Don't focus on words. Focus on actions. For example, the action of deploying the military on Americans does not make conditions better for us. Quite the contrary. The action of having a military parade for the president's birthday is expensive and doesn't benefit us. That money could be going to education, school lunches, Medicaid, building bridges, etc. But it isn't. it is only going to stroke the president's ego. Most of his actions, EO's, deals, bills, etc., fall into this category.

Leaving aside the equivalence of "protesting" with "rioting," the United States has robust Constitutional, common-law and statutory guardrails against the use of the military domestically. The US military cannot, absent an insurrection in which regular legal order cannot be maintained, be deployed against US residents. The use of the military in the past has been limited to what were deemed by federal and state officials full insurrections (e.g., the Whiskey Rebellion), or, in the civil rights era, in response to governors affirmatively refusing to enforce the law regarding an end to segregation and the integration of public institutions. In this case we have state and local officials explicitly stating that the factual predicates of an insurrection aren't being satisfied (the protests cover a few square blocks in a metropolitan area that by itself is larger than Lebanon or Kosovo, in a state larger than Japan or Sweden). While courts traditionally give deference to executive determinations of this sort, they aren't beyond judicial review, and this is (I would argue) clearly pretextual.

What we're seeing here, conversely, is an attempt to sidestep this clear principle through not-particularly-clever tricks and semantic gamesmanship; for example, mobilizing Marines to "protect federal property," but then DHS officially asking DOD to give active duty forces arrest power. This is clearly unconstitutional and illegal, but, as with much we've seen recently, the hope appears to be that if you change the facts on the ground quickly enough, the clear illegality of the actions can be ignored.

In addition, the federalization of a state National Guard against the will of the state is unprecedented; I don't know of any previous example of this happening. In the American system, even though the National Guard is a vestige of the old state militias, it's clear that the states are at least assumed to have plenary authority over their own forces absent an invasion or insurrection.

  > Leaving aside the equivalence of "protesting" with "rioting,"

People are pushing back when rubber bullets and tear gas are being used, illegally.

U.S. citizens have a right to protest. This is baked into our constitution.

It's also quite possible they mean "Americans" in a general sense in that the Marines are not being turned loose on the American public. They are being focused on the rioters specifically.

Obligatory self-declaration since you and many others will probably jump to conclusions about my opinion (as for whatever reason, we seem incapable of nuance even to the point of understanding that not everything in life is completely black or white), even though I've said nothing of it until now: I think Trump's actions are grotesque, authoritarian, and fascist, and it really pisses me off.

If they are non-citizens, they are not american. Pretty cut and dry distinction. Nothing fascist about this.

> If they are non-citizens, they are not american.

Tell me where I said "most" in that sentence.

You guys have a stark division between the government employees and the not-government-employees. Isn't the US government "for the people, by the people"? Serious question. I'm not disputing what you said, rather I'm trying to understand it.

They are also effectively impossible to sue, so you'll probably never see any justice in the courts if they act unlawfully. Even if manage to get the lawsuit going they will play fuck-fuck games with jurisdiction until you lose (as I found out when trying to sue feds for stripping me naked, cavity searching me, and executing a fraudulent warrant on a fabricated dog alert -- no one would take my case because they had lost similar cases every time).

Yes but the news (in the US) is a fully for profit organizations most of which are owned by the right-wing folks. (i.e. Much of the newspapers, CNN, Fox News are run by boards that are right-leaning)

They are intentionally pushing a narrative that the family I have in the area believes is simply a very small number of incidents that are nowhere near as bad as what is presented.

> This does not look like the military being deployed on Americans, rather it looks like the military being deployed on rioters. Whether those rioters are Americans or illegal immigrants really doesn't matter for the purposes of reestablishing order.

https://www.brennancenter.org/our-work/research-reports/poss...

I suggest you stop looking at this through the lens of an Israeli and do some research on the US system of laws :)

Deploying the military "on rioters" and whether they are "Americans or illegals" is actually quite important. Using the military as a police force is illegal and the only real open legal question is if using it against "invaders" who are not here legally is technically allowed.

You are acting like these people are Hamas, when in reality, they are nowhere close to even 5% as dangerous.

As Americans, and people living in the USA, we are allowed to do this. It's a Constitutional protection.

Again, all of this is a distraction from what the prez is doing.

I don't feel particularly safe in the US with the government making lists of people like me based on the medication we are taking.

https://www.usnews.com/news/health-news/articles/2025-05-02/...

Its not new, but the centralization of these datasets isn't making me feel like anything other than a target.

I think what we're running into is an issue many empires have run into in the past: once you scale things internationally people just don't get along. For some reason we thought computers and secular science changed that aspect of human nature (the same way Rome thought democracy and military doctrine did) and we're finding out once again people don't work that way.

They are similar enough that they are not actively being openly attacked even if hateful people exist.

See: The Israeli ITT agreeing with the American conservative position and making common cause. Etc.

That person would not have made those comments if he thought the American conservative position was jewish == other tribe == bad. Even if it is for a decent chunk of that population of conservatives which is why people I know are confused why they get asked if I'm jewish. Because they don't realize the person that they were talking to is a bigot going off my stereotypically jewish features.

> I think what we're running into is an issue many empires have run into in the past: once you scale things internationally people just don't get along. For some reason we thought computers and secular science changed that aspect of human nature (the same way Rome thought democracy and military doctrine did) and we're finding out once again people don't work that way.

No, that is buying into the framework the Conservatives use that globalism is the failure point.

This is not correct. The failure point is the number of gullible people who take things like waving foreign flags as reason enough to ignore the law.

*EDIT for the response below 'cause I'm lazy and don't feel like waiting and coming back*

No. You are arguing because 'everything fails eventually, failure is inevitable' but that isn't true in human lifetimes. Dozens of generations have existed in multiple empires without seeing the empire's end.

The fact gullible people eventually bring an Empire down just means, yes, thousand year empires do not exist but we've already had 3 generations live, grow old, and die entirely within the globalist period. So...for those people, it never ended.

You just want to be "right" without considering the other person's point of view as equally valid.

So, yes, technically just because something ends does not mean the end during a given lifetime is inevitable.

But yes, excluding misinformation and open deciet from the process of running a Democracy is theoretically the goal I would say. That requires none of the things you state because you seek to bait me into responding into "gotcha" extremist positions that have never been real or needed to achieve a goal.

Simply saying "You cannot intentionally lie and misrepresent a 1 square mile protest as a reason to break the law as the government who upholds the law" should not be a controversial position you feel the need to argue against, yet you do, like the Israeli above precisely because you've been lied to.

You're arguing my point for me. People are what people do and the fact that people do these things (and consistently do these things throughout history) means that these large scale international empires are impossible to maintain. The problem may very well be conservatives, so what do you do? Exclude them? Put them in concentration camps? Now you're back to agreeing with me again.

EDIT: (for your response)

They don't bring it down "eventually" this happens very quickly. It's been known since ancient times that this happens (ibn Khaldun wrote about these things for example.) The problem is that "conservatives" from different "tribes" look very different (this is obvious if you've spent time trying to understand politics in foreign countries) so once you deal with the majority conservative group you just end up with a new one from the plurality. It's not an eventually thing, it's a critical mass problem. The only way international states work is if there's a single majority that excludes outsiders (like the Arabs used to and sometimes still do for example.)

You are redefining terms to "win", m8.

Entire lifetimes within the safe confines of an empire is not anyone's definition of "very quickly" in English. Please educate yourself on what you are talking about and do better research.

There is no point in engaging in a one sided conversation with someone who is either being dishonest with himself or truly misunderstanding the topic in question to the point phrases are needed to be redefined to some absurd parameter measured in 60+ year spans as "very quickly".

Please understand you really should learn something on these topics rather than quoting stuff you clearly show a shallow understanding of that is unique to a certain political group and not even the intellectuals in that group would argue as you have.

*EDIT TO REPLY*

> I agree entire lifetimes would not be very quickly. I'm arguing once you have a plurality population these things tend to blow up within a generation.

?? but Americans were Christian white male conservatives as the majority during the generations in question and were arguably more conservative as even people like the Irish and Italian were "outside parties" like you view jews.

Are you arguing the American situation deteriorated multiple times in the 20th century (1900-2000) and somehow resurrected its Empire each time?

This is just a bizarre conversation at this point but I'm morbidly curious.

Btw, the official definition is 1890s to now for the American Empire as you are talking about. So...idk how you square it failing in the ??present day?? and later with multiple generations being born and dying during that time period.

M8, it is hilarious how easy conservatives trying to normalize that stuff in the wild is.

I was just curious since you were trying to play the "I am playing devil's advocate" card when you are clearly a card carrying conservative.

Look, idk how you are concluding this kind of craziness but it _is_ craziness from a fact based point of view. I'm only opposed to conservatives in the US for three reasons:

1) They are against my access to life saving medical care, potentially forcing me to flee the country to where I can afford it.

2) They are very comfortable courting anti-Jewish extremism in the US which is why I have to keep track of which bigoted asshole cares I'm jewish so I know who will try to knife me in the back professionally/personally.

3) They are less fiscally conservative (when it comes to the debt/deficit) than Democrats with their tax giveaways, guaranteeing the eventual failure of the United States financially. Similarly, their economic policies are sprinkling fairy dust and pray the long term consequences away.

As a supporter of Israel (the part that isn't hurting the cooperating palestianians anyway), a fiscal conservative, and so forth, it is bizarre to me I have no party in the United States but the Democratic Party to vote for.

Once again you argue my point for me. A place for everyone is a place for no one.

And you agree people like me should be removed from the country (even thought we are citizens) based on the kind of solutions the Nazis used before they moved on to camps.

10/10 glad the guy berating people for calling people fascists openly admits he is one.

That would still include you by the way since you'd like to conserve Israel. That's not a moral failure on your part that's just how people work and it's why international states can't work.

EDIT: Regardless of how you feel about it your proposed policy has a clear contradiction. You can dislike it, you can call me a nazi for pointing it out, but if you don't have an answer to this then your idea simply isn't practical for everyone else to adopt.

You feel I should be exiled from my home country for the same reasons nazis were killing people when that planned failed. That isn't calling you a nazi, that is you being a nazi.

The fact you are in denial isn't my problem, I'm just glad you are dense enough to admit it to people.

EDIT:

It is hilarious the guy who ignored the point repeatedly now freaks out and calls me "emotional" about how _but I'm not a nazi_ when he agreed with Nazi talking points multiple times. When you agree with Nazi talking points but don't like the label, yeah buddy, you are a Nazi.

The only "emotion" I'm feeling is hilarity and how oblivious you are to your own talking points.

Think about things like agreeing people should be forced out due to medical conditions, etc. and obvious basic eugenics shit you agreed with earlier. And ask yourself, why am I suddenly panicking about this when it was fine a few posts ago?

Hint: It is because you know you lost the argument on you being a nazi. Maybe facts will make you realize your feelings are not facts. Maybe not, but it was worth a shot to try to make you see the way the world sees you.

> I really hope you to acknowledge this at least for your sake: your own ideology is not self consistent and ultimately excludes you regardless of what it means for everyone else.

You feel my right to buy reasonably priced (on a national crowd based level for my age) insurance is an ideology and that I should be exiled from my country because of it.

So yeah, buddy, that alone makes you a nazi. I don't need to point out the other talking points so you can't hide later from the truth when you get called out again because you didn't realize how many times you repeated you were a nazi in coded language.

> EDIT: I know it's hard, but you really need to focus and think clearly here, think carefully about the ideas themselves. If you don't things are only going to get worse for both of us.

Huh?

My ability to not die is something I need to think about?

Nice edit but it still points to you being a nazi if you think that is a true statement because my medical conditions make me unprofitable in a for-profit healthcare system.

The hilarious part is you really are just tripling and quadrupuling down on eugenics as a key part of your position. Which makes you a nazi. Congratulations! You win all the prizes!

> EDIT2: I feel like, for your sake, I should add that I stopped caring about how "the world sees me" long ago. I've been called a nazi just for living normally and peacefully with people around me, the word has no meaning to me any more. I'd encourage you to stop getting hung up on it and focus on the practical realities of today not things that happened in another country with other people a hundred years ago.

Yeah but you aren't being truthful here or you'd have stopped responding and trying to deflect the clear pro-nazi/eugenics statements in a public forum.

You can lie to yourself if you want but the truth is when you go to bed, you know deep down, you care. Or you'd have stopped this shit show when it was 50/50 you were a nazi. Instead you kept insisting you weren't while insisting you were right on the basis of eugenics among other reasons.

You didn't even have the sense to claim I wasn't right in calling you out for being pro-eugenics and pro-denial-of-care-for-minorities-to-force-exile. Because it is your belief system and too integral for you to refute until its pointed out to you repeatedly.

> EDIT3: I did acknowledge that. The problem is that insisting on what you're arguing for degenerates rapidly and is not practical. I even tried to steel man your position for you with the idea that maybe you could exclude conservatives (both from the original majority population and the eventual plurality) and pointed out how that would ultimately result in the same mass exile problem you're upset about.

How did you steel man position exactly? How is the fact the majority of the EU can deliver what I say is a critical and life threatening problem or the fact the US currently works that way (but the GOP consistently attacks it and has repeatedly failed by very thin margins to force me out of the country due to medical costs)?

You can lie to yourself all you want but I'm already on 6+ month waiting lists for basic care with private for-profit health insurance. I am better off _today with insurance_ on flying to Mexico or Malaysia or whatever for healthcare. And you want to make it worse for me. When the rest of the world doesn't have this problem. Somehow its magic to you and you insist its not a viable philosophy to have medical care for people like me.

Once again, not being pro-eugenics, is proven to work in the real world. You are a nazi. I'm done because you can't seem to deviate or defend your position in any rational sense beyond "My feelings tell me this isn't true"

Firstly I'm not saying you need to be exiled (in fact I'm arguing the position you're taking ultimately would result in that.) I'm arguing that you have to be selective about who you include in a polity (importantly, you have to exclude people who are unable or unwilling to socialize with the majority population) and that pluralities result in completely unstable states.

Secondly I'm not a nazi. I believe the Jews and English have a long history of forming friendly and productive polities, I think we've done better than most with you (other than maybe the Dutch.) The last time the Jews were excluded from England during the Edict of Expulsion was also unusually friendly as far as Jewish expulsions have gone historically (it was certainly better than what happened in Germany.) I think if we're both willing to acknowledge reality and work with each other we could have a bright future together.

But this depends on you being realistic. When you ignore reality you end up with ideologies like the one you've expressed which not only disenfranchises the majority of the country and creates an extremely unstable state but also ultimately excludes you (anywhere outside of Israel at least.)

I really hope you to acknowledge this at least for your sake: your own ideology is not self consistent and ultimately excludes you regardless of what it means for everyone else.

I don't think you need to be excluded at all but you do need to be practical and realistic. If you insist on forcing the rest of the world on us then just as a practical matter the majority population of any country has to exclude you from the discussion and I don't think that will work out nicely for anyone.

EDIT: I know it's hard, but you really need to focus and think clearly here, think carefully about the ideas themselves. If you don't things are only going to get worse for both of us.

EDIT2: I feel like, for your sake, I should add that I stopped caring about how "the world sees me" long ago. I've been called a nazi just for living normally and peacefully with people around me, the word has no meaning to me any more. I'd encourage you to stop getting hung up on it and focus on the practical realities of today not things that happened in another country with other people a hundred years ago.

EDIT3: I did acknowledge that. The problem is that what you're arguing for degenerates rapidly and is not practical. I even tried to steel man your position for you with the idea that maybe you could exclude conservatives (both from the original majority population and the eventual plurality) and pointed out how that would ultimately result in the same mass exile problem you're upset about.

The idea just doesn't work. I know it's upsetting but reality tends to be upsetting. You've got to let it go and figure out where to go from here.

EDIT4: Re: healthcare (I'm not sure why you think that's relevant but ok.)

I actually know people in two countries with public health care: Colombia and Canada. I've watched both of them use it. It's far worse than anything in the US (the way Colombia in particular treats immigrants IMO is absolutely horrifying.) But if you think you'll get better care in a place like that you should go ahead and see for yourself what it's like.

I don't know if you're aware but doctors and medicine don't grow on trees, in fact they're extremely expensive (partly because of what's essentially just bad philosophy in developed countries.) The idea that we could make them available to everyone is very nice but again you're just ignoring the practical reality that giving that sort of thing away for free to the rest of the world can only result in shortages. I don't think our current health care system is good at all but just essentially throwing it out like that could only make it worse.

I don't think you're quite cut out for political discussions. You seem to be very hung up on rhetoric and emotion and unable to really think about how things scale. I don't know how to help you with that. Maybe read some philosophy books and spend more time around different people?

All you have is ad hominem m8. It is hilarious as it is sad.

> I actually know people in two countries with public health care: Colombia and Canada. I've watched both of them use it. It's far worse than anything in the US (the way Colombia in particular treats immigrants IMO is absolutely horrifying.) But if you think you'll get better care in a place like that you should go ahead and see for yourself what it's like.

I've gotten medical care in Malaysia, Portugal, England, Germany, and so forth.

I got into these places with something as simple as a broken nose faster than I'd get through the line at any American hospital. And got better and cheaper care.

You can lie to people who don't have real world experience but not me, buddy. Good luck out there but all you seem to do is lie or use fellow conservatives as sources. I'm not sure which is worse.

The sad fact is, I'd actually want to vote for conservatives but just not US ones that are against my access to health care out of self preservation.

You seem to be convinced I'm some ideological foil to conservatives by saying you shouldn't be able to lie and propagandize. You should probably look inward and ask yourself why you need to lie to people to get through the day.

The sad fact is, outside of local ambulance service in places like Malaysia or Colombia, most of these places have private hospitals for a Westerner that is quite affordable. Yet somehow, just allow them to exist adjacent to public care never seems to cross a cosnervative's mind to admit such things exist. (Hint: They benefit from the same economy of scale as country-wide buying of medication and so forth. Combined with lower labor costs for similar nation-wide markets with guaranteed demand, it actually has been shown to lower costs but you wouldn't ever have researched real information to figure that out)

> That's a little wild to hear from someone who's called me a nazi half a dozen times and seemed to think that changed the validity of his argument.

You agree with Nazi talking points. There, does that make you happy?

>Malaysia They do, its called a golden visa buddy.

>England > No. They do not have a functioning public health service. I don't know much about the other two states but if you put England in that list it makes me question the validity of the rest of it.

Yeah, buddy, please unplug from conservative outlets.

>The sad fact is, outside of local ambulance service in places like Malaysia or Colombia, most of these places have private hospitals for a Westerner that is quite affordable.

> So you're in favor of private health care? I'm still not even sure why you've even brought all this up. Furthermore if you can afford private health care than why is public health care "a matter of self preservation?"

Are you not understanding I basically have to leave to have affordable access to emergency care if Project 2025 (or even the proposals that failed in 2016) gets their way?

Idk what hole you hide in but that has to contain some amazing powers of self-deception.

Good luck, I'm just done man. You can't be this oblivious without hiding in some conservative bubble that bans all dissent.

That's a little wild to hear from someone who's called me a nazi half a dozen times and seemed to think that changed the validity of his argument.

>Malaysia

I forgot Malaysia just lets anyone immigrate and call themselves Malaysian. It's crazy how accepting Asian countries are. They're all such a great example of how you can simultaneously have public health care and open borders.

>England

No. They do not have a functioning public health service. I don't know much about the other two states but if you put England in that list it makes me question the validity of the rest of it.

>The sad fact is, outside of local ambulance service in places like Malaysia or Colombia, most of these places have private hospitals for a Westerner that is quite affordable.

So you're in favor of private health care? I'm still not even sure why you've even brought all this up. Furthermore if you can afford private health care than why is public health care "a matter of self preservation?"

It's fine if you personally don't support more extreme actions. Time has shown again and again the most important thing civilians can do is to refuse to condemn other civilians who are acting in the same goals as you. We must focus on why everyone is acting in those goals: we have armed, masked men invading communities, who have made attempts at trafficking children, stolen away elderly women, detained citizens accused of no crime, and are being incredibly disruptive throughout the country.

I'm going to have to see a source for that one.

Removed children? Sure. Trafficked them? Prove it.

Done, lose the sardonic attitude when you don’t know the facts

https://www.latimes.com/california/story/2025-04-09/federal-...

https://www.k12dive.com/news/ice-agents-lausd-schools-parent...

https://www.k12dive.com/news/DHS-ICE-HSI-LAUSD-immigration-e...

Stop trying to make it look like what it is not.

Among other reasons, we got here because the government only seems to respond to big business and the oligarch class, but not the rest of us.

> it is important to keep the focus on Trump and the need for him to be deposed.

being causal for more Trumps to be elected.

This guy is not going to stop on his own. He's attuned to operating in a business context where there is some other singular entity who might back down when the damage from the chaos gets too high (or he backs down when the pain is too high for him, like with tariffs). But in a society based on individual liberty, backing down is not on the table until the whole society has been subjugated.

Longer term, if we actually manage to get through this to meaningful elections, one would hope that the abject failure of Trumpism would make enough of the electorate wary of more "strong" man fascists promising easy answers. This should have happened after his first term, but Trump's main skill is deflecting blame and Covid was one heck of an excuse.

And as far as underlying issues driving polarization and disconnect from reality, those are going to be there regardless of my statements.

I'd say we are at the point where the people who enabled the fascists just have to accept they were wrong and take their licks for the damage they've caused to our country. Similar to the bits of soul-searching that are going on amongst Democrats about the overbearing DEI groupthink. Will some small reconciliation grow into a trend and create a lasting deescalation, or do we have to continue working to actively reject the extremism? Let's worry about that when the mad king no longer has the reigns of power, lest good-faith attempts hold us back from getting to that state where any of this might matter.

As for not being true, are the newspapers lying? Are those photographs fakes?

No. Torching cars is already a crime and the city and state were already restoring order. The kind of flag waved while a car is torched does not change the calculus. Critically, a US citizen does not cease to be a US citizen because they waved a foreign flag; we have free speech in the United States, and flag-waving is protected by the first amendment.

Also worth noting that none of this would have happened if the regime didn't deliberately provoke it in the first place.

Apparently LA agrees with this fundamentally American idea.

And "reestablishing order" is an obvious farce, because the Trump administration was deliberately provoking this conflict by sending in masked agents to abduct people and at least in one instance, running over a protestor. The administration has been consistently escalating the conflict, which is not something you do to "reestablish order", but it is absolutely a tactic of 20th century authoritarians to acquire emergency powers which they then use to prevent elections, jail political opponents, etc.

1. We have 5 or 6 branches of military. The important one here is the national guard, ones meant to aid Americans in emergency or crisis.

2. The other branches have huge limits on when the federal government can deploy them domestically The Posse Comitatus Act that came as a result of the US civil war covers this.so having marines being deployed is a huge overreach.

3. The vast majority of the time, the national guard is managed by the state Governor, and Gavin Newsom has explicitly opposed this decision. The federal government taking command of the national guard is an exploit of The Insurrection Act that's been going on for a while.

All thst context being given: Newsom is right. This isn't trying to establish order, this is a meticulous escalation on a conservative president in a liberal city to make a show of force. For reference, there's reportedly some 600 rioters and they sent out 2000 (now 4000) national guard and 709 marines. This is all without including the LAPD which is comprised of over 8000 officers.

The amount of money and resources spent on this is utter overkill. And part of the point. They want an excuse to call martial law so badly.

The funds for the "United States Army 250th Anniversary Parade" were allocated before President Trump was elected, during the Biden debacle. The fact that it falls on June 14th is what is called a "coincidence".

Be careful about blindly accepting propaganda as fact.

I've never met someone so unlucky /s

That must take some crazy mental gymnastics...

As to your other points, most aren't coincidences, though some aren't real either.

1. https://www.cbsnews.com/news/trump-project-2025-first-100-da... 2. https://thehill.com/opinion/columnists/juan-williams/5120168... 3. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4cnyv9qNQSI

The date is exactly what was being discussed. I was responding to the mischaracterization of "a military parade for the president's birthday", which is factually inaccurate. Plus, the plan was made during Biden's term.

> I suppose it's just a coincidence that Trump is following project 2025, step by step, since day one

He's following Agenda 47, which was published on his campaign website. He stated he agreed with some of Project 2025, but not all of it.

It's unsurprising that some involved in writing Project 2025 are working for the Trump admin.

He's stated every stance you can on 2025. Heard of it, never heard of it, love it, hate it, etc.

https://www.google.com/search?q=trump+never+heard+of+2025&oq...

You should read the post you're responding to. It clearly addresses this very question.

> though some aren't real either

I think you mean, "though I'm not familiar with some of those cases"--otherwise a citation is needed.

Um: "The Army’s 250th birthday celebration has been in the works for two years, Army officials said. But adding a parade was the Trump White House’s idea, so planning for that began only two months ago." (Emphasis added.)

https://www.cnn.com/2025/06/06/politics/trump-military-parad...

That was the president lying on a nationally televised debate, the purpose of which was to lay the groundwork for exporting poor people who were here legally.

It's just a lie in service of fueling hatred toward the most poorest people in this country. Fascism 101.

Should Trump also relay blood libels against Jews?

https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/us-politic...

It's usually about how the poor get Foo for free, which everyone else has to pay for, and also about how they misuse Foo for nefarious reasons. The commons then get riled up, either because "Hey, why do they get free housing when I have to spend tons of money?" or because of all the nefarious things they supposedly do.

Also: Food stamps can't buy alcohol (let alone drugs).

Explain how work requirements to qualify for Medicaid makes conditions better to ensure there are fewer poor people. Doesn't this just harm people who can't work due to disability, and practically ensure they will never get better enough to work and contribute to society?

Sure saves a lot of money for wealthy people though.

How does the government know whether any specific person is "able-bodied"?

  > How does the government know whether any specific person is "able-bodied"?

Bonus points: we'll be able to remove people that should have had eligibility but failed to get the right paperwork in place. And we all know those who are severely disabled and unable to work are always excellent on filing their paperwork correctly and on-time and always make required meetings.

There is about the same amount of money allotted to help states stand up new programs to validate these requirements as the federal cost of Trump's birthday party.

Yes. Yes it is.

Pray you never find yourself in a situation where you can't work anymore or rely on anyone. Because under Trump's, this means guaranteed death. In the richest country ever.

Trump, speaking to his nephew about their disabled son [1]: "Maybe you should just let him die"

[1] https://www.theguardian.com/books/article/2024/jul/24/trump-...

Business and removing jobs and being rewarded with tax breaks while American workers can't find anything. Whose fault is that?

"But muh roads and hospitals and police." Lol, that is covered by the ~0.5% of my salary I pay in property taxes and a little extra in use taxes and county and state sales tax. The federal portion, what do I get? Massive subsidies for people who stick their boot down my throat, military provocations that make us all far less safer, the worlds largest prison population (and near the top per capita). None of it makes sense -- the stuff that matters was achieved with the feds spending 2% of the gdp (and I might add, pretty much open immigration).

"Helping the poor" is one of the worst mistakes the USA ever undertook.

History shows we've historically been pretty shitty at doing that at an individual level.

> The federal portion, what do I get?

Ignoring FICA, a large chunk is debt servicing, public health, earned income tax credits, food assistance, SSI, science programs, global trade security, and more. Most isn't "people who stick their boot down [your] throat", unless you're someone looking to abuse workers or food production or happens to be outside in LA these days.

The phrases to look for are “infested” and “purge”. Some politicians consider low-income to be a character of a person or a group (all the way up to a nation). Those same politicians laud language from Hitler about infestations and metaphors of racial purity.

Even the most generous pro-government take on that passage would have him believing that the state should be separate from the church, so church doctrine should not be imposed through state decree.

here's the correct indoctrination message

https://www.nytimes.com/2024/03/17/us/politics/trump-fox-int...

> Former President Donald J. Trump, in an interview broadcast Sunday, doubled down on his description of immigrants as “poisoning the blood” of the country, language that echoes Hitler.

> “Why do you use words like ‘vermin’ and ‘poisoning of the blood’?” Howard Kurtz, the media critic and interviewer, asked on Fox News. “The press, as you know, immediately reacts to that by saying, ‘Well, that’s the kind of language that Hitler and Mussolini used.’”

> “Because our country is being poisoned,” Mr. Trump responded.

Sure. The rich (R) electorate gladly watch how the non-rich (R) electorate has taken the bait and is happy chasing after the newly othered.

They won't be happy if the non-rich republicans start taking their aim at lobbying, unfair tax-breaks for the rich, or any form of taxation that prevents them from keeping their ill-gotten wealth.

https://lacity.gov/highlights/curfew-announced-downtown-los-...

While the two parties fight about specific measures (as they always do), and don't trust one another at all, they both agree that extreme measures are appropriate in LA right now.

This discussion is about the situation in LA, and not just a generic partisan dispute we could read on any political discussion, right?

it's the feds and the sheriffs and the police causing unrest, by intent and design.

LAPD are trained and regularly used for crowd control and protest dispersal. The guard isn’t. And for sure the Marines have no clue about policing.

I think LAPD is choosing a 1st amendment violation as the lesser failure than permitting any escalation involving the National Guard. That would quickly turn out badly for the guard, become a pretext for ever more violent authoritarianism in response.

This was posted before a single National Guardsman arrived in LA. It’s yet another lie by an untrustworthy liar, and a psychopath. https://trumpstruth.org/statuses/31410

If you think this is normal politics, at best you’re ignorant, at worst you’re brainwashed.

It is not normal for two parties to completely distrust each other. Adversarialism is evidence of trust, not distrust. If you don’t understand that, you don’t understand how the government works at all.

A generic partisan dispute is how much money to spend on health care versus roads versus the military versus foreign aid.

What’s occurring now is whether a president can punish individuals for funding his political opponents, enrich himself through obvious and undenied bribery, and send in the military only to Democratic majority cities to force them to submit to his will regarding immigration in violation of state and federal law.

LA is handling this provocation calmly. NYC and Philly will not be so relaxed about it as LA.

I think your line of thinking might be either overly naïve, or maliciously turning a blind eye:

First, "both-sides"-ing, for lack of a better word, is — IMHO — a false equivalence that treats the current democratic transgressions of rights and freedoms from the alt-right government to, for example, democrat's normalizing that saying racist stuff is a faux-pas; i.e. some goons are actively harming humans and that isn't the same as racists being butt-hurt that they were banned from some site.

Second, in this particular case — where there is push back against fascists — trying to reduce the scope of the discussion is like trying to censor police-cam footage to just the split-second segments where the cops get scared and shoot, but that leaves out how the trigger-happy cop broke protocol, escalated the situation, and berated confusing orders at the victim. So, no... We need nuance and context.

I really hope people that find themselves what-abouting for fascists are able to escape whatever information bubble they find themselves in so that they may be able to stop willfully looking past other people's humanity before we all find each other on the wrong end of a power-tripping cop that won't even have to come up with a good lie to snuff our lives out.

Before Trump intervened, LA has had worse Superbowl afterparties than the protest was at that time. This is all very much manufactured rage.

Consider that your news sources are really biased.

Here's a live feed, watch for yourself: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U6S_OwCgKOU

Edit: https://www.reddit.com/r/PublicFreakout/comments/1l88mhj/lap...

Old dead link: https://www.reddit.com/r/chaoticgood/comments/1l8ax0z/protes...

Remember, less lethal does not mean non-lethal and doesn't mean it can't cause enough damage to impact someone's quality of life forever.

The cameraperson or another bystander should have called 911. Asked for ambulance (and maybe fire dept) to attend. In addition to medical care, that would at least get some higher degree of paperwork going from an accountability perspective.

State-sanctioned organized crime by white supremacist terrorists, that's the connection with Republicans. They pardoned the insurrectionists that violently captured the capital building and pay off murderers whose crimes achieve their political goals. It's mostly happening out in the open, brazenly. We're not rational machines, we're easily manipulated and it takes less energy to settle into beliefs others want us to have. "Flood the zone" works but reality is still happening.

From my point of view, this person was disobeying orders from police, which gives them the right to use force. Is a rubber bullet an appropriate amount of force? Probably not, but I don't see this video as a completely one sided interaction with one party being wrong.

12million immigrants came into the country during the Biden administration. This type of load on the system does not go unnoticed. NYC for example was drastically transformed.

Why do you think it’s just a “perceived” problem?

They cannot handle it with the resources being given. This is true for the red states like Texas and what not, the social services we do have struggle to handle the load. But we're choosing to let these systems struggle. We could solve it if we chose to do so.

In 2020 our population was ~330 million people. Even if 12 million people immigrated to the United States, that's an influx of 3.6%. In reality its probably closer to 4 or so million, so really more like 1.2%. We're supposedly the wealthiest country on the planet with so much opportunity and freedom and yet we can't handle adding far less than 5% of the population as migrants in five years? If that's the case, we're probably the poorest country on the planet, not the wealthiest.

And even then, we could choose to do something about that. We could do more to help people settle all across the US and be well supported to succeed. But we don't. So instead, we have people crowd the areas where we turn a blind eye to hiring illegal labor and have the social impacts concentrated there and then refuse to actually do anything to help those social costs.

But these are all things we choose to do. We could choose to do something else.

How do you decide who goes where? What stops them from moving back to the bigger cities? How to you limit demographic displacement?

The UK is doing this, and the US under Biden was trying at a smaller scale with Haitians in smaller towns. It doesn't work, and isn't so simple.

Once again, we're choosing to not have these social supports or social services. It's a choice. We could do it if we wanted, after all we're allegedly the wealthiest country on the planet but somehow can't seem to afford anything.

> How do you decide who goes where?

I'm not suggesting we force it to be a top-down forced decision. I'm often a pretty free-market and empowering people to make their own decisions kind of guy, when it makes sense. And sure, people will tend to cluster more in large cities, that happens even for non-migrants. But in the end, we're doing practically nothing to encourage people to spread out that social cost (or worse, encouraging for forcing the clustering), and that doing nothing is a choice. And then we're doing very little to support these places experiencing such large social costs, which is once again a decision.

All of this is stuff we could do differently, we just choose the status quo (or now choosing violence!) that doesn't work well for a lot of us. Sure seems to be making some people exceptionally wealthy though.

America is really struggling to support & enable a people, to create a social safety net. Opportunity is low. But often when immigrants come in from other places, they will put in enormous energy, that can bring some very sad towns back to life.

But you'd be making the same arguments about the Irish and the Italians and the Germans. The family of mine that migrated faced similar kinds of rhetoric, Germans migrating in the 1800s. Even worse, they were German Catholics, my word! Truly ruining the neighborhood and cultural identity of the communities they moved to.

If we want more white Americans in the world maybe we should be doing more to encourage people to have families by offering better safety nets and family support. With birthrates as they are white America will disappear regardless of immigration. We should address the reasons why we're not having kids instead of throwing stones at others and blaming them for us letting our society crumble around us.

But as a quick take I think the land pressures of native Hawaiians is radically different than the land issues of white Christians in Texas. And it's not like there's any deeply historic religious connections to Arlington Texas to white Christians for a quick example is there? The worry if cultural elimination is probably radically different at a quick glance wouldn't you agree?

I'm generally for open or at least non-discriminatory immigration. A few sticking points

1) Discriminatory settling patterns are well established as imposed law in the US, i.e. 'hawaiian home lands', American Samoa, Saipan, etc. The first step here is to make ALL US nationals and citizens equal, before we can really even hope to start making immigrants equal. Given limited political capital this would be my #1 priority to burn that capital on.

2) Welfare is essentially incompatible with open immigration and pushes the populace heavily towards favoring middle age wealth foreigners -- that is basically europeans and white English speaking countries. We could probably make it a little less 'racist' if immigrants were forced to permanently disclaim any access to public funds.

3) Immigration is justified under human and properties rights, freedom to go wherever one is invited or has ownership, and basic human liberties. Immigration in practice in the US heavily relies on use of public facilities, which are paid for by the tax payers -- as property owners you would be violating their rights if US persons cannot control foreign access to the public properties they are forced to pay taxes for. i.e. there should be zero immigration controls whatsoever crossing from one ranch to the other on adjacent parts of the Mexican border, but when you use public resources you are now becoming a trespasser if the property owners don't consent.

You start off by declaring it's a fraudulent right but then spend hundreds of words arguing for a framework for your own fraudulent right

> Welfare is essentially incompatible with open immigration

One might then question the rest of their ideals about their morals and what Christ has charged us to do and wonder if racial stability is the standard or helping people is the standard. But I guess you've already decided on such a thing.

> Discriminatory settling patterns are well established as imposed law in the US, i.e. 'hawaiian home lands', American Samoa, Saipan, etc.

I'd say laws in island territories have vastly different concerns than laws on the mainland especially when considering land and cultural concerns. They have vastly different pressures, don't you agree? Like what were going to argue only white Protestants can own land in Montana? Pretty different circumstances here than a tiny island with religious circumstances.

The ethnic discrimination laws in America Samoa, and to a lesser extent Saipan (I think for them more about control, they have no problem with Chinese running roughshod operating all kinds of shady and illegal business, it is probably the most corrupt place in the US) are aimed towards stopping cultural elimination. The case is compelling for Samoa, the others are just naked racial discrimination as the local populace seems to have settled on the fact their culture has pretty much been eliminated as anything beyond a footnote and they're going to cash grab all they can out of the remains which I guess is just the usual American dream.

(Hawaii used to go even further, and racially discriminate in voting, but racial discrimination in voting was struck circa 2000 with dissent written by the now deceased racist Ruth Ginsburg in Rice v Cayetano. Not long after that 'non-'Hawaiians also finally got the right to equally run for office).

American Samoa is particularly aggressive about it, their government and IIRC even the feds strongly imply or command you can enter for 30 days as a tourist without further authorization, despite the fact that established case law and the American Samoa Bar training to internal lawyers teach that US citizens have the right to permanently settle and work in American Samoa. I did some research and could not find any case of a US citizen being 'deported' from the territory unless they were wanted for crimes elsewhere but they do their damnedest to make it sound like you can be.

No matter that previously you were pointing to places as small as Arlington Texas.

You don't actually care about eliminating these discriminatory policies. You just have your racist motives to apply it inequally.

And it really shows your ignorance too, acting like Arlington is some small place. There's tons of land around here in North Texas, ample for whoever to make a new story and new life. The people making up most of the population have only been here for like a hundred years, tops. Any kind of long historic claim to the land outside of Native American populations are a farce. This isn't true for small islands in the Pacific which probably have a vastly more complicated history.

But it sure shows your character that you bother to deeply look up such a legal basis for racist ideology. Good work broadcasting your hard work.

And yeah, I'm the racist for arguing anyone should have the ability to partake in American prosperity. Meanwhile you're the non-racist advocating for enforcing racial land rights across all the US. Got it.

Once again, I don't really know what's happening there. This is all conjecture based on what's obvious for comparing an island nation to a giant and mostly uninhabited Continental plain. If there's more people in North Texas, we just build more homes. We just drag the highway out a bit more. We just rezone to allow a bit more density. There is plenty of land here that's entirely empty and devoid of development. An island nation doesn't have that. If they get pushed out of what's there, where do they go? The bottom of the ocean? Seriously, think for two seconds if your racist brain will allow it. And I acknowledge, I don't know the policies, I don't know what's really happening there. But I can at least acknowledge the societal pressures going on are massively different.

> This is just naked racism.

I agree, your points are naked racism. Looking for some legal reason to put race restrictions on land generally across the entire United States is absolutely a racist position to take which seems to be the main position you're arguing for. Whether or not the policies on American Samoa are racist (they might be, I've agreed I'm ignorant to them!) isn't a valid reason for bringing such racist policies to the mainland US.

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

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44243768

So how about this: go fuck yourself, and your nauseating appeal to your ivory tower techie faux-academic attempt at guidelines. Nothing about me is 'equal' to this self righteous racist piece of human garbage, although I admit his behavior is the very best argument as to why his culture should rapidly be overshadowed in Texas.

This is only a place where people want to come to discuss things because we and others put effort into keeping it that way. If you're going to participate here, and if you're going to expect others to be held to a high standard, we need you to hold yourself to a high standard too.

In the 1800s? No. You realize how much happened with the great expansion and all that? The population squeeze that happened from the civil war? I find it laughable you'd be arguing for the Native American tribes in the early 1800s. Once again, showing your racist ideology. Thanks for further confirming such a thing. America is for white Protestants only. Got it.

Thanks for confirming to you, me, a white Christian American is not welcome here and shouldn't have been here in the first place. Because I'm not really the right kind of white Christian.

They literally have an immigration schema, if you want permanent resident to citizen track, that requires immigrants to match the ethnic makeup of the country's citizens.

So you have all these white public housing advocates, talking about how great public housing is in Singapore, but they leave out that you have to have PR or citizenship to get it, and they've accomplished making all that possible by having like half their population non-citizens who pay taxes for housing they're ineligible to get and then the people living in the public houses are ethnically guaranteed non-replacement.

I find such things to be incredibly backwards and abhorrent. To think if you lucked out in some genomic lottery to be allowed to have extreme privilege in society, this sounds like a fucking nightmare

There are a lot of cool and neat things about Singapore but damn do a lot of things feel like the kind of things that keep me up at night.

But honestly, the modern GOP is closer to enforcing such requirements than any opposing party.

It's the happiest little police state in the world ;)

So sick of Americans empty-analysis and ignorance of externalities their society puts on others; overseas colleagues see it as white Taliban. They don't see people in streets over tariffs screwing up their lives, so they've started to tell their politicians Americans (as in the public) are not reliable actors. They don't realize it, but the American publics own credibility is shot, not just their politicians.

I have taken to cutting off friends and family and shit talking anyone in public that wants to socialize; do the politic work to put me on the hook for their healthcare, otherwise I refuse to bother with their existence. Withdrawing from people's lives is a forcing function for self reflection.

You all keep me off the hook caring you exist. I just have to help make line go up. Anything to do with you all as individuals is not my responsibility. That's the choice of the American people. I'm here to profit, not give a fuck you exist.

That's what my fellow Americans taught me through their feckless political effort. Illusory idea some invisible hand gives a shit based upon the gibberish from history they read by people who were wanking their literacy rather than inventing indoor plumbing.

your calcuation needs to account for ppl coming in on non immigrant visas too.

usa issued 10 million non-immigrant visas in 2024. not counting 5 million tourist visas.

Also, Trump approved for. Ore H1B Visas this year.

parent and gp comments are talking about "immigrants" . where do you see illegal immigrants ?

Are we instead saying that anyone not born in the US but comes in is an enemy?

Are you saying 'immigrants' anywhere in this thread automatically implies 'illegal immigrant' . Thats really confusing to me.

> Are we instead saying that anyone not born in the US but comes in is an enemy?

this is ridiculous twisting of my comment. I was just correcting record about population increase from immigration. population increase doesn't happen just from immigrant visas, ppl on non-immigrant visas stay in the country often for decades.

But sure, somewhere around 4-5 million illegal/undocumented immigrants, add another 10 million or so non-immigrant visas (which I agree, tend to have people end up staying for lots of other reasons), we're still somewhere around 15 million or so migrants with most of those having some kind of stable job lined up before they arrive. It's still less than 5% of the overall population increase with these migrants, but now a lot of these in this addition are largely economically self-sufficient from the get-go (those with work visas). You're not really changing my point at all.

In the end we're just too poor to deal with a generally pretty minor increase in population over several years while simultaneously seemingly being the wealthiest nation on the planet? How does that make sense?

Also, your claim of:

> usa issued 10 million non-immigrant visas in 2024. not counting 5 million tourist visas

is factually incorrect. The US issued around 11.5 million non-immigrant visas, of which 8.5 million were visitor visas. So not a total of 15 million visas and excluding the tourism its really about 3 million non-immigrant not-tourist visas.

> in 2024, in Fiscal Year 2024, we issued 11.5 million visas, and that’s a world record for us, breaking all previous records. Of these 8.5 million were visitor visas.

https://2021-2025.state.gov/secretary-antony-j-blinken-and-s...

https://travel.state.gov/content/dam/visas/Statistics/Annual...

There were 10,438,327 non immigrant visas. Out of which there were 5,902,426 b1/b2 and 29,286 B1.

looks like i din't count ppl with BCC in visitor visas.

> In the end we're just too poor to deal with a generally pretty minor increase in population over several years while simultaneously seemingly being the wealthiest nation on the planet? How does that make sense?

again, i didn't say this. i was just trying to correct the record. I honestly have no say in "how many is too many" . i have no idea how to even think about that to come up with a framewrok to answer that question

We had caravans of tens of thousands of people constantly streaming into the US for four years. The video evidence is out there for everyone to see. News outlets that did not engage in hiding reality and promoting falsehoods had crews at the border every day for four years collecting video evidence of what was going on.

If you care about understanding the truth, go to the US Customs and Border Protection website and look around. You can also cross check with Homeland Security and other official sources. And, yes, you will find data that predates the Trump administration...so you can't blame bias. For example, if I remember correctly, there were over THREE MILLION unauthorized entries in 2024.

If such a thing were being reported by multiple reputable sources, I’d be less inclined to roll my eyes at the preposterous idea.

We had an average of 250K people per month coming into the country for 48 months by land an air. The relevant government agencies have published the statistics, even going back to Biden era reports. You can believe anything you want, but thinking that it was only four million is a delusion.

OK, even if I play your game and we say it was "only" four million (ridiculous). Here's the problem:

That means 88K people per month for 48 months breaking our laws. Four million people entering the country without permission has a very simple name: Invasion.

Even worse, unless we create 88K new jobs per month for 48 months, these people are, by definition, unemployed. Our published unemployment statistics somehow conveniently ignore this fact. And, the other fact that we ignore is that the US has not created an additional 88K jobs per month over the 48 months of the Biden administration. The best we did was to recover the 10 million jobs lost during the pandemic.

At 12 million, that is 250K new jobs required to support them. The US is NOT AT ALL anywhere close to that growth rate, not even enough for 88K new workers per month.

That aside, as a resident of Los Angeles, I have seen the increase in crime (a neighbor's home, for example, was broken into by a couple of illegal immigrants). In addition to that, these destructive demonstrations full of Mexican, Guatemalan and Salvadorian flags are as tone deaf as can be. Throwing cinder blocks at police officers on the road and highway (surprised nobody died) isn't going to do anything positive for anyone's cause, justified or not.

This is madness and it has to stop. What's worse, is that these people are protesting (and wanting to protect) criminals. The government of the state and city are also on the side of criminals. Here's a partial list of who was detained in Los Angeles and who these demonstrators want released into our city:

https://www.dhs.gov/news/2025/06/08/ice-captures-worst-worst...

Yeah. Right. Time to realign your world view. This is stupid.

You are living in an incomprehensible fantasy my friend. Good luck.

Seeing immigrants and perceiving an increased in crime, and citing that they are related is post facto rationalization fallacy.

Let's see... what other logical fallacies are in here. Oh.. people emigrate and die, so the accumulation of numbers is not valid nor does that handle double counting.

AFAIK a strong US economy generates around 250k jobs per month. Further, there were more jobs created under Biden than were lost during the pandemic.

I'd also suggest if this all were a big deal, illegal entry ought to be elevated from a civil infraction. It is more severe in the eyes of the law to drive 25 hour than it is to overstay a visa.

I didn't say they were and you have no clue if they are or are not. Even if you were personally there to demonstrate peacefully, no have no clue what forces are operating behind they scenes. And we know that part is true. One way to put it is that aspects of this is organized crime. They will eventually be discovered and held to pay for what they have done in a court of law.

> Let's see... what other logical fallacies are in here

Not a logical fallacy, but the most incomprehensible development over the years is that somehow large numbers of people think it is OK for people to just pour into the US as they wish, no controls, no admission criteria, nothing. And yet, the same people understand that this is not acceptable anywhere else in the world.

Clearly there's nothing I can say to help people who are firmly chained inside the cave looking at shadows. The indoctrination is way too powerful. Some of us try, but, sadly, the only way this insanity will pass is for people to gain clarity on their own. Not sure what it will take. Time will tell.

Perhaps this is your idea of what this country needs to become?

https://i.imgur.com/JcjpHKe.png

Not going to happen. No way.

> Some of us try, but, sadly, the only way this insanity will pass is for people to gain clarity on their own. Not sure what it will take. Time will tell.

I'd say it would take sound arguments. Meanwhile, your arguments are not sound. You did not address what I wrote. To rebut a 'guilt-by-association' criticism, you said "I didn't say they were [affiliated]". That confirms the criticism.

You did not address the post-facto rationalization criticism at all.

I also saw a person in a pokemon costume too. Until we can have some sound arguments and facts, it's very much a choose-your-own-adventure situation. Are we here to just yell at each other? I personally do think the country needs to maintain rule-of-law (with notable mention of the 1st amendment), and the full rule-of-law goes for everyone, police, protestors, and opportunists.

Not here to yell at you or anyone. Having lived in multiple cultures and countries across the world, I bring to the table a perspective that most Americans simply do not have. I have no clue if you are American, BTW. I have had the experience of being in fear for my life while detained by military thugs as a teenager. I have seen and lived the pain and misery leftist ideologies bring to populations first hand.

Any immigrant who has actually lived these realities cannot comprehend how it is that the US does not simply laugh these people off the stage. And, to be sure, the extreme right is just as destructive, yet that is not a reality in the US at all (despite the media pushing that narrative into people's brains day after day).

So, like I said, nothing I can say to you or anyone else, that much is obvious. There are things you learn about society and ideology that can only be learned from experience. Maybe the US needs to live through a leftist utopia for a period of time for everyone to come out smarter. That would be tragic, of course, but it might also be necessary. If California does not scare the shit out of the rest of the nation I don't know what will.

Have a good one.

Rolling in the National Guard and Marines on a peaceful protest is, quite frankly, un-American. It's massive federal overreach that has led to violence in the past. Would be nice if the current administration knew its own history.

The moderate or peaceful majority is never the reason for enforcement actions. These are triggered by a militant and violent minority, some of whom are actually paid to cause disruption. So, you have a couple of choices. The first is to do nothing and just let it burn. We have seen that happen before. The second is to bring forward an overwhelming show of force to dissipate that violent element (and bring them to justice). That's what happened.

This is no different from control system theory. The ideal critically-damped feedback loop does not exist when dealing with mobs. Either you crank up the dampening early or you pay the consequences of doing it too late. We can't have entire business districts destroyed by thugs. You have to stop them as soon as possible. As it stands, these animals caused a massive amount of damage in just a couple of days.

Yesterday showed the contrast very well, there was a peaceful (truly, not the fake "peaceful" pushed by the media while shit is burning) protest that seemed to number in the thousands of people. Perfect. No problems. That only happened because thugs (the minority) learned within a day or two that they would suffer severe consequences for their actions.

Violence happened, but not to any scale that makes a military deployment on American soil in peacetime make sense.

Does this look like a riot justifying soldiers to you? https://kolektiva.social/@jonahgibberish/114663170166350434

> This is no different from control system theory.

Rolling out the Marines is turning the `I` knob, not the `D` knob. It's teaching protestors "if you're gonna show up, come armed to deal with soldiers." Incredibly dangerous in a country where that firepower is in so many private hands.

I don't know when we became a nation so cowardly that we have to point military firepower at our own citizens. When strangers are turning out into the streets to thwart federal enforcement, maybe the problem is the law not the criminals?

Actually, it's the other way around.

The US southern border was very porous for most of its history. Around 1986, a combination of moral panic about Latino influence on the culture and concerns about drug trade enabled the Reagan administration and Congress to tighten immigration law into something approximating the structure we have today in terms of enforcement (https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC5049707/).

This backfired spectacularly. Let people bop back and forth to Tijuana, and they bop back and forth to Tijuana. Force them to struggle to cross the border, to declare nationality, start evicting them if they over-stay... And now they have reason to choose and to fight for the choice. The result of closing the border is undocumented immigration went up (secondary statistics strongly suggesting that this was actual immigration, not enforcement resulting from more tracking of undocumented immigrants).

Regardless of the law on paper, under-enforcement was the behavior of the land for nearly a century, and this new regime is an experiment that has strongly suggested the law was sourly anti-human to begin with.

(As a meta-comment on law: you're talking to a generation that watched the War on Drugs happen. Don't be surprised Americans have soured on the notion, in general, that law and morality are closely interlocked).

People died and permanently retired during the pandemic. It's possible the 10 million number represents a restored workforce; it's also possible it represents a changed workforce.

If the latter, that illegal immigration allowed the US to recover faster than it would have otherwise and the lesson from history is we're a stronger nation for easing immigration restrictions.

There is no question whatsoever that immigration, legal and done correctly, is a force for good. As a legal immigrant, it understand this very well.

In fact, I understand the entire process very well, including the illegal immigration part. You see, when I was six years old, my parents overstayed their tourist visa in the US. They were then told to leave and my entire family left. Two years later, after going through proper channels, we obtained permission to come to the US legally.

I truly do not understand how people twist themselves into a pretzel to justify illegal entry into a country. Actually, it is worse than that, the only country where they seem to think this is OK is the US. Every single person who is for illegal immigration in the US understands why you cannot just move to New Zealand, for example, to stay and work there without permission. They also understand New Zealand's points system for the selection of who is granted permanent residency. Not in the US. Of course not.

Proponents also say that not enough people are let in legally or that it is too slow. Two points to be made here. The entire planet wants to come to the US, so, yeah, it will take a couple of years (as it did for my family). Second, when millions of people enter illegally, the annual quota for legal immigration cannot be increased. Doing so would exacerbate the problem. So, illegal immigration actually hinders changes and growth of the legal immigration system.

Finally, proponents of illegal immigrants are of the same ilk as those who propose raising tax rates for everyone except themselves. And, when they do include themselves, they don't lead by example and simply send more money than they owe to the government. Same with immigration. How?

I break into your home with my entire family while you are on vacation. I start paying the bills; power, water, insurance, heck, I even pay the mortgage.

Can we all stay in your home forever? You are welcome to come back from your vacation and share the home with us?

Of course not. Nobody of sound mind would accept such a situation.

How is breaking and entering into a country --any country-- justified and elevated to almost be a virtue?

While not a perfect analogy, of course, this does illustrate a fundamental idea: You don't get to grab things (your iPhone, car, home, residency, benefits, etc.) by force and keep them just because you did. If the world worked that way we would all be walking around with a firearm strapped to our leg and blood would run down every street in the nation. Violating these fundamental rights is nothing less than destructive to society.

Yes, of course, and this is not contradictory. "American Exceptionalism" means different things to different people, but broadly speaking: as a nation built of immigrants, there's no particular "right" time to pull up the ladder and say "That's enough immigrants now." Most people who support this position (not all, but enough to be concerning), when you peel back the veneer, support it because they want America to be "A nation of X" and America facing the reality of more people with different world experiences threatens that goal. There's a reason the protests in Charlottesville turned from being about the history of the South to chants of "Blood and Soil."

Regardless of what the law says: the reality on the ground is the American economy is relying on the labor provided by the undocumented, and they are our friends and neighbors for years running. Sometimes, when a law bends too hard against what the people actually want, you ditch the law. A government fails to grasp that to its peril; hopefully, it only results in tea wasted in the harbor.

> when millions of people enter illegally, the annual quota for legal immigration cannot be increased

Untrue; these are rules we make up for ourselves. Congress could set the number to zero tomorrow. Or infinity. It's entirely up to us.

> Finally, proponents of illegal immigrants are of the same ilk as those who propose raising tax rates for everyone except themselves

I think we'd have to agree to disagree. I, for instance, am in favor of raising taxes on myself and people in my tax bracket, as well as basically everyone above my tax bracket. No strong opinion on lower brackets. And I do send more than I owe to the government. And buy bonds.

Your meta-argument is "These people don't see the problems;" I think you are mistaken. People see the problems, they just think they're better handled with community service than with truncheons and planes to some other country.

> I break into your home with my entire family while you are on vacation. I start paying the bills; power, water, insurance, heck, I even pay the mortgage.

> Can we all stay in your home forever?

I mean, that's an argument about "squatter's rights," not immigration, but for what it's worth... yes? The law in many states does recognize your right to keep using the land if you develop it and it's de-facto abandoned. If I own so much land I can't use all of it and you find a better use for it, that's on me.

The nature of immigration is so divorced from this analogy as to make it worthless. Try this one instead: You come here, build a house, raise a family. Five years later, I come along and try to kick you out because you didn't cross an 'i' on some paperwork in 2019. Is this just, or should I leave you the heck alone because you're not hurting anyone?

> You don't get to grab things (your iPhone, car, home, residency, benefits, etc.) by force and keep them just because you did

I'm sure you're not arguing "America should be returned to the Native Americans..." But that is the argument you are making here. Are you sure you mean it?

... FWIW, I'm sorry your parents were forced out. In an ideal world, that shouldn't have happened. That would have been, what, roundabouts the Reagan presidency? Reagan's administration set us on the path to where we are today by deciding a lot of laws on the books suddenly needed enforcement where little had happened. To all our detriment.

Well, time to exit this thread. The problem with HN having become a monoculture forum is that it is impossible to have conversations. I never downvote or flag anyone, particularly those who disagree with me. The same is not true on the other side, if you don't tow the line you get attacked, downvoted and flagged mercilessly until you shut your mouth. So, yeah, you win. Have a good day.

I appreciate seeing your vantage point on this topic. While we do not agree, It is helpful to see other people's takes.

Just in case you misinterpreted my story, I think it was 100% correct and proper for the US to ask my family to leave, apply for permission to come back legally and finally do so. My parents did not do the right thing by overstaying their visa and working. In other words, I do not agree that they should have been allowed to stay.

When they did obtain authorization they had to agree to not be a burden to US taxpayers for five years. I also agree with this.

Legal and orderly immigration is essential for societies to function. This is true everywhere on this planet.

We are left in a very, very bad place when the media can't be relied on to tell the truth. But here we are..

I wish we could tell that to Trump.

>We had caravans of tens of thousands of people constantly streaming into the US for four years. T

Okay, and Biden deported more people than Trump's first term. Is that fact a joke too?

>go to the US Customs and Border Protection website and look around.

Okay, what am I looking for? The most recent news update was June 5th about building a wall in Arizona. I thought that 2016 narrative was over?

>if I remember correctly, there were over THREE MILLION unauthorized entries in 2024.

And

>In Fiscal Year (FY) 2024, there were 271,484 individuals removed from the US by ICE (Immigration and Customs Enforcement). This number represents an increase of nearly 90% compared to the previous fiscal year. This data includes removals by ICE's Enforcement and Removal Operations (ERO).

Why are we acting like Biden did nothing?

You mean the guy who mumbled and could not find his way out of a room without being held by the hand?

C'man. You can believe whatever fantasy you'd like. Reality, on the other hand, is like physics, it does not care one bit if you have no clued what you are talking about.

The problem with most people surrounding these topics is that the vast majority of the media has absolutely shielded you from seeing the truth. They simply do not talk about it. Even worse, they lie about it all the time. Including bullshit like "mostly peaceful protests".

This happened again here in Los Angeles just now. Leftist media and politicians pushing the mostly peaceful protest narrative, and, in the meantime, this was happening:

https://youtu.be/qz04yTHnCqs?si=WKf_Nx2wZFJUTPSH&t=30

Wake up.

Now that bureaucracy has been smashed in favor of autocracy, and we're suffering the other demented guy - not merely as a figurehead, but getting straight raw dogged by his rotting brain as he destroys what's left of our distributed economy with a national sales tax, orders the American military to attack American cities, and preps for a uuuuge North Korean style parade.

As Americans, we have a right to protest. That right does not go away when other people damage property, government property especially. Remember January 6, where there weren't even real ideals at stake but just a crowd riled up on fake news campaign propaganda that turned out to be utterly false?

When things do get out of hand, which is far beyond a few destroyed government vehicles, it is up to the local police forces to set the balance between restoring order and that still existing first amendment right to protest. Despite LAPD having been doing this just fine, Trump is illegally escalating the situation to look strong for the useful idiots still following him, to distract from his hissy fit with Musk, and most importantly to take the focus off his Big Ugly Deficit Spending Inflation Bill poised to bankrupt our country.

It seems like you need to have the realization that just because you've caught one tribe's media lying does not mean that you've found pure truth.

Typical. Diminish the other person by claiming that everything they say are talking points. In other words, they are mindless drones simply repeating what they are told. The minute you take that perspective the only thing you can believe is your own bullshit, because everything else is dismissed as talking points. Brilliant.

> It seems like you need to have the realization that just because you've caught one tribe's media lying does not mean that you've found pure truth.

I'll repeat what I said in another comment:

Having lived in multiple cultures and countries across the world, I bring to the table a perspective that most Americans simply do not have. I have had the experience of being in fear for my life while detained by military thugs as a teenager. I have seen and lived the economic and cultural destruction the left loves to use to control societies. They love the poor so much they multiply them. I have seen and lived the pain and misery leftist ideologies bring to populations first hand. No leftist society in history, anywhere, has elevated their population. Before you say China, that was done by the CCP grabbing onto external capitalist forces, without which they would still be an agrarian society.

To be sure, the extreme right is just as destructive, yet that is not a reality in the US at all (despite the media pushing that narrative into people's brains day after day).

Any immigrant who has actually lived these realities cannot comprehend how it is that the US does not simply laugh these people off the stage. Or, how it is that Americans are so easily duped by these professional manipulators.

There's nothing I can say to you or anyone else to have you see the reality that has been playing out, that much is obvious. There are things you learn about society and ideology that can only be learned from experience.

Maybe the US needs to live through a leftist utopia for a period of time for everyone to come out smarter. That would be tragic, of course, but it might also be necessary. If California does not scare the shit out of the rest of the nation I don't know what will.

Have a good one.

> Annual net migration — the number of people coming to the country minus the number leaving — averaged 2.4 million people from 2021 to 2023, according to the Congressional Budget Office. Total net migration during the Biden administration is likely to exceed eight million people.

From ChatGPT:

> So, while 10–11 million CBP encounters is the most solid official figure, when you add gotaways, overstays, and parole entries, the total number of people likely entering without full authorization could reasonably be around 15–17 million during the Biden presidency.

There were not 12 million immigrants entering during the Biden administration. Please provide balanced proof.

The only people in NY that claimed we couldn’t handle it were the Mayor who was trying to get out of his blatant corruption by appealing to Trump.

Funny how that seems to have ended magically as soon as Trump was elected.

We all point to Texas's education department as a laughing stock of results. But we expect Texas to bear a massive part of the burden of low income non-English migrants while using the same measuring stick to compare. And we act like this is fair. And don't get me wrong, Texas' legislature is complicit for the failure! We should all do more to support these communities.

I do agree, it's largely a self inflicted problem. But things need to change to properly deal with the increase in those relying on public programs. They're underfunded, understaffed, and under supplied. We're not setting people up for success, and it shows.

It can't possibly be that hard to find Spanish speaking teachers in Texas.

When you can have 80% of the take home apay but have fewer parents issuing death threats while filling tacos at Taco Bell (and they pay for your community college to go elsewhere) it's no surprise teachers choose to go elsewhere.

Practically every school district in Texas is facing a qualified teacher shortage.

Of course, the Trump admin has responded to this by deciding not to fund the TQP grant program, which in part trains and places teachers in high-need areas like STEM, special ed, and bilingual ed. This struggle is mostly a self-inflicted policy choice.

I'm saying we need to change our funding for education and protect workers rights. We need to crack down on those hiring illegal labor. I agree things need to change. I think the federal government should acknowledge we're being more impacted by immigration than many other states and help more with education and other social programs. I think it was a bad choice for us to not expand Medicaid back in the day and I think its bad we're talking about restricting it more. I'm probably not the person you're picturing in your mind, I'm going to go ride a bicycle to pick up my kids from school today and I've talked a few friends of mine out of buying a pickup truck.

> And don't get me wrong, Texas' legislature is complicit for the failure!

I'm fully agreeing at least half the problem is within.

> Rounding people up and locking them up won’t solve the other self inflicted problems

I agree! I don't think a lot of what Texas is doing is good!

What are you talking about?

https://homeland.house.gov/wp-content/uploads/2024/10/Septem...

And that does not account for got-aways, which easily number in the millions.

Please.

The Democrats, who love to lecture everybody about "protecting democracy", are attempting to sway voter demographics in their favor through illegal immigration. California used to be a Republican state till it was turned deep blue through immigration.

And one-party states produce the worst, most incompetent politicians, who rise to the top not through the battle of ideas, ability and accountability but through political favors and backroom deals.

Gavin Newsom is the perfect example of this.

If they're failing, they're failing extremely well. I wonder how we get some of that failure in my part of the country?

https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/u-haul-california/

Remind me again why we want to kick immigrants out?

Trying to research this, I see examples like Denver and Chicago that have had struggles, anx did things like limit shelter stats to 72 hours. I found no examples though that were point blank: "we cannot handle this." Again, excluding mayor Adam's, perhaps you can help fill in the gaps with concrete examples and hopefully some verbatim quotes of "we cannot handle this?"

When you wrote "so they", I want to be sure that the 'they' refers to bus operators that were payed to drop off migrants in Chicago:

"The city says buses can arrive only during daytime hours so volunteers can be available to help, but bus drivers are responding by dropping migrants off in Chicago suburbs at night." [1]

The '2 buses per day' needs context. That could very well be a simple ask to not send them all at once. Further, the buses we are talking about were meant to overload the target the cities. They were sent with no notice, no coordination, just dumping a couple hundred or more people off into a random place in a random city. The ask therefore of "don't send all buses just on the same day", instead spread it out so that the volunteer resources are not overwhelmed and have a chance to work with and place everyone. I don't want to belabor this too much further, but I strongly suspect the desire for 2 buses max was a lot more about load balancing than it was rate limiting.

My impression, Chicago was more like "do this orderly, we can handle it, just don't drop off a couple hundred people all at once in some random place without telling us."

[1] https://www.npr.org/2024/01/06/1223287116/chicago-is-tighten...

load balance with what exactly ? there is only one server thats rate limiting. oh you mean other servers being border states that aren't allowed to do similar rate limiting?

you asked "examples and hopefully some verbatim quotes of "we cannot handle this?""

I gave you an example of exactly that but you say you "suspect" its not that. Chicago doesn't need "volunteers" to handle intake. City spent 700M dollars to migrant housing, employing thousands of people in all sorts of roles. You think they are dependent on volunteers to man a bus intake point? That was all clearly a ruse. Migrant shelters were very unpopular with mayor's core constituency[1].

> do this orderly, we can handle it

It was not like that it was "we can only take 2 buses total per day any" It was clearly stated in city ordinance. Why are you twisting it into something else. Demand doesn't just drop off just because city decided to rate limit.

I think you are being higly disingenuous here.

Edit: ok i see why from your other comments. You were making a statement not asking a question about cities not wanting migrants.

Anyways, I don't have dog in this fight. I am telling you what the mood was here in south chicago at that time.

https://blockclubchicago.org/2023/05/11/south-shore-neighbor...

Sorry, I should have been more direct. I do not see your example is a verbatim, "we cannot handle this." Your example strikes me as a: "please don't dump everyone on us all at once without telling us first. Spread it out some, give us notice, and don't do it in the middle of the night so that the people who would help are available."

> Chicago doesn't need "volunteers" to handle intake.

I'm just quoting the source, from the previously referenced [1]: "The city says buses can arrive only during daytime hours so volunteers can be available to help."

> Demand doesn't just drop off just because city decided to rate limit.

We agree there was a limit put in place. We have not yet established the intent was to rate limit vs any other plausible explanation. Even if load balancing were not the intent, that does not prove the intent was rate limiting.

OTOH, if we did know the total number of buses, then we could infer rate limiting. Notably if there are more than 14 buses/wk, then the 2 buses per day limit would be a rate limit. If it's 10 busses/wk, then a 2 bus/day max is not a rate limit beyond the 24 hour threshold, which is exactly load balancing.

> Anyways, I don't have dog in this fight. I am telling you what the mood was here in south chicago at that time.

I appreciate that. I can understand that there would have been a tense mood. The way people were 'shipped' to Chicago seemed intended to put high stress on the community receiving them.

> I strongly suspect

> My impression

so i guess its just your interpretation against mine. prbly not productive to discuss this anymore.

anyways kind of boring done to death on internet a million times before :)

I have no doubt these countries exist, but I'm deeply skeptical that they are imitable.

A number of European countries have military or paramilitary forces used for law enforcement when it comes to things such as quelling riots. Here is an example.

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

Cuba, the PRC, North Korea, Russia...

And no country gives whatever it is you're calling due process to illegal immigrants. They deport them. Obama deported hundreds of thousands without any legal hearings.

However, in practice, if you're a citizen, it's pretty easy to prove it. You'll be carrying forms of state-issued ID and you'll have a paper trail that makes it obvious. There's rarely much ambiguity over whether a particular person is here legally or illegally, as much as some might like to pretend there is.

[1] https://apnews.com/article/marcelo-gomes-ice-massachusetts-a...

[1] https://www.npr.org/2025/04/16/nx-s1-5366178/trump-deport-ja...

[2] https://www.npr.org/2024/10/21/nx-s1-5134924/trump-election-...

Virtually every European country gives due process, even in illegal immigration cases. And probably more importantly, the US Constitution requires due process even for cases of illegal immigration.

> Obama deported hundreds of thousands without any legal hearings

But they had due process. He didn't round people up in the streets without the ability to contest government claims of illegal immigration.

The UK certainly does.

The immigrants deported under Obama had due process.

You are just blatantly lying

Not technically military, closer to National Guard.

Obeying illegal orders to attack American citizens on American soil is certainly something, but it isn't law enforcement.

If this were actually about law enforcement, we would have passed the bipartisan border protection / immigration bill that has been on the table for eons.

If it's a true story. Your comment history reads like conservative talking points fabricated by someone pretending to be black or pretending to care about black people. Specifically not like a black conservative.

> These adjacent communities get hit twice because migrant labor also decreases salaries for locals.

If the migrant labor is filling in labor gaps, then no, this is not true. Seems the evidence also disagrees: "Consistently, economists have found that an increase in immigration rates does not cause a drop in wages for U.S.-born workers" [1]

Please provide evidence that your statement is true even in any instance, let alone generally true. The economic impact of migrant labor is quite real, and positive, in terms of taxes and money spent back in the community.

[1]https://immigrationimpact.com/2024/07/09/immigrants-do-not-t...

Is there actually more real context missing here?

I'd suggest doing some light reading on the reliability and integrity of the sources you prefer to get your 'news' from.

Do you actually have any source to support your claim? I mean, MAGA nuts have been swearing for over a decade that there was a torrent of illegal immigrants arriving each day into the country, and that somehow democrats were to blame, but even after Trump's fascist push with it's forced deportations of everyone including US citizens without due process the numbers barely reached 100k. And now we're seeing Trump's ICE thugs mobilizing a small army of agents to assault Home Depot parking lots?

Where are all those illegal immigrants?

The numbers cited by Republican scaremongers like Stephen Miller were probably inflated and derived from CBP border encounters, rather than on how many people were entering the country. But there does seem to have been a significant surge, partly thanks to new immigration programs that made it easier to entering the country while seeking asylum. Deportations seems to have remained high under Biden.

[1] https://www.nytimes.com/2024/12/11/briefing/us-immigration-s...

Sure, it couldn't possibly be anything else like inflation after COVID (which happened globally) that caused incumbents to lose around the world. No, Dems just needed to get this one thing right and they're to blame for Trump. Sure.

EDIT: https://imgur.com/uPJAxEl

I'm pro Trump and have been for many years. I just don't think we would have won if the Dems hadn't handed us the victory. Thank you Democrats!

How has Trump improved our lives and country in his first term?

And how is he improving our lives now?

Trying to understand how HNers, who I’m assuming apply logical thinking, can vote for someone who a) is a convicted criminal b) absolutely not interested in improving your life.

What’s the appeal?

You are happy to agree with nonsensical statements, as long as they imply your side is winning, why?

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

That's led directly to the current mess because it taught people that the most important thing is to get into the country, regardless of legality, so you could be in place when the next amnesty came along.

We know how to stop illegal immigration--you put CEOs in jail for employing illegal immigrants. Illegal immigration stops dead.

"Illegal immigration" is simply a dogwhistle.

Commutation and Pardons under the current regime are signal about what behaviour will be forgiven, ignored, or even outright rewarded.

When they had their big press conference to announce the 900 arrests, reporters asked about plans to investigate the company based on the documentation found.

"That's not in the scope of our investigation. We do not have plans to do that at this time."

To no one's shock, they've never found time to do it since, either.

Undocumented immigrants are too important to the economy, to the tune of over 17.7 billion worth in 2005. (in Texas)

Instead they do things that look great (and check the most important box): border wall (that the US gov pays us for), security forces (that the US gov pays us for), mandating that the sheriffs work with fed agencies (that the US will reimburse them for). But passing a law that requires businesses use a free quick government service to check documents and a small agency to do random audits -- that's to too burdensome on the state's bottom line. Any one that thinks states like Texas actually wants to eliminate undocumented immigration at this point, has simply been hoodwinked.

[0] https://www.texastribune.org/2025/06/05/texas-e-verify-requi...

People wouldn't have continued to come if Conservatives hadn't continued to employ and build business models around undocumented labor. Not addressing the root cause of the problem, employers willing to reward people for coming to the US, is the problem with the Reagan amnesty. Nothing else would have stopped immigration like stopping the reward for immigration would have. But conservatives are addicted to their bottom lines/business special interests and couldn't bring themselves to do what needed doing to stop what they term a 'foreign invasion'. At least the dems do it out of compassion and don't see it as an invasion. The conservatives just allowed the financing of what they see as a 'foreign invasion' for a small share of business special interest dollars.

Really shows the priority of some people here. It's clearly not getting a job.

Without the incentive of employers paying more here than in peoples' home countries the entire problem largely just goes away but let's abduct 1st graders and stage US Marines in American cities.

That is a strange thing to think is to blame. I'll take a guess that you do not live in a (south) border state.

People were taught they could come into the country and (1) find work that (2) paid more than not having work -- when they got paid at all [0] and still less than US workers [1] and the state not only allows it but encourages it. Why? There continues to be a chronic shortage of construction workers to fill jobs. Our housing situation would be far worse if the GOP immigration stance was anything more than a dog and pony show. [2]

The state with the longest south border has refused to require businesses use the fed e-verify system to check work id's, everyone knows they use fake ids. It's not some scandal that Reagan or the "Dems" recently caused. It's simply just the way it always has been. Makes for great rage bait though.

But, we do appreciate all your federal tax dollars paying us to "get tough on immigration"!

Texas, again, failed to pass a bill aimed at conducting a "study of the economic, environmental and financial effects of illegal immigration on the state" -- just the cost mind you. The last study in 2006 found that they contributed more than they cost. Deporting the "estimated 1.4 million undocumented immigrants living in Texas in 2005 would have cost the state about $17.7 billion in GPD." [3] They have since refused to do another study. They know mass deporting immigrants would devastate the economy and growth.

For the undocumented that's been here awhile, it's just another day. Maybe they get unlucky and it's their turn to play a part in the "tough on immigration" hoax. They'll be back in a few days because the state and their employer needs them and no one will bat an eye when the cameras are off. Which is why we should be taking note of the extremes Trump is going to, there is something else to it; else his buddies in Texas would have passed those bills last month.

[0] https://www.texastribune.org/2016/12/16/undocumented-workers...

[1] https://www.fosterglobal.com/news/report_half_of_tx_construc... [pdf]

[2] https://www.texastribune.org/2025/06/05/texas-e-verify-requi...

[3] https://www.texastribune.org/2024/12/06/texas-undocumented-i...

It is absolutely not. It is politics 101: you are the only one who can solve a problem.

War on Drugs, War on Terror.

It's no mistake that the War on Drugs and the War on Terror were both radical increases in authoritarian power, both of which were implemented by Republicans as part of right-wing approaches to addressing both perceived and real threats.

Yes, those are political objectives, but the entire point of calling them out as fascist is to distinguish them from other anti-fascist political objectives which seek to reduce or constrain the power of the state, or to strengthen human rights guaranteed by the state.

In between republican presidents there were also Democrat presidents and they did zero to put a stop to any of them. Zero. Using your logic above, both types of presidents are fascist in nature since they followed the same policies.

What I am saying is that when the state takes power from the people, it (almost) never gives it back. Just like with laws, repealing them is a gargantuan task and again, almost no will to do it. Taxes, they go up more then they ever go down.