Good afternoon from New England, friends. Flyover Country took a short hiatus to regroup after a busy Spring, but the newsletter is back and hopefully many more podcasts.
Burying the Lede
As Americans come to terms with what is actually in the Big, Beautiful Bill, families across the Heartland are reeling from the devastation of flooding in Hill Country in Texas. The extraordinary storm wreaked havoc across the central part of the state, including at an all-girls summer camp, Camp Mystic, where many children as young as eight-years-old are still missing. At least 70 people are confirmed dead and 11 girls and 1 counselor from the camp remain missing. Extraordinary atmospheric conditions released 1.8 trillion gallons of rain in and around Texas Hill Country on Friday. In one area, the Guadalupe River rose from 7 feet to 29 feet in just a few hours. For context, 29 feet is nearly three stories of a house. Meanwhile, important positions at the National Weather Service were left vacant because of DOGE.
Alligator Alcatraz Is A Real Thing
There was one week where I really did try and detach from the political mania of the Spring. In do so, missed that this headline was not one promulgated by The Onion but is rather a real site in Florida championed by President Donald Trump, Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem, and Governor Ron DeSantis. This terrain in the Everglades is surrounded by alligators and python snakes, neither of them friendly to humans, and thus, in the deranged mind of Stephen Miller, President Trump’s top immigration advisor, optimal to house illegal immigrants before deportation. In fact, he has encouraged other states to follow this model. “We don't have alligators, but we have lots of bears. I am not aware of any plans for an Alaska version of Alligator Alcatraz," representatives for Alaska's state government told Fox News' Laura Ingraham Tuesday.
Alligator Alcatraz, The Grizzly Pen . . . These conditions are as inhumane as they sound.
The Social Safety Net Is Thinning
North Carolina is bracing for considerable cuts to Medicaid in the “Big, Beautiful Bill.” Health experts say that rural America stands to suffer the most if the Medicaid population shrinks; Mr. Trump’s bill will lead to 11.8 million more uninsured Americans by 2034, according to the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office. Local health officials and chief executives of hospital systems across the state said that expanding Medicaid had helped create a lifeline for rural hospitals, allowing some to bounce back from financial deficits.
Meanwhile, millions of people are bracing for cuts to SNAP benefits which will exacerbate food insecurity in the United States. The breakdown in a food safety net could have a significant impact in Republican strongholds as people across the country, including in deep red areas, lose access to benefits and struggle to find an alternative. Rural communities, which largely voted for President Donald Trump, often have access to just one or two emergency food pantries.
President Trump held a rally in Iowa. “I have another hat here that says ‘Donald Trump was right about everything,’ and I said, ‘No, no, that sounds a little bit too conceited,’” he said when boasting about the bill. “But it happens to be true.” Trump also said he “hates” Democrats because they won’t vote for him. I’m reminded how many months the press spent amplifying Hillary Clinton’s deplorables comment. Trump’s commentary about the opposition won’t be a second-day story.
The American Party Won’t Amount to Much
Whatever “The American Party” means, it is the name of Elon Musk’s so-called new political party. After falling out with his pal President Trump over the “Big, Beautiful Bill” (it guts funding for electric vehicles, notably), he announced he will be starting a new party. Ask former New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg how the third-party route works in terms of ballot access and institutional barriers. Anyway, this won’t go anywhere in part because Musk is not very popular and yet he talks about things that are wildly off-putting but also because he managed to irritate everyone with any sensibility over DOGE. Probably better to go back to the tech sector where he’s having plenty of problems.
Trump Played the GOP on Mass Deportations
The “Big, Beautiful Bill” dedicated considerable funding to Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) which is intended to put more mass deportations. ICE is the highest-funded law enforcement agency in the country, at nearly $30 billion through September 2029. Mass deportations were a hallmark of Trump’s 2024 presidential campaign, and thus no one should be surprised that he is acting on it or that Republicans capitulated to his demands. Historically, he’s not unique. To identify, arrest, and deport the full 11-million undocumented population – and potentially others stripped of existing protections – the U.S. government will need to spend billions of dollars to build detention camps and marshal hundreds of thousands of enforcement officers and support staff to carry out raids and enforcement actions in communities across all 50 states. Republicans in Congress just gave Trump the money he needed to accomplish his goals.
ICE currently has funding for 41,500 detention beds, a number glaringly short of what would be required to house millions of immigrants in removal proceedings. Proponents of mass deportation have suggested that the government could build “vast holding facilities that would function as staging centers” for migrants awaiting trial and removal “on open land in Texas near the border.” These facilities, sometimes referred to as “camps,” are eerily reminiscent of the use of internment camps during the detention of Japanese Americans during World War II.
As I have noted many times, expect the Heartland to be impacted across a number of critical industry sectors, including agriculture, hospitality, and construction. Rep. Dan Newhouse (R-Wash.) said he was told “straight to my face” that the Trump administration was “not going after agriculture.” To justify ICE’s budget increase, it is very likely that the Trump administration will go well beyond criminals, which was the plan they sold to rural state leaders, and will now target all undocumented immigrants.
Cocktail Party Top Three
In case you missed the news that the Trump administration froze $7 billion in funding in congressional-approved grants for personnel and afterschool programs. This means Alabama schools will lose $68 million. Plenty of Heartland states will be decimated by these cuts with no mechanism to replace that funding. Rural educators will experience job loss while communities that rely on afterschool programs to support working families will suffer, too. Mix and Alabama Slammer and discuss this with a public school educator.
Moviegoers will have the opportunity to see another “Superman” film on July 11th. This installment stars David Corenswet as the Man of Steel, Rachel Brosnahan as Lois Lane, and Nicholas Hoult as Lex Luthor. Written and directed by James Gunn, it’s apparently a very political film. “I mean, ‘Superman’ is the story of America,” Gunn explained. “An immigrant that came from other places and populated the country, but for me it is mostly a story that says basic human kindness is a value and is something we have lost.” Gunn’s films are not very good, but somehow he convinced Warner Bros. CEO David Zaslav that he could reboot DC Studios, which had floundered under Zack Snyder’s direction. Mix a Superman and discuss whether every superhero film is an allegory.
According to comprehensive reporting from Arkansas Times, there is a white, separatist community growing in northeast Arkansas. Known as “Return to the Land,” they aim for a desired front of European families.” The leader, Csere, has registered two LLCs in Arkansas; one for a company called Global Homestead Solutions, a consulting company offering services for people wanting to start their own communities, and another called North Arkansas Excavation, according to the Arkansas secretary of state’s website. Enjoy a Freedom Frose to beat the heat and the prospect of yet another cult residing in Arkansas.
The Life and Death of the University
Robert George and Cornel West have a piece in The Washington Post suggesting the path forward for American universities. They observe,
We believe a fundamental reason for the decline of the pursuit of truth on campuses is the collapse in acknowledging the importance of civic friendship — which, following Aristotle, we understand to be the bond of mutual respect and willingness to cooperate for the sake of the common good, even across significant disagreements or divisions.
This idea of civic friendship is academic speak for fostering a community of robust debate, which is what the classroom is supposed to foster. However, self-censorship among students and faculty coupled with on-going punishment of faculty over misuse of pronouns, word choice, assigned readings, challenging students’ attitudes and perceptions, and encouraging disagreement has put the classroom in a terrible spot. American Fiction and The Human Stain are two examples of novelists attempting to expose the folly of these policy prerogatives in higher education (it exists in secondary education, too). And, yet, recently a student at the University of Florida Law School won an award for writing a paper in which he argued that “We the People” in the preamble to the Constitution only meant “White people.” He was named the best student in the class.
President Trump has focused his attention on universities relentlessly, and he is exacting concessions. Expect this to continue as university chancellors like Santa Ono, who was at the University of Michigan when I was completing my LL.M, continue to make it easy for him. At UMich, I witnessed the chilling effects towards faculty, which was aided by a sensational press. Perhaps realizing that the academic environment was untenable (apologies go nowhere; mistakes are unforgivable), Ono, after recognizing that the far left had control of the faculty, tried to pivot to the University of Florida but not before denouncing Michigan’s approach. He was clearly hoping to impress Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis. It didn’t work. Trying to have it both ways never does.
Comparatively, at the University of Virginia, a well-liked president, James Ryan, resigned under pressure because of support for Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion initiatives. According to The New York Times,
The Trump administration on Friday secured perhaps the most significant victory in its pressure campaign on higher education, forcing the resignation of the University of Virginia’s president, James E. Ryan, over the college’s diversity, equity and inclusion efforts.
Trump’s assault on the university is unlikely to stop, which is unfortunate. And he appears to be abetted by a willing U.S. Supreme Court. Professor Stephen Carter at Yale Law School provided a collegial, thoughtful path forward. Be that as it may, I am not sure universities have the capacity to self-scrutinize the implications of weighing into every social matter through policy statements and actions. Sometimes - most times I would argue - it is justifiable and practical for the university to avoid taking a stance. “Institutional neutrality” does not mean there is a lack of representative points of view. Rather, it leaves those points of view to each of the individuals associated with that university, including students, faculty, staff, and alumni. In turn, it can encourage a marketplace of ideas rather than the suppression of any particular point of view. And, when managed through the appropriate time, place, and manner structures of the First Amendment, everyone is able to have their say, fairly and safely.
Many universities missed this point, as my alma mater, Middlebury College, did several years ago. Their capitulation to illiberal notions of students has fueled Trump’s ability to attack the meaning and purpose of the university. How otherwise smart faculty and administrators did not see this coming is baffling. Yet, here we are.
To be clear, In public discourse is very much acceptable to offend and to be offended by a well-reasoned, intellectually substantiated point of view. Critical thinking and constructive debate allow the sorting of out of ideas even if the outcome is mutual disagreement. The university would do well to accept that reality and embrace the classroom, rather than the boardroom to the student-fed echo chamber of social media, as the modicum of learning.