It’s interesting ICE raided the outside of a Home Depot. Like, of all the immigrants, the immigrants that stand outside of Home Depot do the hardest physical labor. There’s no heart to what’s going on.

> It’s interesting ICE raided the outside of a Home Depot. Like, of all the immigrants, the immigrants that stand outside of Home Depot do the hardest physical labor. There’s no heart to what’s going on.

From an outsider's view, everything looks so performative and fabricated to be consumed by a tv target audience. I mean, if there is so much illegal immigration in the US, is it the most effective use of resources to target a TV cliche that would gather a residual number of people?

To me, it's every day more apparent that democracies are transitioning into mediocracies. Everything is performative, real results do not matter. It's not a coincidence that this administration has a bunch of TV personalities in it, including the president. Influencers are the new ruling class because the opinion of every m**n permanently glued to their phone is valid (i.e. a vote)

> To me, it's every day more apparent that democracies are transitioning into mediocracies. Everything is performative, real results do not matter.

I think the whole point of these stupid stunts is to mobilize the base and distract critics. Your random redneck racist might feel strongly about the Hollywood caricature of Mexicans wearing sombreros at a Home Depot parking lot, but the truth of the matter is that Trump is mobilizing the US armed forces against a governor's will while threatening him with imprisonment.

Late stage democracy

They hate poor people. The wealthy undocumented people are sitting at home in their legal son or daughter's house watching the kids without a care in the world. The ones getting caught up in this are the ones that can't lay low for a while.

Nope.

They is doing lots and lots of heavy lifting here. At the same time things are very confusing, because it seems like your fellow American is out for blood in a manner that shows no humanity.

Your fellow American on the right is plugged into a Matrix that traffics in its own narratives and can now freely manufacture or amplify its own fringe facts and narratives.

They are actually fighting very hard for the soul of america - as they see it. Virtuous efforts to stop the villainy and stupidity of the venomous yet weak liberals, leftists and democrats.

There’s a system in place to manufacture narratives, the closest analogy would be wrestling - except the President doesn’t treat it as fiction, he acts as if it’s real.

And since you can make and sell narratives incredibly quickly, while facts and analysis are days of effort - well, you have a structural change to the market place of ideas.

It happens everywhere in democracies now. See Brexit - entirely predictable. Yet completely unable to “sell” the known and clear problems to a majority of the citizenry.

Same with tariffs.

There’s a floor to people’s capability in navigating our current information environments - and partisan groups of experts are happy to use it to their advantage.

The problem began empirically with conservative positions, but the efficacy of the technique has now created its own political force.

The wrestling analogy is exactly how I feel watching Trump since 2016. I feel like I am watching WWE wrestling, and it is obviously fake. The actors are not actually fighting. Except half the country is completely convinced that it is real. Its hard to find common ground or even explain why I think it is fake, because it feels like it would be self-evident to anyone over the age of 12.

I'd say it's more like trash reality tv. The media loves it because people watch. They can highlight/create narratives and selectively edit footage to craft the storyline. In pro wrestling, on the other hand, the heel is in on it and plays their part in service to the story. That's not the case here.

> They hate poor people.

The image the Trump administration conveys goes way beyond targeted hate. They appear to be replaying the Nazi playbook of persecuting minorities as a strategy to wedge in totalitarian control over a nation and society. Illegal immigrants just so happen to be the path of least resistance in the US.

I've often felt the same way as an insider. It's beyond a parody of itself.

Presumably it's just this meeting, filtering down the ranks:

So in late May, Stephen Miller, a top White House aide and the architect of the president’s immigration agenda, addressed a meeting at the headquarters of Immigration and Customs Enforcement, known as ICE. The message was clear: The president, who promised to deport millions of immigrants living in the country illegally, wasn’t pleased. The agency had better step it up.

Gang members and violent criminals, what Trump called the “worst of the worst,” weren’t the sole target of deportations. Federal agents needed to “just go out there and arrest illegal aliens,” Miller told top ICE officials, who had come from across the U.S., according to people familiar with the meeting.

Agents didn’t need to develop target lists of immigrants suspected of being in the U.S. illegally, a longstanding practice, Miller said. Instead, he directed them to target Home Depot, where day laborers typically gather for hire, or 7-Eleven convenience stores. Miller bet that he and a handful of agents could go out on the streets of Washington, D.C., and arrest 30 people right away.

https://www.wsj.com/us-news/protests-los-angeles-immigrants-...

Miller is an excellent, quick witted entertainment and speech writer in his own way. What's astonishing is using what is essentially an entertainer for high level strategy.

> What's astonishing is using what is essentially an entertainer for high level strategy.

I think this makes it even scarier. This means the goal is clearly not establishing sound policy, but to output propaganda that is designed to be easily consumed by TV audiences. It is beyond reality because it is not designed to make sense, it is designed to make sense to TV consumers by feeding on the context they get from their TV tropes. The Mexicans hanging around in Home Depots is a TV cliche that's recognized by people living wel beyond any Home Depot.

Tbf this entire administration is a circus full of entertainers from the top down. It's like these guys are taking notes from a Mexican soap opera, ironically.

People voted for the entertainment. They want to see some brown people getting violence meted out to them. It's the deep sickness of racism all the way up, especially Miller.

That's just one of many problems with this whole lie.

The best is Trump crowing about historically low unemployment numbers, and then peddling hysteria about illegals "taking American jobs." None of his degenerate followers care that this argument is stupid, and calls them stupid.

Now it's been papered over with other excuses, like the mythical "fentanyl" that's pouring in from Canada.

Trump is not a demagogue. He appears like he is, but that is a misconception. He actually hates immigrants.

Only three people seeking work outside HD. Hope they raise their salary demands.

You have to target the immigrants who work hard, just so we can eventually prove Trump right when he says all of the immigrants are lazy and take our welfare entitlements. The remainder will be poorer, that’s just math.

Whether it’s good public policy is neither here nor there, so long as our Leader is right.

They raided a school during their graduation ceremony to haul away parents of children receiving their graduations.

It would save a ton of effort and lives if illegals would self deport. So, maybe they're adding in a lot of intimidation to try to increase the self deportation rate?

I’m not sure I understand. Are you saying ICE should deport on.. merit basis? Leave the hardest working immigrants be and deport the lazy ones?

There’s a million ways to skin a cat. The process you choose informs everyone of the problem you are prioritizing.

For example, you are deporting labor. Ostensibly Because of fairness and justice - they are in the country illegally. Ergo they should go.

No one should be above the law.

This has zip to do with gangs and criminality though.

But why this process ? Why not punish people who are employing them ?

This is more efficient and even more just. People are employing workers they know are here illegally and undercutting minimum wage.

Or why not raise minimum wage so more people will be willing to work those jobs ?

People act on incentives - and america is a country with a concentration of some of the hardest working and smartest people in the world.

It has a tradition of valuing this and converting those strengths into its own.

Now I have enough of a background in econ, business and politics to see through the narratives.

I also know you can’t sell all those interventions, not the least because none of these address the issue of gangs and criminality and eating pets.

Which brings us to the issue that your rationale, the ones which are debated online - are downstream from whatever controversy and theory that’s going to show up as soon as a new distraction is needed.

I mean, just Take a look at your original question,

“Leave the hardest working and deport the lazy ones ?”

America is built on immigration of the hardest working, most driven people from across the globe.

America is a machine for hardworking people to move ahead. That’s its promise.

And this is the question its citizens are unironically asking.

That America was built on immigration one century (or even one decade) ago doesn't say anything about what America should do now. America is a nation that has borders and a right to control immigration, like all other nations in the world. When America wants more immigration, the American government raises the number of legal immigrants allowed per year. When they want less, they lower that number. Illegal immigrants, hard working or lazy, have nothing to do with that.

You want to ditch history for what America should do now, and what America wants to do now, based on an exact reading of your words, is to "enforce its laws on illegal immigrants". And you implied you want to reduce immigration as well.

As I said, many ways to skin a cat.

People follow incentives, so why not punish people who are paying for the labor? Arrests for employing them?

Its an economic system, theres 2 way incentives.

The process used, depends on what problem you are solving.

ICE has been arresting business owners for this, but unfortunately the legal requirement to do so is very high - you have to prove they knew what they were doing. It should probably be lowered.

Yes, we need much higher penalties on employers who break the law by hiring illegal aliens, and make it harder for them to pretend they didn't know, in addition to deporting illegals. It's not either/or; it's both/and.

Due process? Who cares?! ICE doesn't need due process and Trump said Americans aren't entitled to it anyway. Do you think Americans are special?

This isn’t a due process issue. There are plenty of crimes where the state does not have to prove you knew you were doing wrong, only that you did wrong. I see no reason why this can’t apply to employers, who would then be much more careful.

Having evidence to prove a crime is absolutely part of due process

Yes, but having to prove you were committing a crime versus the government having to prove you knowingly committed a crime are two different things. We do not always require the latter. For example, in most states, the government does not care whether you knew you were above the legal BAC when convicting you of DUI.

As it stands, employers can pretend ignorance and as long as they were not really stupid, put putting things in writing or personally arranging for the trafficking, they can likely get away with it. There’s no reason I can think of why we shouldn’t change that.

You're just talking about different standards of knowledge for a crime which has absolutely nothing to do with what I posted, which is that Trump has been arguing that there is no need for americans to receive due process - so the issue of evidentiary standards, which you are discussing, would be completely irrelevant in the scenario he advocates for. Once again, I ask you, as he retorted at a reporter "are Americans special?"

I apologize, I thought you were responding to my comment. I didn’t intend or desire to be in a political conversation.

Yes, punishing employers for hiring illegal immigrants works too. The two solutions are not exclusive and they can be implemented parallely.

Trump repeatedly said the administration would be targeting 'violent criminals and rapists', 'gang members', and 'heinous monsters' first.

So, you know, maybe they could try to do what they said they'd do for once?

The US is obsessed with precedence so doing something correctly once would ruin their exemption.

I don't understand what are you proposing in practice. Should ICE discover illegal immigrants and let them go if they're not heinous enough?

They've stated themselves that they don't have the resources for due process in all of these cases. So, yes. That is precisely what they should do. They can stop putting effort and resources into pointless ones and actually do their job.

So now they have not only to determine a person is an illegal alien; on top of that, you want them to somehow determine who is "heinous" and who is "good"? It seems a lot more work, considering the fact that there's no objective scale for "being heinous" (what do you do? You ask their friends?) but there's a reasonably objective way of telling if a person is illegaly residing in US or not.

Well, it's what Trump said they would do. So they can either do it or he's lying.

There is a pretty reasonable way to determine if someone is "heinous" or not, committing a violent crime and being found guilty of it. And if going through a criminal justice system is "too much work", then I'm got news for you about who that's going to be applying to next...

The problem is that the average person bot agrees that only the worst of the worst should go, but also believes that there are far, far, far more of such people out there than actually exist. This is why we see poll metrics saying things like a majority of people agree with the deportations but disagree with how it is being done.

Ah but that was a sleight of hand! They're doing exactly what they said they'd do.

They said they'd target violent criminals, but they didn't say they wouldn't target non violent criminals as well. People who heard that were wishcasting.

Whether or not they are a "priority" is semantics. If you hear them explain it, they're all defacto criminals for being undocumented, and therefore equally culpable as a murder or a rapist in matters of deportation.

The crime they're concerned about over all others is illegal immigration. According to them, an illegal immigrant who has done nothing else wrong deserves to be deported just as much as rapist illegal immigrant.

This is exactly where they should raid. I have a lot of friends and family that work construction. Illegal immigration has absolutely destroyed the construction labor market by undercutting wages. People should be a fair wage for their work. We shouldn't promote pushing wages down by importing more people, especially desperate people.

Maybe you should take a look at what Private Equity has done to construction before blaming day laborers at Home Depot.

I oppose private equity consolidation too, this is not an either/or proposition, but that’s not the biggest factor that’s impacted construction labor these past few decades.

Where's you heart for the hard working black men who are disproportionately impacted by illegal immigration?

What happened to all those safe active denial systems?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Active_Denial_System

> modifications or misuse by an operator could nevertheless turn the ADS into a more damaging weapon which could potentially violate international conventions on warfare

Safe? When manned by actors known to shoot journalists in the head with “less lethal” weapons?

Some passages from your source:

ADS operators would be exposed to more than the standard maximum permissible exposure (MPE) limits for RF energy, and military use requires an exception to these exposure limits

According to Wired, the ADS has been rejected for fielding in Iraq due to Pentagon fears that it would be regarded as an instrument of torture

Seems to have problems on both ends.

It's a salami tactic, that's how democracies are turning into autocracies, slice by slice. This is something new to you, but people who experienced this firsthand see what's going on in the US as an obvious road to autocratic rule. Then another Rubicon will be crossed, and another, one by one, little steps, until someday you will find yourself in a totally different country after all the steps converge into a different political system.

That, or the fast road to dictatorship. Escalate until you declare martial law, never to be revoked. The end.

The Ghorman massacre in the recently aired season 2 of Star Wars Andor is the playbook version of this.

I don't think the US is there yet, but the direction seems about right. As you say, step by step.

In the LA riots of 1992 there was also the national guard and the military: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1992_Los_Angeles_riots

Andor was great. I really enjoyed it. It's the AI robots you should really worry about.

Yes, you also always have some superficially similar event to reassure people that this has happened before.

It’s usually too much for people to contemplate that things are going to end.

Or worse, it’s bad faith, and it’s shared to lull people into accepting the change.

One of the clear things is that the right side of the political sphere is no longer constrained to narratives that have accurate correspondence to reality.

Even if this blows over, there will be something else, and then something else - and some superficially plausible rationale that contradicts previous positions.

And people who’ve seen this before will point it out - but people in the hall of mirrors will be stuck dealing with whatever is being reflected around them.

It’s genuinely cognitively hard to reason past such things, especially if reasoning past them is done alone - because then you are now stuck feeling like you are outside of your group - worse, you might have to join the people you were angry with.

This is one reason it takes a long time (months, years) to travel this distance - you can’t mentally switch allegiances and world views in a moment. There’s too many interconnected beliefs, actions - neurons.

But for people who’ve seen this before, it’s pretty clear cut.

I've been around and seen many things. I don't think it's that clear cut. But if you start from the conclusion and work your way backwards you can reason about anything.

Another problem is that these processes have a feedback loop. I don't like feeding that loop.

But yes, time will tell. I do agree certain things are normalized which probably shouldn't, but the system has some degree of robustness.

The proper thing for the left to do, IMO, is to present a clear and believable alternative. That also helps with the question of "join the people you were angry with". If the left doesn't understand why people are angry then they can't present this alternative. Standing on a hypothetical box in a hypothetical public square and yelling "the end is nigh" is not political discourse. The left also doesn't get to choose the laws it likes, just like the right doesn't, illegal immigration, as the term hints, illegal. Rioting and destroying things is also illegal. The only way a dictator can take over the US given all the checks and balances is when it seems that's the best alternative to enough people.

> In the LA riots of 1992 there was also the national guard and the military

The Governor requested federal help. Legally different.

It is different when state governors impede the enforcement of federal laws and the President needs to send in the military. Eisenhower had to do that in Arkansas. It’s shameful but it happens.

The law is not on their side in 2025. That's the difference.

The Insurrection Act of 1807 allows the President to do it without the request of a governor so I don't think there is a legal difference.

Did the President during the LA protest of the beating of an unarmed person ever say they wanted to be a dictator?

I edited this post because riots implies they weren't burning down their own neighborhoods because they didn't actually own anything there and had not been prevented from owning anything. Certain groups love to post the actually affected Korean store owners, but it's a gross one minority group was pitted against another to prove racism was ok in retrospect to cause the conflict.

I studied political sciences twenty years ago - even then it was established consensus that presidential democracies are vulnerable to authoritarian takeover. The position has too much power, is easily abused and there are not enough checks on that position. The US escaped that problem for a long time due to strong cultural norms - but you abolished them (i.e. gatekeeping the presidential nominees and replacing that with a televised drama) and working checks (but again, now party in congress and president march in lockstep). FPTP and gerrymandering just exacerbate that problem and entrench a very unhealthy "the winner takes it all without need for compromise" culture.

You need electoral reform post haste - but I do not seed even a start to that discussion, so I think you are hosed. Might not be Dictator Trump, but maybe Vance or some other guy who succeeds in this game.

And all who cry "if the democrats win everything will be ok again!!!!" - not it won't. The democrats are too slow to recognize the problem and even if they eventually do, there are no majorities to change the system. And finally: Democracy needs at least two parties - democrats cannot be expected to keep branches of the government forever. You need a sane and democratic second party. Republicans ain't it - but the current system gives them success, so why change?!

We escaped them because the tenth amendment and judiciary constrained federal powers in non war time to activity summing up to like 2% of the GDP and they needed an amendment to do anything outside of a little box. POTUS was fairly low stakes office in peace time, lower stakes to most than their governor and state legislators.

We tossed that all aside in the 1930s via threatening to pack the Supreme court. Federal powers are now everything because interstate commerce is now everything and without a functional 10A and with delegation to executive agencies POTUS approaches God level.

> I studied political sciences twenty years ago - even then it was established consensus that presidential democracies are vulnerable to authoritarian takeover.

Democracies are vulnerable to "authoritarian takeover" has been known and understood for 2500 years.

> The position has too much power, is easily abused and there are not enough checks on that position.

In most parliamentary democracies, the Prime Minister is much more powerful than the US President. This is particularly the case since the PM is PM by virtue of his party having the legislative majority.

> And all who cry "if the democrats win everything will be ok again!!!!" - not it won't.

A better argument would be that this isn't a partisan issue. The last President declared a Constitutional Amendment by fiat and attempted to do (good) things like student loan relief with blatantly illegal authoritarian methods due to the perpetual Congressional gridlock.

> In most parliamentary democracies, the Prime Minister is much more powerful than the US President. This is particularly the case since the PM is PM by virtue of his party having the legislative majority.

This is a grave misunderstanding. A legislative majority isn't a static historical fact like Trump's electoral majority, it's dynamic - those are identifiable people not just a statistic.

Liz Truss was the UK's Prime Minister for less than two months. What changed in two months? Probably most of the idiots who actually voted for her didn't change their minds, but that doesn't matter, her fellow Tory MPs feared the worst from the outset and were proven correct. If she hadn't left she'd have been kicked out, she's known to have actually asked if there's some way she can cling on and been told basically "No" because there isn't.

Ultimately, if they can't get rid of her any other way, her backbench only needs to affirm a simple motion, "That This House Has No Confidence In His Majesty's Government" and it's all over. It would never come to that, but that's the backstop.

Congress can also agree to remove the President. Indeed it would take only a few Rs to flip to do so.

We see PMs easily enacting massive legislative reforms and even Constitutional changes that are nigh impossible in the US, that was not a particularly controversial statement.

Congress could, in theory, begin an arduous process (weeks? months?) in which eventually, if they succeed, again in theory it removes the President and... puts in his place his chosen replacement. It has never successfully done this, so from there we're in uncharted waters but it's hardly obvious that it is an effective procedure.

In contrast the Westminster Parliament routinely disposes of Prime Ministers who lose its confidence, it's already happened once in my lifetime and it's not some multi-week procedure in which there's some performance of a judicial process, just a simple question: Does this Government retain the Confidence of the House?

Margaret Thatcher decided on this course of action on a Monday, on Wednesday morning she rose to say, "Mr. Speaker, I beg to move, 'That this House has no confidence in Her Majesty's Government.'" and by the next morning the Callaghan minority government had fallen.

The length of time the process takes is entirely under the control of Congress. It could be done in a day if they wanted. The longer time periods seen with Clinton and Trump were to attempt to gin up the political support to follow through.

I was concerned with facts, whereas you seem focused on a fantasy about how you wish things were. But your fantasy doesn't matter at all. US-style Presidential Republics are a known bad design, the US nation building projects stopped doing this themselves because it doesn't work, the United States itself is just a slower decay, it's not an exception.

The problem wasn't the Crown, that's the big takeaway. Giving the same power to a guy who doesn't have a hat doesn't fix the problem. You need to hold this much power in commission, that's the lesson that gave us the present British arrangement - the Lord High Treasurer was much too powerful, so his power was given to a commission, today its First Lord though not nearly as powerful as the Lord Treasurer, is too powerful, that's the Prime Minister you gestured at - the formal office is "First Lord of the Treasury", with the Chancellor being Second Lord, and the whips taking subsidiary parts of the commission. If you ask me we should further re-divide this power.

But just giving all that power to one man (and in the US it has always been a man) is even worse. The US President has powers that a King had, which made sense in the 18th century but stands out today - that's why Trump can corruptly pardon people for example.

It's really baffling to see this take repeated, especially when we've seen European PMs rewrite their country's constitution. That's just not feasible in the US system. US Presidents are quite limited in their power. A lot of (justified) outrage occurs over the US President doing something that PMs can typically do with no issue.

You seem fixated on the practical process of removing one from power, which is of course irrelevant as long as their party backs them, which is the actual threat in both cases. In either case, if the legislature does not back them, they can be removed from power with little issue.

I see in a sibling comment you think this is actually a weakness of the US system...apparently the PM radically changing all the laws, norms, and unwritten constitution of his country is "not powerful", while the US President typically fighting a battle to get one single major piece of legislation through in his career is unitarian dictatorship?

> , the US nation building projects stopped doing this themselves because it doesn't work, the United States itself is just a slower decay, it's not an exception.

The US nation building projects felt that parliamentary democracies were easier to control, as direct election of Presidential executives sometimes leads to democracies electing leaders who are able to carry out policies that violate US interests.

I'm sure it is baffling, why are all these stupid facts contradicting your nice simple truth? Because it's a fantasy.

> We see PMs easily enacting massive legislative reforms and even Constitutional changes that are nigh impossible in the US

I'm responding to this part separately because it's a very different issue. The existence of "superior law" in the form of a written constitution, is very silly. There need be only a single law, the law of the land - and the legislature must be able to change it - and only them, otherwise why have a legislature at all?

These are only man's laws, they're no different than the laws of Football ("soccer") for example, they are not facts about the world like Mother Nature's Laws - and so to hold some of these laws superior to others is a waste of everybody's time. The resulting paralysis in the US is not something to be praised, it's just another rusted joint, a lost degree of flexibility and so a point of weakness.

In reality, the supposed "impossible" constitutional changes in the US simply enable learned helplessness. Democratic representatives weep that alas much as they wish otherwise they "cannot" fix obvious problems because change is "impossible" and then of course somebody who actually does want to change things just does and says (as we might expect remembering these are only man's laws) if you don't like it too fucking bad.

> There need be only a single law, the law of the land - and the legislature must be able to change it - and only them, otherwise why have a legislature at all?

The legislature can change the US Constitution. The federal Congress proposes an amendment with a 2/3rds yes-vote, then it must be ratified by legislatures of 3/4ths of the states.

The reason to make some laws harder to change than others is to protect civil rights. In the US, it is very difficult to legally infringe on the right to free speech, for example. In the UK, it is simply a matter of a majority vote in Parliament.

> Democratic representatives weep that alas much as they wish otherwise they "cannot" fix obvious problems because change is "impossible" and then of course somebody who actually does want to change things just does and says (as we might expect remembering these are only man's laws) if you don't like it too fucking bad.

Passing Constitutional amendments is perfectly feasible and has been done many times. It just can't be done without majority political support and the will to do so. They've been passed and "repealed" before, with Prohibition, for example.

A lot of kvetching in the US system (on both sides) comes from people whose ideas are simply not very popular and would like to change the rules so they win. In a democratic society, you need majorities of the population to agree. For larger changes, you preferable want larger majorities.

>We see PMs easily enacting massive legislative reforms and even Constitutional changes that are nigh impossible in the US

I don't know about UK but in Australia we need a Referendum (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Referendums_in_Australia) to change the constitution and those have been historically extremely difficult to pass (only 8/45). The PM absolutely cannot alter the Constitution.

Yeah, it’s dangerous to generalize parliamentary systems too broadly. That isn’t the case in all of them. But as you can see in his comments, he thinks that having “constitutional” laws above other laws is also a bad idea.

I don't even remember who the president was. I'd have to look it up. And in 2050 you won't remember who Trump was. At least that's where my money is right now. There is no way Trump is turning into a dictator, for one thing he's too old. Is there any precedence to a 78 year old turning into a dictator for life? (I mean I'm not as young as I used to be and dictator is probably not in my future either).

EDIT: It was US President George H. W. Bush ...

> no way Trump is turning into a dictator, for one thing he's too old. Is there any precedence to a 78 year old turning into a dictator for life

I agree that Trump is unlikely to turn into a dictator. But Caesar wasn't Rome's last dictator. And he wasn't the first to march on Rome.

Precedents are being set. Regardless of your views on illegal immigration, what's going on should be concerning because eventually someone with strong views you don't agree with will be in power, and if they can just arrest members of Congress, openly defy courts, ship ideological opponents to Guantanamo and send Marines into states they don't like, we're all going to be poorer for it. (If this shit stands, I'd argue the next Democrat in the White House should go FDR on the system.)

If history rhymes, I wonder if we aren't about at Marius and Sulla, rather than at Caesar.

Republicans used to limit themselves out of of fear of a Democrat being able to do it the next time they won.

Now it seems like the republicans are trying to speed-run to a point where there won’t ever be another Democrat to worry about.

> Now it seems like the republicans are trying to speed-run to a point where there won’t ever be another Democrat to worry about

The simpler explanation is they're bad at long-term planning. Most of Trump's Cabinet and advisors are, essentially, influencers after all.

We probably need to work on a Project 2026 and Project 2028 document set. Plans to use these newly-unlocked powers to reform how power is distributed in America, force forward long-overdue projects being resisted by vocal minorities and secure our republic from its tendency towards electoral fetishism.

Two heads of the same coin I guess! I agree though, we sorely need a counterweight to this administration. I keep asking my friends that support Trump if they’ll have the same staunch attitude towards strong executive branch powers if a Democrat gets elected next. I haven’t gotten a straight answer back.

I'll really worry about both, thank you.

It was requested by the governor. A lot different from today where the governor is actively opposing it.

They're not being deployed to run down protesters, they're deploying to protect federal personnel and federal property only.

What if the threat to federal personnel comes from people trying to protect themselves from being run down by federal property?

You think any individual marine will follow their conscience and step in if they see an abuse of power by authority?

To be fair they’re not even doing that. They’re holed up without food or beds because there was no plan while the LAPD manages the protests and riots triggered by the federal troop deployment. It’s literally designed to inflame tensions, and it’s the direct cause of everything that’s going on. I feel bad for those troops being used as a pawn in a political TV stunt.

The national guard and the marines are not trained in crowd control. They are trained in combat situations. They have no role to play here, at best they just make people angry, at worse could perpetuate a massacre.

I've never been in the military but I was in a civil war. Let me explain what a few days holed up does to a bunch of young dudes with automatic weapons: it makes them eager for an exciting break from the monotony.

The US military probably cannot be compared to any other nation’s military outside of China. They simply aren’t that trigger happy, and with no civil war and a strongly enforced set of national laws, ain’t no way that’s happening here.

Speaking as a Brit, there were regular jokes about how bad US troops were during the Iraq war as a result of numerous friendly fire incidents. You also only have to go on Youtube to see jokes around US Marines and sticking crayons up their nose to realise your faith in the ability of the average soldier's mental faculties is higher than that displayed by the armed forces themselves.

Even the British Army, generally regarded for professionalism, make a lot of jokes about how unintelligent and trigger happy the average squaddie is.

Do you think that marines doing silly things when bored and murdering their fellow citizens for entertainment are in ANY way actually related? I’m not sure we can continue this conversation if you can’t tell how unrelated “guy sticks crayons up his nose for a joke” and “guy kills his own fellow citizens” are.

Man I’m obviously not saying they have perfect discipline, I’m saying you clearly cannot compare them to a nation dealing with an ACTIVE CIVIL WAR.

Ok let me tell you a story from the British Army where my friend was an officer. Officers have to be driven everywhere by a squaddie for insurance reasons (to keep it simple).

One day he’s being driven in Germany and a cyclist is keeping pace with them. Officer tells the driver to “fuck him off,” meaning to drive away really quickly. The squaddie mishears this as “knock him off,” and promptly swerves into the rider.

Granted this was British but, as I pointed out, we’re pretty highly regarded for professionalism. So, do I think US troops are any brighter or more ethical? If ordered to shoot, will a significant number say “sir, no sir!”

No, I don’t think either of those things are true.

Man, the inability to see how unrelated this story is to civil war militants murdering fellow citizens for fun, especially when your example doesn’t even concern Americans, is disheartening.

> They simply aren’t that trigger happy

I already addressed this with my comments on American troops lighting up British tanks during Iraq.

> and with no civil war and a strongly enforced set of national laws

Er… have you read the news? The first part of the quote is a concern of many commentators and the second part of your comment is a fucking bad joke given your President has ignored multiple laws and judicial rulings, including sending the marines into LA without the permission of the governor!

> I already addressed this with my comments on

No, you didn’t lol. You showed how American soldiers could shoot at some other military members who were in a tank. I gotta say, if you think I care even half as much about any random Brit more than any American, you’re crazy.

Also, are you under the impression that a random soldier going on a killing spree against innocent Americans would be treated the same as the President playing legal games, albeit ones with very serious consequences?

> No, you didn’t lol.

Just because you don’t like getting schooled doesn’t change the fact that you were.

> Also, are you under the impression that a random soldier going on a killing spree against innocent Americans would be treated the same as the President playing legal games, albeit ones with very serious consequences?

A president that pardoned murderers from January 6th? A president that said there were good people in a group of neonazi rioters? A president that sent those military people in there against the legal restrictions on sending the military in? A president that fired all people in the chain of command who would say “no?”

Yes, I think it’ll be treated differently, just not the same way you will.

Oh, you’re acting like a toddler in a schoolyard now. Okay, you’re very clever and I’m not - you’re so big brain and I’m dumb.

> A president that pardoned murderers from January 6th? A president that said there were good people in a group of neonazi rioters? A president that

Yes? Why do you think this is a gotcha? I already said they were games with serious consequences. Are you ok dude?

This really feels like one of those

”””conversations””” where the other person is in fact arguing against someone else, and I’m just a proxy for whatever you’re actually mad about.

Well since you asked nicely, Legal Eagle obliged and reminded me that the NG shot at protesters during the Vietnam War: https://youtu.be/CT8_IV42AM8?si=HCyQNBpJ7T9pfodS

Skip ahead to about 10 minutes. So yes, I’m still right and the US military are as trigger happy as any other military.

Are soldiers dumb automatons though? I struggle to imagine them looking forward to the prospect of firing on American citizens.

Yes, soldiers are frequent perpetrators of atrocities and proud about comiting those atrocities. They are also easy to convince civilians are their enemies. Especially when frustrated, bored, hungry and sleep deprived.

It stems from leadership - and current leadership wants them to be like that. So, they will become like that.

Well they're training on that now. With rubber bullets they are breaking down the emotional barriers to pointing assault weapons at US Citizens, feeling the hate flow through them, and pulling the trigger

If you read 'ordinary men' or watch the documentary, basically anyone can be trained to even execute innocent people by putting them in a suit and promising to name call them or feed them worse food if they don't do it. Something like 2M jews were killed outside of the gas chambers by essentially regular citizens who would see no worse punishment than social shaming and less desirable duties for refusing, and whom didn't even really want the job in the first place.

'Illegal immigrants' however would sell better, especially if they were 'provocative'

The same exact lie was said about Tiananmen Square.

I have a bridge to sell you.

I suspect many commenters on HN would also have bridges to sell you, seeing as they’re from around the world, and countries where similar statements were made.

The statement is one thing. Reality is different, even with the best intentions, things get messy, and then the media and information firestorm that follows leaves scars that fester for decades.

You’d be lucky if it doesn’t lead to new infections and new wounds.

Which is why self inflicted wounds are so absurd, especially from nations that have the expertise to know better.

But - expertise is expensive, and entertainment and narrative vitality is the currency we traffic in.

A currency that pushes the costs of clean up and figuring out what happened to the future, if you are lucky to have any committees to look at it all.

We all need a news system that isn’t competing with engagement.

I'm not american but I remember marines being mobilized for hurricane Katrina in New Orleans too. Funny that if it's so bad to deploy them, why is it OK to deploy them in other countries?

Their job is to be deployed internationally and specifically not to be deployed domestically. That's why it's so appalling.

It's also appealing each time they are deployed internationally, but to "others".

Yes. The American President is supposed to look out for Americans. First. That's what Trump was elected to do. Not trash out economy at the global and local levels.

Looking out for Americans is precisely what he's doing by deporting illegals. Of course people who are in a position of wealth are not affected by their existence so they think there’s no issue.

> Looking out for Americans is precisely what he's doing by deporting illegals

Nothing about deporting illegal immigrants requires deploying the Marines.

They're deployed because of the riots, not illegal immigration.

> They're deployed because of the riots, not illegal immigration

The riots got worse after they were deployed. Obviously. They're being deployed because we have a drunk for SecDef, a basket case in Stephen Miller and flagging illegal-immigrant arrest numbers that are making Homan look incompetent. So we get theatrics. Sort of like the tariffs.

The Republican party has been stealing the surplus wealth from offshoring for decades with their fake refrain of "fiscal responsibility", and now that our country's industrial base has been hollowed out and the jig is up you fall right for their ploy to blame a scapegoat instead.

Trump is doing exactly what his voters wanted. They wanted exactly these economic policies, exactly these anti-democratic policies, exactly these anti-science policies, exactly this harm to everyone who is being harmed except themselves.

It is not just Trump. he represents what conservatives, republicans and their voters are. And this is enabled by consistent pretension that Trump is an secretly opposed aberration. No, he is admired both publicly and secretly.

100% people begged Republican voters to review what Trump was cooking with Project 2025. It’s time for dinner.

No.

> The Insurrection Act of 1807 [...] empowers the president [...] to nationally deploy the U.S. military [...] in specific circumstances, such as the suppression of civil disorder [...]

-- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Insurrection_Act_of_1807

The Insurrection Act of 1807 allows the president to deploy troops within the US to squash riots and other things.

Being deployed to help in a disaster is very different from being deployed to quell protests.

They're not being deployed to quell protests they're being deployed to guard federal buildings from protesters.

That's not really relevant to the disaster remediation point.

They are being deployed on American soil for their force projection.

You're being disingenuous. The Marines are guarding federal buildings from protesters? The protestors wouldn't be there if federal agents weren't surrounding, blocking, and frankly terrorizing communities. Of course that will fire up a community to protest! But that's all part of the plan isn't it?

ICE agents are deporting people here illegally. I don’t see anything wrong with that.

The deportation isn't the problem. It's how they're being done. Due process is core to our democracy and must be respected and followed, regardless of who. Court orders are being ignored.

I have zero problem with deporting people that are here illegally. I have plenty of problems with how it's currently being done.

> Court orders are being ignored

Can you expand on this? If you are referring to the AEA, as far as I know that’s not what is being used in LA.

Kinda seems like they're randomly grabbing people and shipping them to Mexico right now. Their MO so far has been to round up people, including people who are here legally, and deport them without due process.

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/jun/09/los-angeles-...

ICE is deporting folks before due process - a right guaranteed to all persons on US soil by amendment to the US Constitution. That is against the laws of the USA.

>ICE agents are deporting people here illegally.

Well in a Freudian way this statement could be interpreted to exactly mean that what ICE is doing is illegal.

The Gestapo simply detained people who were breaking the law.

I would note they aren’t guilty of a crime - it’s a civil infraction. “Illegal” is a pejorative used to imply criminality, being an undocumented immigrant is not in fact criminal or a crime.

The issue however that prompted the protests was the way they are pursuing deportations with militarized tactics, brutality, and snatching people off the streets as abductions. They do not declare themselves, do not present their civil warrant, do not produce identification, and subsequently frequently do not follow laws, regulation, or the constitutional requirements of due process.

There is no reason that their neighbors, family, and friends need to be happy with what’s happening. They are afforded protection in our society to be angry and disclaim the government without fear of persecution or prosecution. When they’re then persecuted and prosecuted for doing that, people are pissed by the injustice. Then when their governments responsible is to fly in the military, you should expect an explosive situation.

Indeed it seems pretty clear the explosive situation was premeditated and planned - using armored vehicles and riot armored police to invade immigrant neighborhoods and abduct service workers and day laborers in broad daylight when a simple standard ICE operation was clearly designed to provoke strong response in those neighborhoods. Everything after that has been pretty deductively arrived at to create this precise situation. Even the language of insurrection and rebellion - laughably absurd claims for even a riot - which hadn’t happened until the national guard were deployed - are carefully chosen words to provide pretext for what comes next.

I desperate miss the states rights individual freedoms libertarian leaning republicans. They would never have done these things.

> The issue however that prompted the protests was the way they are pursuing deportations with militarized tactics, brutality, and snatching people off the streets as abductions.

Also that they’re going after many people who are actually attempting to comply with the law, because those are the easiest to find. Meanwhile tens of millions of undocumented immigrants are still here, and the lesson they’re being taught is don’t trust the legal process, stay under the radar. In the end the Trump administration is unlikely to make a large dent in the undocumented population - they certainly haven’t so far. It’s mostly theater. They’ll just end up discovering how unintended consequences work.

Yes, the classic "if it's legal, it's moral" position. It was also legal to turn in Anne Frank.

This tells me a lot about you. You purposefully ignore the "how."

ICE agents are also deporting a lot of people here legally. Just last week: they attempted to deport and ban the wife of a U.S. soldier visiting her husband on leave with a valid tourist visa ; several U.S. citizens working for at the Westlake Home Depot despite being shown proof of citizenship; a U.S. Marshall of Mexican descent who was born in the country to legal residents.

That doesn't include the hundreds of students legally here on student visas.

And of course, if ICE is going to deport people in the country illegally: it's well establish by now that Musk and Melania violated the terms of their nonresident visas when they first came to the U.S., rendering their U.S. citizenship null and void (Musk worked in violation of his student visa; Melania both worked in violation of her tourist visa and overstayed her visa by several years; if she hadn't married Trump she would have been deported and banned from the U.S. for 10 years).

Freedom of movement is a basic human right.

Article 13 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights asserts that:

"Everyone has the right to freedom of movement and residence within the borders of each state."

"Everyone has the right to leave any country, including his own, and to return to his country."

Note that this affords the freedom to relocate within, leave, and return to one’s country, not the freedom to enter into other countries in violation of their immigration laws.

Are they? What about the ones that aren't here illegally? Trump told the Supreme Court that Kilmar Garcia was wrongfully deported, but they had no obligation to bring him back anyway. Is that what you are talking about?

How will any outside observe be able to tell the difference between them 'guarding federal buildings' and them being deployed to attack political enemies of the regime?

Will a useful idiot throwing a rock at a federal building be sufficient casus belli for the latter?

Lol at Katrina the police and guard were going door to door confiscating arms of occupied homes in blatant violation of the second amendment. There is a video if a guardsman bragging about something to the effect 'hoping he doesn't have to smoke someone coming around a corner."

As it turns out when you send a force trained only to kill and subjugate, that's what they do. A few guardsman stood down but most did not.

National guard are also trained to assist in disaster relief and humanitarian efforts. They did a lot of that after Katrina.

They have been used in the past to quell protests (in LA), by Bush the senior in 1992. Actually he sent in more than the current number.

National Guard and Army Corps of Engineers are often deployed in disasters to help. This is the opposite and the governor of California specifically did not request this so Trump usurped his authority.

Because “USA USA USA we’re number one! Exporting muh freedoms.”

USAian hypocrisy one of their many traits which they pretend not to notice. Unless you’re a furriner …

This is such bad form to stereotype an entire diverse nation like this. I'd feel the same way about any other nation on earth.

You can't comment like this on HN.

I’m willing to defer to mods on this one, but Aussie slang is full of warm put downs for ‘mericans, but I would hesitate to call the comment in question derogatory in nature.

https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/Seppo

tl;dr: it’s rhyming slang, Yank (USA person who may/may not also be one of the two Australian stereotypes of Americans, the other one being Texans) rhymes with (septic) tank, shortened to the euphemism used by OP

Thanks, I'm Australian, and I know what it means, and I know how it's used :)

Thanks, I’m an American who is related to Australians and has lived in Australia. Since we both have standing to speak and both know how it’s used, I think it’s fair to say that I said this for the rest of the class, as I am a regular here and had an inkling you’re Australian.

Words like that have a complicated past. They may be have been used with a veneer of friendliness but in truth they’re diminutive or derisive. The person I replied to here has used it repeatedly in a derisive way on HN. We wouldn’t tolerate equivalent words being used for Asian people or others of different origins. I haven’t heard the word used in ordinary conversation for decades, hence it’s jarring to see it here.

> The person I replied to here has used it repeatedly in a derisive way on HN.

I think this is kind of an interesting point, because you mention Asian people, but "American" isn't a race. To certain readings, racism is prejudice plus power. In this setup, America is a hegemon establishment power. To dismiss someone or their views just because they're from the US doesn't sound nice, and I don't see how using the term would improve the tenor or tempo of the discussion, but as you surely know, cheekiness is a common trait of Australians. That's why I brought it up, as it's well and good and arguably just to be direct and to the point about not using that kind of talk on HN, because that's what your mod hat is for. I acknowledge and respect that you're doing what you're supposed to do. I simply wanted to gently acknowledge that whatever point that they were making, however poorly it might be phrased, was part and parcel to the derision that you're speaking of. I don't know if it's a very interesting or compelling point when stripped of its emotional language, but our words perhaps say more about ourselves than that which we speak of. I think it's good to be clear about what it is that is bad, not simply that it is bad.

You know better than I what is bad posting for HN, as what might be within the norms of acceptable speech down under would make many English-speaking people blush. I think the post was more heat than light myself, but if they'd said it any other way, we wouldn't be having this interaction, which is arguably what HN is for, interacting with each other in a way that encourages curiosity about the topic and about each other.

Then again, most people aren't super curious about HN metacommentary, so I better wrap this up. Appreciate the context.

Here you go:

https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que...

HN isn’t a platform for expressing hatred, and that’s an unqualified good thing. I’m reminded of some writer, who wrote about how happy families are all alike, and how unhappy families are unhappy in their own unique way. There are so few things it takes to make it go right, and there are so many ways that good things can go wrong.

If tone policing limits the Overton Window of acceptable speech because it is not sufficiently positive, that becomes a kind of expectation for self-censorship, which is contrary to the HN guidelines which promote curious, free expression. Negative expressions can inflame the passions and can be antithetical to building a healthy community, but if the only acceptable negative expressions must be clinical in tone at worst, many legitimate expressions of content will be disqualified due to unauthorized discontent.

Thanks for the reference, by the way. I should collect a list of them. My current favorite is in my bio on here.

Please avoid nationalistic stereotypes like this on HN, it's not what the site is for, and destroys what it is for.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

The marines were deployed in New Orleans to help in hospitals, distribute food and water, and specialists in search and rescue. That is a very different context.

> I remember marines being mobilized for hurricane Katrina in New Orleans too

The governor of Louisiana requested federal help. Legally very different.

Most people here in CA who aren’t Democrats believe that Newsom is a partisan hack and that he and his policies are completely ineffective at keeping Californians safe from dangerous criminals, so his lack of requesting help is mostly being viewed as his typical “agenda over reality” orientation.

> his lack of requesting help is mostly being viewed as his typical “agenda over reality” orientation

Most people don't understand why we have the system of laws that we do. Most Americans couldn't design a stable republic the way our founders did. (Most of their contemporaries couldn't either.)

Nothing about deporting illegal immigrants requires calling in the Marines. Nothing about this situation makes their deployment in Los Angeles legal. Performative hackery is practiced by both sides. Desecrating the honour of our armed forces used to be bipartisan, but I guess that's no longer the case.

Ok, but that's not most people in CA, so I don't know what that has to do with anything.

there's a reason why people remember kent state.

The real danger of Kent State is it teaches in for a penny, in for a pound.

What reason is that?

National Guard killed unarmed students.

Kent State was only, what, four people? Barely registers by modern mass shooting standards. The US is inured to violence.

For reference, Euromaidan involved the death of over a hundred protesters before the government finally collapsed.

The thing about Kent State wasn't that four people were killed. The thing about Kent State was that the US military killed four people - four US civilians.

The people of the US may be inured to violence. They aren't inured to violence from their own military, though.

The President who ordered the Kent State National Guard deployment won his re-election campaign in a massive landslide - 49 out of 50 states went for Nixon. I suspect that people that lived through it remembered Kent State very differently at the time than we do (or maybe than they do now).

Nixon didn’t order the Kent State deployment. It was Ohio’s state governor, Jim Rhodes.

Which makes this situation all the more remarkable, since Trump called in the national guard without Newsom’s approval.

The Insurrection Act of 1807 allows the president to call the national guard to stop riots. It also allows the military to be sent in.

LA has had the marines sent in to stop riots in the past so this isn't exactly a new thing.

That’s true enough, I should have said supported and perhaps instigated (by insulting the students beforehand) rather than ordered.

Kent State is a classic case of historical revision. The majority of Americans supported the National Guard’s actions, in part because they were in valid fear for their lives after the rioters started throwing bricks at their heads.

Revisionism you say? Most accounts say that before the National Guard was involved, most of what was thrown was beer bottles at police cars.

The Wikipedia article on the shootings doesn't mention the word "brick" once. It also says:

"While on the practice field, the guardsmen generally faced the parking lot, about 100 yards (91 m) away. At one point, the guardsmen formed a loose huddle and appeared to be talking to one another. They had cleared the protesters from the Commons area, and many students had left.

Some students who had retreated beyond the practice field fence obtained rocks and possibly other objects with which they again began pelting the guardsmen. The number of rock throwers is unknown, with estimates of 10–50 throwers. According to an FBI assessment, rock-throwing peaked at this point. Tear gas was again fired at crowds at multiple locations."

So there were rocks being thrown at National Guard members who were ALREADY teargassing the boxed in group AND had knelt and aimed weapons.

Somehow you extrapolate that to average people going about their day and randomly taking a brick to the head... huh.

So even by your account, the rioting students were attacking the guardsmen by pelting them with rocks, and the guardsmen opened fire to defend themselves from this attack. That's a clear instance of justifiable force.

It's terrifying, certainly.

One man was taken into custody for allegedly throwing a Molotov cocktail at an officer and a motorcyclist was arrested for ramming a police skirmish line.

https://www.yahoo.com/news/kill-l-police-attacked-fireworks-...

Los Angeles County Sheriff Robert Luna said "you had people who were...attacking police officers, deputy sheriffs and causing a lot of destruction."

The 101 Freeway shut down Sunday evening two times due to protesters on an overpass throwing rocks, debris, and firecrackers at California Highway Patrol officers and vehicles.

Footage on Sunday from the CBS News Los Angeles helicopter showed that multiple windows of the police headquarters had been shattered as well.

https://www.cbsnews.com/losangeles/news/downtown-la-protests...

I can't overstate how absolutely separate this is from reality. Yes there are protests, largely peaceful and in a tremendously small part of Los Angeles. In fact, in terms of sheer size, its less than half the size, in sq miles, of the fires in January.

Rocks / debris came after tear gas.

The news has been startling in its mis-coverage.

> I can't overstate...

Your effort to overstate might have derailed your own reality.

Don't know about you, but I could never throw a brick at anyone. I couldn't and wouldn't put a mask on and head out with the intent to burn cars, throw rocks, loot, and cause criminal damage. That is the opposite of "largely peaceful."

The LAPD chief stated it's "out of control." Your attempt to imply tear gas was used on peaceful protesters doesn't fit the evidence. Many of the rioters are highly organised with supply runs of masks, fireworks and projectiles. I'm not sure what your agenda is but "accuracy" doesn't seem to be it.

AFAIK, I would not read much into the possession and use of gas masks - the bake-sale anarchist medics are pretty well organized and equipped.

There's a lot of people in LA with the skills and equipment to rapidly organize like this; got to see it in person during the Occupy protests, when a tiny village popped up around City Hall - complete with power and internet infrastructure; medical, porta-potties, meals, workshops and seminars... it was pretty impressive!

It's also worth noting the insanity that is July 4th in Los Angeles, so there being a lot of fireworks is uhhh... really, really not weird for LA? We usually get increasing amounts (in size and frequency) of illegal firework "shows" all throughout June.

Lastly - there's also a big difference between "out of our [LADP's] control" and "out of control" - that's (AFAIK) actually the norm for effective protests. A large protest that's under the LAPD's control is generally a "demonstration" instead (see the women's marches).

The protests usually are very well attended organised and peaceful. The organisers of the protests want people to go home afterwards and most do.

But some people hang around after it's ended and then the sun goes down and the protest is actually over and the police try to get people to leave. Then it's a people Vs police confrontation that may escalate. Then it's a riot. Usually these deescalate and the police have training in how to do that.

It's not the protests that is violent it's what happens after the protest finishes. Riots by definition are out of control!

Some protestors would claim that the violence is orchestrated by the police. There has been some evidence of that in some places of the world. Mostly it's a riot of violent people, criminals, kids usually, who are thrilled by the violence and chaos and hatred. Mob mentality creates a mob.

I don't know about you, but I could never fire tear gas at peaceful protestors exercising their right to peacefully protest.

Do you have evidence of tear gas fired at peaceful protesters? I'm getting a Greta Thunberg "help I've been kidnapped by IDF" vibe from the tear gas claim.

There's a lot of videos of the contrary - LAPD pelted with rocks by aggressive mobs who are there to fight against "nazi scum" or fight for "stolen land" as they wave every other flag than American.

All the footage I've seen and social media I've seen goes the other way: that the people watching and filming the ICE raids were then fired upon by ICE.

I suspect the usual media chicanery - everyone reporting the story that their viewers want to hear.

Anyway. My point was that I could not do this. If I was asked to fire teargas at a crowd who were protesting kidnapping people off the streets and taking them to concentration camps, I could not do that. I would refuse that order.

> "watching and filming the ICE raids"

You're posting misinformation. Tear gas is deployed when mobs surge in direct violation of orders not to, or to control violence and criminality by large crowds. Your attempt to frame it as "cops attacking peaceful onlookers" is in conflict with the evidence available.

Citation needed. I'm seeing videos of folks saying that ICE started it all.

Aljazeera is pretty good with unbiased coverage, and it doesn't lay the blame one way or the other [0]. It just says "(LAPD) declared the area an unlawful assembly, deployed tear gas, issued tactical alerts and made several arrests."

I would still read that as the cops fired first.

https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2025/6/11/how-the-los-angeles...

Literally the first thing listed is the declaration of an unlawful assembly. After that you have either compliance or non-compliance with the declaration.

Given the mountain of evidence of criminal damage, we can assume the declaration came after evaluating the scale of criminal behavior. Reading that as "cops fired first" sounds like cognitive bias.

Again, I think you're being fed different media reports than I am.

And the whole point of a protest is that it is defiance of authority. Having a protest declared "unlawful assembly" is kinda the point.

I'm curious what you saw from the "No Kings" protests from your point of view? Were they also unlawful, with mountains of evidence of criminal damage? The organisers estimate that 11 million people attended 2000 different locations around the USA, and it was almost entirely peaceful. What are you being told?

I saw the one where a journalist was shot with rubber bullets. What does the flag have to do with anything? Aren't you guys supposed to have freedom of expression?

The Australian journalist who wasn't wearing any media vest, standing in middle of road next to an unfolding high-tension incident so she could get a good shot? That journalist? The cop that shot her was in the wrong, but she didn't help herself attending the frontline of a riot in casual dress and going for the money-shot.

Freedom of expression isn't immune from ridicule or condemnation. In one NYC anti-ICE protest they're chanting "From Mexico to Gaza, globalize the intifada". You can argue that's freedom of expression, as is burning the US flag and other dopey unhelpful actions.

Back during the George Floyd riots, there were numerous videos of cops shooting rubber bullets at people just for lulz. There was one when a person standing inside and filming through the window got shot at, cracking the glass.

Most of those same cops are staffing PDs today, so they will behave exactly as they did back then. Nobody sane should give them any benefit of doubt.

She was being filmed by a camera crew, it was obvious she was from the press. Media vest - it's not Afghanistan - though deployment of military may give that impression. Really going for the 'she was asking' for it defense?

Nice bit of victim blaming there.

it is HN special :) “not the rapist fault, it was the short skirt…”

I'm sorry, you're flat wrong. That is exactly what Freedom of Speech means.

You obviously disagree with it, but that doesn't mean it's not protected.

you could compare to that time right wing extremists took over a some park in Oregon.

they shot a bunch of people, and the feds took it pretty hands off. if anything, the protestors arent being nearly violent enough to get soft hands from the government. if they were out there with automatic weapons and actively shooting at the cops and guard, theyd be left right alone, and the road would be shut down for a couple months

The LAPD don't have a very good track record for honesty in the last few decades. I'd take anything they say with a cellar of salt.

Agreed. And if I was out there, actually peacefully protesting, and people around me started throwing rocks, looting, or causing criminal damage I would leave. If I was gassed with tear gas, I would leave. I wouldn't attack the police.

> Yes there are protests, largely peaceful and in a tremendously small part of Los Angeles.

Firey but mostly peaceful protests are happening all over again. No, burning down cities is not peaceful. After just a few days, at least five officers, several journalists, and we don't know how many rioters have been injured so far. We don't yet have estimates of property damage, but tens of millions would be conservative. Similar riots have resulted in hundreds of millions in damages.

When the right does this, we call it what it is: violent riots. We acknowledge it's wrong to attempt to prevent the government carrying out its the duties it was democratically elected to carry out. We should hold that standard to the left as well. These rioters are anti-democratic.

Apparently we don't call it that when the right does it. It's only the "Radical Left" that actually gets these labels. And the tear gas comes first.

Well we should. American politics needs more integrity and consistency. Politics as a team sport is destroying the country.

I think you've missed what the protest is. People are against the government action they are using the first amendment -- which is part of what makes america great -- to say they are against it.

You can say, rightly, there's a car on fire. You can also say the police shot at a journalist.

"burning down cities" would however be incorrect, as the person who literally lives here I can tell you that it is not happening.

What happens is that these protests start off very peaceful and then they become riots because the police make it so.

What you, and other's, need to understand is that the police have absolutely no mechanism to de-escalate anything. It's a concept completely foreign to American policing. As soon as the police are involved, the situation deteriorates rapidly.

For instance, almost all (95%+) of the BLM protests were completely peaceful. No violence or property damage. You wouldn't get that impression from the news. But, of the ones that did turn violent, every time the violence BEGAN with police overstepping. Pushing protestors, or shooting them, or throwing gas. And then, obviously, the situation deteriorates.

What would you do if friends and family and neighbors of yours for years, even decades, were pulled from their homes, places of work and worship, schools, etc?

Once the state sets its eyes on enemies, it doesn't stop adding to that list.

Use of the tools and techniques in place right now will continue to be used, and against "legal" citizens.

I worry how we turn the corner. I don't like what history says.

> What would you do if friends and family and neighbors of yours for years, even decades, were pulled from their homes, places of work and worship, schools, etc?

This was always a well-understood risk though.

where is that in the US constitution? the part where it says anyone might be pulled from their homes?

If you are an illegal alien you can be detained by virtue of being in the US illegally, that's my understanding.

This concept hinges on everyone walking around with ID at all times. If you don't have it on you we'll throw you into a concrete box for 8 hours while we sort it out. Cool? Oh you were a home birth in Wisconsin you say? Sounds vaguely Canadian.

This is why the 4th amendment exists. It is my favorite amendment. I wish people would take it more seriously.

As far as I understand, people are ID'd all the time in US. If police stops you, they will ask for an identification document; if you don't have it, they will ask for your SSN and if you can't remember it, they will run your name and address until they match you with a photo id on their systems. In the meanwhile, you're detained and you're not free to leave. Immigration aside, how are they supposed to identify you?

This is illegal, notoriously, police can only request AND detain someone to provide ID if they are actually suspected of committing a crime. Potentially being illegal, a neighbor calling the police or stuff like that does not give them permission to detain. They can nicely ask, but that's all.

ICE can even arrest you, let alone detain, if they have reasonable suspicion that you might be subjectable to deportation.

https://theconversation.com/ice-has-broad-power-to-detain-an...

That's specific to ICE though, where they need a "warrant", not from a judge but just from some other ICE "supervisor".

I agree that in practice there is some kind of loophole: ICE gets a "warrant" for someone that by definition has no ID, so there is no point in identifying a detainee - the immigration court will do that, later. Effectively, they seem to get away with snatching people off the street that vaguely may resemble any "warrant" they have.

They can't detain you forever because they can't ID you. You can't be compelled to own an ID or carry it around with you all the time. Many naturally born americans have no passport, birth certificate, or even state license.

So many homeless here have zero identification.

They are basically just going after people who are too brown and even ending up grabbing people who are just here on vacation, legally.

Wait, I agree that false positives shouldn't happen, but true positives (i.e. you are an illegal alien, ICE interacts with you, they detain you until they discover your status, then start the deportation process) are how the system is supposed to work.

Okay, the president has decided to revoke your citizenship. You're now an illegal alien. What do you do now?

If I'm not born American, I suppose the right way of handling that would be negotiating a date to voluntarily leave the country (I think it's called self-deportation), which leaves you a bit of levee to put your things in order. If I was born American and I only have American citizenship, that would be a strange situation to be in. I suppose a bunch of other countries would have offered me instant citizenship just to spite Trump. I'm not sure what does it have to do with people who entered the US illegally and were never citizens in the first place though.

Because one of the major things Trump has talked about and has been moving towards is revoking citizenship. Both those who are naturalized US citizens as well as ending birthright citizenship and revoking their rights. You do that, then they have 'entered the country illegally' and everything follows from there

8 U.S. Code § 1325 of the Immigration and Nationality Act makes it illegal to enter the country without authorisation. Are you implying that these people didn't know it was illegal, or are you arguing that the country should have no borders?

> What would you do if friends and family and neighbors of yours for years, even decades, were pulled from their homes, places of work and worship, schools, etc?

That has happened to me. Some of them did real heinous shit and deserve prison for the rest of their lives.

HN not beating the allegations of sheltered, gated community, out-of-touch kids going straight into white collar life.

> One man was taken into custody for allegedly throwing a Molotov cocktail at an officer and a motorcyclist was arrested for ramming a police skirmish line

So less violence towards law enforcement and insurrection than January 6th. Action the President endorsed in January by issuing pardons.

Honestly, if a Democrat were to match Trump's energy, they'd be promising pardons to protesters who damaged ICE property or torched a Trump property. They're not. In part because they're rudderless. But also because they're still gripped by the notion that we're not in the midst of a coup.

I like how the federal government actually enforcing federal law is a “coup” to you.

If Trump wanted to match Democrat energy he would declare the LA riots an insurrection and devote 40% of the FBI to identifying, rounding up, and imprisoning all of the protestors.

> the federal government actually enforcing federal law is a “coup” to you

The Marines aren’t enforcing squat. That’s on ICE and the LAPD, the only ones doing the arresting.

> he would declare the LA riots an insurrection and devote 40% of the FBI to identifying, rounding up, and imprisoning all of the protestors

If they broke into a federal building? Absolutely.

> The Marines aren’t enforcing squat.

You’re the one hyperventilating about a “coup”; do you care to clarify what you actually meant by that or should I just write it off as a paranoid delusion?

You don't get to ignore Everyone's right to due process and then insist you are enforcing federal law. ICE is not enforcing federal law by ignoring the constitution.

LAPD on Sunday night live with NBC 4 Los Angeles confirmed that most of the Sunday night looters were arrested. They also confirmed that most of the looters were part of a retail-theft gang attempting to use the protests as cover, and that at least one of the looters was actually a far-right-wing activist (unsuccessfully) attempting to stage a false flag operation to justify the use of military force.

> LAPD on Sunday night live with NBC 4 Los Angeles confirmed that most of the Sunday night looters were arrested

I trust this is true. But the comment would be stronger with a source.

  A combined 42 arrests were made by the Los Angeles Police Department, California Highway Patrol and Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department, the LAPD said early Monday. Alleged crimes included attempted murder, looting, arson, failure to disperse, assault with a deadly weapon on a police officer and other offenses.

https://www.nbclosangeles.com/news/local/la-protests-arrests...

is one source, others may have more or less detail. It supports arrests being made wrt looting, not the assertion that most of the looters were arrested.

Bad as these things are, the Governor of California currently believes their own law enforcement can handle the situation without the National Guard. If he felt he needed support, he'd have requested it using the provided legal mechanisms.

Note that Trump's DoD did not seem to be in a hurry to deploy the National Guard on 6th January, despite multiple requests to do so: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Law_enforcement_response_to_th...

> Bad as these things are, the Governor of California currently believes their own law enforcement can handle the situation without the National Guard. If he felt he needed support, he'd have requested it using the provided legal mechanisms.

My understanding is that the National Guard are being deployed because ICE is being impeded from carrying out their operations. If California were allowed to constructively block the Federal government from carrying out policy of democratically elected administrations, that would be effectively a declaration of secession. Hundreds of years of precedent has made it clear that states are subordinate to the Federal government.

> My understanding is that the National Guard are being deployed because ICE is being impeded from carrying out their operations. If California were allowed to constructively block the Federal government from carrying out policy of democratically elected administrations, that would be effectively a declaration of secession.

The California government are not blocking the Federal government from carrying out ICE raids. If you believe otherwise, please show the evidence that Trump has presented.

California has decided not to prevent the rioters from impeding federal enforcement officers. This forces the Federal government to use Federal resources.

Evidence please.

What the governor of California believes does not matter when federal agents are being attacked. The President has a responsibility to protect his agents. If California is not doing that sufficiently, the President is more than justified in sending reinforcements.

The government of California is not preventing ICE agents from working, so under what authority, with evidence, does the President justify using the National Guard?

Maybe those agents should identify themselves as such instead of hiding like cowards, making them impossible to determine from crazed vigilantes?

The Gov of CA is not a neutral actor.

Sure, whatever, but he's also the leader of CA. Something something state's rights? I don't know, doesn't that matter or only when it's you guys?

Where’s your evidence that he’s blocking ICE agents from doing their jobs?

I remember back in 2013 in Ukraine, when the government tried to violently disperse the protesters on Maidan, they didn't just throw molotovs - they built a catapult to throw them further. And they burned down several APCs:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zzdkzpQRaAM

And you know what? They were justified.

George Bush called up the National Guard and the Marines in 1992 for the Rodney King riots. At least 4000....

> George Bush called up the National Guard and the Marines in 1992 for the Rodney King riots.

Governor Wilson called up the National Guard, actually; subsequently, at Governor Wilson's request, and coordinating planning with both the Governor and Mayor Bradley of LA, President Bush invoked the Insurrection Act, federalized the Guard, and called up the Marines, and deployed the federal and federalized forces (including, also, federal law enforcement) in close cooperation and coordination with state and local law enforcement to restore order.

That is very different from the situation presently.

Yes this is more like the 1957 incident in Little Rock, Arkansas where the state governor was impeding federal law, forcing President Eisenhower to federalize the Arkansas National Guard and deploy the 101st Airborne to restore order and enforce federal law.

Its not LIKE that, and you can tell because in that situation, the Guard was called up by thr governor to directly prevent implementation of a federal court order, and it was only federalized to order it to return to its barracks (and the 101st deployed to assure that order was followed.)

The fact that the Guard can be actively federalized, rather than sent home to prevent jt from being used against the Federal government, demonstrates that the situations are wildly dissimilar.

(It is also not legally similar as Trump has not invoked the Insurrection Act, which is the only thing that allows using the US military use to enforce the law, whether restricted to doing so in the neighborhood of civilian federal infrastructure and personnel or not.)

Johnson also called up the guard in '65, without the governor requesting. So is your issue state sovereignty? I say without bias. Just trying to understand the point. If Newsome asked Trump for the guard you would then be OK with it?

https://www.npr.org/2025/06/09/nx-s1-5428352/johnson-nationa...

> Johnson also called up the guard in '65, without the governor requesting.

After invoking the Insurrection Act, correct.

> So is your issue state sovereignty?

In part, but more specifically, my issues are both the substantive issues of policy and the relevant federal law.

The latter is simpler: 10 USC § 12406, which Trump has relied exclusively on in federalizing the Guard, explictly does not (unlike the Insurrection Act, which allows federalizing any part of the universal militia, including but not limited to the Guard when its conditions are met) allow bypassing the Governor. And no provision of law, absent the Insurrection Act, allows deploying regular federal forces, with or without the Governor, for any civilian enforcement mission, however limited.

Because the governor requested federal assistance.

As someone outside the US, I find this strange. You have a democratically elected president, elected in part on a platform of removing illegal immigrants. He is now removing illegal immigrants. That is democracy at work, is it not?

The presidency is only legally afforded some powers. The issue here isn't Trump's fulfilling of campaign promises. The issue here is if Trump is following the law while doing so.

This is well out of my area of expertise, but isn't illegal immigration a federal issue, and the federal agencies answer to the executive branch?

My understanding of the protests is they're primarily against the removal of illegal immigrants and as Trump has taken control of (?) some state elements that has become a contentious point, but wasn't to begin with.

Normally I'd read up more before discussing with people, but the news article seem pretty blurry on the primary intentions of the protesters and what specifically they are against.

Every immigrant being destined by ICE isn't necessarily an "illegal" immigrant.

Can you provide examples? I'm finding it difficult to seach the news due to the wording picked by media.

They are against the ICE raids and in particular the egregious ones on restaurants, farms, schools, houses of worship, etc.

Indiscriminate rounding up. We are seeing citizens detained. Families separated. Fear, which is clearly the point.

But it's not indiscriminate. It's people who entered the country illegally.

Genuine question here, do you think illegal immigrants in churches or working on farms should not be deported, but those without a job or day labouring should?

I find it strange to distingush an illegal immigrant based on perceived value. If someone breaks into my house but also does my washing and mows my lawn, that doesn't change the fact they broke into my house.