The Mystery of ICE's Unidentifiable Arrests
newyorker.com
newyorker.com
● ENFORCED DISAPPEARANCES, Amnesty International -- https://www.amnesty.org/en/what-we-do/enforced-disappearance...
● International Convention for the Protection of All Persons from Enforced Disappearance -- https://www.ohchr.org/en/instruments-mechanisms/instruments/...
● Aguilar, P. & Kovras, I. (2018). Explaining disappearances as a tool of political terror. International Political Science Review, 40(3), pp. 437-452. doi: 10.1177/0192512118764410
https://www.thedailybeast.com/trump-doj-refuses-to-comply-wi...
"Trump says 5 more law firms will provide $600 million total in free legal work for causes he supports" - https://www.cnbc.com/2025/04/11/trump-law-firms-pro-bono-wor...
These EOs amount to death sentences for these firms, obviously, and so far they're rolling over and submitting when EO'd against or they perceive they may be EO'd, halting legal work against the administration and providing free labor to Trump.
It does matter. There is long standing tradition of blaming what conservatives and their leadership do to everyone else. And euphemism away what they do by using softer words (corrupt when it was extortion) while using harsher words on those who fought him and lost (the company you call corrupt sued Trump and this is retaliation). That is part of the problem.
Democrats, well-meaning as they are, are too consumed with doing right and not with actually being in a position to do right. They even rally around total losers. As Paul Graham noted, it's the charisma, stupid, and since Obama (not a good choice), they've had no one.
I'd argue the opposite, actually. The Democratic party is obsessed with staying in power, but unwilling to have any halfway-interesting policies because they fear missing out on lobbyist bribes or losing any chance of getting the independent/undecided/centrist vote. Every time the Republicans move to the right, the Democratic party does a small step to the right as well to "compromise".
The Democratic party isn't interested in doing the right thing, and as a result the left-wing voter base turns to complete apathy or wastes their vote on independent candidates. If the US had a functioning democracy, there would've been a new left-wing party ages ago.
It wasn't about immigration, but it's a pretty generally applicable principal
Republican Party leadership in 2015-2016 wanted more of business as usual, and to keep power. Trump came in talking just like an actual Republican voter in a midwestern diner, with the credibility of being a party outsider, which cut the legs out from under them because they have sucked at representing their actual voters for decades. This struck such a grievous blow that he quickly took over the entire party. Then he either actually did things Republicans had been selling voters on for years but not delivering (Roe v Wade, gone, thanks to his Supreme Court), or at least kind-of ineptly tried to do things Republican voters have long wanted but Republican politicians never really even tried to do (the stupid wall, tariff China, destroy [well, uh, replace with a barely-different agreement, but whatever, names matter] NAFTA).
It took him bumbling his way through a pandemic to lose, and not by that much, he'd almost certainly have gotten a second term if not for sheer chance despite all the blatant corruption and daily incredibly stupid bullshit, that is how effective this strategy was.
Democrats won't improve and will struggle to win elections until something similar happens to their party. This will need to include abandoning strident neoliberal economic policy, as it did for the Republicans, because voters never liked that and it only worked because both parties stuck to it regardless.
... all of this is assuming we have free & fair Federal elections again.
Both parties share the blame. With Trump some claim that it was Kamala's focus on trans that made the difference while others claim that she didn't focus that much on it if at all. My take is that both parties jump at the opportunity to focus on these lesser issues rather big picture items such as taxes, universal healthcare or anything else that would actually make a large impact in people's lives.
This is nothing new. I remember when Bernie was drowned out years ago and the focus became gay marriage instead of the much more important issues he was advocating for. The blame for focusing on these issues cannot fall just on the republican party. The democrats were more than happy to focus on these issues instead of something that might pit them against those that fund them. If all that matters is who is paying you behind closed walls, then it doesn't matter which party is in power at all.
Besides, the parties are not symmetrical. This is not both sides issue, this is literally republicans causing all the damage issue while democrats are blamed for not stopping it. The "both parties are to blame" when what is happening is literally republicans doing it massive harm intentionally is what caused this situation.
My guess right now is that democrats after Trump are counting on coming in, fixing some very minor things while running on a 'everything is gonna be different' platform much like Obama did after Bush.
I'm not saying they are equal, they are different but at the end of the day they both play on the same team so who cares about the small differences?. I honestly believe the democrats are done for, its either that or there won't be a point to them anymore since if they stay the same there won't be any need to pretend anymore as the last cycle of this little game ends with the next Trump.
It is ridiculous that he is blamed for not doing much when what republicans back then did was, well, blocking everything. The ridiculous obstructions and one sided arguments were new back then, they became norm now.
> while Trump again removed the chips act and everything else that Biden did
Trump broke laws big time while doing it. He is literally dismantling both democracy and rule of law. It is ridiculous to criticize democrats for not going full fascists when they had power while also claiming them and republicans are the same. Yes they could act like Trump does now and create own autocracy. That they did not is a good point for them.
> who cares about the small differences
These are not small differences. For that matter, the tariffs Biden kept and current 135% dramas mixed with annexations threats toward allies are not nearly in the same league. And that is what I am talking about.
In order to achieve both sides are the same, you need to:
- Massively exaggerate bad democrats do, simultaneously blame them when they are centrists and when they go slightly left. And then throw blame them for what republicans do on top of it.
- Massively whitewash what republicans do, ignore the worst of what they do, minimize the scale. And then use their worst as a blueprint for what democrats were supposed to do.
As politicians, they do succumb to their own share of shenanigans. But they seemed to tend to not enjoy shitting on quite as many people.
Now HSI is undoubtedly informing some of the immigrant raids, and the leadership of ICE is now clearly oriented to the right, but there are some what I’d call non-partisan things the agency is doing that we don’t want abolished.
Not picking on you at all, I just wish more of these arguments dove a little deeper into all that ICE does.
re-create it as the Immigration Office of Clerks and make them wear polo shirts with a little logo and chinos and work in cubes to process paperwork quickly. letting it have a whole department of sociopaths with guns is just a ticking time bomb.