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Comment by paulsutter | Hacker News Reader

Wait, who is threatening to use the US military against US citizens?

The current president has previously spoken of it multiple times [0, 1] and has already authorized domestic military deployments, albeit not against citizens [2].

[0] https://www.cnn.com/2024/10/13/politics/trump-military-enemy...

[1] https://www.washingtonpost.com/elections/2024/10/24/trump-mi...

[2] https://www.military.com/daily-news/2025/01/27/here-are-all-...

The flagged subthread doing some whataboutery with drone strikes actually has a point that is relevant here; the War on Terror provided an erosion of rule of law, both in terms of normalized militarisation of society and in keeping places like Guantanamo Bay (US territory where US law basically doesn't apply) open.

The threatened immigration sweeps and the talk of removing birthright citizenship tie into this. If the troops are reluctant to be deployed against US citizens, simply make the people you want to deploy them against not US citizens any more.

Yeah this is my fear -- when we remove birthright citizenship, then suddenly you have to prove that your bloodline back to the Nth degree were citizens, or you have to prove yourself by some other way. So if someone or some group disagrees with what he is doing, he can simply add a requirement for citizenship that they can't meet and then they're not citizens.

The whole point of birthright citizenship is to create a clear, unambiguous means of testing if someone is a citizen so that people cannot be disenfranchised easily even by a hostile executive. If you can produce a birth certificate, you are a citizen end of discussion. As someone who disagrees with what is happening, my biggest fear is that myself, my son, or my family could be declared "not a citizen" and forcibly removed to some other country where we are also not citizens under a new system. This is not a good thing for the US.

HR22, the "SAVE act" is removing the birth certificate from viable documents for millions of people who have changed their names. If the person who changed their name does not get an updated birth certificate (most don't, like women after they marry and take their husbands last name), then they can no longer vote. This is many millions of regular naturally born citizens in the US.

https://www.congress.gov/119/bills/hr22/BILLS-119hr22ih.pdf

He came damn close in his first term. I remember watching the Twitter video on June 1, 2020 - see the video: https://www.nbcnews.com/video/watch-helicopters-hover-low-ov... to see how low the helicopters were flying and the rotor wash was clearly intended to intimidate the protesters.

https://warontherocks.com/2020/10/let-the-generals-speak-ret...

> In May 2020, protests emerged in the aftermath of the killing of George Floyd by a white police officer, as well as other incidents of police brutality against African Americans. In these protests there was in some cases significant property destruction and looting. In response, more than 20 states and the District of Columbia activated the National Guard to assist in stabilizing the situation.

> By June 1 Trump was reportedly ready to send 10,000 regular military troops to the streets — forces usually used in external conflict. He threatened to invoke the Insurrection Act, which would have allowed him to deploy the troops without the governors’ permission. Active-duty troops were brought to the Washington, D.C., area, including some from the immediate response force brigade of the Army’s 82nd Airborne Division. For a few days it looked like Trump might send in the troops, precipitating the retired officer commentary detailed below. Ultimately the president did not invoke the Insurrection Act and the troops were sent home.

It wasn't just Trump: https://www.nytimes.com/2020/06/03/opinion/tom-cotton-protes...

https://www.defenseone.com/policy/2020/10/helicopters-over-d...

https://media.defense.gov/2021/May/27/2002730396/-1/-1/1/DOD...

https://abcnews.go.com/Politics/soldiers-disciplined-helicop...

https://web.archive.org/web/20230607212142/https://casebook....

https://www.usnews.com/news/national-news/articles/2020-06-0...

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