Next Comes What

Is there a link between a specific subset of men who resent their exes and everything wrong in the country today?

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The latest "Next Comes What" considers Trump and his lackeys through the prism of being the most divorced guys in history. Andrea Pitzer points out how reckless and chaotic the administration's actions are, and notes the oft-discussed concept of divorced-guy energy, in which some men adopt self-destructive behaviors and become resentful of their exes. She offers up Trump himself, Russell Vought, Pete Hegseth, and RFK Jr. as examples. JD Vance and Stephen Miller qualify in their own ways, despite not being divorced. Andrea considers Elon Musk perhaps the most divorced guy in the world.

The episode then covers a recent study from Rural Sociology actually identifying a pattern among some (but not all) men in communities undergoing social or economic shifts, in which they embrace risk-taking and often self-destructive behaviors. When the researcher asked why in interviews, this particular group of men often brought up a partner they were no longer with, and expressed resentment about that person. She considers them in light of the already-identified concept of reactive protest masculinity. Andrea takes a hypothetical leap (because the study was quite small), and wonders whether this is a scientific identification of divorced-guy energy, and suggests what it might mean for the country if a similar pattern is happening in and around the White House. She closes with thoughts on how to push back on what Trump is doing if this administration is in fact acting out reactive protest masculinity on a global scale.

Classic authoritarian tactics reveal what Trump is hoping to do, but they may backfire.

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The latest "Next Comes What" covers two significant events from the last week: the massive bombing attack conducted by the U.S. and Israel on Iran and OpenAI's announcement that it would partner with the government just hours before the attack began. Andrea Pitzer looks at the guardrails OpenAI competitor Anthropic had attempted to set up in recent weeks, drawing red lines around fully autonomous weapons and any use of its products for domestic surveillance. And she outlines how Open AI appears to have agreed to something that Anthropic would not in order to seal the deal with the government. Both the bombing of Iran and the possible opening of floodgates for increased domestic surveillance reflect two classic strategies of wannabe and established authoritarians.

Andrea explains how such leaders use external conflict to try to unify the people behind problematic policies, and expand domestic surveillance to suppress dissent. But right out of the gate, the war on Iran is unpopular with the American public. And recent work from Marcel Dirsus suggests that increased surveillance can actually work against tyrannical aims over time, creating the illusion of control, as governing elites become more isolated and paranoid. Trump may very well not get what he wants out of either tactic. Andrea closes the episode with some thoughts for how to take action.

The US is detaining pregnant children in Texas and limiting their access to health care. We shouldn't tolerate this obscenity.

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Our episode this week looks at events in San Benito, Texas, where pregnant immigrant minors are being detained by the US government. As recently as 2024, the facility was kept from receiving pregnant minors due to mismanagement of medical appointments and care plans. More importantly, the former head of the Office of Refugee Resettlement during Trump's first administration has explained that moving pregnant girls there from around the country is done entirely to keep them from getting access to abortions.

Andrea Pitzer discusses the significant risks that pregnant adolescents face in giving birth compared to women in their twenties. She also looks at the history of pregnant detainees in Argentina under dictatorship, where hundreds of women were killed after giving birth, their children handed off to members of the military or their allies to raise as their own. The toll of that especially heinous family separation has torn families apart for generations in Argentina.

Small fixes to ICE brutality can be dangerous, because they run the risk of entrenching what we want to stop.

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This week's episode begins by considering the reforms to ICE operations that some Democratic leaders are demanding, as well as remarks by Hillary Clinton last weekend in Germany. Andrea Pitzer argues that what Democratic leadership is calling for runs the risk of making the overall Trump project on immigration permanent. She looks at how the talk of reforms is well-intentioned, but by failing to likewise address the larger problem, the opposition could solidify the expanding network of camps going forward.

Andrea considers three examples from the history of detention at Guantanamo of how small shifts had huge, unfortunate repercussions, The first is from Bill Clinton's first term, and shows how an attempt to save the lives of some migrants in detention at Gitmo was successful, but it came at the cost of leaving the site a legal black hole with no guaranteed rights for detainees. The second example comes from the post-9/11 era, when the Supreme Court gave minimal rights to detainees in the third year of War on Terror abuses there, but did so without addressing the larger abomination that Guantanamo represented. Andrea's third example looks at the expeditionary project model used in 2007 to build Camp Justice for the big trial of 9/11 suspects expected to take place on the island. That trial has still not happened. But in recent weeks, the same expeditionary model has been funded through a Navy contract to stand up detention camps for immigrants on a vast and expedited basis inside US borders. Andrea closes with recent successes from everyday people and ways that anyone can take action to stop ICE and close the camps.

The Trump administration is pushing to acquire warehouses to stage mass deportations. But we can bust the concentration camp boom.

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This week Andrea Pitzer talks about the Trump administration's move toward the warehousing of human beings as part of its war on immigrants and everyone else. She looks at why this shift is a threat and why it's necessary for everyone to resist it now. All over the globe for more than a century, how to detain vast numbers of individuals with the least investment in their care has been a key concern of most of the world's worst leaders. Andrea explores how the US is now run by one of them. She looks at conditions in detention, the mushrooming expansion of camps, and what that means for every American. The episode closes with the many ways communities have successfully been fighting warehouse detention near them, and other ideas for how to resist and document the inhumanity being installed in towns and cities across the country.

A sea change is underway. Take heart, and keep going.

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This week's episode focuses on two events from Texas in recent days. The first is the release of five-year-old Liam Conejo Ramos and his father from a detention camp after court intervention. The second is the stunning upset in a Texas state senate race, which pro-labor veteran Taylor Rehmet won handily, though Donald Trump had defeated Kamala Harris in the same district by double digits just over a year ago. Andrea Pitzer looks at these recent happenings and despite the violence and turmoil still taking place nationwide, believes a sea change is underway. She walks listeners through recent court cases and polling that are going very much against the Trump administration. She traces local actions in places like Virginia and New Jersey working to keep ICE detention facilities out. She notes recent research from sociologist Dana Fisher, who has found tremendous support for organizations engaging in nonviolent civil disobedience, including sit-ins and blockades.

It's not that the government isn't continuing to terrorize whole cities and communities. What the president and his allies are finding out is that being able to terrorize a people is often not sufficient to force them surrender. Bringing everyone into this fold of civil rights and humane treatment won't happen automatically. It takes work. But the seeds have been planted, and a movement is growing.

Demanding a perfect victim to justify outrage when law enforcement kills someone is a trap we don't have to step into. Subscribe to Andrea Pitzer's Degenerate Art newsletter to support Next Comes What and get Andrea's posts first: https://degenerateart.beehiiv.com/subscribe Read the post that inspired this episode: https://degenerateart.beehiiv.com/p/the-innocence-trap Watch YouTube: https://youtu.be/-z3OVVkJBXM TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@degenerateartnews This week, Andrea Pitzer considers four recent killings by law enforcement officers responsible for apprehending or detaining immigrants. She goes through the huge outpouring of sympathy after the shootings of Renee Good and Alex Pretti in Minneapolis, and notes the public tributes to them nationwide. The New Year's Eve killing of Keith Porter Jr., a Black man, drew outrage in Los Angeles, but did not get as much attention across the country for reasons that Andrea ponders. She then considers the ways the deaths of those seen as "good people" can galvanize Americans against state violence, but also run the risk of stepping into a trap. The case of the death at Camp East Montana in Texas of Geraldo Lunas Campos, who had served sentences for criminal conduct in the past, including sexual contact with a minor, is more uncomfortable to consider. But Andrea argues that his offenses don't justify the building of a vast system of concentration camps, his being swept into them years after serving his time, or his being killed by guards in detention. And she warns that he is just as much of a canary in a coal mine for the risks faced by all Americans, documented or not, if we allow agents of the government to execute people with impunity. The longterm law enforcement violence that has been cheered on from both sides of the aisle has set the stage for where we are at now, and is an issue we will have to address as a country before we can truly be safe from the nightmare that ICE and Border Patrol are inflicting on the country today. The episode closes with what you can do to deal with this government violence and immigrant detention operations that are still taking place nationwide.

The correct response to Dachau was not better training for the guards. We can end the current nightmare.

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This week's episode discusses how societies come to concentration camps, and the ways ICE is helping the US to solidify into a concentration-camp regime. Andrea Pitzer discusses the rapidly rising numbers of those detained in immigration detention--some 66,000 at the end of 2025--with the agency's already stated eventual goal of arresting millions. She looks at the kidnappings, deliberate blindings, the murders of detainees in Texas and of random people out on the streets, and the general terror currently unleashed on cities led by politicians opposed to Trump. Andrea explains how concentration camps aid the rise of police states, and the ways terror becomes entrenched into bureaucracy. We are already deep in that process, and this year is critical.

We must stop the calcification of the detention-camp system before we lose the ability to fight back. The US is currently holding more than three times as many people in immigration detention as the Nazis held in their concentration camp system in the spring of 1939, more than six years into the Third Reich. This situation has come to pass, Andrea argues, because of long-standing deep weaknesses in our system that have enforced second-class citizenship for millions at each stage of American history, allowing politicians to manipulate public fears for their own gain. But we also have a heritage of extraordinary resistance from everyday people, and Andrea outlines ways that everyone can help shut down the authoritarianism that is already here and getting worse.

The US government is attacking its own people (and others), but you don't have to spend your life feeling helpless or marinating in fear and fury.

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This week's episode covers the gravity of the moment in the US, the curse of glib centrist pundits, and how to come together in useful ways to fight the abuses the federal government is inflicting on civilians daily. Andrea Pitzer considers recent violence, particularly the murder of Renee Good, and looks at the ways we absorb current events and how we talk to one another and why they matter. Referencing the tendency to snipe at others who have similar views, Andrea addresses that the upside is that we do want to connect and change the current landscape. But the downside is that we often just go online to tear into or demotivate one other. Meanwhile, many pundits exist in some other universe entirely, where nothing changes or nothing matters.

Dissecting a clip of David Brooks on the PBS NewsHour, Andrea outlines how his comparison of the conflict between ICE and unarmed civilians to an Ivy League football game reveals centrist pundit preoccupations and uselessness. They want to preserve a status quo in which there are two morally equivalent sides, while they get to referee. Yet the work of demonstrators and the brave people standing up to ICE across the country (especially in Minneapolis right now) are making a difference. US public opinion on ICE is shifting quickly and dramatically, which will help motivate politicians who haven't yet found a voice to protect the American people in the short run—and in the long run offers an opening to shatter the agencies that are methodically brutalizing the country. Andrea closes with an idea of how we might bring our voices together more powerfully going forward.

Donald Trump is just a symptom of our national disease. We have to--and we can--change the system that coughed him up.

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This week, Andrea Pitzer focuses on the U.S. attack on Venezuela, looking at what we know, how recent events fit into history, and why it's important to stop Trump. But she also dives into why the president is just a symptom of what ails the country. The episode speed-runs the last two centuries of U.S. policy in the Americas, and the long history of intervention. Andrea shows how Trump's administration is mired in the rhetoric and fixations of the last century, with control over oil and anti-Communist obsessions determining how his advisors respond to almost every situation.

More importantly, she talks about Trump as merely the vessel of the real dysfunction afflicting the U.S. This illness could have wormed its way into the Democratic Party instead of the Republican Party, building a propaganda machine and bringing some virulent, billionaire-backed populism to power in some other form. But it didn't, and we are where we are. Which means we have to fight the Republicans' assault on democracy while simultaneously building a new kind of national governance that rejects the rot at the core of the current system. Andrea quotes her former editor Laura Helmuth arguing that we need to "move slow and build things." The episode closes by referencing a handful of the evidence-based policies that would transform everyday Americans' lives, and encourages listeners to work for one long-term change that matters to them.