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It didn’t take long for a consensus to form about the differences between Donald Trump’s first term as president and his return to the Oval Office. 

After just a few months, columnists, wonks and pundits were rushing to point out the ways that Trump’s operation had professionalized and become more efficient. With aides and Cabinet members like Russell Vought and Stephen Miller in the White House, the ragtag circus of Trump’s first term could be forgotten. 

This was a lean machine, dialed in on Project 2025 and dead set on carrying out the (admittedly terrifying) goals of the GOP’s far-right fringe. These new competent conservatives might hold truly disgusting views, went the conventional wisdom, but at least they were more predictable than the sideshow of Scaramuccis and Lindells. It’s easier to counter someone whose plan is obvious, or so the reasoning went. 

We don’t need to look back on the tenures of former Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem and former Attorney General Pam Bondi to know that idea was wishful thinking. And we don’t need to revisit the ludicrous accusations made during the 2024 presidential campaign by Trump and his then-running mate JD Vance about Haitian immigrants in Springfield, Ohio, eating pets to know that their intentions were clear all along. Trump’s second term has been just as chaotic and mean-spirited as the first. If there’s any guiding philosophy to this administration, it’s a desire to hurt as many enemies of the MAGA movement as possible. To borrow a phrase from Adam Serwer, the cruelty is still the point.

For proof, look no further than the Supreme Court cases that were decided on Wednesday. The conservative majority, half of whom were appointed by Trump, undercut the ability of refugees to seek asylum in the United States. In a pair of 6-3 decisions, the majority ruled that immigration officials could bar asylum seekers from entering the United States from Mexico and that Trump could end the Temporary Protected Status program. Justice Sonia Sotomayor of the Court’s liberal wing did not hold back when reading her dissent on the former case from the bench. She told the conservative justices that they had just voted to let people die in the deserts of northern Mexico.

“The consequences of today’s decision are predictable,” Sotomayor said. “More people will die. More people will attempt to cross the border illegally, and some will make it while others will not. More people will turn back and be subjected to violence because of something they cannot or should not have to change about themselves, such as their race, religion, nationality, or political opinion.”

Serwer’s original 2018 essay on MAGA’s sadist streak started with a description of the smiling white men in old photos of lynchings in the United States. The white men, he noted, stood over mutilated Black people in their Sunday best, shoving to get in the photo with a corpse, desperate to show off their glee. 

On Thursday, Katie Miller, wife of White House deputy chief of staff Stephen Miller, underscored the cruelty of the administration — and the MAGA coalition at large — by celebrating the SCOTUS rulings with a racist joke. Staring down a future of violent deportations, she toasted the health of the “dogs and cats of Springfield.”

What do you think? Are we in for a few more years of wanton sadism? Is there anything to be done to help the people the Trump admin has deemed undesirable? Sound off in the comments.

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