Yes, and? ICE is out there violating the law multiple times every day, in front of numerous witnesses and camera phones. The law isn't going to protect us.
A lot of people have been concerned that ICE is turning into a personal army for Trump. This year they will expand ICE to over 40,000 agents allegedly. This is enough to overwhelm police departments in every jurisdiction.
There is a real possibility that these agents will continue detainment of people, even if they are US citizens, as they are trying to vote. Perhaps they will use their facial recognition app, Mobile Fortify (built by NEC), to identify people and decide if they’re a likely GOP voter or not. Who knows. Whatever they do, this feels like a serious threat to American democracy.
The process is so blunt, so blatant, it's surprising that it works. I'm guessing it's the result of years and years of lessening the american people so that they can roll over in the most undignified way.
This wouldn't be on-topic for HN even if it wasn't running in "Newsweek" --- even if a sitting senator had said it, mere proposals are explicitly off-topic --- but I always feel like it's useful to call out the fact that "Newsweek" is a grift publication. The Newsweek your parents read went out of business a decade and a half ago, and was purchased by a cult and run as an SEO farm.
Why is a proposal off-topic? Who decides what is on-topic and off-topic? It seems quite relevant to me, since the administration regularly has people putting out statements that either test the waters or try to normalize some idea. And those statements have significant impact on many readers of HN.
Illegal immigrants are not voting, especially in significant numbers.
Meanwhile this exact topic is discussing how our voting system may be directly attacked by effectively a foreign power, after the population was previously swayed by foreign influence in the form of revanchist propaganda highlighting all of America's problems while offering no solution beyond naked fascism red in tooth and claw.
It's also utterly disingenuous to bring up "criminals" to drive focus onto individuals, skipping right past the fish rotting from the head with the corrupt federal executive.
This is a predictable play. This had a highish likelihood of happening the moment they announced the massive, rapid funding and personnel expansion. Now that "abolish ICE" (ICE being their critically-important newly-empowered end-run around Posse Comitatus) is trending, they basically have to play every card they've got, or risk seeing their project set back by at least a few years, just as it's gaining steam. It'll take longer to capture enough of the courts and military that they don't need ICE and its bullshit "but immigration enforcement must have special otherwise-unconstitutional powers" smoke-screen of a justification any more.
I also expect:
1) Lawsuits, subpoenas, and indictments against and of elections offices and key officials in Democratic areas of vulnerable Republican districts, timed to mess with their ability to even function. If it suppresses the vote that's a "nice to have" but mostly this is to sow uncertainty about the elections both by generating ginned-up headlines (it doesn't matter if the investigations actually find anything or go anywhere) and by delaying vote counting and causing chaos (e.g. very long lines) on Election Day, which opens up greater space for the GOP to act after the elections.
2) Challenges of the outcomes by the administration and their proxies, and outright calls for Republicans to pull certification tricks akin to the fake-elector crime they attempted in '20. This would be supported by #1, and by ICE-created chaos and vote suppression.
Incidentally, the ICE intervention can take many forms, the most extreme of which (and most effective to the admin) is triggering violence (a lot of people are going to react poorly to being asked "papers, please" by a small squad of armed & armored federal thugs on the way to vote) that actually shuts down polling places in key locations. This both heavily suppresses the vote in areas they've targeted, and serves their "chaos! Democrats are trying to cheat by letting illegals vote! See how much they freak out when we don't let them?" narrative. The lighter version is some cautious shows-of-force and unrealized threats ahead of time, aimed at gentler levels of vote suppression (if you're a citizen but have an accent and aren't white, you might think twice about your odds of getting to the polls without getting locked up for a day or two and losing perhaps five figures you may not have attaining your release, and just stay home, even if ICE ends up not showing or just doing some show-of-force drive-bys that end up all over social media)
I'd love to know what, if anything, state governments are planning to prevent any of this. I've personally not been able to think of a single effective thing they can do about it as far as actually keeping it from happening or recovering quickly from the material harm it does (winning much later in the court of public opinion, for whatever that's worth, is another matter, as is eventually winning in court) but maybe there's something.
(I rate all the above fairly likely, in some form; my outside-but-not-impossible-odds guess is they'll seize some ballot drop boxes or enroute mail-in ballots with nebulous claims of wrongdoing that don't go anywhere but do fuck up specific districts' voting processes, with, as usual, no relief from the courts because by the time anything can be done about it it's a fait accompli and nobody's gonna trust those ballots after the feds have had them, anyway)
One thing states can do is expand early voting. The longer people have to vote, at more locations, the harder it is to focus this chaos on specific precincts on a single day.
The second thing they can do is ensure the police force is on their side. Remove officers that would collaborate with attempts to overthrow an election. Require training, monitor social media, ensure qualified immunity cannot protect them, and make sure they are aware.
They’re recruiting aggressively right now, and ICE received over 200K applications per some statement they put out. So they’ll probably be at 40K+ agents by mid-year. Note that while there are thousands of election places, there are only a small number of states that are deciders for the elections, since others are solidly blue or red. And in those states, there are only a handful of blue cities for Trump/GOP to disrupt. And even within those cities, it’s easy to figure out which areas are likely voting one way or the other. ICE already has far more agents than every local police force in every one of those locations. They would overwhelm everyone if they do this.
One thing that surprised me in the Epstein files is just how much Epstein was intertwined in various foreign relations. Like Peter Thiel repeatedly meeting Russian officials and his Kremlin handler (literally) at Epstein’s properties. And various Israeli people conducting business there. Isn’t Thiel collaborating with Russians treasonous? What does it mean when you have this set of people who are all working together - Bannon, Thiel, Musk, Vance, etc - are they all treasonous?
Bannon's company Cambridge Analytica was a subsidiary of SCL Group, a British psyops/infoops firm that explicitly intended to tamper in foreign elections.
23 comments
[ 2284 ms ] story [ 167 ms ] threadThere is a real possibility that these agents will continue detainment of people, even if they are US citizens, as they are trying to vote. Perhaps they will use their facial recognition app, Mobile Fortify (built by NEC), to identify people and decide if they’re a likely GOP voter or not. Who knows. Whatever they do, this feels like a serious threat to American democracy.
The process is so blunt, so blatant, it's surprising that it works. I'm guessing it's the result of years and years of lessening the american people so that they can roll over in the most undignified way.
> https://www.jmail.world/messages/steve-bannon
Spoiler: ~50% of goals met in Trump's first year.
https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&qu...
>Off-Topic: Most stories about politics, or crime, or sports, or celebrities, unless they're evidence of some interesting new phenomenon.
You could argue it's an interesting new phenomenon?
The same story is in loads of publications.
Meanwhile this exact topic is discussing how our voting system may be directly attacked by effectively a foreign power, after the population was previously swayed by foreign influence in the form of revanchist propaganda highlighting all of America's problems while offering no solution beyond naked fascism red in tooth and claw.
It's also utterly disingenuous to bring up "criminals" to drive focus onto individuals, skipping right past the fish rotting from the head with the corrupt federal executive.
How can you know this though?
I also expect:
1) Lawsuits, subpoenas, and indictments against and of elections offices and key officials in Democratic areas of vulnerable Republican districts, timed to mess with their ability to even function. If it suppresses the vote that's a "nice to have" but mostly this is to sow uncertainty about the elections both by generating ginned-up headlines (it doesn't matter if the investigations actually find anything or go anywhere) and by delaying vote counting and causing chaos (e.g. very long lines) on Election Day, which opens up greater space for the GOP to act after the elections.
2) Challenges of the outcomes by the administration and their proxies, and outright calls for Republicans to pull certification tricks akin to the fake-elector crime they attempted in '20. This would be supported by #1, and by ICE-created chaos and vote suppression.
Incidentally, the ICE intervention can take many forms, the most extreme of which (and most effective to the admin) is triggering violence (a lot of people are going to react poorly to being asked "papers, please" by a small squad of armed & armored federal thugs on the way to vote) that actually shuts down polling places in key locations. This both heavily suppresses the vote in areas they've targeted, and serves their "chaos! Democrats are trying to cheat by letting illegals vote! See how much they freak out when we don't let them?" narrative. The lighter version is some cautious shows-of-force and unrealized threats ahead of time, aimed at gentler levels of vote suppression (if you're a citizen but have an accent and aren't white, you might think twice about your odds of getting to the polls without getting locked up for a day or two and losing perhaps five figures you may not have attaining your release, and just stay home, even if ICE ends up not showing or just doing some show-of-force drive-bys that end up all over social media)
I'd love to know what, if anything, state governments are planning to prevent any of this. I've personally not been able to think of a single effective thing they can do about it as far as actually keeping it from happening or recovering quickly from the material harm it does (winning much later in the court of public opinion, for whatever that's worth, is another matter, as is eventually winning in court) but maybe there's something.
(I rate all the above fairly likely, in some form; my outside-but-not-impossible-odds guess is they'll seize some ballot drop boxes or enroute mail-in ballots with nebulous claims of wrongdoing that don't go anywhere but do fuck up specific districts' voting processes, with, as usual, no relief from the courts because by the time anything can be done about it it's a fait accompli and nobody's gonna trust those ballots after the feds have had them, anyway)
The second thing they can do is ensure the police force is on their side. Remove officers that would collaborate with attempts to overthrow an election. Require training, monitor social media, ensure qualified immunity cannot protect them, and make sure they are aware.
US money paid to such firms also paid for Brexit.