The American Police State Is Here

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ICE is about to eclipse the FBI as America's most important law enforcement agency. That's bad. Super-duper bad.

Jonathan V. Last

Jul 08, 2025

∙ Paid

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Federal agents threaten protesters during a protest over federal immigration enforcement raids at Delaney Hall Detention Facility on June 13, 2025 in Newark, New Jersey. (Photo by Andres Kudacki/Getty Images)

1. ICE > Medicaid

While most people spent the budget fight fixated on health care policy, I suspect that in a year we will consider this legislation to be the moment that Trump created his own internal security apparatus: His goal is to have ICE supplant the FBI in national law enforcement.

This is a big deal. Because the FBI is a professionalized organization with strict standards and a well-defined mission while ICE is more or less a national brute squad.

The Trump administration realized that corrupting the FBI would be a tall order. So while they’re certainly trying to do that, they put most of their chips on a different number: Reinventing ICE as the primary instrument of internal state power.