I don't think it's about the numbers at all -- he's seeing whether anybody will stop him from nakedly violating posse comitatus[1].
The President can of course dispatch the military for domestic law enforcement, but to do so he needs to establish a legal exception, like the Insurrection Act. That hasn't happened yet.
The text is indeed simple, and directly contradicts the President’s authority here:
> Orders for these purposes shall be issued through the governors of the States or, in the case of the District of Columbia, through the commanding general of the National Guard of the District of Columbia.
To surpass that, the president must declare an insurrection. But he’s done no such thing, since such a claim is nakedly indefensible.
(This justification of course only applies to the national guard. The federal armed forces have even stronger guardrails.)
He does not have to care anymore. He realised he will not be prosecuted - the supreme court gave him king status after all, and all prosecution before failed to have consequences - so he can do whatever he wants. As you said, he checks if there is anyone who will stop him, which at this point would be an armed revolution or a coup d'État by the military.
The USA is a dictatorship now, the trump cult has won. Let's hope it crumbles fast.
I worry that, rather than de-escalation, one of the White House’s explicit goals here is to stage manage a Kent State-like demonstration of state force against left-wing activists that spreads to other cities. I sincerely hope I’m cynically wrong here.
You're not cynical; it's his plain, revealed character. He's been openly fantasizing about soldiers shooting protestors for years. He's asked his own defense secretary if he could do it for him,
Obama deported millions with relatively little pushback. Because he did not deny anyone due process.
Everybody has a requirement for due process. It's the only constitutional way to prove someone is an illegal alien, or overstayed their welcome, or has a history.
You cannot "enforce existing immigration laws" by ignoring due process, because they are a requirement of existing immigration laws
> Obama deported millions with relatively little pushback. Because he did not deny anyone due process.
This is blatantly inaccurate. Obama administration frequently used expedited removal to deport people without hearings. Don't take my word for it, a simple Google search will serve you well.
existing laws require permits, and don't let them raid elementary schools for minors and courthouses for those going through the legal process. We just "mistakenly" sent a US ciizen to a foreign country to a month, ignoring a 9-0 Supreme court order to delay the process to bring him home.
If this is action you agree with, just say so. But the books do not support this.
There is no law against apprehending illegal aliens in courthouses. It might be a bad idea in terms of optics and public policy but it doesn't appear to be specifically illegal.
I'm confused-do you support peaceful protest, or do you think that protests always descend into anarchy and require assault rifles to be brought out to kill some people?
How many people should have been shot on January 6 2021? If this is what you actually think, please make an affirmative statement saying lots of people should have been shot. If you won't, then I can't really take your statement above seriously.
We can’t have people going around and killing other people, but we can’t have people going around and destroying property. It might sound noble to have this idea that we would always put life ahead of property but many of us have property valuable enough that it could be cashed in and used to save lives yet we chose not to do so. I think people are far more ready to spend on virtue with the destruction of others property rather than their own.
A vast, open one with a nearly 1000 page document outlining their plan hosted on their website whose primary operatives are now high-level government officials.
Hard to believe? That's exactly what they're relying on: they think people are too stupid to believe there's an actual radical white-supremacist Christian Theocratic movement working to destroy the United States. It's the biggest known internal existential threat of the last 150 years and our corporate media and political environment has resulted in conditions that have enabled it to manifest nearly unchallenged.
So the Heritage Foundation (a conservative thinktank) wrote a document about their conservative vision for America (a pretty standard move for a thinktank), ergo the Trump administration is a sockpuppet for the Heritage Foundation and is carrying out its vision? Sounds like a conspiracy theory, alright.
Who are these "primary operatives" who became "high-level officials"?
> Hard to believe? That's exactly what they're relying on
>In the 2024 presidential election, 73.6% (or 174 million people) of the citizen voting-age population was registered to vote and 65.3% (or 154 million people) voted according to new voting and registration tables released today by the U.S. Census Bureau.
Moreover, due to the electoral college and Senate and gerrymandering of House districts, the majority is hardly needed for attain power. I bet that even in other societies, throughout time, roughly a third of the population will not react to what one of the other thirds is doing (even if they claim they don't approve in polls).
No, it's not what happened... The election was not won with 35% of the popular vote...
Again, if you insist on talking about "35% of people in the US" rather than "35% of voters", then fine, but I think it's a weird way to talk about it. We don't know what the people who didn't vote thought about the candidates. Voting is the way that we find that out!
>if you insist on talking about "35% of people in the US" rather than "35% of voters", then fine, but I think it's a weird way to talk about it.
When were talking about adhering to a dangerous status quo, the conversation makes sense. A status quo of boring beauracracy can be defendable. A status quo of fascism, much less so. Thars why conversations in 2025 are like this.
Even then:remember Trump still had a 40% approval rating after all this.
Most numbers I can find say that about 65% of Americans are registered to vote. Let’s say 100% of them voted in 2024.
Of that, let’s call it a flat 51% voted for Trump. That means that about half of 65%, or roughly 32.5% of American citizens support Trump, and by extension, likely this policy move.
So yes, it actually is more than you need to win elections.
Didn't Trump say we won't have to worry about elections anymore?
What's stopping them to do enough fuckery between now and 2028 to "win" the GOP the election in 2028 (or even 2026), and to stop Trump from joining the ranks of despots that keep getting reelected like Putin and Erdogan? Or JD Vance can be his Medvedev.
To use a horrible analogy, a lot of times women don't even admit to themselves that they've been raped, because accepting that means accepting a horrific label. The USA is in the middle of getting raped, and so far the response has been to mostly freeze up and take it, not wanting to fight, because that is scary and can get you hurt even more. (Well, at least for the majority of the country there isn't a real fightback yet...).
I'm giving it until 2028. I'm not even fully convinced Trump makes it that far. But if that comes to fruition, then yes. I would support California joining Canada.
Trump has already joined those ranks, he just failed at it. January 6th was a legitimate attempt at overturning the election results. He was impeached over it. Mike Pence was the only thing that stopped it, and I can’t believe how close we actually came to that timeline.
And you’re absolutely right about the denial. It manifests as the “nothing ever happens” meme.
That was a very different time, as you must be aware. We did not have anything like the same polarization or the accelerating effect of the internet coupled with all-out information warfare across a 24-7 news cycle. I could go on for 1000 words about how different society is from 60 years ago.
The majority of non-city dwellers I know are now so propagandized against cities that I think they would be neutral to outright supportive of a kill order.
This is a dire situation and I'm not sure how this country crawls back out of this authoritarian slide, but we've got to somehow.
The day after Kent State, a Gallup poll found 58% of polled Americans blamed the students for being shot. 31% had no opinion, and 11% blamed the National Guard.
After the National Guard shot a few kids for literally no reason (nobody had ever been given orders to fire), they told the student standing around "Disperse or we will shoot again"
This has never been a problem for the party of Roger Stone who literally has a large back tattoo of Nixon and is one of the primary reasons we had Bush Jr as president even though Al Gore won the votes when the count was allowed to finish
I think the goal hear is to "both sides" the concept of insurrection to neuter the January 6th criticism of his administration. The protesters here, at least in some cases, are doing their protests explicitly to prevent the government from enforcing laws that the protestors don't like.
Instead it makes Jan 6th look worse as Congress asked for national guard and Trump did nothing. Newsom condemned the use of military and Trump did it anyway.
>explicitly to prevent the government from enforcing laws that the protestors don't like.
100+ policemen died on Jan 6th. What's the body count here?
I was too loose with my words, apologies. "casualties" was the word I was looking for.
Wikipedia says as much, since the government itself took down their page:
>Within 36 hours, five people died: one was shot by the Capitol Police, another died of a drug overdose, and three died of natural causes, including a police officer who died of a stroke a day after being assaulted by rioters and collapsing at the Capitol.[d][34][45] Many people were injured, including 174 police officers. Four officers who responded to the attack died by suicide within seven months.[35] Damage caused by attackers exceeded $2.7 million.[46]
"Within 36 hours" is doing a lot of work here. Zero cops died as a result of the protests.
Officer Sicknick (the cop who died of a stroke the next day) was pepper-sprayed by rioters, but not physically assaulted in a way which might cause a stroke. He did not collapse at the capital on Jan 6, but at 10PM the following day (your confusion on this point is understandable, given that the Wiki article deceptively implies that he collapsed on Jan 6). His autopsy found that his death was due to "natural causes".
The gaslighting around Jan 6 is really outrageous.
Oh speaking of gaslighting, what is this horseshit?
"Not physically assaulted in a way which might cause a stroke" - you're right, I can imagine no way in which hitting someone in the head multiple times with a fire extinguisher might cause a hemorrhagic stroke, a literal bleed in the brain. Versus a spontaneous stroke, which at his age would affect 0.03% of the population to even occur, let alone be actively fatal, especially when the person was already in the hospital being monitored for the injuries TO THEIR HEAD.
That's the absolute risk for a 42-year-old individual having a stroke in the US in that year, a 1 in 1.2M risk that it happened in the 24 hours following that.
Poor Officer Sicknick, had the shit beat out of him and then suffered a 1 in a million "unrelated" stroke in the same 24 hours!
> His autopsy found that his death was due to "natural causes".
I love that you leave out the next fucking sentence, that even if you are playing pedant, still says this: "that the events that transpired on January 6 played a role in his death".
Piss off with the gaslighting bullshit. Yes, the Capitol Police issued a statement... as little more than damage control.
I can appreciate where you're coming from. Lies and liars piss me off, too. But it's simply a fact that Sicknick was not struck by a fire extinguisher. That claim was published repeatedly by many mainstream outlets (who happily spread all manner of lies in the immediate aftermath of Jan 6) based on "anonymous sources", but yhere is zero evidence that it happened.
I wonder how many civilians will be disappeared before a Dem governor finds their balls and musters the state militia. There’s millions of patriots out there just waiting for the call to action. This nonviolent shit will get you killed. MLK was a gun owner.
If that kind of talk worries you, consider how much uglier it will be when the good people of LA form unregulated militias instead. Do you really want to see Ruby Ridge 2: Rooftop Korean boogaloo?
I really don't think it would be a good idea to throw more guns into this mix. That will not help any protester and it will help Trump justify his decision to send the military, to his supporters. It will also escalate things. I'm sure most marines will be very hesitant to use force against unarmed American civilians. Half of them wouldn't even have voted for Trump. But if they're up against a militia all bets are off.
The idea of unregulated blue state militias has me chuckling a bit, given how said states have largely neutered their citizen's ability to own capable rifles.
We are to depend on our trusted local law enforcement to protect us, as well as our valiant governors who will assuredly call up local guards to do the same. Examples of brave, novel Democratic resistance to Trump abound these days. There's no need to worry!
It’s a nice lie the right tells themselves, that there isn’t one long gun for every military-age liberal already in friendly partisan hands. This country is so flooded with guns, that it spills over to Mexico, a country where guns are almost completely banned. Our sloppy seconds enable the cartels to fight on even footing with the Mexican Army.
Most of our GWOT veterans tend to despise the Republican Party for what should be obvious reasons. Chicago famously has no guns too, am I right? The cognitive dissonance is honestly astounding.
Honestly though, guns really only go so far. They’re useful for making yourself more trouble to fuck with than you’re worth to cowardly paramilitary thugs. They’d rather go abduct first graders and unarmed adults in the final stages of becoming US citizens, than risk suddenly finding out they’re in the middle of Ruby Ridge 2. Guns are more of a self defense tool. Ukraine and Iran have proven in recent years that drones are far more useful to an insurgency than guns. That constant hum, like a swarm of bees, constantly threatening a slow and painful death, destroys the enemy’s will to live, never mind fight. You see videos of Russian orcs just sitting there, almost catatonic, as the drone finally puts them out of their misery.
Soldiers, especially Marines, are trained to follow orders and kill. They are not specialists in de-escalation or crowd control.
Here's hoping this is purely an optics play and they are only there to waste money and incite nationalism. Because if this escalates in any way and the US military turns on Americans, its hard to understate how bad things could get.
I’m not sure that’s true any more. I know a few vets and it was definitely thought-provoking to hear a Marine who’d been in the thick of Fallujah react to some police shooting by noting that they had stricter rules about use of force because the top brass wanted to get the Iraqi people on their side.
Every city in the US has illegal aliens, but how many ICE raids are making the news in places like St. Louis, or New Orleans, or Houston - no, they aren't sending ICE to red states like they are to California, they are focusing on Los Angeles for the purpose of fomenting unrest so they can enact martial law. That wouldn't be so cool for their supporters if red states had riots, but their supporters love seeing liberal California with a boot on its neck.
Not that I totally disagree with your statement but one part....
I live in a very red state (North Idaho). They don't need to send ICE here. The sheriffs are all cooperating and lending county facilities to hold immigrants. It is safe to say the entire sheriffs department is basically a branch of ICE at this point.
They have been targeting I-90 and US-95 heavily and running plates on every car along with a helicopter that basically just goes back and forth all day.
There is very little immigrant presence here (illegal or otherwise) but they have been catching work crews at random (usually under the premise of suspicious vehicle/behavior).
Spokane has been having CBP and ICE raids as well. Quite a few make the local news. Just doesn't get the attention like the larger cities do. Quite a bit of roundups going on out by Yakima and Tri-Cities, WA too. Which is part of why they are using county jails to hold people.
If it was ever true, it hasn't been true for a long time.
There used to be (and probably still is) a saying in the US military that goes something like "Folks who can't hack it in the military wash out and become cops.".
The military is not at all configured to be an effective long-term occupying force, but its personnel are trained to be soldiers [0] and peacekeepers. (While I'm absolutely certain that one can find examples of psychos that should have been detected and discharged earlier, that's true of any sufficiently-large organization. Finding every malicious person is a task that's next to impossible.)
Anyway, in a high-pressure, chaotic situation, I'd rather come up on a random member of the US military [1] than a random cop any day of the week.
[0] Yes, this does mean that they damage, destroy, injure, and kill when required.
[1] Whether active duty, reservist, or honorably discharged.
> Here's hoping this is purely an optics play and they are only there to waste money and incite nationalism
They don't deserve any benefit of the doubt at this point. Ask yourself what the MAGA reaction would've been to troops being deployed to their riot at the Capitol.
Your neighbor's car and business are 100% safe from protesters, unless your neighbor is a fed.
You realize that this is all happening in a very small part of LA, which is an absolutely enormous metropolitan area with more than 10 million residents. The cars being torched are Waymos (which have been happily recording video that is turned over to authorities at request, instead of by warrant -- this action will keep them out of the protest zones) and no businesses are being harmed. The ones being violent are in uniform (even LAPD is saying that protesters are peaceful and those who are violent are people who are frequently violent and showed up for the fight, which is telling on themselves more than a bit).
For 99% of Angelenos, this weekend could have been business as usual if they chose to ignore the federal threats to their neighbors. Millions went to farmers markets, kids birthday parties, church, and all of the other regular weekend activities. The city has not been invaded by anyone other than feds, it is not a war zone, it's not even close to a riot. You are being lied to and manipulated if you believe any of that.
And this week, many residents who have the privilege of doing so are standing in line to barricade the entrance to schools that are hosting graduation ceremonies, so abuelas can celebrate the end of elementary school without being terrified of being kidnapped by men in masks. This is how the community protects its own, and a lot of other places could learn from that if they gave a shit.
In LA, the guys standing outside of Home Depot are the kind of guys that a woman would feel safe telling that they're carrying cash, invite them into their car, and bring them to their house... alone. These are not dangers to anyone.
LAPD and especially LASD, on the other hand, aren't the kind of guys who are safe alone with their own wives.
For those who don’t know the reference: This quote is from a journalist who tries to make a protest with a few billion dollars private property set on fire (BLM), pass a peaceful, with fire as the decorum of the journalist. It ignited the moods because the speech was obviously contradicted by the background, highlighting that journalists invert reality and are missioned for propaganda (by whom, nobody knows).
And then “the People” voted for Trump. It’s probable there is massive support for the current deployment of forces. The protestors themselves probably aren’t the real target of this episode, it’s probably rather about highlighting the lack of will and complacency of the Californian structures in establishing order.
I stand by the statement. Waymo is not being meaningfully harmed here.
Waymo's jaguars are well insured -- this does not harm Alphabet in any meaningful way (and certainly not in the "Your neighbor's small business" context that was the context of the post). They shouldn't have been in the area (the taxis weren't), and they absolutely shouldn't be helping law enforcement quite so voluntarily with their video surveillance.
If you want LA to go back to "normal", get ICE, USMC and the federalized guard out of there. They are the problem. Your tax dollars are paying for this charade, and if nothing else, you should be pissed about that.
The Homeland Security Secretary today described LA as a "city of criminals". It's hard to see how it could be anything but willful ignorance or self-delusion at this point to think that the Trump administration's intention is to protect LA residents.
I live there and very few of us are cheering the military. We get protests like this in LA all the time. TBH, these protests are nothing compared to what happens when the Lakers or Dodgers win a championship.
And the protestors aren't the problem; the problem are the looters using the protestors as cover. The looters mostly belong to the retail theft gangs that have been plaguing stores across the country (even in red states) since COVID.
This started with rioters attacking the legitimate authorities (ICE) as they tried to enforce long-established law that most of the population supports (you can't be in the country without citizenship, visa, or similar authorisation). Escalating to the national guard and ultimately the military is established best practice when the rule of law breaks down in a given locality. No fascism there (if anything, letting rioters run wild as long as they're going after the undesirables is a well known fascist tactic)
Not saying I agree with the deployment, but as someone who was in this gun club this isn’t true at all and hasn’t been for some time. IIRC basic de-escalation was taught in recruit training.
I suspect that whatever training the military provides is more than what LAPD officers get. LAPD is talking a good game this time around but ABC broadcast footage of mounted LAPD officers trying to get their horses to stomp someone who was on the ground, prone, and not resisting.
Reminder that the authority under which the the US military is deployed against US citizens was intended to be used in exceptional (extreme) circumstances - ostensibly because no other options would suffice.
The Insurrection Act authorizes the president to deploy
military forces inside the United States to suppress rebellion
or domestic violence or to enforce the law in certain situations.
The statute implements Congress’s authority under the Constitution
to "provide for calling forth the Militia to execute the Laws of
the Union, suppress Insurrections and repel Invasions."
It is the primary exception to the Posse Comitatus Act,
under which federal military forces are generally barred
from participating in civilian law enforcement activities.
This is the heaviest hammer in the toolbox. Deploying it against citizens he doesn't like because he resents their message is a historical display of bad character and is profoundly unethical in a way that the harshest adjectives struggle to reflect.
Do you approve of the way ICE is going about their business? What I see is Gestapo-like behavior that deserves protest, which is being responded to with unnecessarily violent force by ICE.
There's nothing in the text that suggests it is appropriate to preemptively deploy US military in response to protests, not even because the administration deems protestors to be enemies.
Narratives in support of preemptively deploying the military against protesters are all crafted justifications, each built after the act has been decided on.
What's left to for apologists to do is to choose whether to own the methods and intentions or mirror the administration's disingeniousness.
> There's nothing in the text that suggests it is appropriate to preemptively deploy US military in response to protests, not even because the administration deems protestors to be enemies.
Would blockading federal offices not qualify under the third condition?
> (3) the President is unable with the regular forces to execute the laws of the United States;
That’s the usual dictator and wannabe dictator playbook. Cause a problem, declare a national emergency and from there take over. The military is an excellent tool for that.
They are being targeted for breaking into another country illegally. I'll never understand anyone who thinks it's OK to welcome anyone who's first act in the US is committing a federal crime by breaking in.
The US spent a lot of time assassinating democratically elected leaders is South American and Central America for decades, along with tons of psychological warfare and economic sanctions.
This, along with bullish economic policies to get them to capitulate to demands of US-homed multinationals (along with plenty of their own internal problems like everywhere else), has caused a problem that has now come home to roost.
It wasn't their fault, they were just born in the wrong country. If they can make it here to work and build a better life for themselves, great. Pay taxes. Get ID'd. Done.
As I said above, I'm not afraid of being deported, but I am concerned about the lack of due process for people being deported. Due process is the core of our democracy and once it's removed for some people, it's removed for everyone. I have zero issue with deporting people that shouldn't be here, but they are owed their day in court to make their case. That is why I'm protesting.
We tried that. Nothing has changed since then - if anything he has consolidated more power.
Republicans would have to lose a lot of seats for it to happen. Or, Trump would do something beyond the pale for the GOP. Hard to imagine what would make them change their minds on it. Probably not thousands of dead protesters.
I have no knowledge of this area of law, but responsible press are saying he can deploy NG and Marines to defend federal property and employees without anything special.
> Approximately 700 Marines with 2nd Battalion, 7th Marines, 1st Marine Division will seamlessly integrate with the Title 10 forces under Task Force 51 who are protecting federal personnel and federal property in the greater Los Angeles area.
It seems like Trump has not invoked the insurrection act but instead it’s all under a different federal law. Steve Vladeck, a Georgetown law professor, has a write up [2] on Title 10 vs the Insurrection Act and some possible concerns. He posted this about the National guard but given the military release states they are being deployed to assist the nation guard under title 10 it still seems relevant. To quote the TL;DR of his post:
> The TL;DR here is that Trump has not (yet) invoked the Insurrection Act, which means that the 2000 additional troops that will soon be brought to bear will not be allowed to engage in ordinary law enforcement activities without violating a different law—the Posse Comitatus Act. All that these troops will be able to do is provide a form of force protection and other logistical support for ICE personnel. Whether that, in turn, leads to further escalation is the bigger issue (and, indeed, may be the very purpose of their deployment). But at least as I’m writing this, we’re not there yet.
What can a soldier do to protect federal property or personel that is not law enforcement? Manual labor to throw up barriers seems to be the only option. Anything else requires violence, which only law enforcement can do legally I thought. Unless perhaps they intend to 'use self defense'. But intent kinda defeats self defense.
As a result, we have people like Trump and Musk, both narcissists and sociopaths, at the White House.
Growing up, I dreamed about going to US, but was born on the wrong side of the Iron Curtain. As I got older and visited the country, it somewhat cooled my dreamed (Europe progressed dramatically in the meantime).
And now I feel a bit nostalgic and disoriented to be honest - what I once regarded as the country with the highest standards of ethics, integrity and rule of law, is unfortunately proving once again that no empire lasts forever. Of course it's a bit too soon as the US is still a superpower, but it definitely feels like the tide turned and really quickly.
You'd have police shoot into a crowd of people because rocks got thrown?
edit: I got throttled, as is the case on HN when things get "active". Here is my response to koolba:
---
At a head? Sure.
Do I think police can get rough and "in it" with civilians without live fire and without the use of the US Military? Yes.
Do I think, when a sufficient bloc of a city rebels against its law enforcement, then maybe the law enforcement should reconsider what they're enforcing? Also yes.
I disagree with the premise that the State is always right and that their monopoly on violence is absolute.
We celebrate the US revolution and revolutions across the world when governments act illegally and against the will of the people, violating civil rights.
I would not support firing into a crowd of people because of minor property damage.
> So you are saying, some people in the crowd throw rocks, therefore, innocent people in the crowd should also die?
I'm not suggesting they police should just blindly open fire on the crowd. But if you are in a crowd that turns violent and starts attacking the police, I think it's reasonable to expect some collateral damage in whatever their response is going to be.
> So you are saying, guy throws rock. Now he has no rock. He should be shot despite having no rock?
Yes. Or are you suggesting that if a guy shoots a gun and misses, then we should we wait for him to reload too? If the guy does not drop down on all fours and assume the position, I think it's reasonable for police to shoot someone throwing rocks at them.
> So you are saying, police riot gear is useless against rocks?
I doubt it's some invincible force field. They could still get hurt. And the police are there not just for their own safety. They are there to protect everybody. If someone is throwing rocks it could hit non police as well.
I do find it incredible the lengths people will go to argue in favor of violence to defend law breakers.
It does make a big difference in the fight for hearts and minds.
The reason why non-violent protest works is not because it prevents escalation, but because when escalation does inevitably happen, the masses will think the escalation was unwarranted and be sympathetic to the protestors. The worst possible thing for a protest movement to do is scaring the masses, since then they will flock to the state for "protection" and give the state carte blanche to get the situation under control.
> The reason why non-violent protest works is not because it prevents escalation, but because when escalation does inevitably happen, the masses will think the escalation was unwarranted and be sympathetic to the protestors.
The problem with your opinion is that it leaves out the fact that one side is deeply involved in ensuring this escalation takes place, either in fact or in appearance only.
So regardless of what protestors are doing, or even who infiltrated protests to inflame and escalate events, the Trump administration is hell bent on having these protests escalate.
That's great for the non Trump side!
If the 'theory of change' is we will protest peacefully, get the authorities to violently surpress us to get wide sympathy and show the wider world how horrible the government is. Then you want a trigger happy authority, so that the disproportionate response is as disproportionate as possible.
I think people greatly overestimate the importance of respectability and majority approval in mass protest movements. The protest has to be disruptive enough to affect the powerful, and approachable enough for sufficient people to join.
For all the work that MLK and his coalition did to practice nonviolence and to appear respectable, they were always disliked by the majority of the public. Being liked by the public is not a prerequisite to getting results. If you focus too much on respectibility, the impact of what you can do decreases until it hits YouGov petition levels.
I think there is a world of difference between being "annoying" or not "respectable" and being threatening.
Being annoying can be quite beneficial to a protest. It brings attention and forces people to think about you. There is a point after which it turns people off, and becomes a net negative, but you usually have to be very annoying for that to happen.
Being scary is entirely different thing though. When people are afraid they tend to become closed off to new ideas, and look to strong leaders. You absolutely don't want that in a protest.
> The protest has to be disruptive enough to affect the powerful, and approachable enough for sufficient people to join.
I think the ultimate point of a protest is to reach the ordinary people who aren't part of a movement. Movements succede and fail not by how much they convince the die hard supporters, but by how much they convinced average uninvolved people.
My challenge to you is to take a successful movement from the past and really look into whether people were afraid of that movement. You might be surprised at what you find. People were effectively fearmongering about every movement.
Nonviolent protest doesn't need to be respectable. It needs the moral high ground. That means you need to goad the enforcement to use violence against you.
This doesn't just work by getting the public on your side. It works by showing that you are not repressed by fear. Fear is how facists rule, so showing others they don't need to fear, that they can decide not to fear, that is the real threat to authority.
That means they will abuse you to make others fear. When that happens, you need it to trigger outrage as widely as possible.
Yeah I think you're missing the point that even nonviolent protesters have the goal of causing escalation. They want you to see them being beaten by the police. They want to trick the powers that be into showing plainly the force of their raw hatred, which is normally hidden behind what appears to be regular soulless bureaucracy.
Isn't it going to take a tipping point to get republicans to impeach Trump, or at least reign him in?
And if Trump isn't reigned in, it seems to me the US will backslide into authoritarian (light) facism.
So a tipping point is required. ideally you engineer it to more likely tip the right way. But doing nothing because otherwise it might reinforce the status quo, will guarantee the status quo.
Horribly, this means one of the best possible outcomes is an unprovoked massacre by these Marines, ordered by Trump.
I've seen a number of people on social media thanking others for neutralising tear gas, so it's definitely happening. Maybe just not evenly distributed.
This is terrifying and unconscionable. Hard to believe this is the USA today. I don’t really see this de-escalating given the ongoing rhetoric but I hope I’m wrong.
I'm not american but I remember marines being mobilized for hurricane Katrina in New Orleans too. Funny that if it's so bad to deploy them, why is it OK to deploy them in other countries?
The deportation isn't the problem. It's how they're being done. Due process is core to our democracy and must be respected and followed, regardless of who. Court orders are being ignored.
I have zero problem with deporting people that are here illegally. I have plenty of problems with how it's currently being done.
Kinda seems like they're randomly grabbing people and shipping them to Mexico right now. Their MO so far has been to round up people, including people who are here legally, and deport them without due process.
Article 13 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights asserts that:
"Everyone has the right to freedom of movement and residence within the borders of each state."
"Everyone has the right to leave any country, including his own, and to return to his country."
Note that this affords the freedom to relocate within, leave, and return to one’s country, not the freedom to enter into other countries in violation of their immigration laws.
ICE is deporting folks before due process - a right guaranteed to all persons on US soil by amendment to the US Constitution. That is against the laws of the USA.
I would note they aren’t guilty of a crime - it’s a civil infraction. “Illegal” is a pejorative used to imply criminality, being an undocumented immigrant is not in fact criminal or a crime.
The issue however that prompted the protests was the way they are pursuing deportations with militarized tactics, brutality, and snatching people off the streets as abductions. They do not declare themselves, do not present their civil warrant, do not produce identification, and subsequently frequently do not follow laws, regulation, or the constitutional requirements of due process.
There is no reason that their neighbors, family, and friends need to be happy with what’s happening. They are afforded protection in our society to be angry and disclaim the government without fear of persecution or prosecution. When they’re then persecuted and prosecuted for doing that, people are pissed by the injustice. Then when their governments responsible is to fly in the military, you should expect an explosive situation.
Indeed it seems pretty clear the explosive situation was premeditated and planned - using armored vehicles and riot armored police to invade immigrant neighborhoods and abduct service workers and day laborers in broad daylight when a simple standard ICE operation was clearly designed to provoke strong response in those neighborhoods. Everything after that has been pretty deductively arrived at to create this precise situation. Even the language of insurrection and rebellion - laughably absurd claims for even a riot - which hadn’t happened until the national guard were deployed - are carefully chosen words to provide pretext for what comes next.
I desperate miss the states rights individual freedoms libertarian leaning republicans. They would never have done these things.
> The issue however that prompted the protests was the way they are pursuing deportations with militarized tactics, brutality, and snatching people off the streets as abductions.
Also that they’re going after many people who are actually attempting to comply with the law, because those are the easiest to find. Meanwhile tens of millions of undocumented immigrants are still here, and the lesson they’re being taught is don’t trust the legal process, stay under the radar. In the end the Trump administration is unlikely to make a large dent in the undocumented population - they certainly haven’t so far. It’s mostly theater. They’ll just end up discovering how unintended consequences work.
ICE agents are also deporting a lot of people here legally. Just last week: they attempted to deport and ban the wife of a U.S. soldier visiting her husband on leave with a valid tourist visa ; several U.S. citizens working for at the Westlake Home Depot despite being shown proof of citizenship; a U.S. Marshall of Mexican descent who was born in the country to legal residents.
That doesn't include the hundreds of students legally here on student visas.
And of course, if ICE is going to deport people in the country illegally: it's well establish by now that Musk and Melania violated the terms of their nonresident visas when they first came to the U.S., rendering their U.S. citizenship null and void (Musk worked in violation of his student visa; Melania both worked in violation of her tourist visa and overstayed her visa by several years; if she hadn't married Trump she would have been deported and banned from the U.S. for 10 years).
Are they? What about the ones that aren't here illegally? Trump told the Supreme Court that Kilmar Garcia was wrongfully deported, but they had no obligation to bring him back anyway. Is that what you are talking about?
How will any outside observe be able to tell the difference between them 'guarding federal buildings' and them being deployed to attack political enemies of the regime?
Will a useful idiot throwing a rock at a federal building be sufficient casus belli for the latter?
Lol at Katrina the police and guard were going door to door confiscating arms of occupied homes in blatant violation of the second amendment. There is a video if a guardsman bragging about something to the effect 'hoping he doesn't have to smoke someone coming around a corner."
As it turns out when you send a force trained only to kill and subjugate, that's what they do. A few guardsman stood down but most did not.
National Guard and Army Corps of Engineers are often deployed in disasters to help. This is the opposite and the governor of California specifically did not request this so Trump usurped his authority.
Yes. The American President is supposed to look out for Americans. First. That's what Trump was elected to do. Not trash out economy at the global and local levels.
Looking out for Americans is precisely what he's doing by deporting illegals. Of course people who are in a position of wealth are not affected by their existence so they think there’s no issue.
> They're deployed because of the riots, not illegal immigration
The riots got worse after they were deployed. Obviously. They're being deployed because we have a drunk for SecDef, a basket case in Stephen Miller and flagging illegal-immigrant arrest numbers that are making Homan look incompetent. So we get theatrics. Sort of like the tariffs.
The elites have been stealing the surplus wealth from offshoring for decades under the Republican party's fake refrain of "fiscal responsibility", and now that the jig is up after our country's industrial base has been hollowed out you fall right for their ploy to blame a scapegoat instead. smh
Trump is doing exactly what his voters wanted. They wanted exactly these economic policies, exactly these anti-democratic policies, exactly these anti-science policies, exactly this harm to everyone who is being harmed except themselves.
It is not just Trump. he represents what conservatives, republicans and their voters are. And this is enabled by consistent pretension that Trump is an secretly opposed aberration. No, he is admired both publicly and secretly.
> The Insurrection Act of 1807 [...] empowers the president [...] to nationally deploy the U.S. military [...] in specific circumstances, such as the suppression of civil disorder [...]
I’m willing to defer to mods on this one, but Aussie slang is full of warm put downs for ‘mericans, but I would hesitate to call the comment in question derogatory in nature.
tl;dr: it’s rhyming slang, Yank (USA person who may/may not also be one of the two Australian stereotypes of Americans, the other one being Texans) rhymes with (septic) tank, shortened to the euphemism used by OP
Thanks, I’m an American who is related to Australians and has lived in Australia. Since we both have standing to speak and both know how it’s used, I think it’s fair to say that I said this for the rest of the class, as I am a regular here and had an inkling you’re Australian.
Words like that have a complicated past. They may be have been used with a veneer of friendliness but in truth they’re diminutive or derisive. The person I replied to here has used it repeatedly in a derisive way on HN. We wouldn’t tolerate equivalent words being used for Asian people or others of different origins. I haven’t heard the word used in ordinary conversation for decades, hence it’s jarring to see it here.
> The person I replied to here has used it repeatedly in a derisive way on HN.
I think this is kind of an interesting point, because you mention Asian people, but "American" isn't a race. To certain readings, racism is prejudice plus power. In this setup, America is a hegemon establishment power. To dismiss someone or their views just because they're from the US doesn't sound nice, and I don't see how using the term would improve the tenor or tempo of the discussion, but as you surely know, cheekiness is a common trait of Australians. That's why I brought it up, as it's well and good and arguably just to be direct and to the point about not using that kind of talk on HN, because that's what your mod hat is for. I acknowledge and respect that you're doing what you're supposed to do. I simply wanted to gently acknowledge that whatever point that they were making, however poorly it might be phrased, was part and parcel to the derision that you're speaking of. I don't know if it's a very interesting or compelling point when stripped of its emotional language, but our words perhaps say more about ourselves than that which we speak of. I think it's good to be clear about what it is that is bad, not simply that it is bad.
You know better than I what is bad posting for HN, as what might be within the norms of acceptable speech down under would make many English-speaking people blush. I think the post was more heat than light myself, but if they'd said it any other way, we wouldn't be having this interaction, which is arguably what HN is for, interacting with each other in a way that encourages curiosity about the topic and about each other.
Then again, most people aren't super curious about HN metacommentary, so I better wrap this up. Appreciate the context.
HN isn’t a platform for expressing hatred, and that’s an unqualified good thing. I’m reminded of some writer, who wrote about how happy families are all alike, and how unhappy families are unhappy in their own unique way. There are so few things it takes to make it go right, and there are so many ways that good things can go wrong.
If tone policing limits the Overton Window of acceptable speech because it is not sufficiently positive, that becomes a kind of expectation for self-censorship, which is contrary to the HN guidelines which promote curious, free expression. Negative expressions can inflame the passions and can be antithetical to building a healthy community, but if the only acceptable negative expressions must be clinical in tone at worst, many legitimate expressions of content will be disqualified due to unauthorized discontent.
Thanks for the reference, by the way. I should collect a list of them. My current favorite is in my bio on here.
The marines were deployed in New Orleans to help in hospitals, distribute food and water, and specialists in search and rescue. That is a very different context.
Most people here in CA who aren’t Democrats believe that Newsom is a partisan hack and that he and his policies are completely ineffective at keeping Californians safe from dangerous criminals, so his lack of requesting help is mostly being viewed as his typical “agenda over reality” orientation.
> his lack of requesting help is mostly being viewed as his typical “agenda over reality” orientation
Most people don't understand why we have the system of laws that we do. Most Americans couldn't design a stable republic the way our founders did. (Most of their contemporaries couldn't either.)
Nothing about deporting illegal immigrants requires calling in the Marines. Nothing about this situation makes their deployment in Los Angeles legal. Performative hackery is practiced by both sides. Desecrating the honour of our armed forces used to be bipartisan, but I guess that's no longer the case.
It's a salami tactic, that's how democracies are turning into autocracies, slice by slice. This is something new to you, but people who experienced this firsthand see what's going on in the US as an obvious road to autocratic rule. Then another Rubicon will be crossed, and another, one by one, little steps, until someday you will find yourself in a totally different country after all the steps converge into a different political system.
Did the President during the LA protest of the beating of an unarmed person ever say they wanted to be a dictator?
I edited this post because riots implies they weren't burning down their own neighborhoods because they didn't actually own anything there and had not been prevented from owning anything. Certain groups love to post the actually affected Korean store owners, but it's a gross one minority group was pitted against another to prove racism was ok in retrospect to cause the conflict.
I don't even remember who the president was. I'd have to look it up. And in 2050 you won't remember who Trump was. At least that's where my money is right now. There is no way Trump is turning into a dictator, for one thing he's too old. Is there any precedence to a 78 year old turning into a dictator for life? (I mean I'm not as young as I used to be and dictator is probably not in my future either).
> no way Trump is turning into a dictator, for one thing he's too old. Is there any precedence to a 78 year old turning into a dictator for life
I agree that Trump is unlikely to turn into a dictator. But Caesar wasn't Rome's last dictator. And he wasn't the first to march on Rome.
Precedents are being set. Regardless of your views on illegal immigration, what's going on should be concerning because eventually someone with strong views you don't agree with will be in power, and if they can just arrest members of Congress, openly defy courts, ship ideological opponents to Guantanamo and send Marines into states they don't like, we're all going to be poorer for it. (If this shit stands, I'd argue the next Democrat in the White House should go FDR on the system.)
> Now it seems like the republicans are trying to speed-run to a point where there won’t ever be another Democrat to worry about
The simpler explanation is they're bad at long-term planning. Most of Trump's Cabinet and advisors are, essentially, influencers after all.
We probably need to work on a Project 2026 and Project 2028 document set. Plans to use these newly-unlocked powers to reform how power is distributed in America, force forward long-overdue projects being resisted by vocal minorities and secure our republic from its tendency towards electoral fetishism.
Two heads of the same coin I guess! I agree though, we sorely need a counterweight to this administration. I keep asking my friends that support Trump if they’ll have the same staunch attitude towards strong executive branch powers if a Democrat gets elected next. I haven’t gotten a straight answer back.
I studied political sciences twenty years ago - even then it was established consensus that presidential democracies are vulnerable to authoritarian takeover. The position has too much power, is easily abused and there are not enough checks on that position. The US escaped that problem for a long time due to strong cultural norms - but you abolished them (i.e. gatekeeping the presidential nominees and replacing that with a televised drama) and working checks (but again, now party in congress and president march in lockstep).
FPTP and gerrymandering just exacerbate that problem and entrench a very unhealthy "the winner takes it all without need for compromise" culture.
You need electoral reform post haste - but I do not seed even a start to that discussion, so I think you are hosed. Might not be Dictator Trump, but maybe Vance or some other guy who succeeds in this game.
And all who cry "if the democrats win everything will be ok again!!!!" - not it won't. The democrats are too slow to recognize the problem and even if they eventually do, there are no majorities to change the system. And finally: Democracy needs at least two parties - democrats cannot be expected to keep branches of the government forever. You need a sane and democratic second party. Republicans ain't it - but the current system gives them success, so why change?!
We escaped them because the tenth amendment and judiciary constrained federal powers in non war time to activity summing up to like 2% of the GDP and they needed an amendment to do anything outside of a little box. POTUS was fairly low stakes office in peace time, lower stakes to most than their governor and state legislators.
We tossed that all aside in the 1930s via threatening to pack the Supreme court. Federal powers are now everything because interstate commerce is now everything and without a functional 10A and with delegation to executive agencies POTUS approaches God level.
> I studied political sciences twenty years ago - even then it was established consensus that presidential democracies are vulnerable to authoritarian takeover.
Democracies are vulnerable to "authoritarian takeover" has been known and understood for 2500 years.
> The position has too much power, is easily abused and there are not enough checks on that position.
In most parliamentary democracies, the Prime Minister is much more powerful than the US President. This is particularly the case since the PM is PM by virtue of his party having the legislative majority.
> And all who cry "if the democrats win everything will be ok again!!!!" - not it won't.
A better argument would be that this isn't a partisan issue. The last President declared a Constitutional Amendment by fiat and attempted to do (good) things like student loan relief with blatantly illegal authoritarian methods due to the perpetual Congressional gridlock.
> In most parliamentary democracies, the Prime Minister is much more powerful than the US President. This is particularly the case since the PM is PM by virtue of his party having the legislative majority.
This is a grave misunderstanding. A legislative majority isn't a static historical fact like Trump's electoral majority, it's dynamic - those are identifiable people not just a statistic.
Liz Truss was the UK's Prime Minister for less than two months. What changed in two months? Probably most of the idiots who actually voted for her didn't change their minds, but that doesn't matter, her fellow Tory MPs feared the worst from the outset and were proven correct. If she hadn't left she'd have been kicked out, she's known to have actually asked if there's some way she can cling on and been told basically "No" because there isn't.
Ultimately, if they can't get rid of her any other way, her backbench only needs to affirm a simple motion, "That This House Has No Confidence In His Majesty's Government" and it's all over. It would never come to that, but that's the backstop.
Congress can also agree to remove the President. Indeed it would take only a few Rs to flip to do so.
We see PMs easily enacting massive legislative reforms and even Constitutional changes that are nigh impossible in the US, that was not a particularly controversial statement.
Congress could, in theory, begin an arduous process (weeks? months?) in which eventually, if they succeed, again in theory it removes the President and... puts in his place his chosen replacement. It has never successfully done this, so from there we're in uncharted waters but it's hardly obvious that it is an effective procedure.
In contrast the Westminster Parliament routinely disposes of Prime Ministers who lose its confidence, it's already happened once in my lifetime and it's not some multi-week procedure in which there's some performance of a judicial process, just a simple question: Does this Government retain the Confidence of the House?
Margaret Thatcher decided on this course of action on a Monday, on Wednesday morning she rose to say, "Mr. Speaker, I beg to move, 'That this House has no confidence in Her Majesty's Government.'" and by the next morning the Callaghan minority government had fallen.
The length of time the process takes is entirely under the control of Congress. It could be done in a day if they wanted. The longer time periods seen with Clinton and Trump were to attempt to gin up the political support to follow through.
I was concerned with facts, whereas you seem focused on a fantasy about how you wish things were. But your fantasy doesn't matter at all. US-style Presidential Republics are a known bad design, the US nation building projects stopped doing this themselves because it doesn't work, the United States itself is just a slower decay, it's not an exception.
The problem wasn't the Crown, that's the big takeaway. Giving the same power to a guy who doesn't have a hat doesn't fix the problem. You need to hold this much power in commission, that's the lesson that gave us the present British arrangement - the Lord High Treasurer was much too powerful, so his power was given to a commission, today its First Lord though not nearly as powerful as the Lord Treasurer, is too powerful, that's the Prime Minister you gestured at - the formal office is "First Lord of the Treasury", with the Chancellor being Second Lord, and the whips taking subsidiary parts of the commission. If you ask me we should further re-divide this power.
But just giving all that power to one man (and in the US it has always been a man) is even worse. The US President has powers that a King had, which made sense in the 18th century but stands out today - that's why Trump can corruptly pardon people for example.
It's really baffling to see this take repeated, especially when we've seen European PMs rewrite their country's constitution. That's just not feasible in the US system. US Presidents are quite limited in their power. A lot of (justified) outrage occurs over the US President doing something that PMs can typically do with no issue.
You seem fixated on the practical process of removing one from power, which is of course irrelevant as long as their party backs them, which is the actual threat in both cases. In either case, if the legislature does not back them, they can be removed from power with little issue.
I see in a sibling comment you think this is actually a weakness of the US system...apparently the PM radically changing all the laws, norms, and unwritten constitution of his country is "not powerful", while the US President typically fighting a battle to get one single major piece of legislation through in his career is unitarian dictatorship?
> , the US nation building projects stopped doing this themselves because it doesn't work, the United States itself is just a slower decay, it's not an exception.
The US nation building projects felt that parliamentary democracies were easier to control, as direct election of Presidential executives sometimes leads to democracies electing leaders who are able to carry out policies that violate US interests.
> We see PMs easily enacting massive legislative reforms and even Constitutional changes that are nigh impossible in the US
I'm responding to this part separately because it's a very different issue. The existence of "superior law" in the form of a written constitution, is very silly. There need be only a single law, the law of the land - and the legislature must be able to change it - and only them, otherwise why have a legislature at all?
These are only man's laws, they're no different than the laws of Football ("soccer") for example, they are not facts about the world like Mother Nature's Laws - and so to hold some of these laws superior to others is a waste of everybody's time. The resulting paralysis in the US is not something to be praised, it's just another rusted joint, a lost degree of flexibility and so a point of weakness.
In reality, the supposed "impossible" constitutional changes in the US simply enable learned helplessness. Democratic representatives weep that alas much as they wish otherwise they "cannot" fix obvious problems because change is "impossible" and then of course somebody who actually does want to change things just does and says (as we might expect remembering these are only man's laws) if you don't like it too fucking bad.
> There need be only a single law, the law of the land - and the legislature must be able to change it - and only them, otherwise why have a legislature at all?
The legislature can change the US Constitution. The federal Congress proposes an amendment with a 2/3rds yes-vote, then it must be ratified by legislatures of 3/4ths of the states.
The reason to make some laws harder to change than others is to protect civil rights. In the US, it is very difficult to legally infringe on the right to free speech, for example. In the UK, it is simply a matter of a majority vote in Parliament.
> Democratic representatives weep that alas much as they wish otherwise they "cannot" fix obvious problems because change is "impossible" and then of course somebody who actually does want to change things just does and says (as we might expect remembering these are only man's laws) if you don't like it too fucking bad.
Passing Constitutional amendments is perfectly feasible and has been done many times. It just can't be done without majority political support and the will to do so. They've been passed and "repealed" before, with Prohibition, for example.
A lot of kvetching in the US system (on both sides) comes from people whose ideas are simply not very popular and would like to change the rules so they win. In a democratic society, you need majorities of the population to agree. For larger changes, you preferable want larger majorities.
>We see PMs easily enacting massive legislative reforms and even Constitutional changes that are nigh impossible in the US
I don't know about UK but in Australia we need a Referendum (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Referendums_in_Australia) to change the constitution and those have been historically extremely difficult to pass (only 8/45). The PM absolutely cannot alter the Constitution.
Yeah, it’s dangerous to generalize parliamentary systems too broadly. That isn’t the case in all of them. But as you can see in his comments, he thinks that having “constitutional” laws above other laws is also a bad idea.
It is different when state governors impede the enforcement of federal laws and the President needs to send in the military. Eisenhower had to do that in Arkansas. It’s shameful but it happens.
Yes, you also always have some superficially similar event to reassure people that this has happened before.
It’s usually too much for people to contemplate that things are going to end.
Or worse, it’s bad faith, and it’s shared to lull people into accepting the change.
One of the clear things is that the right side of the political sphere is no longer constrained to narratives that have accurate correspondence to reality.
Even if this blows over, there will be something else, and then something else - and some superficially plausible rationale that contradicts previous positions.
And people who’ve seen this before will point it out - but people in the hall of mirrors will be stuck dealing with whatever is being reflected around them.
It’s genuinely cognitively hard to reason past such things, especially if reasoning past them is done alone - because then you are now stuck feeling like you are outside of your group - worse, you might have to join the people you were angry with.
This is one reason it takes a long time (months, years) to travel this distance - you can’t mentally switch allegiances and world views in a moment. There’s too many interconnected beliefs, actions - neurons.
But for people who’ve seen this before, it’s pretty clear cut.
I've been around and seen many things. I don't think it's that clear cut. But if you start from the conclusion and work your way backwards you can reason about anything.
Another problem is that these processes have a feedback loop. I don't like feeding that loop.
But yes, time will tell. I do agree certain things are normalized which probably shouldn't, but the system has some degree of robustness.
The proper thing for the left to do, IMO, is to present a clear and believable alternative. That also helps with the question of "join the people you were angry with". If the left doesn't understand why people are angry then they can't present this alternative. Standing on a hypothetical box in a hypothetical public square and yelling "the end is nigh" is not political discourse. The left also doesn't get to choose the laws it likes, just like the right doesn't, illegal immigration, as the term hints, illegal. Rioting and destroying things is also illegal. The only way a dictator can take over the US given all the checks and balances is when it seems that's the best alternative to enough people.
To be fair they’re not even doing that. They’re holed up without food or beds because there was no plan while the LAPD manages the protests and riots triggered by the federal troop deployment. It’s literally designed to inflame tensions, and it’s the direct cause of everything that’s going on. I feel bad for those troops being used as a pawn in a political TV stunt.
The national guard and the marines are not trained in crowd control. They are trained in combat situations. They have no role to play here, at best they just make people angry, at worse could perpetuate a massacre.
I've never been in the military but I was in a civil war. Let me explain what a few days holed up does to a bunch of young dudes with automatic weapons: it makes them eager for an exciting break from the monotony.
The US military probably cannot be compared to any other nation’s military outside of China. They simply aren’t that trigger happy, and with no civil war and a strongly enforced set of national laws, ain’t no way that’s happening here.
Speaking as a Brit, there were regular jokes about how bad US troops were during the Iraq war as a result of numerous friendly fire incidents. You also only have to go on Youtube to see jokes around US Marines and sticking crayons up their nose to realise your faith in the ability of the average soldier's mental faculties is higher than that displayed by the armed forces themselves.
Even the British Army, generally regarded for professionalism, make a lot of jokes about how unintelligent and trigger happy the average squaddie is.
Do you think that marines doing silly things when bored and murdering their fellow citizens for entertainment are in ANY way actually related? I’m not sure we can continue this conversation if you can’t tell how unrelated “guy sticks crayons up his nose for a joke” and “guy kills his own fellow citizens” are.
Man I’m obviously not saying they have perfect discipline, I’m saying you clearly cannot compare them to a nation dealing with an ACTIVE CIVIL WAR.
Ok let me tell you a story from the British Army where my friend was an officer. Officers have to be driven everywhere by a squaddie for insurance reasons (to keep it simple).
One day he’s being driven in Germany and a cyclist is keeping pace with them. Officer tells the driver to “fuck him off,” meaning to drive away really quickly. The squaddie mishears this as “knock him off,” and promptly swerves into the rider.
Granted this was British but, as I pointed out, we’re pretty highly regarded for professionalism. So, do I think US troops are any brighter or more ethical? If ordered to shoot, will a significant number say “sir, no sir!”
No, I don’t think either of those things are true.
Man, the inability to see how unrelated this story is to civil war militants murdering fellow citizens for fun, especially when your example doesn’t even concern Americans, is disheartening.
I already addressed this with my comments on American troops lighting up British tanks during Iraq.
> and with no civil war and a strongly enforced set of national laws
Er… have you read the news? The first part of the quote is a concern of many commentators and the second part of your comment is a fucking bad joke given your President has ignored multiple laws and judicial rulings, including sending the marines into LA without the permission of the governor!
No, you didn’t lol. You showed how American soldiers could shoot at some other military members who were in a tank. I gotta say, if you think I care even half as much about any random Brit more than any American, you’re crazy.
Also, are you under the impression that a random soldier going on a killing spree against innocent Americans would be treated the same as the President playing legal games, albeit ones with very serious consequences?
Just because you don’t like getting schooled doesn’t change the fact that you were.
> Also, are you under the impression that a random soldier going on a killing spree against innocent Americans would be treated the same as the President playing legal games, albeit ones with very serious consequences?
A president that pardoned murderers from January 6th? A president that said there were good people in a group of neonazi rioters? A president that sent those military people in there against the legal restrictions on sending the military in? A president that fired all people in the chain of command who would say “no?”
Yes, I think it’ll be treated differently, just not the same way you will.
Yes, soldiers are frequent perpetrators of atrocities and proud about comiting those atrocities. They are also easy to convince civilians are their enemies. Especially when frustrated, bored, hungry and sleep deprived.
It stems from leadership - and current leadership wants them to be like that. So, they will become like that.
Well they're training on that now. With rubber bullets they are breaking down the emotional barriers to pointing assault weapons at US Citizens, feeling the hate flow through them, and pulling the trigger
I suspect many commenters on HN would also have bridges to sell you, seeing as they’re from around the world, and countries where similar statements were made.
The statement is one thing. Reality is different, even with the best intentions, things get messy, and then the media and information firestorm that follows leaves scars that fester for decades.
You’d be lucky if it doesn’t lead to new infections and new wounds.
Which is why self inflicted wounds are so absurd, especially from nations that have the expertise to know better.
But - expertise is expensive, and entertainment and narrative vitality is the currency we traffic in.
A currency that pushes the costs of clean up and figuring out what happened to the future, if you are lucky to have any committees to look at it all.
We all need a news system that isn’t competing with engagement.
> modifications or misuse by an operator could nevertheless turn the ADS into a more damaging weapon which could potentially violate international conventions on warfare
Safe? When manned by actors known to shoot journalists in the head with “less lethal” weapons?
ADS operators would be exposed to more than the standard maximum permissible exposure (MPE) limits for RF energy, and military use requires an exception to these exposure limits
According to Wired, the ADS has been rejected for fielding in Iraq due to Pentagon fears that it would be regarded as an instrument of torture
It’s interesting ICE raided the outside of a Home Depot. Like, of all the immigrants, the immigrants that stand outside of Home Depot do the hardest physical labor. There’s no heart to what’s going on.
> It’s interesting ICE raided the outside of a Home Depot. Like, of all the immigrants, the immigrants that stand outside of Home Depot do the hardest physical labor. There’s no heart to what’s going on.
From an outsider's view, everything looks so performative and fabricated to be consumed by a tv target audience. I mean, if there is so much illegal immigration in the US, is it the most effective use of resources to target a TV cliche that would gather a residual number of people?
Presumably it's just this meeting, filtering down the ranks:
So in late May, Stephen Miller, a top White House aide and the architect of the president’s immigration agenda, addressed a meeting at the headquarters of Immigration and Customs Enforcement, known as ICE. The message was clear: The president, who promised to deport millions of immigrants living in the country illegally, wasn’t pleased. The agency had better step it up.
Gang members and violent criminals, what Trump called the “worst of the worst,” weren’t the sole target of deportations. Federal agents needed to “just go out there and arrest illegal aliens,” Miller told top ICE officials, who had come from across the U.S., according to people familiar with the meeting.
Agents didn’t need to develop target lists of immigrants suspected of being in the U.S. illegally, a longstanding practice, Miller said. Instead, he directed them to target Home Depot, where day laborers typically gather for hire, or 7-Eleven convenience stores. Miller bet that he and a handful of agents could go out on the streets of Washington, D.C., and arrest 30 people right away.
Miller is an excellent, quick witted entertainment and speech writer in his own way. What's astonishing is using what is essentially an entertainer for high level strategy.
Tbf this entire administration is a circus full of entertainers from the top down. It's like these guys are taking notes from a Mexican soap opera, ironically.
> What's astonishing is using what is essentially an entertainer for high level strategy.
I think this makes it even scarier. This means the goal is clearly not establishing sound policy, but to output propaganda that is designed to be easily consumed by TV audiences. It is beyond reality because it is not designed to make sense, it is designed to make sense to TV consumers by feeding on the context they get from their TV tropes. The Mexicans hanging around in Home Depots is a TV cliche that's recognized by people living wel beyond any Home Depot.
People voted for the entertainment. They want to see some brown people getting violence meted out to them. It's the deep sickness of racism all the way up, especially Miller.
That's just one of many problems with this whole lie.
The best is Trump crowing about historically low unemployment numbers, and then peddling hysteria about illegals "taking American jobs." None of his degenerate followers care that this argument is stupid, and calls them stupid.
Now it's been papered over with other excuses, like the mythical "fentanyl" that's pouring in from Canada.
They hate poor people. The wealthy undocumented people are sitting at home in their legal son or daughter's house watching the kids without a care in the world. The ones getting caught up in this are the ones that can't lay low for a while.
They is doing lots and lots of heavy lifting here. At the same time things are very confusing, because it seems like your fellow American is out for blood in a manner that shows no humanity.
Your fellow American on the right is plugged into a Matrix that traffics in its own narratives and can now freely manufacture or amplify its own fringe facts and narratives.
They are actually fighting very hard for the soul of america - as they see it. Virtuous efforts to stop the villainy and stupidity of the venomous yet weak liberals, leftists and democrats.
There’s a system in place to manufacture narratives, the closest analogy would be wrestling - except the President doesn’t treat it as fiction, he acts as if it’s real.
And since you can make and sell narratives incredibly quickly, while facts and analysis are days of effort - well, you have a structural change to the market place of ideas.
It happens everywhere in democracies now. See Brexit - entirely predictable. Yet completely unable to “sell” the known and clear problems to a majority of the citizenry.
Same with tariffs.
There’s a floor to people’s capability in navigating our current information environments - and partisan groups of experts are happy to use it to their advantage.
The problem began empirically with conservative positions, but the efficacy of the technique has now created its own political force.
The wrestling analogy is exactly how I feel watching Trump since 2016. I feel like I am watching WWE wrestling, and it is obviously fake. The actors are not actually fighting. Except half the country is completely convinced that it is real. Its hard to find common ground or even explain why I think it is fake, because it feels like it would be self-evident to anyone over the age of 12.
I'd say it's more like trash reality tv. The media loves it because people watch. They can highlight/create narratives and selectively edit footage to craft the storyline. In pro wrestling, on the other hand, the heel is in on it and plays their part in service to the story. That's not the case here.
To me, it's every day more apparent that democracies are transitioning into mediocracies. Everything is performative, real results do not matter. It's not a coincidence that this administration has a bunch of TV personalities in it, including the president. Influencers are the new ruling class because the opinion of every m**n permanently glued to their phone is valid (i.e. a vote)
> To me, it's every day more apparent that democracies are transitioning into mediocracies. Everything is performative, real results do not matter.
I think the whole point of these stupid stunts is to mobilize the base and distract critics. Your random redneck racist might feel strongly about the Hollywood caricature of Mexicans wearing sombreros at a Home Depot parking lot, but the truth of the matter is that Trump is mobilizing the US armed forces against a governor's will while threatening him with imprisonment.
You have to target the immigrants who work hard, just so we can eventually prove Trump right when he says all of the immigrants are lazy and take our welfare entitlements. The remainder will be poorer, that’s just math.
Whether it’s good public policy is neither here nor there, so long as our Leader is right.
It would save a ton of effort and lives if illegals would self deport. So, maybe they're adding in a lot of intimidation to try to increase the self deportation rate?
They've stated themselves that they don't have the resources for due process in all of these cases. So, yes. That is precisely what they should do. They can stop putting effort and resources into pointless ones and actually do their job.
So now they have not only to determine a person is an illegal alien; on top of that, you want them to somehow determine who is "heinous" and who is "good"? It seems a lot more work, considering the fact that there's no objective scale for "being heinous" (what do you do? You ask their friends?) but there's a reasonably objective way of telling if a person is illegaly residing in US or not.
There is a pretty reasonable way to determine if someone is "heinous" or not, committing a violent crime and being found guilty of it. And if going through a criminal justice system is "too much work", then I'm got news for you about who that's going to be applying to next...
The problem is that the average person bot agrees that only the worst of the worst should go, but also believes that there are far, far, far more of such people out there than actually exist. This is why we see poll metrics saying things like a majority of people agree with the deportations but disagree with how it is being done.
Ah but that was a sleight of hand! They're doing exactly what they said they'd do.
They said they'd target violent criminals, but they didn't say they wouldn't target non violent criminals as well. People who heard that were wishcasting.
Whether or not they are a "priority" is semantics. If you hear them explain it, they're all defacto criminals for being undocumented, and therefore equally culpable as a murder or a rapist in matters of deportation.
The crime they're concerned about over all others is illegal immigration. According to them, an illegal immigrant who has done nothing else wrong deserves to be deported just as much as rapist illegal immigrant.
There’s a million ways to skin a cat. The process you choose informs everyone of the problem you are prioritizing.
For example, you are deporting labor. Ostensibly Because of fairness and justice - they are in the country illegally. Ergo they should go.
No one should be above the law.
This has zip to do with gangs and criminality though.
But why this process ? Why not punish people who are employing them ?
This is more efficient and even more just. People are employing workers they know are here illegally and undercutting minimum wage.
Or why not raise minimum wage so more people will be willing to work those jobs ?
People act on incentives - and america is a country with a concentration of some of the hardest working and smartest people in the world.
It has a tradition of valuing this and converting those strengths into its own.
Now I have enough of a background in econ, business and politics to see through the narratives.
I also know you can’t sell all those interventions, not the least because none of these address the issue of gangs and criminality and eating pets.
Which brings us to the issue that your rationale, the ones which are debated online - are downstream from whatever controversy and theory that’s going to show up as soon as a new distraction is needed.
I mean, just Take a look at your original question,
“Leave the hardest working and deport the lazy ones ?”
America is built on immigration of the hardest working, most driven people from across the globe.
America is a machine for hardworking people to move ahead. That’s its promise.
And this is the question its citizens are unironically asking.
That America was built on immigration one century (or even one decade) ago doesn't say anything about what America should do now. America is a nation that has borders and a right to control immigration, like all other nations in the world. When America wants more immigration, the American government raises the number of legal immigrants allowed per year. When they want less, they lower that number. Illegal immigrants, hard working or lazy, have nothing to do with that.
You want to ditch history for what America should do now, and what America wants to do now, based on an exact reading of your words, is to "enforce its laws on illegal immigrants". And you implied you want to reduce immigration as well.
As I said, many ways to skin a cat.
People follow incentives, so why not punish people who are paying for the labor? Arrests for employing them?
Its an economic system, theres 2 way incentives.
The process used, depends on what problem you are solving.
ICE has been arresting business owners for this, but unfortunately the legal requirement to do so is very high - you have to prove they knew what they were doing. It should probably be lowered.
Yes, we need much higher penalties on employers who break the law by hiring illegal aliens, and make it harder for them to pretend they didn't know, in addition to deporting illegals. It's not either/or; it's both/and.
This isn’t a due process issue. There are plenty of crimes where the state does not have to prove you knew you were doing wrong, only that you did wrong. I see no reason why this can’t apply to employers, who would then be much more careful.
Yes, but having to prove you were committing a crime versus the government having to prove you knowingly committed a crime are two different things. We do not always require the latter. For example, in most states, the government does not care whether you knew you were above the legal BAC when convicting you of DUI.
As it stands, employers can pretend ignorance and as long as they were not really stupid, put putting things in writing or personally arranging for the trafficking, they can likely get away with it. There’s no reason I can think of why we shouldn’t change that.
You're just talking about different standards of knowledge for a crime which has absolutely nothing to do with what I posted, which is that Trump has been arguing that there is no need for americans to receive due process - so the issue of evidentiary standards, which you are discussing, would be completely irrelevant in the scenario he advocates for. Once again, I ask you, as he retorted at a reporter "are Americans special?"
This is exactly where they should raid. I have a lot of friends and family that work construction. Illegal immigration has absolutely destroyed the construction labor market by undercutting wages. People should be a fair wage for their work. We shouldn't promote pushing wages down by importing more people, especially desperate people.
I oppose private equity consolidation too, this is not an either/or proposition, but that’s not the biggest factor that’s impacted construction labor these past few decades.
The thing about Kent State wasn't that four people were killed. The thing about Kent State was that the US military killed four people - four US civilians.
The people of the US may be inured to violence. They aren't inured to violence from their own military, though.
The President who ordered the Kent State National Guard deployment won his re-election campaign in a massive landslide - 49 out of 50 states went for Nixon. I suspect that people that lived through it remembered Kent State very differently at the time than we do (or maybe than they do now).
Kent State is a classic case of historical revision. The majority of Americans supported the National Guard’s actions, in part because they were in valid fear for their lives after the rioters started throwing bricks at their heads.
Revisionism you say? Most accounts say that before the National Guard was involved, most of what was thrown was beer bottles at police cars.
The Wikipedia article on the shootings doesn't mention the word "brick" once. It also says:
"While on the practice field, the guardsmen generally faced the parking lot, about 100 yards (91 m) away. At one point, the guardsmen formed a loose huddle and appeared to be talking to one another. They had cleared the protesters from the Commons area, and many students had left.
Some students who had retreated beyond the practice field fence obtained rocks and possibly other objects with which they again began pelting the guardsmen. The number of rock throwers is unknown, with estimates of 10–50 throwers. According to an FBI assessment, rock-throwing peaked at this point. Tear gas was again fired at crowds at multiple locations."
So there were rocks being thrown at National Guard members who were ALREADY teargassing the boxed in group AND had knelt and aimed weapons.
Somehow you extrapolate that to average people going about their day and randomly taking a brick to the head... huh.
So even by your account, the rioting students were attacking the guardsmen by pelting them with rocks, and the guardsmen opened fire to defend themselves from this attack. That's a clear instance of justifiable force.
One man was taken into custody for allegedly throwing a Molotov cocktail at an officer and a motorcyclist was arrested for ramming a police skirmish line.
Los Angeles County Sheriff Robert Luna said "you had people who were...attacking police officers, deputy sheriffs and causing a lot of destruction."
The 101 Freeway shut down Sunday evening two times due to protesters on an overpass throwing rocks, debris, and firecrackers at California Highway Patrol officers and vehicles.
Footage on Sunday from the CBS News Los Angeles helicopter showed that multiple windows of the police headquarters had been shattered as well.
I can't overstate how absolutely separate this is from reality. Yes there are protests, largely peaceful and in a tremendously small part of Los Angeles. In fact, in terms of sheer size, its less than half the size, in sq miles, of the fires in January.
Your effort to overstate might have derailed your own reality.
Don't know about you, but I could never throw a brick at anyone. I couldn't and wouldn't put a mask on and head out with the intent to burn cars, throw rocks, loot, and cause criminal damage. That is the opposite of "largely peaceful."
The LAPD chief stated it's "out of control." Your attempt to imply tear gas was used on peaceful protesters doesn't fit the evidence. Many of the rioters are highly organised with supply runs of masks, fireworks and projectiles. I'm not sure what your agenda is but "accuracy" doesn't seem to be it.
Do you have evidence of tear gas fired at peaceful protesters? I'm getting a Greta Thunberg "help I've been kidnapped by IDF" vibe from the tear gas claim.
There's a lot of videos of the contrary - LAPD pelted with rocks by aggressive mobs who are there to fight against "nazi scum" or fight for "stolen land" as they wave every other flag than American.
All the footage I've seen and social media I've seen goes the other way: that the people watching and filming the ICE raids were then fired upon by ICE.
I suspect the usual media chicanery - everyone reporting the story that their viewers want to hear.
Anyway. My point was that I could not do this. If I was asked to fire teargas at a crowd who were protesting kidnapping people off the streets and taking them to concentration camps, I could not do that. I would refuse that order.
You're posting misinformation. Tear gas is deployed when mobs surge in direct violation of orders not to, or to control violence and criminality by large crowds. Your attempt to frame it as "cops attacking peaceful onlookers" is in conflict with the evidence available.
Citation needed. I'm seeing videos of folks saying that ICE started it all.
Aljazeera is pretty good with unbiased coverage, and it doesn't lay the blame one way or the other [0]. It just says "(LAPD) declared the area an unlawful assembly, deployed tear gas, issued tactical alerts and made several arrests."
Literally the first thing listed is the declaration of an unlawful assembly. After that you have either compliance or non-compliance with the declaration.
Given the mountain of evidence of criminal damage, we can assume the declaration came after evaluating the scale of criminal behavior. Reading that as "cops fired first" sounds like cognitive bias.
Again, I think you're being fed different media reports than I am.
And the whole point of a protest is that it is defiance of authority. Having a protest declared "unlawful assembly" is kinda the point.
I'm curious what you saw from the "No Kings" protests from your point of view? Were they also unlawful, with mountains of evidence of criminal damage? The organisers estimate that 11 million people attended 2000 different locations around the USA, and it was almost entirely peaceful. What are you being told?
I saw the one where a journalist was shot with rubber bullets. What does the flag have to do with anything? Aren't you guys supposed to have freedom of expression?
The Australian journalist who wasn't wearing any media vest, standing in middle of road next to an unfolding high-tension incident so she could get a good shot? That journalist? The cop that shot her was in the wrong, but she didn't help herself attending the frontline of a riot in casual dress and going for the money-shot.
Freedom of expression isn't immune from ridicule or condemnation. In one NYC anti-ICE protest they're chanting "From Mexico to Gaza, globalize the intifada". You can argue that's freedom of expression, as is burning the US flag and other dopey unhelpful actions.
Back during the George Floyd riots, there were numerous videos of cops shooting rubber bullets at people just for lulz. There was one when a person standing inside and filming through the window got shot at, cracking the glass.
Most of those same cops are staffing PDs today, so they will behave exactly as they did back then. Nobody sane should give them any benefit of doubt.
She was being filmed by a camera crew, it was obvious she was from the press. Media vest - it's not Afghanistan - though deployment of military may give that impression. Really going for the 'she was asking' for it defense?
AFAIK, I would not read much into the possession and use of gas masks - the bake-sale anarchist medics are pretty well organized and equipped.
There's a lot of people in LA with the skills and equipment to rapidly organize like this; got to see it in person during the Occupy protests, when a tiny village popped up around City Hall - complete with power and internet infrastructure; medical, porta-potties, meals, workshops and seminars... it was pretty impressive!
It's also worth noting the insanity that is July 4th in Los Angeles, so there being a lot of fireworks is uhhh... really, really not weird for LA? We usually get increasing amounts (in size and frequency) of illegal firework "shows" all throughout June.
Lastly - there's also a big difference between "out of our [LADP's] control" and "out of control" - that's (AFAIK) actually the norm for effective protests. A large protest that's under the LAPD's control is generally a "demonstration" instead (see the women's marches).
The protests usually are very well attended organised and peaceful. The organisers of the protests want people to go home afterwards and most do.
But some people hang around after it's ended and then the sun goes down and the protest is actually over and the police try to get people to leave. Then it's a people Vs police confrontation that may escalate. Then it's a riot. Usually these deescalate and the police have training in how to do that.
It's not the protests that is violent it's what happens after the protest finishes. Riots by definition are out of control!
Some protestors would claim that the violence is orchestrated by the police. There has been some evidence of that in some places of the world. Mostly it's a riot of violent people, criminals, kids usually, who are thrilled by the violence and chaos and hatred. Mob mentality creates a mob.
you could compare to that time right wing extremists took over a some park in Oregon.
they shot a bunch of people, and the feds took it pretty hands off. if anything, the protestors arent being nearly violent enough to get soft hands from the government. if they were out there with automatic weapons and actively shooting at the cops and guard, theyd be left right alone, and the road would be shut down for a couple months
Agreed. And if I was out there, actually peacefully protesting, and people around me started throwing rocks, looting, or causing criminal damage I would leave. If I was gassed with tear gas, I would leave. I wouldn't attack the police.
> Yes there are protests, largely peaceful and in a tremendously small part of Los Angeles.
Firey but mostly peaceful protests are happening all over again. No, burning down cities is not peaceful. After just a few days, at least five officers, several journalists, and we don't know how many rioters have been injured so far. We don't yet have estimates of property damage, but tens of millions would be conservative. Similar riots have resulted in hundreds of millions in damages.
When the right does this, we call it what it is: violent riots. We acknowledge it's wrong to attempt to prevent the government carrying out its the duties it was democratically elected to carry out. We should hold that standard to the left as well. These rioters are anti-democratic.
I think you've missed what the protest is. People are against the government action they are using the first amendment -- which is part of what makes america great -- to say they are against it.
You can say, rightly, there's a car on fire. You can also say the police shot at a journalist.
"burning down cities" would however be incorrect, as the person who literally lives here I can tell you that it is not happening.
What happens is that these protests start off very peaceful and then they become riots because the police make it so.
What you, and other's, need to understand is that the police have absolutely no mechanism to de-escalate anything. It's a concept completely foreign to American policing. As soon as the police are involved, the situation deteriorates rapidly.
For instance, almost all (95%+) of the BLM protests were completely peaceful. No violence or property damage. You wouldn't get that impression from the news. But, of the ones that did turn violent, every time the violence BEGAN with police overstepping. Pushing protestors, or shooting them, or throwing gas. And then, obviously, the situation deteriorates.
What would you do if friends and family and neighbors of yours for years, even decades, were pulled from their homes, places of work and worship, schools, etc?
Once the state sets its eyes on enemies, it doesn't stop adding to that list.
Use of the tools and techniques in place right now will continue to be used, and against "legal" citizens.
I worry how we turn the corner. I don't like what history says.
> What would you do if friends and family and neighbors of yours for years, even decades, were pulled from their homes, places of work and worship, schools, etc?
This concept hinges on everyone walking around with ID at all times. If you don't have it on you we'll throw you into a concrete box for 8 hours while we sort it out. Cool? Oh you were a home birth in Wisconsin you say? Sounds vaguely Canadian.
This is why the 4th amendment exists. It is my favorite amendment. I wish people would take it more seriously.
As far as I understand, people are ID'd all the time in US. If police stops you, they will ask for an identification document; if you don't have it, they will ask for your SSN and if you can't remember it, they will run your name and address until they match you with a photo id on their systems. In the meanwhile, you're detained and you're not free to leave. Immigration aside, how are they supposed to identify you?
They can't detain you forever because they can't ID you. You can't be compelled to own an ID or carry it around with you all the time. Many naturally born americans have no passport, birth certificate, or even state license.
So many homeless here have zero identification.
They are basically just going after people who are too brown and even ending up grabbing people who are just here on vacation, legally.
Wait, I agree that false positives shouldn't happen, but true positives (i.e. you are an illegal alien, ICE interacts with you, they detain you until they discover your status, then start the deportation process) are how the system is supposed to work.
This is illegal, notoriously, police can only request AND detain someone to provide ID if they are actually suspected of committing a crime. Potentially being illegal, a neighbor calling the police or stuff like that does not give them permission to detain. They can nicely ask, but that's all.
That's specific to ICE though, where they need a "warrant", not from a judge but just from some other ICE "supervisor".
I agree that in practice there is some kind of loophole: ICE gets a "warrant" for someone that by definition has no ID, so there is no point in identifying a detainee - the immigration court will do that, later. Effectively, they seem to get away with snatching people off the street that vaguely may resemble any "warrant" they have.
If I'm not born American, I suppose the right way of handling that would be negotiating a date to voluntarily leave the country (I think it's called self-deportation), which leaves you a bit of levee to put your things in order. If I was born American and I only have American citizenship, that would be a strange situation to be in. I suppose a bunch of other countries would have offered me instant citizenship just to spite Trump.
I'm not sure what does it have to do with people who entered the US illegally and were never citizens in the first place though.
Because one of the major things Trump has talked about and has been moving towards is revoking citizenship. Both those who are naturalized US citizens as well as ending birthright citizenship and revoking their rights. You do that, then they have 'entered the country illegally' and everything follows from there
8 U.S. Code § 1325 of the Immigration and Nationality Act makes it illegal to enter the country without authorisation. Are you implying that these people didn't know it was illegal, or are you arguing that the country should have no borders?
> What would you do if friends and family and neighbors of yours for years, even decades, were pulled from their homes, places of work and worship, schools, etc?
That has happened to me. Some of them did real heinous shit and deserve prison for the rest of their lives. And some I disagree with the laws they were charged for.
HN not beating the allegations of sheltered, gated community, out-of-touch kids going straight into white collar life.
LAPD on Sunday night live with NBC 4 Los Angeles confirmed that most of the Sunday night looters were arrested. They also confirmed that most of the looters were part of a retail-theft gang attempting to use the protests as cover, and that at least one of the looters was actually a far-right-wing activist (unsuccessfully) attempting to stage a false flag operation to justify the use of military force.
A combined 42 arrests were made by the Los Angeles Police Department, California Highway Patrol and Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department, the LAPD said early Monday. Alleged crimes included attempted murder, looting, arson, failure to disperse, assault with a deadly weapon on a police officer and other offenses.
is one source, others may have more or less detail. It supports arrests being made wrt looting, not the assertion that most of the looters were arrested.
> One man was taken into custody for allegedly throwing a Molotov cocktail at an officer and a motorcyclist was arrested for ramming a police skirmish line
So less violence towards law enforcement and insurrection than January 6th. Action the President endorsed in January by issuing pardons.
Honestly, if a Democrat were to match Trump's energy, they'd be promising pardons to protesters who damaged ICE property or torched a Trump property. They're not. In part because they're rudderless. But also because they're still gripped by the notion that we're not in the midst of a coup.
I like how the federal government actually enforcing federal law is a “coup” to you.
If Trump wanted to match Democrat energy he would declare the LA riots an insurrection and devote 40% of the FBI to identifying, rounding up, and imprisoning all of the protestors.
You’re the one hyperventilating about a “coup”; do you care to clarify what you actually meant by that or should I just write it off as a paranoid delusion?
You don't get to ignore Everyone's right to due process and then insist you are enforcing federal law. ICE is not enforcing federal law by ignoring the constitution.
Bad as these things are, the Governor of California currently believes their own law enforcement can handle the situation without the National Guard. If he felt he needed support, he'd have requested it using the provided legal mechanisms.
> Bad as these things are, the Governor of California currently believes their own law enforcement can handle the situation without the National Guard. If he felt he needed support, he'd have requested it using the provided legal mechanisms.
My understanding is that the National Guard are being deployed because ICE is being impeded from carrying out their operations. If California were allowed to constructively block the Federal government from carrying out policy of democratically elected administrations, that would be effectively a declaration of secession. Hundreds of years of precedent has made it clear that states are subordinate to the Federal government.
> My understanding is that the National Guard are being deployed because ICE is being impeded from carrying out their operations. If California were allowed to constructively block the Federal government from carrying out policy of democratically elected administrations, that would be effectively a declaration of secession.
The California government are not blocking the Federal government from carrying out ICE raids. If you believe otherwise, please show the evidence that Trump has presented.
California has decided not to prevent the rioters from impeding federal enforcement officers. This forces the Federal government to use Federal resources.
What the governor of California believes does not matter when federal agents are being attacked. The President has a responsibility to protect his agents. If California is not doing that sufficiently, the President is more than justified in sending reinforcements.
The government of California is not preventing ICE agents from working, so under what authority, with evidence, does the President justify using the National Guard?
I remember back in 2013 in Ukraine, when the government tried to violently disperse the protesters on Maidan, they didn't just throw molotovs - they built a catapult to throw them further. And they burned down several APCs:
> George Bush called up the National Guard and the Marines in 1992 for the Rodney King riots.
Governor Wilson called up the National Guard, actually; subsequently, at Governor Wilson's request, and coordinating planning with both the Governor and Mayor Bradley of LA, President Bush invoked the Insurrection Act, federalized the Guard, and called up the Marines, and deployed the federal and federalized forces (including, also, federal law enforcement) in close cooperation and coordination with state and local law enforcement to restore order.
That is very different from the situation presently.
Yes this is more like the 1957 incident in Little Rock, Arkansas where the state governor was impeding federal law, forcing President Eisenhower to federalize the Arkansas National Guard and deploy the 101st Airborne to restore order and enforce federal law.
Its not LIKE that, and you can tell because in that situation, the Guard was called up by thr governor to directly prevent implementation of a federal court order, and it was only federalized to order it to return to its barracks (and the 101st deployed to assure that order was followed.)
The fact that the Guard can be actively federalized, rather than sent home to prevent jt from being used against the Federal government, demonstrates that the situations are wildly dissimilar.
(It is also not legally similar as Trump has not invoked the Insurrection Act, which is the only thing that allows using the US military use to enforce the law, whether restricted to doing so in the neighborhood of civilian federal infrastructure and personnel or not.)
Johnson also called up the guard in '65, without the governor requesting.
So is your issue state sovereignty? I say without bias. Just trying to understand the point. If Newsome asked Trump for the guard you would then be OK with it?
> Johnson also called up the guard in '65, without the governor requesting.
After invoking the Insurrection Act, correct.
> So is your issue state sovereignty?
In part, but more specifically, my issues are both the substantive issues of policy and the relevant federal law.
The latter is simpler: 10 USC § 12406, which Trump has relied exclusively on in federalizing the Guard, explictly does not (unlike the Insurrection Act, which allows federalizing any part of the universal militia, including but not limited to the Guard when its conditions are met) allow bypassing the Governor. And no provision of law, absent the Insurrection Act, allows deploying regular federal forces, with or without the Governor, for any civilian enforcement mission, however limited.
As someone outside the US, I find this strange. You have a democratically elected president, elected in part on a platform of removing illegal immigrants. He is now removing illegal immigrants. That is democracy at work, is it not?
The presidency is only legally afforded some powers. The issue here isn't Trump's fulfilling of campaign promises. The issue here is if Trump is following the law while doing so.
This is well out of my area of expertise, but isn't illegal immigration a federal issue, and the federal agencies answer to the executive branch?
My understanding of the protests is they're primarily against the removal of illegal immigrants and as Trump has taken control of (?) some state elements that has become a contentious point, but wasn't to begin with.
Normally I'd read up more before discussing with people, but the news article seem pretty blurry on the primary intentions of the protesters and what specifically they are against.
But it's not indiscriminate. It's people who entered the country illegally.
Genuine question here, do you think illegal immigrants in churches or working on farms should not be deported, but those without a job or day labouring should?
I find it strange to distingush an illegal immigrant based on perceived value. If someone breaks into my house but also does my washing and mows my lawn, that doesn't change the fact they broke into my house.
This is probably an unpopular opinion but I would like politicians on the left to speak up about the rioting and burning of stuff at the current protests and also the Tesla and George Floyd protests. It doesn’t help the cause if we allow some assholes to destroy stuff. Basically they are giving people like Trump an excuse to deploy force and a lot of people will agree. I can’t see what is achieved by burning cars and stores.
> This is probably an unpopular opinion but I would like politicians on the left to speak up about the rioting and burning of stuff at the current protests and also the Tesla and George Floyd protests.
I mean, Gavin Newsom just did a long interview from a "crisis center" where he did exactly that, today. And plenty of Democratic politicians also speak against violent protests whenever they occur.
But unless you actually pay pretty close attention to what Democratic politicians actually say, you won't hear these statements. Fox doesn't cover Democratic politicians speaking against violence. And frankly, if there's a 99.9% peaceful protest with one burning car, the media will devote 80% of their coverage to the burning car, and maybe a few sentences to politicians saying the burning car is bad. The media is unfortunately interested in spectacle and entertainment.
I pay more attention than average to what politicians of both parties say, and it's kind of hilarious how often I hear "Why didn't so-and-so say X?" (uh, they do every week or two), or "I never believed so-and-so would do Y" (uh, they literally promised Y on the campaign trail). I don't know how to fix this.
The Democratic politicians have painted themselves into a corner by trying to maintain far left support. Compare the messaging:
Trump: We must have law and order. Immigration laws must be enforced. We will not tolerate riots or destruction.
Protesters: The government shouldn't detain people who are in the country illegally. We should ignore federal laws we don't agree with. If we disagree with federal agents who are enforcing existing laws, we should impede them, attack them, and destroy property to lash out.
This is not an endorsement of Trump, as he's clearly milking this situation to squeeze Newsom. This is a deliberate strategy to put Newsom in an untenable position and paint him as an irredeemable liberal to everyone outside California. Until the left takes a logically defensible position on illegal immigration, they will continue to be vulnerable to Trump's theater on this and he will continue to bludgeon them with it in elections.
>The Democratic politicians have painted themselves into a corner by trying to maintain far left support
>This is a deliberate strategy to put Newsom in an untenable position and paint him as an irredeemable liberal
What's fascinating with current US politics and media is how these two sentences can be constructed in same sentence in an attempt to come off as "see I'm smart and media literate, I can see the full picture!" while literally the first sentence of your comment shows that that's not the case.
The media repeating "Democrats are far left" long enough and it have penetrated your head. There's probably pandering to far left in democratic party I assume, but it have been magnified to a reality altering level by media so that's now believed as the core, while same thing happening on the far-right & Republican party.
Both side must be truly be thinking like you, I assume. "I see the full picture, I'm smart" while parroting a distortion only required to be repeated for years.
If everyone could put their phone down, touch some grass, take a road trip to the opposite political isle maybe this distortion could've been avoided.
First of all, chill out, for someone tooting their own horn, your own perspective is very one dimensional. What's really interesting about the democratic party's position is how they've utterly failed to embrace the popular parts of "left" policy (universal healthcare and etc, basically look at bernie sanders for what policy is actually widely popular on the left). And yet, they embrace incredibly unpopular parts of "extreme left". Being pro-illegal immigration is incredibly stupid and unpopular. DEI discrimination on the basis of race is also incredibly stupid and unpopular. I suppose i could also mention transitions for children. Need i mention free speech? It's a travesty that republicans have become the free speech party, but it's something the left has ceded.
So we're in a situation where the democratic party is utterly failing to actually implement any of the good or popular left policies that would help the masses, even the pretty moderate ones, but is pushing incredibly unpopular extreme left policies that don't actually help the citizenry. In that context it's honestly a very reasonable thing for someone on the right to point to the dems call the party far left. And yet for those of us that want these policies for the people, the dems appear right-leaning. Very odd how this has worked out, but both are true in a way.
I think the reason behind this is mainly due to them being controlled by their corporate donors who dictate focusing on the unpopular policies which are cheaper for the corporations to contend with. Universal healthcare would be a huge blow to corporate control in this country, as right now healthcare is tied to employment and that gives large corporate employers incredibly excessive power.
I don't know how my comment gave the impression I'm agitated. I'm far from US so it's just an outsider observation.
In either case, thank you for the insight. It didn't give me any additional insight and while you call it one dimensional, I only see an expansion of the same idea I shared: both sides use culture war to smear each other (and as a lazy cop-out to game the media attention for coverage and votes). Most people have heard of AOC, Bernie, and Elizabeth Warren's. Even Ted Cruz & RFK JR (pre election). Surely when congress is 400+ and senate is 100+ people, those names don't represent ALL of the intricate factions of the two parties?
Yet we all act like they somehow are the representative of the opposite. To me you're just saying the same thing, but relieving any responsibility of the parrots, and putting it solely on corporate and self interested politician.
If those culture wars win votes, I think putting the sole responsibility that way is just an convenient excuse for everyone to play along the system and shout at each other.
I guess to the people shouting at each other, my comment might have come off as "touting my horn". I'm from the outside, I don't have any high horse or stakes in this but I understand the confusion
You seemed overly anxious to ignore what I actually wrote in my previous comment and use as an excuse to force everyone into reading your diatribe about how the media portrays Democrats, even though that's not actually in conflict with anything I wrote. So yes, I think it would be good for you to do some self-reflection before telling others they are living in a bubble. You might not be as objective as you think you are.
> And yet, they embrace incredibly unpopular parts of "extreme left". Being pro-illegal immigration is incredibly stupid and unpopular. DEI discrimination on the basis of race is also incredibly stupid and unpopular. I suppose i could also mention transitions for children. Need i mention free speech? It's a travesty that republicans have become the free speech party, but it's something the left has ceded.
You've swallowed a lot of right-wing propaganda about the Democratic Party. Do you really thing Democrats are "pro-illegal immigration"? The rest of these tendentious mischaracterizations take some tedious and likely fruitless effort to debunk, but just think about that phrase. Do you think any party is in favor of illegal immigration? How would that work anyway? Parties try to pass laws. The best you could find is that some party favors immigration policies you would prefer be illegal.
Democrats are against violating laws to deport people here legally or following the legal, prescribed process for adjudicating their status. Republicans are okay with breaking the law to chuck people out of the country. That produces a different result, but "illegal" is on the wrong side of the balance there for your argument.
You're not in a great position to tell Democrats what to say and do if you're clearly ignoring what they say and do and believing the lies other people feed you about them.
> Do you really thing Democrats are "pro-illegal immigration"?
I do. Demonstrably so. The Biden administration admitted between 8-20 million illegal immigrants into the country, depending on the estimate used. Even at the low end, this is the highest ever in the history of the country. More than any other administration. They made all kinds of excuses. They claimed they needed new laws. Trump solved it almost overnight. [https://www.cbp.gov/newsroom/stats/southwest-land-border-enc...] The Democrats lied. They didn't need more laws. They wanted things the way they were. They chose to permit the situation and allow it to devolve like that.
Now almost every Democrat representative is resolutely opposed to deporting illegal immigrants. There is simply no other way to interpret this than they are in fact pro illegal immigration.
I'm not the person uncritically examining party propaganda. My information is based on what the democratic party has said and done, nobody else. So, entire post misses the mark very hard for me.
Frankly i think you're exactly the person who is part of the problem here, proudly prejudiced, not very well informed despite thinking you know better than everyone.
> Do you think any party is in favor of illegal immigration? How would that work anyway? Parties try to pass laws. The best you could find is that some party favors immigration policies you would prefer be illegal.
This kind of reads like it's written by AI or something but either way it's irrational on such a fundamental level that i don't really know what to make of it. Obviously a ruling power in a country can be in favor of something illegal and take action to increase illegality on purpose. That's what you are saying trump is doing, so you don't even disagree with yourself. Where did you think the huge numbers of illegal immigrants came from while under democratic leadership, did they materialize independently? No, they promoted illegality.
It wasn't in my post but just in case you aren't an AI, the democratic party is pro illegal immigration for relatively straightforward reasons. their large corporate donors like having a large cheap underclass of workers to exploit and abuse. Illegal immigrants are much less likely to cause problems at work and are likely to work harder because they are at a much higher risk. If you're a CEO you can bet it's better to hire people you know will never unionize, you can exploit easily and won't file any workplace safety complaints. You can even commit wage theft with abandon, what are they going to do about it? There's also other secondary effects like creating a large amount of illegality overloads the courts and generally creates chaos which can be easy to exploit.
I've also seen the argument that the dems hope to swing demographics to secure the vote but i'm not so sure about that one, especially considering how hard legal voting immigrants are swinging against the democratic party for all of my prior mentioned reasons. I feel like if you were actually in touch with the legal immigrant population you would understand this a lot better.
I'm in favor of large scale legal immigration so people get full workplace rights and aren't easy to take advantage of. Duh. Creating an underclass of workers with less rights to keep corpo rat profits rising is bad. The democratic party has done the opposite, this is fact. Not really sure what else there is to say, all your smoke isn't worth much.
And i do think the dem's longer term plan was something stupid like "bring in infinite illegal immigrants to create a problem" and then "we will sell the solution and make them all citizens!" and that went ass up with their own hubris exploding in their face. Either way that's evil shit.
You're further pushing the narrative here. If the government had acted entirely within the law then people would be less upset about it. I don't think it'd be entirely gone, but lesser for sure. Until the right takes a logically defensive position on illegal immigration, they will continue to trigger this reaction.
That's the point; the right WANTS this reaction. It's how they will continue to capture the American center. Masked people waving Mexican flags while they stand on top of burned out police cars is a gift to them.
Trump's political superpower is his ability to take a base position that is entirely reasonable and agreeable to most people ("The US must enforce its federal immigration laws"), then use inflammatory rhetoric and legal boundary testing to whip his opposition into undisciplined, emotional overreactions that leave them in a worse political position than him. He has been absurdly successful in using this tactic since 2015.
I think that's a really succinct description of "how Trump works"....and it's also an interesting case study in Gerasimov's "Reflexive Control Doctrine".
The far left are anarchists and communists. They consider the Democratic party part of the capitalist system that needs to be replaced. Democrats are the neoliberal party. Democrats are not trying to get their support. Right-wing media has painted Democrats and progressives as radical far leftists, but it's simply not true. Most of their policies can be seen implemented in Europe.
Remind us all what crime he was convicted of. A $20 bill was alleged by a shop clerk to be counterfeit. There is no evidence either that it was, or that it was known to be counterfeit.
> He then resisted a lawful arrest. His death was entirely self inflicted.
Hard to self-inflict murder. "It wasn't murder!" - if his death was due solely to his alleged actions, and not due to excessive and inappropriate force by the police involved, then an officer would not have been charged with and convicted of second-degree murder. Nor would prosecutors not only charge the police involved, but move to increase charges and sentencing requests due to the "unnecessary and particularly excessive cruelty being inflicted upon [Floyd] by the officers". Weird.
Why was kneeling on his neck for nine and a half minutes necessary? There were four officers there. We all watched the video. I'm not aware that your other claims have been proven true.
Spreads out police resources for one. Protesters outnumber police. Every cop pulled away from the protest to respond to a fire, looting incident, or whatever can translate directly to lives saved / protesters not arrested etc. Also makes certain goals more achievable. I read a crimethinc article about the george floyd protests and it suggested that the looting drew the cops away from the barricade at the police station, allowing them to destroy it. Seems a lot more practical than pearl clutching.
We should be clear, protesting is not illegal. It's protected first amendment speech. There is activity at protests that is illegal, and should be punished, but that's not protesting and lumping them together puts a chilling effect on.
Everyone says this but no one means it. Governments just declare an area offlimits, or they declare a curfew or one of hundreds of ways they use to make protesters illegal. Ultimately, protests are only legal inside a small cube where no one can see, and thus the protesters have no effect.
Protesting is illegal. People should protest anyway because it is stupid that protesting is illegal.
I think the difficulty of this is how much Trump absolutely wants to escalate things, because it fits right into his narrative.
I've seen lots of pictures of protestors waving Mexican flags, and of the burning Waymos, etc. My guess is these are a very small percentage of protestors, but it makes for great TV, and Trump gets to say that he's "protecting America against violent foreign invaders". And I can imagine many people watching this and agreeing with him - I mean, I consider myself quite liberal, but waving a Mexican flag at these events just makes me think you can fuck right off with that bullshit.
It's a great example IMO of how Trump deliberately sows division and escalates whenever possible in order to use people's fear to consolidate power. It's basically Autocracy 101.
The first amendment does apply to the rioter with the flag but it also does to the people watching this. The watchers will get inflamed by (a) the vandalism and (b) the spectacle of the Mexican (or any foreign) flag associated with the vandalism. They absolutely have a right to get angry.
I recently naturalized as a US citizen. It took ~15 years (permanent residency + citizenship). That was after spending a decade (multiple programs) here as a student. No one should suffer and live in fear in an ideal world. At the same time, it is galling to see the left support illegal immigration because (a) someone "contributes" to the economy, (b) they are paying taxes (how is this known by anyone except the payer and the IRS?), (c) they are good people.
The reaction of my extreme-left wing friends is to say "well, you got to come here. They deserve the same opportunity." I am the first one to admit I have had some advantages. At the same time, every legal immigrant goes through a relatively rigorous process. Any whiff of a criminal record has the potential to derail the process, as should be the case. Just apply the law equally to everyone. That's one of the promises of our constitution. I mean this both for liberals and conservatives. If a law is unjust, we have mechanisms in place to overturn them. But to ignore the law is a long-term danger to this country. This is one of the reasons there is a lot of support for this type of action. It is borne out of frustration. Lastly, the idea that people supporting deportation are racists is an easy cop-out to not have to explain how we got to the current state (saying this as a non-white person although I also disagree with the left's assertion that only white people can be racist).
It's weird that you won't come out and say what you think is "going on" though. I've given the explanation that the vast majority of people waving Mexican flags in LA would give: they are expressing that they're proud to be Mexican, or of Mexican heritage, and are sick of being treated like they're less than other people because of that heritage.
What is your explanation? I suspect that it's something along the lines of: "people waving foreign flags are signaling their intention to invade the US", but that you don't want to say it overtly because it's obviously a racist talking point from right-wing media.
No, I am not your valet. You can easily search for something like 'democrats condemn violence' if you actually want to know instead of wasting my time.
You would do well to remember that the protesters likely feel it would be accomplishing their political goals to provoke a larger violent confrontation with the police. The best case for the protesters looking to undermine Trump is if they convince the US Marines to open fire and slaughter lots of innocents on live TV. That could make these protests 10x - 100x larger than they are currently. Think Boston Massacre and you'll get the idea.
I doubt the rioters want to be slaughtered to undermine the president. But the people egging them on and providing them with riot masks seem to like the idea.
Whether or not someone supports the current topic of the mostly peaceful and somewhat rebellious and violent protests, this much is clear.
You either support somewhat violent protests, regardless of topic, expecting that law enforcement and civilians will handle it amongst themselves, or you are authoritarian and demand that the federal government intervene with the US Armed Forces the moment someone throws a rock at a cop car.
This is an abomination, and anyone who supports the deployment of troops in my opinion lacks the values I thought were universal in this country.
(To support this action by Trump is to say you don't support the second amendment, on the grounds that the people should never have the power to subvert the state).
I really hated when Fox news would say things like this and I hate it when individuals do. It makes it impossible for us to communicate.
Just because the other side doesn't share your values doesn't mean they have none. You might say their values are evil. That's a different discussion, but they're rarely just reacting blindly.
> They clearly value authority and order above all else
No, they do not even get to claim order any more. This situation is being escalated by Trump in order to have a raging crisis for him to attack and drive even more division. Just like he did to the 2A/BLM protests, just like he did with the election lies culminating in the J6 protests, just like he did with his appalling anti-leadership throughout Covid. Trump doesn't possess the skills to actually tackle problems. His only real skill is slithering away from blame after he creates chaos and destruction. The fascists' only real value is now naked autocratic "strong" man authoritarianism. And the only reason they're still clinging to caring about the law is to assuage their own egos that the suffering they're reveling in is somehow justified.
It makes me feel sick as a programmer knowing how many people on this board that values "hacker" anti authoritarianism and curiosity would have the government send the military to shoot their own citizens
I think the bad people are the ones hurting social services, creating terror through police actions and taking billions of dollars in bribes through their cryptocoin while being president.
But yeah, some cars getting destroyed is terrible.
Okay, so if this is the case, then why are you advocating escalating the situation further?
I mean, surely you're not so stupid to legitimately believe the marines are being sent in for "control", right? We all, left, right, and center, understand what this is. Trump news-casting. It's an attempt to make the situation worse for clicks and views, for sensationalism. And it's working quite well!
Even if you think these riots are riots and that they're the bad guys and yadda yadda yadda... okay and why are we sending in the marines to cause more destruction? What's the link there buddy? Do you just want to watch the world burn? Because, honestly, that's kind of fucked up.
I think the bigger picture is the creeping authoritarianism of the administration. Focusing on the actions of a few angry individuals after over the top ICE raids is missing that the administration sent in US troops over the objection of state officials. That Trump is calling the governor scum and suggesting that Democratic officials be arrested. That this sort of justification has happened in Russia, Hungary, El Salvador to consolidate power.
Flashback: For years, the Insurrection Act has loomed large in the minds of Trump and his conservative allies.
- In the summer of 2020, as Trump privately fumed over nationwide Black Lives Matter protests, White House aides drafted a proclamation to send thousands of active-duty U.S. troops into the streets.
- Trump ultimately was talked down by Joint Chiefs Chairman Gen. Mark Milley and Defense Secretary Mark Esper, but he has publicly expressed regret over not acting more forcefully.
- Top Trump allies, including architects of the far-right roadmap "Project 2025," have at various points called for using the Insurrection Act to secure the border, preempt Inauguration Day protests, and even subvert the 2020 election.
I'm not American, thus I had no vote in the election, nor do I like Trump for a number of reasons.
However, enforcement of immigration laws has been one of the biggest parts of his election platform, if not the central part(build the wall, etc).
I imagine his voters are happy to see some action being taken.
The protestors could really do with some better optics, destroying property and waving foreign flags is just going to increase approval for military action.
If the protestors had instead marched peacefully with American flags, it would have been a much better PR win.
I'm so tired of hearing this type of thing. "If the protesters would simply protest correctly, then I would respect them."
News flash. The opposition is always going to say something like this to set an impossible bar for the protestors. This type of thinking undermines all protests, protects the status quo, and basically boils down to victim blaming.
Not to mention you can always have false flag operatives undermining a movement.
Do you really think MLK Jr. didn't want to punch those cops in the face that were beating people at his marches? But he had emotional IQ, discipline, and effective organization. The current crop lacks all of that and the results are showing it.
Go look at news coverage from the period, he was denounced as an agent of chaos and blamed for riots all the time. Read history, not the anodyne postcard version of it.
His behavior at his marches is well documented. He wasn't setting anything on fire or throwing rocks at police. One way brings the American center to your side, the other pushes them away. Those who ignore this do so at the peril of their own causes.
Yes, the parent's point is that despite being restrained as you describe, the establishment still tried to paint MLK as a provocateur. Which speaks to my point that the status quo faction is always going to frame protestors this way in order to undermine them.
Yes and the videos of his peaceful marches and the brutality of the police ended up discrediting the establishment propaganda against him and bringing the American center to his side. It's the most historically successful strategy in activist history, but no one wants to do that because it doesn't feel good in the moment.
And yet, we can all choose what kinds of protests we do and don't support and respect.
It's true that the opposition will say that even the best most peaceful protest is bad. But sometimes people broadly will agree with them, and other times they won't, and that depends on what's actually going on.
What good is a "PR win"? Nobody would have even heard about it if they'd marched peacefully, and if they had it would have changed nobodies minds, and otherwise changed nothing. The issues for which a simple march can have any influence at all on are the ones for which the powers that be don't have strong feelings on, where they can be swayed by seeing public support for the issue. Trump has well past dug in his heels on illegal immigration, and has a large base that backs him on it (as you recognize); a fully peaceful protest would have accomplished absolutely nothing.
There are issues worth rioting over. Maybe you don't feel that illegal immigration is one of them, but you should at least understand the logic of a protest, and why sometimes becoming violent is necessary to accomplish anything.
It's relevant to mention that the trigger for these riots was federal agents administratively detaining people who are in the country illegally. These are not new federal immigration laws that Trump has passed; in fact, they were enforced thoroughly by the Obama administration, as well.
Trump is purposely manufacturing a crisis because he knows his opposition is taking a losing position. Polls have been very clear that voters want the government to enforce immigration laws. Maybe not in Los Angeles, but nationally, the left is taking the losing side of this issue.
How does a raid only target people who are here illegally? How do agents determine the identity and status of the person they're grabbing in a factory or school?
The idea is absolutely farcical. Plus, we know for sure that these raids have taken people mistakenly.
It's extra bad when the government's official position is that they can't get someone back from the foreign prison they're sent to. The threat to all citizens is clear; that's why they're resisting. "The left" may lose in the mainstream media but it's clearly the correct side of history.
Not to mention, that in most of the videos I’ve seen about detention of “illegals” - “ICE agents” look like a bunch of thugs. Facemasks, no identification features, they never introduce themselves, etc.
It’s clear since the election - Trump administration will use violence without any due process. Sort of Catch-22.
If you resist the indiscriminate purge of what Trump considers “illegal immigrants”[0] - military will be called to suppress the protests with some sort of never ending “emergency situation” established giving him full dictatorial powers.
Or he will just do the purges without resistance and achieve same goals.
“Protest voters” and democratic leadership have a lot to think about right now.
[0] lets not forget that you can be a US citizen and you can still be purged
> How does a raid only target people who are here illegally? How do agents determine the identity and status of the person they're grabbing in a factory or school?
This has been done for decades and has very established standard operating procedures. Do you think immigration raids started with Trump? This has been going on since the 1950s and there is established legal basis and agency procedures specifying exactly what the agents can and can't do, along with repeatable methods for verifying identity and legal status.
> However, enforcement of immigration laws has been one of the biggest parts of his election platform, if not the central part(build the wall, etc).
If you pay attention, you will notice that immigration policies have nothing to do with what's happening in the US, and at most they are a pretext.
The Trump administration is rounding up and transfering people, including US citizens, to prisons in third world countries they have no connection with. They are doing this without due process or legal basis. They have attacked and threatened judges who can and did opposed these actions. Lately the Trump administration is even threatening elected officials, including governors, with imprisonment.
Now you are witnessing the Trump administration illegally mobilizing both a state's national guard and the armed forces against its own citizens.
At one point anyone has to ask themselves if this is really about immigration at all.
Where a vote is cast matters. You can cast a protest vote for president in states like California or Idaho. You probably shouldn't cast a protest vote in a state that doesn't have such a regular electoral margin. There is often room for influence down ballot as well.
Gotcha, but. The whole point of a protest vote is to influence other people. Doesn’t that influence cross precinct boundaries these days?
The only effect of any protest vote is to tell your friends. Hasan had a lot of friends. Arab communities in Michigan had a lot of friends. Never-never Trumpers had a lot of friends.
I personally believe that a personal political strategy should have a conscientious goal, cognizant of the effects of its action.
There’s no separate moral universe where you preserve your ideals by helping elect an autocrat from the other side.
I was under the impression that the intent of a protest vote was to make a statement that the voter does not like the options presented.
A voter should weigh the value of their statement vs the value of voting for the lesser evil. In a state like mine, where the results of the next three presidential elections could be predicted with accuracy today, a statement seems to have more value to me; if I lived in a battleground state, it would be different. I have often voted in presidential primaries where the candidate was already selected; again, I value my vote for the lesser evil much less than a statement.
> you preserve your ideals by helping elect an autocrat from the other side
Harris was an authoritarian, but not an autocrat. People got sick of ever-growing bureaucratic authoritarianism, but made the mistake of thinking the problem was the bureaucracy rather than the authoritarianism. So now the bureaucracy has been smashed and we are left with autocratic authoritarianism.
This is a fundamental misunderstanding of democracy. In a democracy you cannot vote your self a dictator. A democracy has democratic institutions such as courts and different branches of government, or systems in place which prevent any one individual from misusing their power, or grabbing more power then they have been handed from the electorate.
In a democracy people can vote for the Devil him self, and the Devil him self would become the president, but there are institutions which prevent him from instituting his demonic policies.
Elections have consequences, but if those consequences are the loss of rights, then you never lived in a democracy to begin with.
> Elections have consequences, but if those consequences are the loss of rights, then you never lived in a democracy to begin with.
So I guess these folks who live in a "real democracy" according to you just have the good government fairy swoop in when the people vote in a dictator.
At the end of the day, a democracy is just people, all the way down. It doesn't matter what laws you've written down, what courts you have, what procedures you've developed. If enough people stop believing in the enforcement of those laws, or court orders, or governmental norms, there is no deus ex machina.
Modern democracies have stuff like free press, strong legislative opposition, and unions which will mount an effective resistance when faced with a tyrant.
Both Italy and Argentina elected a pretty dictatorial rulers, but neither successfully removed any civil rights from their citizens as a result, as the democratic institutions mobilized an effective resistance.
As a comparison to the USA, in a healthy democracy, the protests we are seeing in LA would not be spontaneous and organically arise from normal everyday people, but they would be called for and organized by unions, civil rights organizations, opposition parties, etc.
EDIT: Thinking about this further, the lack of participation from unions, human rights organizations, opposition parties, etc. during the anti-ICE protests, is much more common in unambiguous dictatorships like Russia or Iran.
Sensible modern democracies will have those features, but they're no more part of the definition than having seatbelts and airbags is part of the definition of what a car is (I guess the model t is the equivalent of ancient Athens here?).
I‘m not concerned with the definition of democracy, if it can even be defined. I‘m simply concerned with the modern concept of democracy, which includes stuff like civil liberties, minority rights, and—relevant here—protection of these rights from tyranny.
I don’t think our analogy is valid. A car is just a car, and the concept of a car has not changed since its invention. The modern democracy has been constantly evolving from its inception (I’m sure democratic societies existed even before ancient Athens), but nobody would consider a democracy from the 1800s a democracy if it existed today. Heck even USA would not pass until the civil rights era of the 1960s.
History shows that to simply not the case.
Individuals are bringing down democracies all the time. Especially presidential democracies are super vulnerable to this because the president has outsized power compared to the other branches of the government.
> This is a fundamental misunderstanding of democracy. In a democracy you cannot vote your self a dictator
Self-coups are a thing, and the best person to subvert a democracy is one who already wields considerable power within one. History is replit, unless you're doing the no-true-scottsman shuffle on the topic of democracy - if so, carry on.
The true Scotsman fallacy is not relevant here because the modern concept of democracy is a constantly evolving term. The modern democracy includes stuff like civil liberties, equal rights, human rights (including minority rights), and protections from tyranny. Many of these (particularly human rights) only arose in the post World War II era. Now coups do indeed happen, but those are the result of an entity overpowering the democratic institutions, not the result of people voting them selves a dictator. If the people vote them selves a dictator, then obviously at least some of the democratic institutions which are supposed to protect those rights were insufficient, or altogether absent.
Protest votes are stupid, but even stupider is chanting vote harder when clearly you aren't able to vote your way out of the death spiral.
Its been comical watching broken systems fall over themselves to accommodate trump while people pretend that they just need to vote for people who will maintain the broken systems instead of abusing them.
If you didnt spend the last 12 years tearing down your broken system and replacing it, you support all this bs. Eventually someone was going to get past the election, into the cockpit of the machine and press all these fucking buttons.
Not only did americans vote for the chimpanzee twice, they never got rid of all the buttons.
"Elections have consequences" you guys are meant to be the demonstration of how an armed populace responds to tyranny. But until I see you guys actually do anything about it, its just proof that more american values are completely worthless.
Not saying this is the case, just maybe challenging your premise as an absolute.
Let’s say someone is genociding, and the election opponent says “I want to also genocide, but harder and smarter.” Your moral obligation is stronger against the incumbent?
Is it because the incumbent is already complicit and the other guy might not be as bad? I don’t understand the moral logic of the possible absolutism here.
Shouldn’t the imperative be to reduce suffering? How does getting the lesser evil out of office help the situation?
And I don't think anyone understands how deeply the destruction runs, even if he is stopped today.
Take his budget proposal for example. It explicitly called for the complete de-funding of TRIO programs. I have worked with multiple TRIO programs at multiple institutions over the years. While I am hopeful that the congress will institute funding for them, but the damage is done. People who have worked for these programs for decades are leaving, because of the uncertainty. These are career professionals who have helped THOUSANDS of kids make a better future. Further, TRIO programs are historically an entry into higher education for first-generation and low-income students not just in terms of being served by the programs, but also being employed by them. Every TRIO program I've worked with has been staffed by low-income first-generation folks. Without this entry into higher education, we will lose these voices in postsecondary education. People start with TRIO then move into hard dollars and off of grants, spreading their experiences across a campus.
The damage is done and we'll be feeling it for longer than my children will be alive.
Subsequently, the thing that really caused my immediate family (hardcore republican) to turn off of Trump was actually his most recent budget proposal and the hearings associated with it. They saw that he was cutting programs that help rural areas more than urban areas and feel betrayed. It takes everything I have in my to not just say "I told you so".
Finally - and completely disconnected, if you want to know how full of shit this administration is - The Secretary of Education said out loud that the (1)TRIO programs were out-of-date, that (2)schools needed to find other ways to recruit students, and that (3)there was no way to measure their success.
(1) TRIO has decades of research supporting their most effective models, and is a thought leader in student support and success for at-risk youth. The current trend of "pathways in higher education" that is sweeping the US is literally just a TRIO model.
(2) TRIO programs are explicitly banned from being used as recruiting tools for their host institutions if they are hosted by a college/university. It is illegal.
(3) TRIO programs submit an annual performance report with multiple measures of success. Any inability by ED to find proof of TRIO effectiveness is because they are incompetent in analyzing the data, not because the data doesn't exist.
What is the point of encouraging more people to participate in politics when that increases the chances of your party losing? From a relatively recent analysis of polls at https://archive.is/kbwom "The reality is if all registered voters had turned out, then Donald Trump would’ve won the popular vote by 5 points [instead of 1.7 points]. So, I think that a 'we need to turn up the temperature and mobilize everyone' strategy would’ve made things worse." That's from a Democratic analyst, not a Republican one.
The Republicans are rubbing their hands together and cackling every time one of you claims "everything is political" or "politics is a duty" because it just helps them win elections.
And it's their only comment. They went through all the trouble of creating an account to write a comment about how much they hate politics on a political post, when they could have just hit the "hide" link that's on every post.
I am honestly so done with American politics infecting every single part of the English internet. Thankfully there is usually some refuge for those of us who speak more than one language.
when it doesn't impact you, or your immediate future, it is fair to steer clear and consider it noise - but this is a textbook historical moment. This isn't cheap talk. These are real and national trajectory altering events.
What happens in these coming months defines a major historical event for the USA, which sets it's course for the coming century.
It may become a country which is directly hostile to you. If you are American and are ignoring this, then it is no different to getting mad your family is wanting to talk about the raging kitchen fire that is unaddressed and escalating because "so what, the stove top has fire sometimes, it's a gas heater, that's normal" which, sure, would be right, but right now the entire wall is ablaze.
You cannot ignore this one, even those of us in other countries cannot ignore this one, as we have to reconsider our alliance with a country that reasonably one can assume is in the middle of falling to a fascist regime.
This is NOT run of the mill politics. This is genuinely about the collective future of the Anglosphere.
Go start a website for the tech scene in your country that presumably isn't in the process of being taken over by fascists? Us Americans need all the avenues to organize we can get.
And it's even topical here - this surveillance industry that grew out of many tech startups is itself at ground zero of this fascist takeover, both boosting extremist disinformation to drive "engagement" and also creating a crop of newly-minted elites with the audacity to kick over the whole apple cart of our American way of life.
Literally just don't click on the post. I don't understand - I look at the front page and 99% of it is not politics.
So, you willingly and intentionally honed-in on the 1% you don't like... just so you can complain? I don't mean to be rude, but I don't think that's normal behavior.
And how will they protect? When a protester throws a rock at a federal building’s window. Or when they run towards the fed building with a can of spray paint.
Not every decision by the US government is made democratically. Sometimes a delegate is voted upon. In this case last year a new commander and chief of the US military was voted in who has this power.
>Democracy does not mean the majority gets whatever it wants.
Yes, it does. By definition democracy is doing whatever the majority wants to do.
>protecting the rights of the minority
Under democracy the minority opinion can be ignored. Rights only need to be protected if the majority wants. And the majority can decide what is and isn't considered a right.
If minority rights are not maintained, then the first majority to win will change the rules/system so that the minority can never become the majority. In the extreme example, the 51% votes to eliminate the 49%. For a democracy to function minority rights and checks on the majority power are fundamental requirements.
>so that the minority can never become the majority
So you are trying to say that a democracy that is unable to find a global maxima is not a functional democracy? I would disagree and say that a democracy moving towards a local maxima is still functional.
That is still not how democracy works! Non-commissioned officers don't swear an oath to upholding the constitution or the people's vote, only to the Commander in Chief. The majority of Americans (and even Congress) could vote in favor of a military invasion of Mexico, and it would be fully constitutional for the sitting president to ignore their vote.
"The majority" changes the Commander in Chief, who in turn can be held liable for violating constitutional democracy if they abuse discretionary powers (see: Richard "I am not a crook" Nixon).
> Newsome wont do enough to protect federal buildings. He doesn't care.
Is that so? What did he had to say about it? As I understand it, the LA governor is adamant in how illegally mobilizing both the national guard and the armed forces is being used to fabricate a crisis.
A few years ago a bunch of protesters damaged a federal building and endangered federal workers and elected officials. They all got pardons. What is your opinion of that event and its outcome?
I asked a question and you answered, it was not a "gotcha". However I have asked other people (in person) over the past few days who do support the pardons and Jan 6 and also support deploying the military against civilians in CA now. Glad to know you're consistent in your views, sad to know you can't tell a question from a "gotcha".
I lived through the BLM protests in a liberal city. They let them destroy everything, then they called in the National Guard to stop looting that already happened.
Everyone’s okay with peaceful protests, but they should call in the national guard and prosecute people for violence. You might hate Trump, but in my previous experience, it’s the residents of the most liberal districts that suffer all the consequences of this nonsense.
Oakland had some boarded up windows for a while around then. The destruction of the window of the Chase branch in downtown was indeed complete, I think people might have broken it twice.
Honestly in 2020, I went to an open grocery store, a little bit outside the city center, the next day and I'm riding in the elevator to the grocery store and there is this black elderly man from the poor area of the city riding with me and we get out and it's closed, and he's like "Oh Man, they destroyed all the grocery stores in my neighborhood."
Was literally everything destroyed, no, but I've got photographs of small businesses boarded up with they already looted everything, please don't loot again. There was devastation throughout the city.
After everything happened, national guard trucks showed up and guarded the devastation. If you drive out to the wealthy burbs, it's like nothing happened. They devastated one of the most liberal parts of America. Congrats.
While I think you are right that Trump is doing this to escalate the situation,
> LA had plenty of local police to handle the scale of the protests before
sure, and why didn't they do it this time? I suspect for the same reason: both Bass and Newsom want to escalate the situation as well. And when both sides want escalation that's what we get. My 2c.
Note I edited my post to remove "before". What I meant is at the start of these protests. LA had and continues to have plenty of its own law enforcement available. There is simply no reason to nationalize the guard without consent of the governor.
Trump decided to call out the National Guard in response to one car getting burned. That's something on the scale of a sports riot, not a collapse of law and order. You are making a mountain out of molehill, or falling for the manipulations of the people who are.
It's hilarious to me that we even have the cultural understanding of a sports riot, and it's assumed that it's just not that bad. Just people having a good time, burning up a car and smashing businesses to celebrate (mourn) their team's victory (defeat).
Is that supposed to be funny? Because in a super dry sort of way it's hilarious as a concept.
Sports riots following a big game are just not that unusual in developed countries (even in Japan from time to time!), and no, they are not that bad. They are minor transgressions that rarely involve serious injury or loss of life and it's foolish to treat them as existential crises.
Are we watching the same things? It would seem they are. I see videos of LA police shooting reporters (with less than lethal but from a lethal distance) and swarms of cops ignoring 3 mounted officers attempting to trample a guy on the ground. Tons of arrests already. LA police are plenty capable of escalating things all on their own. They arrested a solid 1/4 of the protesters last night and will keep right on doing that, I'm sure.
I think the fact that the LAPD had a press conference where they stated they were prioritizing responding to only certain kinds of crimes and cancelled time off for officers among a whole list of changes, indicates they could use help and adding in federal resources was the correct decision.
If it’s the city I think you’re referring to, the governor was literally begging the mayor to ask for help from the national guard, and she refused for hours. They would have been deployed long before that. I believe the quote the mayor said at the time was something like “give them room to destroy” and basically gave the rioters the green light.
Edit:
Fwiw, the governor probably shouldn’t have waited for permission. A white man encroaching on the city run by a black woman at the height of Freddie Gray, tough spot to be in.
> where the mayor of the city said that she was going to allow, give protesters room to destroy and wasn't going to stop them.
I didn't vote for Trump in 2016 or 2024, but I did do so in 2020 specifically because of the BLM riots, which the media incited (through selective reporting of police violence), excused ("fiery, mostly peaceful protests"), and then went so far as to doxx and harass anyone who resisted the mob, or even just those who found themselves in the wrong place at the wrong time, like the fuel truck driver who hadn't been informed that BLM had commandeered an interstate (and didn't want to get Reginald Denny'd): https://www.the-independent.com/news/world/americas/crime/tr...
Glad to see Trump learned his lesson from the first time.
You're making it sound like the "violence" started in a vacuum. Let's not forget where the actual violence and unlawfulness originated from – in both the BLM and ICE protests.
It's generally the police that starts being violent. It's a very well known tactic and not done just for fun (though I don't doubt they have fun doing it).
Sorry, shattered most of the windows of the central business district, destroyed virtually every grocery store and pharmacy to the point of an almost total loss, carried away most anything of value that could be reasonably carried away on foot from any retailer or small business, vandalized tons of private property/vehicles. Lit tons of police cars on fire.
I don’t still live there. Honestly, it convinced me right or wrong that the only reason I’m able to live in the city was because the police are there to sort of enforce the laws and that there is a certain percentage of the population that will steal everything as soon as they think there is an opportunity. Compare that to the suburbs where you could leave valuables out in your yard and no one would take them convinced me that I would rather raise a family in a stable mostly crime free environment.
The original way it was put is that “they were allowed to destroy everything” and the national guard was brought in after the looting had already happened. That’s the picture I’m responding to and contesting because I don’t think it’s true in most of the country. Maybe Minneapolis and a small number of other places?
You men the poor resisdents, because this people dont plunder and burn the mansions in Beverly Hills, where they hire private security and have gated communities.
They burn the small business of honest working people.
Have you seen the photos? The situation is out of control. Cops were hiding under bridges while their cars are destroyed by rocks and Molotov cocktails. It’s a shitshow.
I'm not suggesting anything, yesterday I was watching live footage and saw a tear gas grenade fall into a pile of junk near a car and light both on fire. I tried to track down a clip of it but the media is focused so much on waymos it's impossible to sort through the noise. Perhaps in a couple days it'll warrant a story.
Anyway, if the cops weren't there, there'd be no fires. Ergo the cops shouldn't be there. Seems like a pretty simple algebra to me.
The "just submit" ideology that people seem to be touting demonstrates a lack of understanding of American psychology. The country was founded on revolution against a despot, that's the core American value. You can't deal with a population like that by sending in storm troopers, that will obviously just escalate the situation.
The government needs to be realistic about the situation and seek alternative measures if their goal is to deport the neighbors of people who love the 2nd amendment. Perhaps they could simply give up on that goal, that's what I would advise.
> The "just submit" ideology that people seem to be touting demonstrates a lack of understanding of American psychology. The country was founded on revolution against a despot, that's the core American value. You can't deal with a population like that by sending in storm troopers, that will obviously just escalate the situation.
I think you're misunderstanding the audience. The Trump administration is not trying to convince or even deter these protesters, all of this is theater for middle America at home watching this on TV. It's a battle for their votes based on who wins the propaganda war by looking less reasonable on the news.
I meant that there are more than sufficient civilian law enforcement resources to address the problem. Between LAPD, CHP, and the various federal agencies, they could easily surge thousands of officers there if they needed to.
By what authority can they actually use violence to guard these federal workers and buildings? Not the insurection act, and so not at all due to pose comitatus.
Typically their presence alone is enough to stop anything new from happening. In theory they would only need to use enough violence to defend themselves. That's how we got Kent State but in general Kent State was also because the guards in that situation found themselves alone and isolated with little training. In a modern context 60 national guards standing around outside of a downtown highrise with a couple Humvees is unlikely to see any escalation.
I wish Kevin Drum were still here. I often didn't agree with his politics, but his blog posts were always insightful, and I wonder what he would say about our current situation.
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[ 3.4 ms ] story [ 359 ms ] threadTrump deploys National Guard as Los Angeles protests against immigration agents (105 points, 2 days ago, 50 comments) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44214230
The National Guard Deployment in LA Is a Threat to Democracy (15 points, 7 comments) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44230137
(Although you'd think 2000 National Guard troops would be enough without the 700 Marines)
The President can of course dispatch the military for domestic law enforcement, but to do so he needs to establish a legal exception, like the Insurrection Act. That hasn't happened yet.
[1]: https://www.brennancenter.org/our-work/research-reports/poss...
> Orders for these purposes shall be issued through the governors of the States or, in the case of the District of Columbia, through the commanding general of the National Guard of the District of Columbia.
To surpass that, the president must declare an insurrection. But he’s done no such thing, since such a claim is nakedly indefensible.
(This justification of course only applies to the national guard. The federal armed forces have even stronger guardrails.)
The USA is a dictatorship now, the trump cult has won. Let's hope it crumbles fast.
https://www.npr.org/2022/05/09/1097517470/trump-esper-book-d... ("Former Pentagon chief Esper says Trump asked about shooting protesters")
* We value human life over property
* We only empower police to use lethal force to prevent that person from taking a life.
Seems you’d like to change this? Enough’s enough, steal a TV and you die on the spot?
Obama deported millions with relatively little pushback. Because he did not deny anyone due process.
Everybody has a requirement for due process. It's the only constitutional way to prove someone is an illegal alien, or overstayed their welcome, or has a history.
You cannot "enforce existing immigration laws" by ignoring due process, because they are a requirement of existing immigration laws
This is blatantly inaccurate. Obama administration frequently used expedited removal to deport people without hearings. Don't take my word for it, a simple Google search will serve you well.
If this is action you agree with, just say so. But the books do not support this.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Do_Not_Split
What if police attack a peaceful protest--say trampling a lone person with horses (https://www.newsweek.com/la-protestor-stomped-police-horseba...) or shooting a reporter standing by herself (https://www.cbsnews.com/news/reporter-los-angeles-protests-r...)? Is there an assault-rifle shaped solution to this kind of anarchy?
https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/tiananmen-... ("Resurfaced Trump interview about Tiananmen Square massacre shows what he thinks of protests")
Hard to believe? That's exactly what they're relying on: they think people are too stupid to believe there's an actual radical white-supremacist Christian Theocratic movement working to destroy the United States. It's the biggest known internal existential threat of the last 150 years and our corporate media and political environment has resulted in conditions that have enabled it to manifest nearly unchallenged.
Who are these "primary operatives" who became "high-level officials"?
> Hard to believe? That's exactly what they're relying on
Is this a QAnon quote or an original?
edit: and remember, it was a net positive for conservatives in the end.
Kind of like shooting reporters with rubber bullets.
(But to your point, anything >0% is pretty horrible.)
https://www.census.gov/newsroom/press-releases/2025/2024-pre...
>In the 2024 presidential election, 73.6% (or 174 million people) of the citizen voting-age population was registered to vote and 65.3% (or 154 million people) voted according to new voting and registration tables released today by the U.S. Census Bureau.
Moreover, due to the electoral college and Senate and gerrymandering of House districts, the majority is hardly needed for attain power. I bet that even in other societies, throughout time, roughly a third of the population will not react to what one of the other thirds is doing (even if they claim they don't approve in polls).
Again, if you insist on talking about "35% of people in the US" rather than "35% of voters", then fine, but I think it's a weird way to talk about it. We don't know what the people who didn't vote thought about the candidates. Voting is the way that we find that out!
When were talking about adhering to a dangerous status quo, the conversation makes sense. A status quo of boring beauracracy can be defendable. A status quo of fascism, much less so. Thars why conversations in 2025 are like this.
Even then:remember Trump still had a 40% approval rating after all this.
Of that, let’s call it a flat 51% voted for Trump. That means that about half of 65%, or roughly 32.5% of American citizens support Trump, and by extension, likely this policy move.
So yes, it actually is more than you need to win elections.
But typically people are talking about percentages of voters with statistics like this.
What's stopping them to do enough fuckery between now and 2028 to "win" the GOP the election in 2028 (or even 2026), and to stop Trump from joining the ranks of despots that keep getting reelected like Putin and Erdogan? Or JD Vance can be his Medvedev.
To use a horrible analogy, a lot of times women don't even admit to themselves that they've been raped, because accepting that means accepting a horrific label. The USA is in the middle of getting raped, and so far the response has been to mostly freeze up and take it, not wanting to fight, because that is scary and can get you hurt even more. (Well, at least for the majority of the country there isn't a real fightback yet...).
And you’re absolutely right about the denial. It manifests as the “nothing ever happens” meme.
If not, 35% approval is perfectly fine if that includes most of the police and the military.
This is a dire situation and I'm not sure how this country crawls back out of this authoritarian slide, but we've got to somehow.
After the National Guard shot a few kids for literally no reason (nobody had ever been given orders to fire), they told the student standing around "Disperse or we will shoot again"
This has never been a problem for the party of Roger Stone who literally has a large back tattoo of Nixon and is one of the primary reasons we had Bush Jr as president even though Al Gore won the votes when the count was allowed to finish
>explicitly to prevent the government from enforcing laws that the protestors don't like.
100+ policemen died on Jan 6th. What's the body count here?
Wikipedia says as much, since the government itself took down their page:
>Within 36 hours, five people died: one was shot by the Capitol Police, another died of a drug overdose, and three died of natural causes, including a police officer who died of a stroke a day after being assaulted by rioters and collapsing at the Capitol.[d][34][45] Many people were injured, including 174 police officers. Four officers who responded to the attack died by suicide within seven months.[35] Damage caused by attackers exceeded $2.7 million.[46]
Officer Sicknick (the cop who died of a stroke the next day) was pepper-sprayed by rioters, but not physically assaulted in a way which might cause a stroke. He did not collapse at the capital on Jan 6, but at 10PM the following day (your confusion on this point is understandable, given that the Wiki article deceptively implies that he collapsed on Jan 6). His autopsy found that his death was due to "natural causes".
The gaslighting around Jan 6 is really outrageous.
"Not physically assaulted in a way which might cause a stroke" - you're right, I can imagine no way in which hitting someone in the head multiple times with a fire extinguisher might cause a hemorrhagic stroke, a literal bleed in the brain. Versus a spontaneous stroke, which at his age would affect 0.03% of the population to even occur, let alone be actively fatal, especially when the person was already in the hospital being monitored for the injuries TO THEIR HEAD.
That's the absolute risk for a 42-year-old individual having a stroke in the US in that year, a 1 in 1.2M risk that it happened in the 24 hours following that.
Poor Officer Sicknick, had the shit beat out of him and then suffered a 1 in a million "unrelated" stroke in the same 24 hours!
> His autopsy found that his death was due to "natural causes".
I love that you leave out the next fucking sentence, that even if you are playing pedant, still says this: "that the events that transpired on January 6 played a role in his death".
Piss off with the gaslighting bullshit. Yes, the Capitol Police issued a statement... as little more than damage control.
[0]https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/brian-sicknick-fire-exting...
If that kind of talk worries you, consider how much uglier it will be when the good people of LA form unregulated militias instead. Do you really want to see Ruby Ridge 2: Rooftop Korean boogaloo?
We are to depend on our trusted local law enforcement to protect us, as well as our valiant governors who will assuredly call up local guards to do the same. Examples of brave, novel Democratic resistance to Trump abound these days. There's no need to worry!
Most of our GWOT veterans tend to despise the Republican Party for what should be obvious reasons. Chicago famously has no guns too, am I right? The cognitive dissonance is honestly astounding.
Honestly though, guns really only go so far. They’re useful for making yourself more trouble to fuck with than you’re worth to cowardly paramilitary thugs. They’d rather go abduct first graders and unarmed adults in the final stages of becoming US citizens, than risk suddenly finding out they’re in the middle of Ruby Ridge 2. Guns are more of a self defense tool. Ukraine and Iran have proven in recent years that drones are far more useful to an insurgency than guns. That constant hum, like a swarm of bees, constantly threatening a slow and painful death, destroys the enemy’s will to live, never mind fight. You see videos of Russian orcs just sitting there, almost catatonic, as the drone finally puts them out of their misery.
Here's hoping this is purely an optics play and they are only there to waste money and incite nationalism. Because if this escalates in any way and the US military turns on Americans, its hard to understate how bad things could get.
I live in a very red state (North Idaho). They don't need to send ICE here. The sheriffs are all cooperating and lending county facilities to hold immigrants. It is safe to say the entire sheriffs department is basically a branch of ICE at this point. They have been targeting I-90 and US-95 heavily and running plates on every car along with a helicopter that basically just goes back and forth all day.
There is very little immigrant presence here (illegal or otherwise) but they have been catching work crews at random (usually under the premise of suspicious vehicle/behavior).
Spokane has been having CBP and ICE raids as well. Quite a few make the local news. Just doesn't get the attention like the larger cities do. Quite a bit of roundups going on out by Yakima and Tri-Cities, WA too. Which is part of why they are using county jails to hold people.
If it was ever true, it hasn't been true for a long time.
There used to be (and probably still is) a saying in the US military that goes something like "Folks who can't hack it in the military wash out and become cops.".
The military is not at all configured to be an effective long-term occupying force, but its personnel are trained to be soldiers [0] and peacekeepers. (While I'm absolutely certain that one can find examples of psychos that should have been detected and discharged earlier, that's true of any sufficiently-large organization. Finding every malicious person is a task that's next to impossible.)
Anyway, in a high-pressure, chaotic situation, I'd rather come up on a random member of the US military [1] than a random cop any day of the week.
[0] Yes, this does mean that they damage, destroy, injure, and kill when required.
[1] Whether active duty, reservist, or honorably discharged.
They don't deserve any benefit of the doubt at this point. Ask yourself what the MAGA reaction would've been to troops being deployed to their riot at the Capitol.
No, it’s not crazy but for an unusually large portion of the populace it makes you a racist.
Ditto for any suggestion that immigration law be enforced.
You realize that this is all happening in a very small part of LA, which is an absolutely enormous metropolitan area with more than 10 million residents. The cars being torched are Waymos (which have been happily recording video that is turned over to authorities at request, instead of by warrant -- this action will keep them out of the protest zones) and no businesses are being harmed. The ones being violent are in uniform (even LAPD is saying that protesters are peaceful and those who are violent are people who are frequently violent and showed up for the fight, which is telling on themselves more than a bit).
For 99% of Angelenos, this weekend could have been business as usual if they chose to ignore the federal threats to their neighbors. Millions went to farmers markets, kids birthday parties, church, and all of the other regular weekend activities. The city has not been invaded by anyone other than feds, it is not a war zone, it's not even close to a riot. You are being lied to and manipulated if you believe any of that.
And this week, many residents who have the privilege of doing so are standing in line to barricade the entrance to schools that are hosting graduation ceremonies, so abuelas can celebrate the end of elementary school without being terrified of being kidnapped by men in masks. This is how the community protects its own, and a lot of other places could learn from that if they gave a shit.
In LA, the guys standing outside of Home Depot are the kind of guys that a woman would feel safe telling that they're carrying cash, invite them into their car, and bring them to their house... alone. These are not dangers to anyone.
LAPD and especially LASD, on the other hand, aren't the kind of guys who are safe alone with their own wives.
Sorry, this ship has sailed.
For those who don’t know the reference: This quote is from a journalist who tries to make a protest with a few billion dollars private property set on fire (BLM), pass a peaceful, with fire as the decorum of the journalist. It ignited the moods because the speech was obviously contradicted by the background, highlighting that journalists invert reality and are missioned for propaganda (by whom, nobody knows).
And then “the People” voted for Trump. It’s probable there is massive support for the current deployment of forces. The protestors themselves probably aren’t the real target of this episode, it’s probably rather about highlighting the lack of will and complacency of the Californian structures in establishing order.
Waymo's jaguars are well insured -- this does not harm Alphabet in any meaningful way (and certainly not in the "Your neighbor's small business" context that was the context of the post). They shouldn't have been in the area (the taxis weren't), and they absolutely shouldn't be helping law enforcement quite so voluntarily with their video surveillance.
If you want LA to go back to "normal", get ICE, USMC and the federalized guard out of there. They are the problem. Your tax dollars are paying for this charade, and if nothing else, you should be pissed about that.
> get ICE, USMC and the federalized guard out of there
nope. They’re gonna stay until the job is done. Sorry you’re outgunned here.
It’s dangerous to have the military do it. The Founding Fathers knew this.
And the protestors aren't the problem; the problem are the looters using the protestors as cover. The looters mostly belong to the retail theft gangs that have been plaguing stores across the country (even in red states) since COVID.
YMMV.
I thought only German Nazi soldiers were incapable of having morality and ability to decide, and were only capable of following orders.
This is the heaviest hammer in the toolbox. Deploying it against citizens he doesn't like because he resents their message is a historical display of bad character and is profoundly unethical in a way that the harshest adjectives struggle to reflect.
There's nothing in the text that suggests it is appropriate to preemptively deploy US military in response to protests, not even because the administration deems protestors to be enemies.
Narratives in support of preemptively deploying the military against protesters are all crafted justifications, each built after the act has been decided on.
What's left to for apologists to do is to choose whether to own the methods and intentions or mirror the administration's disingeniousness.
Would blockading federal offices not qualify under the third condition?
> (3) the President is unable with the regular forces to execute the laws of the United States;
They're proud of their heritage, and its the reason why they are being targeted.
Besides, there are also fully legal immigrants being deported.
This, along with bullish economic policies to get them to capitulate to demands of US-homed multinationals (along with plenty of their own internal problems like everywhere else), has caused a problem that has now come home to roost.
It wasn't their fault, they were just born in the wrong country. If they can make it here to work and build a better life for themselves, great. Pay taxes. Get ID'd. Done.
Papiere bitte
This is how a free country turns slowly into a place where you need to carry a passport to take out the garbage bin in the morning.
I’d cite my source, but can’t find it. I also can’t find anything saying he is invoking it.
Do you have any specific source?
Edit: I’ve found several sources that make It clear the Insurrection Act had not been invoked.
https://www.cnn.com/2025/06/09/politics/insurrection-act-tru... - “Trump officials quietly discuss moves in LA that avoid invoking Insurrection Act, but it’s not off the table”
Republicans would have to lose a lot of seats for it to happen. Or, Trump would do something beyond the pale for the GOP. Hard to imagine what would make them change their minds on it. Probably not thousands of dead protesters.
> Approximately 700 Marines with 2nd Battalion, 7th Marines, 1st Marine Division will seamlessly integrate with the Title 10 forces under Task Force 51 who are protecting federal personnel and federal property in the greater Los Angeles area.
It seems like Trump has not invoked the insurrection act but instead it’s all under a different federal law. Steve Vladeck, a Georgetown law professor, has a write up [2] on Title 10 vs the Insurrection Act and some possible concerns. He posted this about the National guard but given the military release states they are being deployed to assist the nation guard under title 10 it still seems relevant. To quote the TL;DR of his post:
> The TL;DR here is that Trump has not (yet) invoked the Insurrection Act, which means that the 2000 additional troops that will soon be brought to bear will not be allowed to engage in ordinary law enforcement activities without violating a different law—the Posse Comitatus Act. All that these troops will be able to do is provide a form of force protection and other logistical support for ICE personnel. Whether that, in turn, leads to further escalation is the bigger issue (and, indeed, may be the very purpose of their deployment). But at least as I’m writing this, we’re not there yet.
[1] https://www.northcom.mil/Newsroom/Press-Releases/Article/421...
[2] https://www.stevevladeck.com/p/156-federalizing-the-californ...
As a result, we have people like Trump and Musk, both narcissists and sociopaths, at the White House.
Growing up, I dreamed about going to US, but was born on the wrong side of the Iron Curtain. As I got older and visited the country, it somewhat cooled my dreamed (Europe progressed dramatically in the meantime).
And now I feel a bit nostalgic and disoriented to be honest - what I once regarded as the country with the highest standards of ethics, integrity and rule of law, is unfortunately proving once again that no empire lasts forever. Of course it's a bit too soon as the US is still a superpower, but it definitely feels like the tide turned and really quickly.
The state will always use loaded language to change public opinion.
I tell my friends that we need to look to Hong Kong and France in case the protests move to Texas.
Such "protests" would be much rarer and shorter in Texas.
edit: I got throttled, as is the case on HN when things get "active". Here is my response to koolba:
---
At a head? Sure.
Do I think police can get rough and "in it" with civilians without live fire and without the use of the US Military? Yes.
Do I think, when a sufficient bloc of a city rebels against its law enforcement, then maybe the law enforcement should reconsider what they're enforcing? Also yes.
I disagree with the premise that the State is always right and that their monopoly on violence is absolute.
We celebrate the US revolution and revolutions across the world when governments act illegally and against the will of the people, violating civil rights.
I would not support firing into a crowd of people because of minor property damage.
So you are saying, guy throws rock. Now he has no rock. He should be shot despite having no rock?
So you are saying, police riot gear is useless against rocks?
I'm not suggesting they police should just blindly open fire on the crowd. But if you are in a crowd that turns violent and starts attacking the police, I think it's reasonable to expect some collateral damage in whatever their response is going to be.
> So you are saying, guy throws rock. Now he has no rock. He should be shot despite having no rock?
Yes. Or are you suggesting that if a guy shoots a gun and misses, then we should we wait for him to reload too? If the guy does not drop down on all fours and assume the position, I think it's reasonable for police to shoot someone throwing rocks at them.
> So you are saying, police riot gear is useless against rocks?
I doubt it's some invincible force field. They could still get hurt. And the police are there not just for their own safety. They are there to protect everybody. If someone is throwing rocks it could hit non police as well.
I do find it incredible the lengths people will go to argue in favor of violence to defend law breakers.
I'm arguing against disproportionate and escalatory violence. Police in other countries somehow deal with rock throwing without shooting.
Trailer: https://youtu.be/QDz1WVUHim4
Def worth watching with people and sharing. Very inspiring <3
Tame is good.
The administration wants the protests to turn into a flashpoint so they can send in more military control.
Lighting things on fire and launching fireworks is enough to create the tipping point. Don't encourage this stuff.
https://theonion.com/protesters-urged-not-to-give-trump-admi...
The reason why non-violent protest works is not because it prevents escalation, but because when escalation does inevitably happen, the masses will think the escalation was unwarranted and be sympathetic to the protestors. The worst possible thing for a protest movement to do is scaring the masses, since then they will flock to the state for "protection" and give the state carte blanche to get the situation under control.
The problem with your opinion is that it leaves out the fact that one side is deeply involved in ensuring this escalation takes place, either in fact or in appearance only.
So regardless of what protestors are doing, or even who infiltrated protests to inflame and escalate events, the Trump administration is hell bent on having these protests escalate.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Do_Not_Split
For all the work that MLK and his coalition did to practice nonviolence and to appear respectable, they were always disliked by the majority of the public. Being liked by the public is not a prerequisite to getting results. If you focus too much on respectibility, the impact of what you can do decreases until it hits YouGov petition levels.
Being annoying can be quite beneficial to a protest. It brings attention and forces people to think about you. There is a point after which it turns people off, and becomes a net negative, but you usually have to be very annoying for that to happen.
Being scary is entirely different thing though. When people are afraid they tend to become closed off to new ideas, and look to strong leaders. You absolutely don't want that in a protest.
> The protest has to be disruptive enough to affect the powerful, and approachable enough for sufficient people to join.
I think the ultimate point of a protest is to reach the ordinary people who aren't part of a movement. Movements succede and fail not by how much they convince the die hard supporters, but by how much they convinced average uninvolved people.
This doesn't just work by getting the public on your side. It works by showing that you are not repressed by fear. Fear is how facists rule, so showing others they don't need to fear, that they can decide not to fear, that is the real threat to authority.
That means they will abuse you to make others fear. When that happens, you need it to trigger outrage as widely as possible.
So a tipping point is required. ideally you engineer it to more likely tip the right way. But doing nothing because otherwise it might reinforce the status quo, will guarantee the status quo.
Horribly, this means one of the best possible outcomes is an unprovoked massacre by these Marines, ordered by Trump.
I've seen a number of people on social media thanking others for neutralising tear gas, so it's definitely happening. Maybe just not evenly distributed.
They are being deployed on American soil for their force projection.
I have zero problem with deporting people that are here illegally. I have plenty of problems with how it's currently being done.
Can you expand on this? If you are referring to the AEA, as far as I know that’s not what is being used in LA.
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/jun/09/los-angeles-...
"Everyone has the right to freedom of movement and residence within the borders of each state."
"Everyone has the right to leave any country, including his own, and to return to his country."
Note that this affords the freedom to relocate within, leave, and return to one’s country, not the freedom to enter into other countries in violation of their immigration laws.
Well in a Freudian way this statement could be interpreted to exactly mean that what ICE is doing is illegal.
The issue however that prompted the protests was the way they are pursuing deportations with militarized tactics, brutality, and snatching people off the streets as abductions. They do not declare themselves, do not present their civil warrant, do not produce identification, and subsequently frequently do not follow laws, regulation, or the constitutional requirements of due process.
There is no reason that their neighbors, family, and friends need to be happy with what’s happening. They are afforded protection in our society to be angry and disclaim the government without fear of persecution or prosecution. When they’re then persecuted and prosecuted for doing that, people are pissed by the injustice. Then when their governments responsible is to fly in the military, you should expect an explosive situation.
Indeed it seems pretty clear the explosive situation was premeditated and planned - using armored vehicles and riot armored police to invade immigrant neighborhoods and abduct service workers and day laborers in broad daylight when a simple standard ICE operation was clearly designed to provoke strong response in those neighborhoods. Everything after that has been pretty deductively arrived at to create this precise situation. Even the language of insurrection and rebellion - laughably absurd claims for even a riot - which hadn’t happened until the national guard were deployed - are carefully chosen words to provide pretext for what comes next.
I desperate miss the states rights individual freedoms libertarian leaning republicans. They would never have done these things.
Also that they’re going after many people who are actually attempting to comply with the law, because those are the easiest to find. Meanwhile tens of millions of undocumented immigrants are still here, and the lesson they’re being taught is don’t trust the legal process, stay under the radar. In the end the Trump administration is unlikely to make a large dent in the undocumented population - they certainly haven’t so far. It’s mostly theater. They’ll just end up discovering how unintended consequences work.
That doesn't include the hundreds of students legally here on student visas.
And of course, if ICE is going to deport people in the country illegally: it's well establish by now that Musk and Melania violated the terms of their nonresident visas when they first came to the U.S., rendering their U.S. citizenship null and void (Musk worked in violation of his student visa; Melania both worked in violation of her tourist visa and overstayed her visa by several years; if she hadn't married Trump she would have been deported and banned from the U.S. for 10 years).
Will a useful idiot throwing a rock at a federal building be sufficient casus belli for the latter?
As it turns out when you send a force trained only to kill and subjugate, that's what they do. A few guardsman stood down but most did not.
Nothing about deporting illegal immigrants requires deploying the Marines.
The riots got worse after they were deployed. Obviously. They're being deployed because we have a drunk for SecDef, a basket case in Stephen Miller and flagging illegal-immigrant arrest numbers that are making Homan look incompetent. So we get theatrics. Sort of like the tariffs.
It is not just Trump. he represents what conservatives, republicans and their voters are. And this is enabled by consistent pretension that Trump is an secretly opposed aberration. No, he is admired both publicly and secretly.
> The Insurrection Act of 1807 [...] empowers the president [...] to nationally deploy the U.S. military [...] in specific circumstances, such as the suppression of civil disorder [...]
-- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Insurrection_Act_of_1807
https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/Seppo
tl;dr: it’s rhyming slang, Yank (USA person who may/may not also be one of the two Australian stereotypes of Americans, the other one being Texans) rhymes with (septic) tank, shortened to the euphemism used by OP
I think this is kind of an interesting point, because you mention Asian people, but "American" isn't a race. To certain readings, racism is prejudice plus power. In this setup, America is a hegemon establishment power. To dismiss someone or their views just because they're from the US doesn't sound nice, and I don't see how using the term would improve the tenor or tempo of the discussion, but as you surely know, cheekiness is a common trait of Australians. That's why I brought it up, as it's well and good and arguably just to be direct and to the point about not using that kind of talk on HN, because that's what your mod hat is for. I acknowledge and respect that you're doing what you're supposed to do. I simply wanted to gently acknowledge that whatever point that they were making, however poorly it might be phrased, was part and parcel to the derision that you're speaking of. I don't know if it's a very interesting or compelling point when stripped of its emotional language, but our words perhaps say more about ourselves than that which we speak of. I think it's good to be clear about what it is that is bad, not simply that it is bad.
You know better than I what is bad posting for HN, as what might be within the norms of acceptable speech down under would make many English-speaking people blush. I think the post was more heat than light myself, but if they'd said it any other way, we wouldn't be having this interaction, which is arguably what HN is for, interacting with each other in a way that encourages curiosity about the topic and about each other.
Then again, most people aren't super curious about HN metacommentary, so I better wrap this up. Appreciate the context.
https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que...
If tone policing limits the Overton Window of acceptable speech because it is not sufficiently positive, that becomes a kind of expectation for self-censorship, which is contrary to the HN guidelines which promote curious, free expression. Negative expressions can inflame the passions and can be antithetical to building a healthy community, but if the only acceptable negative expressions must be clinical in tone at worst, many legitimate expressions of content will be disqualified due to unauthorized discontent.
Thanks for the reference, by the way. I should collect a list of them. My current favorite is in my bio on here.
https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
The governor of Louisiana requested federal help. Legally very different.
Most people don't understand why we have the system of laws that we do. Most Americans couldn't design a stable republic the way our founders did. (Most of their contemporaries couldn't either.)
Nothing about deporting illegal immigrants requires calling in the Marines. Nothing about this situation makes their deployment in Los Angeles legal. Performative hackery is practiced by both sides. Desecrating the honour of our armed forces used to be bipartisan, but I guess that's no longer the case.
The Ghorman massacre in the recently aired season 2 of Star Wars Andor is the playbook version of this.
I don't think the US is there yet, but the direction seems about right. As you say, step by step.
Andor was great. I really enjoyed it. It's the AI robots you should really worry about.
I edited this post because riots implies they weren't burning down their own neighborhoods because they didn't actually own anything there and had not been prevented from owning anything. Certain groups love to post the actually affected Korean store owners, but it's a gross one minority group was pitted against another to prove racism was ok in retrospect to cause the conflict.
EDIT: It was US President George H. W. Bush ...
I agree that Trump is unlikely to turn into a dictator. But Caesar wasn't Rome's last dictator. And he wasn't the first to march on Rome.
Precedents are being set. Regardless of your views on illegal immigration, what's going on should be concerning because eventually someone with strong views you don't agree with will be in power, and if they can just arrest members of Congress, openly defy courts, ship ideological opponents to Guantanamo and send Marines into states they don't like, we're all going to be poorer for it. (If this shit stands, I'd argue the next Democrat in the White House should go FDR on the system.)
Now it seems like the republicans are trying to speed-run to a point where there won’t ever be another Democrat to worry about.
The simpler explanation is they're bad at long-term planning. Most of Trump's Cabinet and advisors are, essentially, influencers after all.
We probably need to work on a Project 2026 and Project 2028 document set. Plans to use these newly-unlocked powers to reform how power is distributed in America, force forward long-overdue projects being resisted by vocal minorities and secure our republic from its tendency towards electoral fetishism.
You need electoral reform post haste - but I do not seed even a start to that discussion, so I think you are hosed. Might not be Dictator Trump, but maybe Vance or some other guy who succeeds in this game.
And all who cry "if the democrats win everything will be ok again!!!!" - not it won't. The democrats are too slow to recognize the problem and even if they eventually do, there are no majorities to change the system. And finally: Democracy needs at least two parties - democrats cannot be expected to keep branches of the government forever. You need a sane and democratic second party. Republicans ain't it - but the current system gives them success, so why change?!
We tossed that all aside in the 1930s via threatening to pack the Supreme court. Federal powers are now everything because interstate commerce is now everything and without a functional 10A and with delegation to executive agencies POTUS approaches God level.
Democracies are vulnerable to "authoritarian takeover" has been known and understood for 2500 years.
> The position has too much power, is easily abused and there are not enough checks on that position.
In most parliamentary democracies, the Prime Minister is much more powerful than the US President. This is particularly the case since the PM is PM by virtue of his party having the legislative majority.
> And all who cry "if the democrats win everything will be ok again!!!!" - not it won't.
A better argument would be that this isn't a partisan issue. The last President declared a Constitutional Amendment by fiat and attempted to do (good) things like student loan relief with blatantly illegal authoritarian methods due to the perpetual Congressional gridlock.
This is a grave misunderstanding. A legislative majority isn't a static historical fact like Trump's electoral majority, it's dynamic - those are identifiable people not just a statistic.
Liz Truss was the UK's Prime Minister for less than two months. What changed in two months? Probably most of the idiots who actually voted for her didn't change their minds, but that doesn't matter, her fellow Tory MPs feared the worst from the outset and were proven correct. If she hadn't left she'd have been kicked out, she's known to have actually asked if there's some way she can cling on and been told basically "No" because there isn't.
Ultimately, if they can't get rid of her any other way, her backbench only needs to affirm a simple motion, "That This House Has No Confidence In His Majesty's Government" and it's all over. It would never come to that, but that's the backstop.
We see PMs easily enacting massive legislative reforms and even Constitutional changes that are nigh impossible in the US, that was not a particularly controversial statement.
In contrast the Westminster Parliament routinely disposes of Prime Ministers who lose its confidence, it's already happened once in my lifetime and it's not some multi-week procedure in which there's some performance of a judicial process, just a simple question: Does this Government retain the Confidence of the House?
Margaret Thatcher decided on this course of action on a Monday, on Wednesday morning she rose to say, "Mr. Speaker, I beg to move, 'That this House has no confidence in Her Majesty's Government.'" and by the next morning the Callaghan minority government had fallen.
The problem wasn't the Crown, that's the big takeaway. Giving the same power to a guy who doesn't have a hat doesn't fix the problem. You need to hold this much power in commission, that's the lesson that gave us the present British arrangement - the Lord High Treasurer was much too powerful, so his power was given to a commission, today its First Lord though not nearly as powerful as the Lord Treasurer, is too powerful, that's the Prime Minister you gestured at - the formal office is "First Lord of the Treasury", with the Chancellor being Second Lord, and the whips taking subsidiary parts of the commission. If you ask me we should further re-divide this power.
But just giving all that power to one man (and in the US it has always been a man) is even worse. The US President has powers that a King had, which made sense in the 18th century but stands out today - that's why Trump can corruptly pardon people for example.
You seem fixated on the practical process of removing one from power, which is of course irrelevant as long as their party backs them, which is the actual threat in both cases. In either case, if the legislature does not back them, they can be removed from power with little issue.
I see in a sibling comment you think this is actually a weakness of the US system...apparently the PM radically changing all the laws, norms, and unwritten constitution of his country is "not powerful", while the US President typically fighting a battle to get one single major piece of legislation through in his career is unitarian dictatorship?
> , the US nation building projects stopped doing this themselves because it doesn't work, the United States itself is just a slower decay, it's not an exception.
The US nation building projects felt that parliamentary democracies were easier to control, as direct election of Presidential executives sometimes leads to democracies electing leaders who are able to carry out policies that violate US interests.
I'm responding to this part separately because it's a very different issue. The existence of "superior law" in the form of a written constitution, is very silly. There need be only a single law, the law of the land - and the legislature must be able to change it - and only them, otherwise why have a legislature at all?
These are only man's laws, they're no different than the laws of Football ("soccer") for example, they are not facts about the world like Mother Nature's Laws - and so to hold some of these laws superior to others is a waste of everybody's time. The resulting paralysis in the US is not something to be praised, it's just another rusted joint, a lost degree of flexibility and so a point of weakness.
In reality, the supposed "impossible" constitutional changes in the US simply enable learned helplessness. Democratic representatives weep that alas much as they wish otherwise they "cannot" fix obvious problems because change is "impossible" and then of course somebody who actually does want to change things just does and says (as we might expect remembering these are only man's laws) if you don't like it too fucking bad.
The legislature can change the US Constitution. The federal Congress proposes an amendment with a 2/3rds yes-vote, then it must be ratified by legislatures of 3/4ths of the states.
The reason to make some laws harder to change than others is to protect civil rights. In the US, it is very difficult to legally infringe on the right to free speech, for example. In the UK, it is simply a matter of a majority vote in Parliament.
> Democratic representatives weep that alas much as they wish otherwise they "cannot" fix obvious problems because change is "impossible" and then of course somebody who actually does want to change things just does and says (as we might expect remembering these are only man's laws) if you don't like it too fucking bad.
Passing Constitutional amendments is perfectly feasible and has been done many times. It just can't be done without majority political support and the will to do so. They've been passed and "repealed" before, with Prohibition, for example.
A lot of kvetching in the US system (on both sides) comes from people whose ideas are simply not very popular and would like to change the rules so they win. In a democratic society, you need majorities of the population to agree. For larger changes, you preferable want larger majorities.
I don't know about UK but in Australia we need a Referendum (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Referendums_in_Australia) to change the constitution and those have been historically extremely difficult to pass (only 8/45). The PM absolutely cannot alter the Constitution.
The Governor requested federal help. Legally different.
It’s usually too much for people to contemplate that things are going to end.
Or worse, it’s bad faith, and it’s shared to lull people into accepting the change.
One of the clear things is that the right side of the political sphere is no longer constrained to narratives that have accurate correspondence to reality.
Even if this blows over, there will be something else, and then something else - and some superficially plausible rationale that contradicts previous positions.
And people who’ve seen this before will point it out - but people in the hall of mirrors will be stuck dealing with whatever is being reflected around them.
It’s genuinely cognitively hard to reason past such things, especially if reasoning past them is done alone - because then you are now stuck feeling like you are outside of your group - worse, you might have to join the people you were angry with.
This is one reason it takes a long time (months, years) to travel this distance - you can’t mentally switch allegiances and world views in a moment. There’s too many interconnected beliefs, actions - neurons.
But for people who’ve seen this before, it’s pretty clear cut.
Another problem is that these processes have a feedback loop. I don't like feeding that loop.
But yes, time will tell. I do agree certain things are normalized which probably shouldn't, but the system has some degree of robustness.
The proper thing for the left to do, IMO, is to present a clear and believable alternative. That also helps with the question of "join the people you were angry with". If the left doesn't understand why people are angry then they can't present this alternative. Standing on a hypothetical box in a hypothetical public square and yelling "the end is nigh" is not political discourse. The left also doesn't get to choose the laws it likes, just like the right doesn't, illegal immigration, as the term hints, illegal. Rioting and destroying things is also illegal. The only way a dictator can take over the US given all the checks and balances is when it seems that's the best alternative to enough people.
You think any individual marine will follow their conscience and step in if they see an abuse of power by authority?
The national guard and the marines are not trained in crowd control. They are trained in combat situations. They have no role to play here, at best they just make people angry, at worse could perpetuate a massacre.
Even the British Army, generally regarded for professionalism, make a lot of jokes about how unintelligent and trigger happy the average squaddie is.
Man I’m obviously not saying they have perfect discipline, I’m saying you clearly cannot compare them to a nation dealing with an ACTIVE CIVIL WAR.
One day he’s being driven in Germany and a cyclist is keeping pace with them. Officer tells the driver to “fuck him off,” meaning to drive away really quickly. The squaddie mishears this as “knock him off,” and promptly swerves into the rider.
Granted this was British but, as I pointed out, we’re pretty highly regarded for professionalism. So, do I think US troops are any brighter or more ethical? If ordered to shoot, will a significant number say “sir, no sir!”
No, I don’t think either of those things are true.
I already addressed this with my comments on American troops lighting up British tanks during Iraq.
> and with no civil war and a strongly enforced set of national laws
Er… have you read the news? The first part of the quote is a concern of many commentators and the second part of your comment is a fucking bad joke given your President has ignored multiple laws and judicial rulings, including sending the marines into LA without the permission of the governor!
No, you didn’t lol. You showed how American soldiers could shoot at some other military members who were in a tank. I gotta say, if you think I care even half as much about any random Brit more than any American, you’re crazy.
Also, are you under the impression that a random soldier going on a killing spree against innocent Americans would be treated the same as the President playing legal games, albeit ones with very serious consequences?
Just because you don’t like getting schooled doesn’t change the fact that you were.
> Also, are you under the impression that a random soldier going on a killing spree against innocent Americans would be treated the same as the President playing legal games, albeit ones with very serious consequences?
A president that pardoned murderers from January 6th? A president that said there were good people in a group of neonazi rioters? A president that sent those military people in there against the legal restrictions on sending the military in? A president that fired all people in the chain of command who would say “no?”
Yes, I think it’ll be treated differently, just not the same way you will.
> A president that pardoned murderers from January 6th? A president that said there were good people in a group of neonazi rioters? A president that
Yes? Why do you think this is a gotcha? I already said they were games with serious consequences. Are you ok dude?
This really feels like one of those
”””conversations””” where the other person is in fact arguing against someone else, and I’m just a proxy for whatever you’re actually mad about.
Skip ahead to about 10 minutes. So yes, I’m still right and the US military are as trigger happy as any other military.
It stems from leadership - and current leadership wants them to be like that. So, they will become like that.
I suspect many commenters on HN would also have bridges to sell you, seeing as they’re from around the world, and countries where similar statements were made.
The statement is one thing. Reality is different, even with the best intentions, things get messy, and then the media and information firestorm that follows leaves scars that fester for decades.
You’d be lucky if it doesn’t lead to new infections and new wounds.
Which is why self inflicted wounds are so absurd, especially from nations that have the expertise to know better.
But - expertise is expensive, and entertainment and narrative vitality is the currency we traffic in.
A currency that pushes the costs of clean up and figuring out what happened to the future, if you are lucky to have any committees to look at it all.
We all need a news system that isn’t competing with engagement.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Active_Denial_System
Safe? When manned by actors known to shoot journalists in the head with “less lethal” weapons?
ADS operators would be exposed to more than the standard maximum permissible exposure (MPE) limits for RF energy, and military use requires an exception to these exposure limits
According to Wired, the ADS has been rejected for fielding in Iraq due to Pentagon fears that it would be regarded as an instrument of torture
Seems to have problems on both ends.
From an outsider's view, everything looks so performative and fabricated to be consumed by a tv target audience. I mean, if there is so much illegal immigration in the US, is it the most effective use of resources to target a TV cliche that would gather a residual number of people?
So in late May, Stephen Miller, a top White House aide and the architect of the president’s immigration agenda, addressed a meeting at the headquarters of Immigration and Customs Enforcement, known as ICE. The message was clear: The president, who promised to deport millions of immigrants living in the country illegally, wasn’t pleased. The agency had better step it up.
Gang members and violent criminals, what Trump called the “worst of the worst,” weren’t the sole target of deportations. Federal agents needed to “just go out there and arrest illegal aliens,” Miller told top ICE officials, who had come from across the U.S., according to people familiar with the meeting.
Agents didn’t need to develop target lists of immigrants suspected of being in the U.S. illegally, a longstanding practice, Miller said. Instead, he directed them to target Home Depot, where day laborers typically gather for hire, or 7-Eleven convenience stores. Miller bet that he and a handful of agents could go out on the streets of Washington, D.C., and arrest 30 people right away.
https://www.wsj.com/us-news/protests-los-angeles-immigrants-...
I think this makes it even scarier. This means the goal is clearly not establishing sound policy, but to output propaganda that is designed to be easily consumed by TV audiences. It is beyond reality because it is not designed to make sense, it is designed to make sense to TV consumers by feeding on the context they get from their TV tropes. The Mexicans hanging around in Home Depots is a TV cliche that's recognized by people living wel beyond any Home Depot.
The best is Trump crowing about historically low unemployment numbers, and then peddling hysteria about illegals "taking American jobs." None of his degenerate followers care that this argument is stupid, and calls them stupid.
Now it's been papered over with other excuses, like the mythical "fentanyl" that's pouring in from Canada.
They is doing lots and lots of heavy lifting here. At the same time things are very confusing, because it seems like your fellow American is out for blood in a manner that shows no humanity.
Your fellow American on the right is plugged into a Matrix that traffics in its own narratives and can now freely manufacture or amplify its own fringe facts and narratives.
They are actually fighting very hard for the soul of america - as they see it. Virtuous efforts to stop the villainy and stupidity of the venomous yet weak liberals, leftists and democrats.
There’s a system in place to manufacture narratives, the closest analogy would be wrestling - except the President doesn’t treat it as fiction, he acts as if it’s real.
And since you can make and sell narratives incredibly quickly, while facts and analysis are days of effort - well, you have a structural change to the market place of ideas.
It happens everywhere in democracies now. See Brexit - entirely predictable. Yet completely unable to “sell” the known and clear problems to a majority of the citizenry.
Same with tariffs.
There’s a floor to people’s capability in navigating our current information environments - and partisan groups of experts are happy to use it to their advantage.
The problem began empirically with conservative positions, but the efficacy of the technique has now created its own political force.
I think the whole point of these stupid stunts is to mobilize the base and distract critics. Your random redneck racist might feel strongly about the Hollywood caricature of Mexicans wearing sombreros at a Home Depot parking lot, but the truth of the matter is that Trump is mobilizing the US armed forces against a governor's will while threatening him with imprisonment.
Whether it’s good public policy is neither here nor there, so long as our Leader is right.
So, you know, maybe they could try to do what they said they'd do for once?
They said they'd target violent criminals, but they didn't say they wouldn't target non violent criminals as well. People who heard that were wishcasting.
Whether or not they are a "priority" is semantics. If you hear them explain it, they're all defacto criminals for being undocumented, and therefore equally culpable as a murder or a rapist in matters of deportation.
The crime they're concerned about over all others is illegal immigration. According to them, an illegal immigrant who has done nothing else wrong deserves to be deported just as much as rapist illegal immigrant.
For example, you are deporting labor. Ostensibly Because of fairness and justice - they are in the country illegally. Ergo they should go.
No one should be above the law.
This has zip to do with gangs and criminality though.
But why this process ? Why not punish people who are employing them ?
This is more efficient and even more just. People are employing workers they know are here illegally and undercutting minimum wage.
Or why not raise minimum wage so more people will be willing to work those jobs ?
People act on incentives - and america is a country with a concentration of some of the hardest working and smartest people in the world.
It has a tradition of valuing this and converting those strengths into its own.
Now I have enough of a background in econ, business and politics to see through the narratives.
I also know you can’t sell all those interventions, not the least because none of these address the issue of gangs and criminality and eating pets.
Which brings us to the issue that your rationale, the ones which are debated online - are downstream from whatever controversy and theory that’s going to show up as soon as a new distraction is needed.
I mean, just Take a look at your original question,
“Leave the hardest working and deport the lazy ones ?”
America is built on immigration of the hardest working, most driven people from across the globe.
America is a machine for hardworking people to move ahead. That’s its promise.
And this is the question its citizens are unironically asking.
As I said, many ways to skin a cat.
People follow incentives, so why not punish people who are paying for the labor? Arrests for employing them?
Its an economic system, theres 2 way incentives.
The process used, depends on what problem you are solving.
As it stands, employers can pretend ignorance and as long as they were not really stupid, put putting things in writing or personally arranging for the trafficking, they can likely get away with it. There’s no reason I can think of why we shouldn’t change that.
For reference, Euromaidan involved the death of over a hundred protesters before the government finally collapsed.
The people of the US may be inured to violence. They aren't inured to violence from their own military, though.
LA has had the marines sent in to stop riots in the past so this isn't exactly a new thing.
The Wikipedia article on the shootings doesn't mention the word "brick" once. It also says:
"While on the practice field, the guardsmen generally faced the parking lot, about 100 yards (91 m) away. At one point, the guardsmen formed a loose huddle and appeared to be talking to one another. They had cleared the protesters from the Commons area, and many students had left.
Some students who had retreated beyond the practice field fence obtained rocks and possibly other objects with which they again began pelting the guardsmen. The number of rock throwers is unknown, with estimates of 10–50 throwers. According to an FBI assessment, rock-throwing peaked at this point. Tear gas was again fired at crowds at multiple locations."
So there were rocks being thrown at National Guard members who were ALREADY teargassing the boxed in group AND had knelt and aimed weapons.
Somehow you extrapolate that to average people going about their day and randomly taking a brick to the head... huh.
One man was taken into custody for allegedly throwing a Molotov cocktail at an officer and a motorcyclist was arrested for ramming a police skirmish line.
https://www.yahoo.com/news/kill-l-police-attacked-fireworks-...
Los Angeles County Sheriff Robert Luna said "you had people who were...attacking police officers, deputy sheriffs and causing a lot of destruction."
The 101 Freeway shut down Sunday evening two times due to protesters on an overpass throwing rocks, debris, and firecrackers at California Highway Patrol officers and vehicles.
Footage on Sunday from the CBS News Los Angeles helicopter showed that multiple windows of the police headquarters had been shattered as well.
https://www.cbsnews.com/losangeles/news/downtown-la-protests...
Rocks / debris came after tear gas.
The news has been startling in its mis-coverage.
Your effort to overstate might have derailed your own reality.
Don't know about you, but I could never throw a brick at anyone. I couldn't and wouldn't put a mask on and head out with the intent to burn cars, throw rocks, loot, and cause criminal damage. That is the opposite of "largely peaceful."
The LAPD chief stated it's "out of control." Your attempt to imply tear gas was used on peaceful protesters doesn't fit the evidence. Many of the rioters are highly organised with supply runs of masks, fireworks and projectiles. I'm not sure what your agenda is but "accuracy" doesn't seem to be it.
There's a lot of videos of the contrary - LAPD pelted with rocks by aggressive mobs who are there to fight against "nazi scum" or fight for "stolen land" as they wave every other flag than American.
I suspect the usual media chicanery - everyone reporting the story that their viewers want to hear.
Anyway. My point was that I could not do this. If I was asked to fire teargas at a crowd who were protesting kidnapping people off the streets and taking them to concentration camps, I could not do that. I would refuse that order.
You're posting misinformation. Tear gas is deployed when mobs surge in direct violation of orders not to, or to control violence and criminality by large crowds. Your attempt to frame it as "cops attacking peaceful onlookers" is in conflict with the evidence available.
Aljazeera is pretty good with unbiased coverage, and it doesn't lay the blame one way or the other [0]. It just says "(LAPD) declared the area an unlawful assembly, deployed tear gas, issued tactical alerts and made several arrests."
I would still read that as the cops fired first.
https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2025/6/11/how-the-los-angeles...
Given the mountain of evidence of criminal damage, we can assume the declaration came after evaluating the scale of criminal behavior. Reading that as "cops fired first" sounds like cognitive bias.
And the whole point of a protest is that it is defiance of authority. Having a protest declared "unlawful assembly" is kinda the point.
I'm curious what you saw from the "No Kings" protests from your point of view? Were they also unlawful, with mountains of evidence of criminal damage? The organisers estimate that 11 million people attended 2000 different locations around the USA, and it was almost entirely peaceful. What are you being told?
Freedom of expression isn't immune from ridicule or condemnation. In one NYC anti-ICE protest they're chanting "From Mexico to Gaza, globalize the intifada". You can argue that's freedom of expression, as is burning the US flag and other dopey unhelpful actions.
Most of those same cops are staffing PDs today, so they will behave exactly as they did back then. Nobody sane should give them any benefit of doubt.
You obviously disagree with it, but that doesn't mean it's not protected.
There's a lot of people in LA with the skills and equipment to rapidly organize like this; got to see it in person during the Occupy protests, when a tiny village popped up around City Hall - complete with power and internet infrastructure; medical, porta-potties, meals, workshops and seminars... it was pretty impressive!
It's also worth noting the insanity that is July 4th in Los Angeles, so there being a lot of fireworks is uhhh... really, really not weird for LA? We usually get increasing amounts (in size and frequency) of illegal firework "shows" all throughout June.
Lastly - there's also a big difference between "out of our [LADP's] control" and "out of control" - that's (AFAIK) actually the norm for effective protests. A large protest that's under the LAPD's control is generally a "demonstration" instead (see the women's marches).
But some people hang around after it's ended and then the sun goes down and the protest is actually over and the police try to get people to leave. Then it's a people Vs police confrontation that may escalate. Then it's a riot. Usually these deescalate and the police have training in how to do that.
It's not the protests that is violent it's what happens after the protest finishes. Riots by definition are out of control!
Some protestors would claim that the violence is orchestrated by the police. There has been some evidence of that in some places of the world. Mostly it's a riot of violent people, criminals, kids usually, who are thrilled by the violence and chaos and hatred. Mob mentality creates a mob.
they shot a bunch of people, and the feds took it pretty hands off. if anything, the protestors arent being nearly violent enough to get soft hands from the government. if they were out there with automatic weapons and actively shooting at the cops and guard, theyd be left right alone, and the road would be shut down for a couple months
Firey but mostly peaceful protests are happening all over again. No, burning down cities is not peaceful. After just a few days, at least five officers, several journalists, and we don't know how many rioters have been injured so far. We don't yet have estimates of property damage, but tens of millions would be conservative. Similar riots have resulted in hundreds of millions in damages.
When the right does this, we call it what it is: violent riots. We acknowledge it's wrong to attempt to prevent the government carrying out its the duties it was democratically elected to carry out. We should hold that standard to the left as well. These rioters are anti-democratic.
You can say, rightly, there's a car on fire. You can also say the police shot at a journalist.
"burning down cities" would however be incorrect, as the person who literally lives here I can tell you that it is not happening.
What you, and other's, need to understand is that the police have absolutely no mechanism to de-escalate anything. It's a concept completely foreign to American policing. As soon as the police are involved, the situation deteriorates rapidly.
For instance, almost all (95%+) of the BLM protests were completely peaceful. No violence or property damage. You wouldn't get that impression from the news. But, of the ones that did turn violent, every time the violence BEGAN with police overstepping. Pushing protestors, or shooting them, or throwing gas. And then, obviously, the situation deteriorates.
Once the state sets its eyes on enemies, it doesn't stop adding to that list.
Use of the tools and techniques in place right now will continue to be used, and against "legal" citizens.
I worry how we turn the corner. I don't like what history says.
This was always a well-understood risk though.
This is why the 4th amendment exists. It is my favorite amendment. I wish people would take it more seriously.
So many homeless here have zero identification.
They are basically just going after people who are too brown and even ending up grabbing people who are just here on vacation, legally.
https://theconversation.com/ice-has-broad-power-to-detain-an...
I agree that in practice there is some kind of loophole: ICE gets a "warrant" for someone that by definition has no ID, so there is no point in identifying a detainee - the immigration court will do that, later. Effectively, they seem to get away with snatching people off the street that vaguely may resemble any "warrant" they have.
That has happened to me. Some of them did real heinous shit and deserve prison for the rest of their lives. And some I disagree with the laws they were charged for.
HN not beating the allegations of sheltered, gated community, out-of-touch kids going straight into white collar life.
I trust this is true. But the comment would be stronger with a source.
is one source, others may have more or less detail. It supports arrests being made wrt looting, not the assertion that most of the looters were arrested.
So less violence towards law enforcement and insurrection than January 6th. Action the President endorsed in January by issuing pardons.
Honestly, if a Democrat were to match Trump's energy, they'd be promising pardons to protesters who damaged ICE property or torched a Trump property. They're not. In part because they're rudderless. But also because they're still gripped by the notion that we're not in the midst of a coup.
If Trump wanted to match Democrat energy he would declare the LA riots an insurrection and devote 40% of the FBI to identifying, rounding up, and imprisoning all of the protestors.
The Marines aren’t enforcing squat. That’s on ICE and the LAPD, the only ones doing the arresting.
> he would declare the LA riots an insurrection and devote 40% of the FBI to identifying, rounding up, and imprisoning all of the protestors
If they broke into a federal building? Absolutely.
You’re the one hyperventilating about a “coup”; do you care to clarify what you actually meant by that or should I just write it off as a paranoid delusion?
Note that Trump's DoD did not seem to be in a hurry to deploy the National Guard on 6th January, despite multiple requests to do so: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Law_enforcement_response_to_th...
My understanding is that the National Guard are being deployed because ICE is being impeded from carrying out their operations. If California were allowed to constructively block the Federal government from carrying out policy of democratically elected administrations, that would be effectively a declaration of secession. Hundreds of years of precedent has made it clear that states are subordinate to the Federal government.
The California government are not blocking the Federal government from carrying out ICE raids. If you believe otherwise, please show the evidence that Trump has presented.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zzdkzpQRaAM
And you know what? They were justified.
Governor Wilson called up the National Guard, actually; subsequently, at Governor Wilson's request, and coordinating planning with both the Governor and Mayor Bradley of LA, President Bush invoked the Insurrection Act, federalized the Guard, and called up the Marines, and deployed the federal and federalized forces (including, also, federal law enforcement) in close cooperation and coordination with state and local law enforcement to restore order.
That is very different from the situation presently.
The fact that the Guard can be actively federalized, rather than sent home to prevent jt from being used against the Federal government, demonstrates that the situations are wildly dissimilar.
(It is also not legally similar as Trump has not invoked the Insurrection Act, which is the only thing that allows using the US military use to enforce the law, whether restricted to doing so in the neighborhood of civilian federal infrastructure and personnel or not.)
https://www.npr.org/2025/06/09/nx-s1-5428352/johnson-nationa...
After invoking the Insurrection Act, correct.
> So is your issue state sovereignty?
In part, but more specifically, my issues are both the substantive issues of policy and the relevant federal law.
The latter is simpler: 10 USC § 12406, which Trump has relied exclusively on in federalizing the Guard, explictly does not (unlike the Insurrection Act, which allows federalizing any part of the universal militia, including but not limited to the Guard when its conditions are met) allow bypassing the Governor. And no provision of law, absent the Insurrection Act, allows deploying regular federal forces, with or without the Governor, for any civilian enforcement mission, however limited.
My understanding of the protests is they're primarily against the removal of illegal immigrants and as Trump has taken control of (?) some state elements that has become a contentious point, but wasn't to begin with.
Normally I'd read up more before discussing with people, but the news article seem pretty blurry on the primary intentions of the protesters and what specifically they are against.
Indiscriminate rounding up. We are seeing citizens detained. Families separated. Fear, which is clearly the point.
Genuine question here, do you think illegal immigrants in churches or working on farms should not be deported, but those without a job or day labouring should?
I find it strange to distingush an illegal immigrant based on perceived value. If someone breaks into my house but also does my washing and mows my lawn, that doesn't change the fact they broke into my house.
I mean, Gavin Newsom just did a long interview from a "crisis center" where he did exactly that, today. And plenty of Democratic politicians also speak against violent protests whenever they occur.
But unless you actually pay pretty close attention to what Democratic politicians actually say, you won't hear these statements. Fox doesn't cover Democratic politicians speaking against violence. And frankly, if there's a 99.9% peaceful protest with one burning car, the media will devote 80% of their coverage to the burning car, and maybe a few sentences to politicians saying the burning car is bad. The media is unfortunately interested in spectacle and entertainment.
I pay more attention than average to what politicians of both parties say, and it's kind of hilarious how often I hear "Why didn't so-and-so say X?" (uh, they do every week or two), or "I never believed so-and-so would do Y" (uh, they literally promised Y on the campaign trail). I don't know how to fix this.
Trump: We must have law and order. Immigration laws must be enforced. We will not tolerate riots or destruction.
Protesters: The government shouldn't detain people who are in the country illegally. We should ignore federal laws we don't agree with. If we disagree with federal agents who are enforcing existing laws, we should impede them, attack them, and destroy property to lash out.
This is not an endorsement of Trump, as he's clearly milking this situation to squeeze Newsom. This is a deliberate strategy to put Newsom in an untenable position and paint him as an irredeemable liberal to everyone outside California. Until the left takes a logically defensible position on illegal immigration, they will continue to be vulnerable to Trump's theater on this and he will continue to bludgeon them with it in elections.
>This is a deliberate strategy to put Newsom in an untenable position and paint him as an irredeemable liberal
What's fascinating with current US politics and media is how these two sentences can be constructed in same sentence in an attempt to come off as "see I'm smart and media literate, I can see the full picture!" while literally the first sentence of your comment shows that that's not the case.
The media repeating "Democrats are far left" long enough and it have penetrated your head. There's probably pandering to far left in democratic party I assume, but it have been magnified to a reality altering level by media so that's now believed as the core, while same thing happening on the far-right & Republican party.
Both side must be truly be thinking like you, I assume. "I see the full picture, I'm smart" while parroting a distortion only required to be repeated for years.
If everyone could put their phone down, touch some grass, take a road trip to the opposite political isle maybe this distortion could've been avoided.
So we're in a situation where the democratic party is utterly failing to actually implement any of the good or popular left policies that would help the masses, even the pretty moderate ones, but is pushing incredibly unpopular extreme left policies that don't actually help the citizenry. In that context it's honestly a very reasonable thing for someone on the right to point to the dems call the party far left. And yet for those of us that want these policies for the people, the dems appear right-leaning. Very odd how this has worked out, but both are true in a way.
I think the reason behind this is mainly due to them being controlled by their corporate donors who dictate focusing on the unpopular policies which are cheaper for the corporations to contend with. Universal healthcare would be a huge blow to corporate control in this country, as right now healthcare is tied to employment and that gives large corporate employers incredibly excessive power.
In either case, thank you for the insight. It didn't give me any additional insight and while you call it one dimensional, I only see an expansion of the same idea I shared: both sides use culture war to smear each other (and as a lazy cop-out to game the media attention for coverage and votes). Most people have heard of AOC, Bernie, and Elizabeth Warren's. Even Ted Cruz & RFK JR (pre election). Surely when congress is 400+ and senate is 100+ people, those names don't represent ALL of the intricate factions of the two parties?
Yet we all act like they somehow are the representative of the opposite. To me you're just saying the same thing, but relieving any responsibility of the parrots, and putting it solely on corporate and self interested politician.
If those culture wars win votes, I think putting the sole responsibility that way is just an convenient excuse for everyone to play along the system and shout at each other.
I guess to the people shouting at each other, my comment might have come off as "touting my horn". I'm from the outside, I don't have any high horse or stakes in this but I understand the confusion
You've swallowed a lot of right-wing propaganda about the Democratic Party. Do you really thing Democrats are "pro-illegal immigration"? The rest of these tendentious mischaracterizations take some tedious and likely fruitless effort to debunk, but just think about that phrase. Do you think any party is in favor of illegal immigration? How would that work anyway? Parties try to pass laws. The best you could find is that some party favors immigration policies you would prefer be illegal.
Democrats are against violating laws to deport people here legally or following the legal, prescribed process for adjudicating their status. Republicans are okay with breaking the law to chuck people out of the country. That produces a different result, but "illegal" is on the wrong side of the balance there for your argument.
You're not in a great position to tell Democrats what to say and do if you're clearly ignoring what they say and do and believing the lies other people feed you about them.
I do. Demonstrably so. The Biden administration admitted between 8-20 million illegal immigrants into the country, depending on the estimate used. Even at the low end, this is the highest ever in the history of the country. More than any other administration. They made all kinds of excuses. They claimed they needed new laws. Trump solved it almost overnight. [https://www.cbp.gov/newsroom/stats/southwest-land-border-enc...] The Democrats lied. They didn't need more laws. They wanted things the way they were. They chose to permit the situation and allow it to devolve like that.
Now almost every Democrat representative is resolutely opposed to deporting illegal immigrants. There is simply no other way to interpret this than they are in fact pro illegal immigration.
Frankly i think you're exactly the person who is part of the problem here, proudly prejudiced, not very well informed despite thinking you know better than everyone.
> Do you think any party is in favor of illegal immigration? How would that work anyway? Parties try to pass laws. The best you could find is that some party favors immigration policies you would prefer be illegal.
This kind of reads like it's written by AI or something but either way it's irrational on such a fundamental level that i don't really know what to make of it. Obviously a ruling power in a country can be in favor of something illegal and take action to increase illegality on purpose. That's what you are saying trump is doing, so you don't even disagree with yourself. Where did you think the huge numbers of illegal immigrants came from while under democratic leadership, did they materialize independently? No, they promoted illegality.
It wasn't in my post but just in case you aren't an AI, the democratic party is pro illegal immigration for relatively straightforward reasons. their large corporate donors like having a large cheap underclass of workers to exploit and abuse. Illegal immigrants are much less likely to cause problems at work and are likely to work harder because they are at a much higher risk. If you're a CEO you can bet it's better to hire people you know will never unionize, you can exploit easily and won't file any workplace safety complaints. You can even commit wage theft with abandon, what are they going to do about it? There's also other secondary effects like creating a large amount of illegality overloads the courts and generally creates chaos which can be easy to exploit.
I've also seen the argument that the dems hope to swing demographics to secure the vote but i'm not so sure about that one, especially considering how hard legal voting immigrants are swinging against the democratic party for all of my prior mentioned reasons. I feel like if you were actually in touch with the legal immigrant population you would understand this a lot better.
I'm in favor of large scale legal immigration so people get full workplace rights and aren't easy to take advantage of. Duh. Creating an underclass of workers with less rights to keep corpo rat profits rising is bad. The democratic party has done the opposite, this is fact. Not really sure what else there is to say, all your smoke isn't worth much.
And i do think the dem's longer term plan was something stupid like "bring in infinite illegal immigrants to create a problem" and then "we will sell the solution and make them all citizens!" and that went ass up with their own hubris exploding in their face. Either way that's evil shit.
Well, unless it's done in furtherance of our agenda and against Congress...
Trump's political superpower is his ability to take a base position that is entirely reasonable and agreeable to most people ("The US must enforce its federal immigration laws"), then use inflammatory rhetoric and legal boundary testing to whip his opposition into undisciplined, emotional overreactions that leave them in a worse political position than him. He has been absurdly successful in using this tactic since 2015.
"Too many people are saying, "It's terrible that innocent black men died, but this property destruction has to stop!"
when they should be saying, "It's terrible that there is property destruction, but the death of innocent black men has to stop!"."
Remind us all what crime he was convicted of. A $20 bill was alleged by a shop clerk to be counterfeit. There is no evidence either that it was, or that it was known to be counterfeit.
> He then resisted a lawful arrest. His death was entirely self inflicted.
Hard to self-inflict murder. "It wasn't murder!" - if his death was due solely to his alleged actions, and not due to excessive and inappropriate force by the police involved, then an officer would not have been charged with and convicted of second-degree murder. Nor would prosecutors not only charge the police involved, but move to increase charges and sentencing requests due to the "unnecessary and particularly excessive cruelty being inflicted upon [Floyd] by the officers". Weird.
The punishment for no crime in the US is state-sanctioned public execution.
We should be clear, protesting is not illegal. It's protected first amendment speech. There is activity at protests that is illegal, and should be punished, but that's not protesting and lumping them together puts a chilling effect on.
Everyone says this but no one means it. Governments just declare an area offlimits, or they declare a curfew or one of hundreds of ways they use to make protesters illegal. Ultimately, protests are only legal inside a small cube where no one can see, and thus the protesters have no effect.
Protesting is illegal. People should protest anyway because it is stupid that protesting is illegal.
I've seen lots of pictures of protestors waving Mexican flags, and of the burning Waymos, etc. My guess is these are a very small percentage of protestors, but it makes for great TV, and Trump gets to say that he's "protecting America against violent foreign invaders". And I can imagine many people watching this and agreeing with him - I mean, I consider myself quite liberal, but waving a Mexican flag at these events just makes me think you can fuck right off with that bullshit.
It's a great example IMO of how Trump deliberately sows division and escalates whenever possible in order to use people's fear to consolidate power. It's basically Autocracy 101.
I'm confused, you consider yourself quite liberal but you think it's bullshit for Mexicans in the US to celebrate their heritage?
I recently naturalized as a US citizen. It took ~15 years (permanent residency + citizenship). That was after spending a decade (multiple programs) here as a student. No one should suffer and live in fear in an ideal world. At the same time, it is galling to see the left support illegal immigration because (a) someone "contributes" to the economy, (b) they are paying taxes (how is this known by anyone except the payer and the IRS?), (c) they are good people.
The reaction of my extreme-left wing friends is to say "well, you got to come here. They deserve the same opportunity." I am the first one to admit I have had some advantages. At the same time, every legal immigrant goes through a relatively rigorous process. Any whiff of a criminal record has the potential to derail the process, as should be the case. Just apply the law equally to everyone. That's one of the promises of our constitution. I mean this both for liberals and conservatives. If a law is unjust, we have mechanisms in place to overturn them. But to ignore the law is a long-term danger to this country. This is one of the reasons there is a lot of support for this type of action. It is borne out of frustration. Lastly, the idea that people supporting deportation are racists is an easy cop-out to not have to explain how we got to the current state (saying this as a non-white person although I also disagree with the left's assertion that only white people can be racist).
What is your explanation? I suspect that it's something along the lines of: "people waving foreign flags are signaling their intention to invade the US", but that you don't want to say it overtly because it's obviously a racist talking point from right-wing media.
You either support somewhat violent protests, regardless of topic, expecting that law enforcement and civilians will handle it amongst themselves, or you are authoritarian and demand that the federal government intervene with the US Armed Forces the moment someone throws a rock at a cop car.
This is an abomination, and anyone who supports the deployment of troops in my opinion lacks the values I thought were universal in this country.
(To support this action by Trump is to say you don't support the second amendment, on the grounds that the people should never have the power to subvert the state).
I really hated when Fox news would say things like this and I hate it when individuals do. It makes it impossible for us to communicate.
Just because the other side doesn't share your values doesn't mean they have none. You might say their values are evil. That's a different discussion, but they're rarely just reacting blindly.
I'm saying they lack the values I grew up believing were universal in this country.
No, they do not even get to claim order any more. This situation is being escalated by Trump in order to have a raging crisis for him to attack and drive even more division. Just like he did to the 2A/BLM protests, just like he did with the election lies culminating in the J6 protests, just like he did with his appalling anti-leadership throughout Covid. Trump doesn't possess the skills to actually tackle problems. His only real skill is slithering away from blame after he creates chaos and destruction. The fascists' only real value is now naked autocratic "strong" man authoritarianism. And the only reason they're still clinging to caring about the law is to assuage their own egos that the suffering they're reveling in is somehow justified.
They are bad people.
It makes me feel sick as a programmer knowing how many people on this board that values "hacker" anti authoritarianism and curiosity would have the government send the military to shoot their own citizens
But yeah, some cars getting destroyed is terrible.
I mean, surely you're not so stupid to legitimately believe the marines are being sent in for "control", right? We all, left, right, and center, understand what this is. Trump news-casting. It's an attempt to make the situation worse for clicks and views, for sensationalism. And it's working quite well!
Even if you think these riots are riots and that they're the bad guys and yadda yadda yadda... okay and why are we sending in the marines to cause more destruction? What's the link there buddy? Do you just want to watch the world burn? Because, honestly, that's kind of fucked up.
Hmm... I don't think the second amendment gives you that right... That's called treason.
- In the summer of 2020, as Trump privately fumed over nationwide Black Lives Matter protests, White House aides drafted a proclamation to send thousands of active-duty U.S. troops into the streets.
- Trump ultimately was talked down by Joint Chiefs Chairman Gen. Mark Milley and Defense Secretary Mark Esper, but he has publicly expressed regret over not acting more forcefully.
- Top Trump allies, including architects of the far-right roadmap "Project 2025," have at various points called for using the Insurrection Act to secure the border, preempt Inauguration Day protests, and even subvert the 2020 election.
https://www.axios.com/2025/06/10/los-angeles-protests-trump-...
However, enforcement of immigration laws has been one of the biggest parts of his election platform, if not the central part(build the wall, etc).
I imagine his voters are happy to see some action being taken.
The protestors could really do with some better optics, destroying property and waving foreign flags is just going to increase approval for military action.
If the protestors had instead marched peacefully with American flags, it would have been a much better PR win.
Then this would be a great time for him to start following them.
Many of his actions this year have been in violation of immigration laws. Incredibly brazen violation of them, in fact.
News flash. The opposition is always going to say something like this to set an impossible bar for the protestors. This type of thinking undermines all protests, protects the status quo, and basically boils down to victim blaming.
Not to mention you can always have false flag operatives undermining a movement.
It's true that the opposition will say that even the best most peaceful protest is bad. But sometimes people broadly will agree with them, and other times they won't, and that depends on what's actually going on.
There are issues worth rioting over. Maybe you don't feel that illegal immigration is one of them, but you should at least understand the logic of a protest, and why sometimes becoming violent is necessary to accomplish anything.
Trump is purposely manufacturing a crisis because he knows his opposition is taking a losing position. Polls have been very clear that voters want the government to enforce immigration laws. Maybe not in Los Angeles, but nationally, the left is taking the losing side of this issue.
The idea is absolutely farcical. Plus, we know for sure that these raids have taken people mistakenly.
It's extra bad when the government's official position is that they can't get someone back from the foreign prison they're sent to. The threat to all citizens is clear; that's why they're resisting. "The left" may lose in the mainstream media but it's clearly the correct side of history.
It’s clear since the election - Trump administration will use violence without any due process. Sort of Catch-22.
If you resist the indiscriminate purge of what Trump considers “illegal immigrants”[0] - military will be called to suppress the protests with some sort of never ending “emergency situation” established giving him full dictatorial powers.
Or he will just do the purges without resistance and achieve same goals.
“Protest voters” and democratic leadership have a lot to think about right now.
[0] lets not forget that you can be a US citizen and you can still be purged
This has been done for decades and has very established standard operating procedures. Do you think immigration raids started with Trump? This has been going on since the 1950s and there is established legal basis and agency procedures specifying exactly what the agents can and can't do, along with repeatable methods for verifying identity and legal status.
Was this incident following an established procedure?
https://www.instagram.com/reel/DKyFzVfJZTY
If you pay attention, you will notice that immigration policies have nothing to do with what's happening in the US, and at most they are a pretext.
The Trump administration is rounding up and transfering people, including US citizens, to prisons in third world countries they have no connection with. They are doing this without due process or legal basis. They have attacked and threatened judges who can and did opposed these actions. Lately the Trump administration is even threatening elected officials, including governors, with imprisonment.
Now you are witnessing the Trump administration illegally mobilizing both a state's national guard and the armed forces against its own citizens.
At one point anyone has to ask themselves if this is really about immigration at all.
The only effect of any protest vote is to tell your friends. Hasan had a lot of friends. Arab communities in Michigan had a lot of friends. Never-never Trumpers had a lot of friends.
I personally believe that a personal political strategy should have a conscientious goal, cognizant of the effects of its action.
There’s no separate moral universe where you preserve your ideals by helping elect an autocrat from the other side.
A voter should weigh the value of their statement vs the value of voting for the lesser evil. In a state like mine, where the results of the next three presidential elections could be predicted with accuracy today, a statement seems to have more value to me; if I lived in a battleground state, it would be different. I have often voted in presidential primaries where the candidate was already selected; again, I value my vote for the lesser evil much less than a statement.
Harris was an authoritarian, but not an autocrat. People got sick of ever-growing bureaucratic authoritarianism, but made the mistake of thinking the problem was the bureaucracy rather than the authoritarianism. So now the bureaucracy has been smashed and we are left with autocratic authoritarianism.
In a democracy people can vote for the Devil him self, and the Devil him self would become the president, but there are institutions which prevent him from instituting his demonic policies.
Elections have consequences, but if those consequences are the loss of rights, then you never lived in a democracy to begin with.
So I guess these folks who live in a "real democracy" according to you just have the good government fairy swoop in when the people vote in a dictator.
At the end of the day, a democracy is just people, all the way down. It doesn't matter what laws you've written down, what courts you have, what procedures you've developed. If enough people stop believing in the enforcement of those laws, or court orders, or governmental norms, there is no deus ex machina.
Both Italy and Argentina elected a pretty dictatorial rulers, but neither successfully removed any civil rights from their citizens as a result, as the democratic institutions mobilized an effective resistance.
As a comparison to the USA, in a healthy democracy, the protests we are seeing in LA would not be spontaneous and organically arise from normal everyday people, but they would be called for and organized by unions, civil rights organizations, opposition parties, etc.
EDIT: Thinking about this further, the lack of participation from unions, human rights organizations, opposition parties, etc. during the anti-ICE protests, is much more common in unambiguous dictatorships like Russia or Iran.
I don’t think our analogy is valid. A car is just a car, and the concept of a car has not changed since its invention. The modern democracy has been constantly evolving from its inception (I’m sure democratic societies existed even before ancient Athens), but nobody would consider a democracy from the 1800s a democracy if it existed today. Heck even USA would not pass until the civil rights era of the 1960s.
Self-coups are a thing, and the best person to subvert a democracy is one who already wields considerable power within one. History is replit, unless you're doing the no-true-scottsman shuffle on the topic of democracy - if so, carry on.
Its been comical watching broken systems fall over themselves to accommodate trump while people pretend that they just need to vote for people who will maintain the broken systems instead of abusing them.
If you didnt spend the last 12 years tearing down your broken system and replacing it, you support all this bs. Eventually someone was going to get past the election, into the cockpit of the machine and press all these fucking buttons.
Not only did americans vote for the chimpanzee twice, they never got rid of all the buttons.
"Elections have consequences" you guys are meant to be the demonstration of how an armed populace responds to tyranny. But until I see you guys actually do anything about it, its just proof that more american values are completely worthless.
Enjoy the fall.
Let’s say someone is genociding, and the election opponent says “I want to also genocide, but harder and smarter.” Your moral obligation is stronger against the incumbent?
Is it because the incumbent is already complicit and the other guy might not be as bad? I don’t understand the moral logic of the possible absolutism here.
Shouldn’t the imperative be to reduce suffering? How does getting the lesser evil out of office help the situation?
Any jackass can say anything. What matters is what they actually have done.
Never reward incorrect action.
The destruction happens in the blink of an eye.
Rebuilding takes a lifetime.
Take his budget proposal for example. It explicitly called for the complete de-funding of TRIO programs. I have worked with multiple TRIO programs at multiple institutions over the years. While I am hopeful that the congress will institute funding for them, but the damage is done. People who have worked for these programs for decades are leaving, because of the uncertainty. These are career professionals who have helped THOUSANDS of kids make a better future. Further, TRIO programs are historically an entry into higher education for first-generation and low-income students not just in terms of being served by the programs, but also being employed by them. Every TRIO program I've worked with has been staffed by low-income first-generation folks. Without this entry into higher education, we will lose these voices in postsecondary education. People start with TRIO then move into hard dollars and off of grants, spreading their experiences across a campus.
The damage is done and we'll be feeling it for longer than my children will be alive.
Subsequently, the thing that really caused my immediate family (hardcore republican) to turn off of Trump was actually his most recent budget proposal and the hearings associated with it. They saw that he was cutting programs that help rural areas more than urban areas and feel betrayed. It takes everything I have in my to not just say "I told you so".
Finally - and completely disconnected, if you want to know how full of shit this administration is - The Secretary of Education said out loud that the (1)TRIO programs were out-of-date, that (2)schools needed to find other ways to recruit students, and that (3)there was no way to measure their success.
(1) TRIO has decades of research supporting their most effective models, and is a thought leader in student support and success for at-risk youth. The current trend of "pathways in higher education" that is sweeping the US is literally just a TRIO model.
(2) TRIO programs are explicitly banned from being used as recruiting tools for their host institutions if they are hosted by a college/university. It is illegal.
(3) TRIO programs submit an annual performance report with multiple measures of success. Any inability by ED to find proof of TRIO effectiveness is because they are incompetent in analyzing the data, not because the data doesn't exist.
I don't love the phrasing of inferiors, but at least evil certainly applies. (Well thought out, well informed) Politics is a duty not a luxury.
The Republicans are rubbing their hands together and cackling every time one of you claims "everything is political" or "politics is a duty" because it just helps them win elections.
What happens in these coming months defines a major historical event for the USA, which sets it's course for the coming century.
It may become a country which is directly hostile to you. If you are American and are ignoring this, then it is no different to getting mad your family is wanting to talk about the raging kitchen fire that is unaddressed and escalating because "so what, the stove top has fire sometimes, it's a gas heater, that's normal" which, sure, would be right, but right now the entire wall is ablaze.
You cannot ignore this one, even those of us in other countries cannot ignore this one, as we have to reconsider our alliance with a country that reasonably one can assume is in the middle of falling to a fascist regime.
This is NOT run of the mill politics. This is genuinely about the collective future of the Anglosphere.
And it's even topical here - this surveillance industry that grew out of many tech startups is itself at ground zero of this fascist takeover, both boosting extremist disinformation to drive "engagement" and also creating a crop of newly-minted elites with the audacity to kick over the whole apple cart of our American way of life.
So, you willingly and intentionally honed-in on the 1% you don't like... just so you can complain? I don't mean to be rude, but I don't think that's normal behavior.
Will the Marines merely deploy harsh language?
It is if the majority want it to be done.
Democracy does not mean the majority gets whatever it wants. Part of being a democracy is protecting the rights of the minority.
Yes, it does. By definition democracy is doing whatever the majority wants to do.
>protecting the rights of the minority
Under democracy the minority opinion can be ignored. Rights only need to be protected if the majority wants. And the majority can decide what is and isn't considered a right.
Then you no longer have a democracy.
Originally from the Dept. of State: https://www.principlesofdemocracy.org/majority
So you are trying to say that a democracy that is unable to find a global maxima is not a functional democracy? I would disagree and say that a democracy moving towards a local maxima is still functional.
"The majority" changes the Commander in Chief, who in turn can be held liable for violating constitutional democracy if they abuse discretionary powers (see: Richard "I am not a crook" Nixon).
Doesn't LA have a police department?
What did the LA governor had to say about it?
Is that so? What did he had to say about it? As I understand it, the LA governor is adamant in how illegally mobilizing both the national guard and the armed forces is being used to fabricate a crisis.
Nice try.
I asked a question and you answered, it was not a "gotcha". However I have asked other people (in person) over the past few days who do support the pardons and Jan 6 and also support deploying the military against civilians in CA now. Glad to know you're consistent in your views, sad to know you can't tell a question from a "gotcha".
Everyone’s okay with peaceful protests, but they should call in the national guard and prosecute people for violence. You might hate Trump, but in my previous experience, it’s the residents of the most liberal districts that suffer all the consequences of this nonsense.
Was literally everything destroyed, no, but I've got photographs of small businesses boarded up with they already looted everything, please don't loot again. There was devastation throughout the city.
After everything happened, national guard trucks showed up and guarded the devastation. If you drive out to the wealthy burbs, it's like nothing happened. They devastated one of the most liberal parts of America. Congrats.
Of the 2000 national guard deployed, only 300 have actually been operationalized.
There was hardly any looting or rioting. Certainly not more than could be handled locally. Trump is doing this to deliberately escalate the situation.
> LA had plenty of local police to handle the scale of the protests before
sure, and why didn't they do it this time? I suspect for the same reason: both Bass and Newsom want to escalate the situation as well. And when both sides want escalation that's what we get. My 2c.
It's hilarious to me that we even have the cultural understanding of a sports riot, and it's assumed that it's just not that bad. Just people having a good time, burning up a car and smashing businesses to celebrate (mourn) their team's victory (defeat).
Is that supposed to be funny? Because in a super dry sort of way it's hilarious as a concept.
Edit:
Fwiw, the governor probably shouldn’t have waited for permission. A white man encroaching on the city run by a black woman at the height of Freddie Gray, tough spot to be in.
> where the mayor of the city said that she was going to allow, give protesters room to destroy and wasn't going to stop them.
https://www.fox5dc.com/news/hogan-says-defunding-police-wors...
Glad to see Trump learned his lesson from the first time.
They didn't make any such claim. They were explaining the consequences they experienced as a result of the BLM riots.
I don’t still live there. Honestly, it convinced me right or wrong that the only reason I’m able to live in the city was because the police are there to sort of enforce the laws and that there is a certain percentage of the population that will steal everything as soon as they think there is an opportunity. Compare that to the suburbs where you could leave valuables out in your yard and no one would take them convinced me that I would rather raise a family in a stable mostly crime free environment.
>shattered windows
Yeah, I could see most of the first floor windows being broken
>destroyed groceries and pharmacies
Wait virtually every, and a total loss? I’m skeptical.
>stole lots from businesses
Sure, I don’t doubt it, though how widespread this was across cities is worth asking.
>vandalized
Don’t doubt this at all.
>lit police cars on fire
Sure, yeah, but how much does that add up to? A few cars per city wouldn’t be much in the grand scheme.
Here’s some indicator of damages. 1500 damaged businesses in Minneapolis alone: https://www.newsweek.com/businesses-year-after-floyd-1596610
And typical estimates are a couple billion in insurance claims (I think nationally?)
Are you just arguing about if it’s “a lot” or not. Thats entirely subjective and not worth debating.
They burn the small business of honest working people.
The cops escalated every situation they arrived at.
The cops and ICE escalated an otherwise peaceful situation.
Agitators unrelated to protests have been known to kick shit up, such as during black lives matter protests when white supremacists would break windows. https://abcnews.go.com/US/man-helped-ignite-george-floyd-rio...
Anyway, if the cops weren't there, there'd be no fires. Ergo the cops shouldn't be there. Seems like a pretty simple algebra to me.
The "just submit" ideology that people seem to be touting demonstrates a lack of understanding of American psychology. The country was founded on revolution against a despot, that's the core American value. You can't deal with a population like that by sending in storm troopers, that will obviously just escalate the situation.
The government needs to be realistic about the situation and seek alternative measures if their goal is to deport the neighbors of people who love the 2nd amendment. Perhaps they could simply give up on that goal, that's what I would advise.
I think you're misunderstanding the audience. The Trump administration is not trying to convince or even deter these protesters, all of this is theater for middle America at home watching this on TV. It's a battle for their votes based on who wins the propaganda war by looking less reasonable on the news.
What can they do to guard then?
His posts were always insightful and it is indeed sad that he is no longer with us.