The US Has Invoked Alien Enemies Act | Hacker News Reader

The US Has Invoked Alien Enemies Act

whitehouse.gov

40 points_kava15 comments

Before flagging, please consider how this act has not been invoked since WW2. Therefore it is a novel and worthy of discussion, regardless of how "not technology related" it is.

These don’t get flagged because they aren’t “technology related”

I think the common reasons are: Not worthy of HN discussion; (claimed to) likely to devolve into unrelated/heated arguments, and against HN rules.

Just that I don't agree this topic fit in any of those categories, so just want to state it first.

I think you're being very generous in your beliefs about why people flag these sort of stories.

From my observation, the only topic that will definitely be flagged before any discussions is genocide in Gaza…

I mean, it trivially fits a number of them but a really big one is 'repetition'. Various political and other not-entirely-HN-on-topic stories end up on the front page and have threads but these are exceptions for particularly unusual or big ones. An administration that engages in daily shitposting-through-executive-order gets a couple of these for novelty but the novelty has long worn off - you'd have to fill HN with them if they all counted as exceptional.

Of course, if you think this one deserves special treatment, the thing to do is email hn@ycombinator.com and ask for flags to be taken off. I think in this case it's a little uphill (as another toplevel comment points out - the news has already overtaken this thing) and you'd probably need to find some sort of third party reporting rather than the government press release.

This has already been effectively stayed by a fed judge.

https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/trump-administration/trump-...

The fact that it was officially invoked at all is already a point of discussion. This is an act that can suspend the constitution as the executive branch see fit. Nobody has ever tried to use it since WW2, and even then it was a controversial act.

It has only been 2 months. How much further can it go in one year? In 4 years? At what point would there be real consequences? I think these questions are important enough to warrant some serious discussion.

This already feels like a reddit discussion. You made points all outlined in the article I linked.

I'm not qualified to speak to hypotheticals and likely neither is anyone else here. However, the only consequences are either Congress removing him, the cabinet removing him via Article 25, an armed uprising, or potentially a Big Mac.

Until any of those happen, there are no consequences for the duration.

No consequences for Trump. For the rest of us, the non-oligarchs, this could mean the end of representative democracy.

> This already feels like a reddit discussion. You made points all outlined in the article I linked.

You seemed to say (implicitly) that this isn't too dire because the judiciary stopped it. They in response made the point that even if this isn't effective now, the rapid escalation of the use executive power is a big deal that points to further escalation that might not be stopped.

Yes, they mentioned facts that appear in the article to support the point but nowhere this point is made, or furthermore, it doesn't even matter if it was. Expressing a similar opinion like one in an article quote makes his reply superfluous?

Saying "reddit" and "nobody is qualified to speak hypotheticals" seems more like you don't wish to engage with his point. The act that's been used to put innocent people in to concentration camps was invoked, more discussion should exist beyond dryly mentioning the mechanisms for ousting the US president.

I'm not assuming your opinions on the matter, the refusal to approach the question just seemed weird to me, so I wanted to note it.

What's the point of approaching questions like this in a forum? Your effort is better spent on the phone with your Congress Critter or on the street protesting. Keyboard warror'ing is a waste of your time.

> You seemed to say (implicitly) that this isn't too dire because the judiciary stopped it.

Do not /ass/ume what other's mean, and don't put words in my mouth.

The existence of content doesn't mean you need to engage with it. If these types of questions or discussion are superfluous in your mind you can always choose to ignore them instead of jumping in. Conversations and questions about the article and its impact seems on-topic in this context, joining the discussion simply to chastise people for participating in the discourse does not feel on-topic to me.

I personally think there is value in discussion around first-in-my-lifetime events like this.

At some point, they're going to make "fuck the judges, ignore and proceed" the official and stated policy. I'm frankly surprised this has not (really) happened yet. Guess they have to boil the frog just a little longer.

The Trump loves looking like they’re doing things more than actually accomplishing them.

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