerateart.beehiiv.com/p/when-protest-packs-a-punch

 Subscribe to Andrea Pitzer’s Degenerate Art newsletter to support Next Comes What: https://degenerateart.beehiiv.com/subscribe

You can find a #teslatakedown protest here: https://actionnetwork.org/event_campaigns/teslatakedown 

In this week's episode, Andrea Pitzer tackles what protest can accomplish and covers the March 7 Stand Up for Science demonstration in DC. She notes that physical bodies gathered together to demand change remind the government who really runs the country, and explains how vital it is to exercise that right. Considering ways that even small or unfocused demonstrations play an important "basic training" role in developing skills and building a movement, Andrea analyzes how to add more strategic elements as numbers grow.

The episode further explores picketing Tesla dealerships as an excellent approach in the current environment. Looking at America's past role in encouraging the ideals (though often not the actual practice) of democracy, Andrea outlines the moral vacuum left when those in the nation's capital decide to actively denounce democracy. We're entering dangerous territory. Solving the current crisis will likely come down to mass protests in the long run, and there's a lot we can do to make sure democracy wins.