Marines being mobilized in response to LA protests | Hacker News Reader

Marines being mobilized in response to LA protests

cnn.com

707 pointssapphicsnail1,677 comments

If illegal immigration is such a problem, why not fine businesses 5x salary for using the labor, for as long as it was used? There are a lot of systems in place to verify working status at this point. It eliminates any incentive to hire this cheaper labor willing to work for lower wages.

The people coming will be coming for a variety of reasons but it won't be to take the jobs of the uneducated Americans

This is what Canada mostly does and it’s super effective, the problem is that the people who employ illegal immigrants: farmers, construction contractors, hotel owners, etc…belong to the same party pushing against illegal immigration, they would basically be punishing themselves, so it isn’t going to happen.

Doesn't post-pandemic Canada have the highest rate of legal immigration in years since government gives out immigration visas like candy? I can't see how this is good in a country that already has a stagnating economy and a housing crisis. You're eroding the bargaining power of local labor and increasing competition for housing in an already tight market.

They were slow to let off the gas pedal after the labour shortages during COVID. There's been a massive swing in the other direction now.

What kind of labor shortages are we talking about? Isn't "muh labor shortage" just corporate propaganda for importing more cheap labor to drive down wages and increase rents?

Also, isn't it completely reckless to import a lot more people in a short timespan, without the necessary housing and infrastructure (doctors, nurses, teachers, etc) to support them in the first place?

Small businesses were having a hard time staffing stores and the like. For a short period 2021 to maybe early 2023.

It's definitely not the case now. Unemployment is way up. Which I suspect is a combination of factors (slowing economy & tariffs) not just immigration.

But yes, Canadian governments work for employers, not workers. Just like any other advanced capitalist country. There is an expectation that there's a "natural" unemployment rate in this country around 6%, and they freak out if it goes much lower than that.

In general, when regular people are complaining about inflation they're complaining about their groceries. When you hear businesses and governments concerned about inflation .. they mean they're stressed out because minimum wage employees are demanding some basic respect that employers feel they shouldn't have to provide...

There were no labor shortages during COVID... Low-wage employers just panicked because they were suddenly competing with generous temporary government benefits.

No wonder Canada's productivity is stagnant and on track for the lowest growth in the G7. Why invest in technology or productivity when you can just cry to the government for cheap, indentured labor?

There has been a massive swing? They announced a small reduction and called it a day.

The tightening of international student visas has actually been quite significant. Its effects on colleges and universities has been very drastic. And it has effects in the labour market as well.

https://archive.is/awVp8#selection-2637.0-2640.0

Quarter with the slowest population growth since at least 2018, excepting one quarter in 2020.

>I can't see how this is good in a country that already has a stagnating economy and a housing crisis

Increasing immigration is a good way to revitalize a stagnant economy. This is the great chasm between people's intuition of how national economies work and economists' understanding of how they work.

Well, it doesn't seem to be working.

It's working at making Canadian landlords rich. That's economic growth too.

>Increasing immigration is a good way to revitalize a stagnant economy.

Then why is Canada's economy stagnating with all that emigration? When is that supposed economic boom coming?

The second issue is, if that economic boom is gonna trickle down to the Canadian working class or only to the top 1% of Canadian business and asset owning class while everyone else is left holding the bag?

Because we've been duped for decades with this uncontrolled immigration trickle down economic fallacy.

Your ancestors were likely "uncontrolled" immigrants and so were mine. That's the way the Western hemisphere was settled. If it's so bad, how did the US and Canada get so rich?

Optimal policy is much different for a post industrial economy than an agrarian/frontier economy, I would rather have better standard of living than consistent ethics

That's possibly true. Is there any evidence? Because there is a thread of racism and fear of the other built into our immigration policies since the beginning, and I don't see that's changed.

This is true if you build enough houses to help the new arrivals, but the government failed to do this and has recently admitted as such. Because they didn’t, the housing crisis is about four times worse in Canada than in America, and that has completely defeated young Canadians and pressured them to not start families.

Exactly The aggressive raids aren't in Florida or Texas, or even California farm county, they're targeting urban areas, and getting the intended headlines.

Not true.. they are doing the raids elsewhere including Texas. Florida cracked down on the state level on businessrs a year ago so not as much of a problem as far as I understand.

Florida has not cracked down. The E-Verify mandate is limited to companies of 25 or more employees and is not enforced. DeSantis will never oppose the criminal businesses profiting from illegal labor.

E verify is the real crackdown. Everything else is just show

When they mandate E-Verify universally and enforce it, we will know that they are serious. Until then, it is just a sham to keep Democrats and Trumpers distracted.

Immigration is a federal government problem. Why would a start “crack” down on something not in its jurisdiction?

The Tenth Amendment and Chamber of Commerce v. Whiting give states the power to enforce work eligibility laws.

“Largest joint immigration operation in Florida history leads to 1,120 criminal alien arrests during weeklong operation” — May 1, 2025

https://www.ice.gov/news/releases/largest-joint-immigration-...

And no employers will be penalized.

Most certainly not Donald Trump, god forbid.

If I was a betting man, I'd handicap the number of paper-less workers he employs at his 3 golf clubs in Florida at 100. If we were to take into account the amount of work-permit-less laborers working on his golf courses nationwide, I'd say the number is over 200.

And even then, I'd bet my life on the over. Having played golf once at his club in Doral (shitty course, would never play again, even if my round was covered), I can safely assume ain't nobody mowing that course that can speak English passably, let alone are in this country working legally.

>Having played golf once at his club in Doral (shitty course, would never play again, even if my round was covered), I can safely assume ain't nobody mowing that course that can speak English passably, let alone are in this country working legally.

How proletarian of him to hire "normal" help. Lol.

Based on my limited experience with comparable clubs in the northeast I would have expected the properties to be run by (subcontracted) crews of "you pay extra because we speak english and have no face tats or felonies" type service personnel because that's what the old money wasp clientele expect.

I'm from the Northeast and have played tennis and golf at a few of the comparable high end places - the subcontractors don't usually speak english either, usually the head groundskeeper is white and speaks it well enough to communicate to the staff who know not to speak to members. Alternatively, the groundskeeper is someone that's been in the US long enough to speak English well enough that nobody would think about his immigration status. In some of the wealthiest places, it's usually a kid whose parents are illegal but he was born and raised in the US, was blessed with intelligence and won a scholarship to a great NEASC school where a member of the club is on the alumni board.

I can also attest that some of the multigenerational "my great grandkids won't have to work a day in their lives" wealth types are some of the cheapest and stingiest people I've ever met, and most certainly don't care that the groundskeepers at their too-cool-for-school clubs in Westchester or The Hamptons or Greenwich speak zero english and aren't here legally. In fact, that's the expectation, because god forbid their club dues go up by a few hundred dollars a year (while they spend that same amount on a single dinner at the clubhouse).

I don't golf so my only experience is incidental and limited to a few clubs that I have a business relationship with a vendors for but it seems to me that the waspy country clubs are mostly staffed with townies and a lower representation of immigrants than comparable occupations for different employers in the same towns.

Now, I get that "a few" isn't a trend but the effect is pretty observable. IDK if it's the customers really driving things or if the townies are simply more capable of excelling in such roles.

> the waspy country clubs are mostly staffed with townies and a lower representation of immigrants than comparable occupations for different employers in the same towns

I've played tennis and golf all over Westchester County, all over Fairfield County, and in Long Island. On the golf side, yeah, it's townies. Same goes for pro shop, tennis assistants, pool staff, and sometimes, kitchen/snack bar staff. But the folks who mow the lawns, clean the locker rooms and toilets, water the greens? Hell no those aren't locals.

However, I'd be willing to bet my life that if one was to go to the Trump golf clubs in WPB, Doral and Jupiter, you'd find that some of the folks, say, watering the course, raking the bunkers, or cutting the lawns definitely do not speak English, do not have work permits, are not getting paid standard legal wages, and most definitely are NOT here legally.

Remember folks, with this administration, hypocrisy is the point.

> Florida cracked down on the state level on businessrs a year ago so not as much of a problem as far as I understand.

Omg, I’m in tears.

It’s an open “secret” in some industries that it’s trivially easy to hire illegal immigrants en masse through Florida-based “recruiters”.

If this somehow changes, some big R donors are going to be very upset.

A core group of Texas Republicans have for years blocked attempts to require employees to verify worker status because some key donors in that state own construction or agriculture businesses which depend on cheap labor. Having a few raids is good for them politically because it gives them free campaign advertising but it doesn’t cost businesses much since it’s infrequent and the penalties are lower than the amount they save in wages (not to mention indirect benefits like keeping workers from saying anything about unsafe conditions).

https://www.texastribune.org/2025/06/05/texas-e-verify-requi...

They do in Texas. Is just that Texas dont buy into the santuary cities bullshit, and raids always happaned there.

Texas raids the employers and deports the undocumented, but the employers are never penalized. They are performative raids, intended to intimidate undocumented workers and prevent them from organizing or pushing for better pay and working conditions. Texas has been doing this for a century, and even during the Braceros era Mexico often refused to work with Texas because of how they treat chicanos.

They may not be called sanctuary cities officially, but if that idea didn't exist there, Texas Senate Bill 4 wouldn't exist in the first place. And it wouldn't be on hold and disputed today.

Or Wisconsin:

> President Trump spent much of his campaign vowing "mass deportations" of undocumented immigrants, and the first weeks of his term have been marked by public displays of immigration enforcement. It could pose a blow to multiple parts of the country's food supply chain, including the dairy industry, where more than half of the national workforce is undocumented.

* https://www.cbsnews.com/video/how-undocumented-workers-suppo...

> The aggressive raids aren't in Florida or Texas, or even California farm county, they're targeting urban areas, and getting the intended headlines.

I don’t know that that is true:

Florida: https://www.fox35orlando.com/news/100-undocumented-immigrant...

Texas: https://www.tpr.org/border-immigration/2025-06-05/ice-raids-...

California farm country: https://calmatters.org/economy/2025/01/kern-county-immigrati...

Didn’t read them all but that last one in Kern was under Biden,

“This appears to be the first large-scale Border Patrol raid in California since the election of Donald Trump, coming just a day after Congress certified the election on January 6, in the final days of Joe Biden’s presidency.”

It strains credulity somewhat to act as though ICE, whose purpose has always been immigration enforcement, only started enforcing immigration under Trump. I remember hearing about ICE/immigration raids for many decades now in California.

In any event I think the prior’s point was that the current admins’ zealous focus on immigration is mostly optics. The idea is to get California activists to juxtapose themselves on the evening news throwing bricks and Molotovs against clean cut patriotic young servicemen. The American electorate prefer marines to brick throwers, so it’s just easy politics. It’s been the go to gambit of the Trump team for most of his two terms. Immigration is a very popular issue with voters, but not with educated journalists who know most GOP donors like the Koch brothers are free market libertarians who want totally open boarders and therefore despite the voter concern, nothing meaningful will ever happen because immigration enforcement and reform will remain in essence a tool to whip up hysteria in the non-sophisticated. Immigration and deportation numbers don’t lie, and tell most of the story.

You clearly posted false statements. Are you able to retract or delete your comment?

I would honestly hope that comments don't get deleted as it makes following discussion threads harder. If someone already posted a rebuttle, you can already see it.

OK agreed as others have pointed out there if enforcement in other places. I get the sense, but can't quantity the push seems different by state and city. Perhaps the reaction is different as well.

I think the real reason is that Trump feels that the illegal immigration issue generates votes for him so actually solving it is the last thing he wants to do.

This has been true of every major policy ‘lock in’ topic for both parties for at least a decade, if not more.

Gun control, abortion, immigration (legal and illegal), taxation/gov’t spending, affirmative action (aka DEI), etc.

Trump is really good at pushing buttons and generating outrage though. Not unexpected for a reality TV show star.

It’s sad how addicted people are to his button pushing. I’ve got an elderly family member with dementia who can’t go more than 2 hours without watching a outrage video about Trump. You know the ones on YouTube, still doing hourly updates on russiagate and other “legal analysis” around Trump prosecutions, still. She lost much of her life savings because these YouTube “experts” explained how Trump would crash the market when in actuality, from 2016 to today, the market has actually gone up. A lot. Thanks medias touch or whoever it is for destroying the sanity and financial security of so many American seniors. What a business model.

> She lost much of her life savings because these YouTube “experts” explained how Trump would crash the market when in actuality, from 2016 to today, the market has actually gone up. A lot.

How did the market going up lose her money?

The loss of potential gains?

If you read the comment carefully, it sounds like she sold early and put into things like CDs which lost money to inflation.

I'm not sure it even matters if there is an actual problem, as long as there is a perception of a problem in his voters.

Because this is more about a display of force than actually solving a problem.

Shh! We can’t do that! You’d piss off the republican donors. Not to mention the American public when their grocery bill significantly increases.

No, it’s much better to go harass people who aren’t in republican circles. Us vs them. Round up some illegals, make some examples, stick it to the democrats (who loosened the borders and are complicit). Trump is strong, and finally cracking down on all of this illegal nonsense, hoo rah!!

It’s all theater, that’s what Trump is - a darn good showman. Some illegals will get deported, eventually some of his core will see him as the thug he is. We just need to ensure democrats have a viable candidate lined up…ideally a white southern man. Clearly the push to elect a woman isn’t working at this time - we’ve tried it twice and Americans vote Trump instead.

This. And two santas.

Don't worry, I'm sure they'll run Newsom for president this time.

They want a reason to remove the current Californian government, as well as manufacturing a reason to enact emergency powers which can 'help' Trump push for a third term. They have been discussing this since before the election.

Trump is hardly a bastion of health, you think he'll still be around when he's 82?

A better question is, does he think he'll still be around?

I mean, this is a guy who put out a press release about his own health where everyone could tell he was lying because it included his own height and they just found pictures of him standing next to other people who were supposed to be the same height or shorter.

Well, let's not forget writing his own "medical assessment" for his doctor to sign off. With gems like "I can confidently state that Donald Trump will be the most healthy and strong man to ever take the Presidency"... not to mention "positive findings on every test" (uhhh, a positive finding on any medical test is an abnormality, Donnie).

Seeing how the online MAGA meme squads love WH40K so much, I'd imagine there's always the Golden Throne option. ~

The e-verify system has been in place since 1996, and does exactly that: verify legal status of workers. It's required for federal contractors, but only about half of states require its use (it used to be more but some states like CA have actually passed laws banning its use).

It verifies the legal status of the documents submitted. Does little beyond encouraging identity theft of USCs that end up with unexpected tax liabilities.

But the estimated number of "illegal" workers is so much larger than the number of people whose identity is stolen on tax returns each year I'd suggest that the issue isn't so much with the tools already available, so much at people aren't using those tools.

Even if we had a perfect e-verify system that magically guaranteed the result was accurate, it probably wouldn't make a difference. Not while it's use is "optional" in states like Texas.

The fact Republicans in Texas harp on about illegal migration but don't do the most basic thing to reduce illegal labor supporting illegal migration really shows its more about having someone to hate than actually working to solve the problem.

Making illegal immigrants commit another crime gives an excuse to try them and deport them

I worked for a company that verified I9’s and provided an eVerify integration for employers. I can’t explain what problem it solved.

It was a multi-million dollar if-statement that copied the expertise of the relevant law into a permanently legacy expert system.

Doing anything besides that would be illegal. But that also means there is no cross-referencing or vendor enforcement of fraud.

It did things like check if some tax-related status code was valid for the indicated home country of emigration. It didn’t do things like check against a national database for an SSN.

It basically punished people for filling out forms incorrectly or not being able to scan a document.

We didn’t get new regulations every quarter or ever. I dunno what the point was.

Edit: the everify step technically used personally identifiable information to contact a national database.

I guess my gripe is that I didn’t see how it could prevent fraud in any way a normal HR person wouldn’t have caught if it were to be caught. It’s a duplication of a process everyone was already doing.

LA is actively supporting illegal immigrants.

If you want something like this to work, federal agents need to do it.

What is "this" and how do you define "work?"

And if illegals are such a problem, why do the Republicans toady up to the corporations that perpetuate and profit from it?

> If you want something like this to work, federal agents need to do it

Doing the arrests? Sure. Intimidating protesters for partisan messaging while desecrating the honour of our armed forces? No.

They are doing arrests and others are trying to block them from doing arrests. That is why the National Guard had to step it, because local law enforcement did nothing to protect ICE from the mobs that try to set free illegals.

> They are doing arrests and others are trying to block them from doing arrests

The only "they" doing arrests are ICE and the LAPD. The California National Guard isn't arresting anyone to my knowledge.

> local law enforcement did nothing to protect ICE from the mobs that try to set free illegals

Source? For literally any of this sentence.

I won’t google it for you. It there’s multiple video evidence readily available.

Evidence of absence is harder than that.

Yesterday I saw a pic claiming to be of local law enforcement keeping the protestors separated from ICE. It was shared by protestors very upset that ICE was being kept safe while ICE shot at the protestors with tear gas — but(!) I have no way to tell if that was even taken this week in LA or 10 years ago in a different continent, because even before GenAI, there's loads of cases where people share videos of something awful, but label it about something completely different and use it as evidence about that other thing.

The person you replied to is looking for evidence that "local law enforcement did nothing to protect ICE from the mobs that try to set free illegals" — it's really hard to show "did nothing" from any single clip.

Even absent GenAI being pretty good now, what kind of video do you think will actually demonstrate that (1) local law enforcement, (2) did nothing, not just in the area being filmed but even when the camera was off, (3) specifically that the mobs were trying to set free "illegals" rather than being very unhappy that unidentified armed people wearing masks were hauling away their local pizza maker who they'd known for a decade?

ICE is doing immigration arrests.

LAPD/Sheriffs are doing vandalism related arrests including unlawful assembly.

CA guard is standing around federal properties. They normally don’t do arrests but they can and will do “detainments” until another agency can take over.

But the FBI is on site doing federal arrests (vandalism etc against a federal building is both a state and federal offense).

> ICE is doing immigration arrests.

Not properly, they are hiding while wearing masks and not making it clear they are LEOs.

Not to mention arresting people here LEGALLY....

"illegals"

Doing a lot of work for you there.

The anti-commandeering doctrine prevents the federal government from directly compelling states to implement or enforce federal law. It has been ruled on time and time again, from 1842 when Justice Joseph Story affirmed it [1] to Justice Samuel Alito in 2018 [2].

The balance between State and Federal power is part of how the country works. You can’t just call in the military whenever States refuse to help you, which they aren’t obligated to do.

[1] “The clause relating to fugitive slaves is found in the national Constitution, and not in that of any State. It might well be deemed an unconstitutional exercise of the power of interpretation to insist that the States are bound to provide means to carry into effect the duties of the National Government nowhere delegated or entrusted to them by the Constitution.” Prigg v. Pennsylvania https://supreme.justia.com/cases/federal/us/41/539/

[2] “Congress may not simply ‘commandeer the legislative process of the States by directly compelling them to enact and enforce a federal regulatory program.” Murphy v. National Collegiate Athletic Association https://www.oyez.org/cases/2017/16-476

Technically, ICE were carrying out arrests for cartel activity and money laundering by illegals as Tom Homan pointed out. They were executing criminal warrants. Then they were attacked. LAPD never came to help them.

Even this supreme court has said the way in which ice is "doing the work" that they're doing isn't constitutional. As in, the way in which "federal agents need to do it" is being done right now is literally illegal. Hence, protests. This isn't rocket science

One case brought before the Supreme Court was the humanitarian legal status for migrants, which it was struck down and they can be sent back.

The other was about the deportations, which the court said they need to serve deportees a notice of deportation before they are actually deported.

There is no ruling that says ICE can't go after them wherever they are and arrest them.

so you agree

LA is definitely okay with illegal immigrants, but it's akin to a deal with the devil. It's a sacrifice on their part for cheap labor in exchange for the occasional burning down and looting of their favorite locations when the tide turns against their favor as it is right now. There is an entire economic system and mechanism of living wrapped around this blood-contract in states like California. The moment something threatens it, you see them out there burning, looting, basically being a terrorizer to preserve this system.

Looking at it from both sides, they are providing cheap labor to the bourgeois, taking a penance and it's agreed that it's okay, and now an outsider is coming in(trump and his administration) threatening that contract and they expect the state leaders to protect them, as they currently are with their inaction and posturing that everything is fine and safe until Trump opened his big mouth and showed force. The inaction and posturing not being effective, now they are out there punishing the elite for not protecting them by burning down the city they love, and love for them to work in, like slave labor.

Everyone knows this to be the case in LA, the argument is does ICE have the right to go in and mass-raid? I believe it does act in the interest of the state, but I also believe that no party has ever wanted to solve the issue of illegal but otherwise law-abiding people having a path to be legal, and that issue also should also be of great interest to the state.

Also, the downvoting provides very deep insight of thinking that has taken over. These people have no critical thinking - not to mention self-criticism, as that has been carefully rooted out - apparently knowledge is not important, but education. The paid actors in streets are not the main problem of USA, but whole generation of imbeciles, that can't take responsibility of their own - not to mention for whole country.

Count how many gray posts are here and think what will happen when they will all leave. Not to mention that this site is Reddit v2.0 and have the same result and that is not coincidence.

> Please don't comment about the voting on comments. It never does any good, and it makes boring reading.

> Please don't post comments saying that HN is turning into Reddit. It's a semi-noob illusion, as old as the hills.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

Lol, people really believe in paid actors at protests? You need to work on your critical thinking if you think that is an actual problem.

Where are they finding these actors? Why aren't the job advertisements ever leaked to the public? Why hasn't an investigative journalist gone undercover to get paid to protest?

But, you're the smart guy, right? We're all imbeciles because we don't want a ruling class of billionaire grifters to normalize the concept of extrajudicial kidnappings. My bad.

This is not true, just last night an Apple store and Ootoro were completey looted and destroyed. I'm clearly calling out a problem from both sides unwilling to move a needle properly.

1992 riots weren't perpetrated by migrants, to the extent they were involved it was as victims. Neither was any of the looting in 2020 to my knowledge.

Btw, nothing significant was "burned down" in 2020 either. Some shops hit by looters closed for a while and eventually reopened. Fairfax was hard hit by looting and if you went there today you would have no clue that anything happened.

The current events are primarily happening in an area that is full of state and federal government facilities, not really anyone's favorite spot. No looting either, there's nothing to loot. The demonstrators are burning Waymos and Bird scooters, better if it would not happen at all, but it's nobody's personal property.

You are posting on a site, that is part of the problem of anti-government thinking without placing any other government structure in place.

> If illegal immigration is such a problem, why not fine businesses 5x salary for using the labor, for as long as it was used?

The Nazis leveraged hatred towards minorities as a wedge to force their totalitarian control over Germany's state and society. They built up a ficticious enemy within, they inflamed society against that enemy, and proceeded to promise they would eliminate that enemy if the were granted total control over everyone and everything.

It's no coincidence that Trump is targeting California to fabricate a crisis and rapidly escalate the issue he created himself, specially how he forced the unjustified and illegal deployment of national guard and the armed forces. The goal is clearly not illegal aliens standing next to Home Depots. The goal is to force a scenario where loyalists in the armed forces target any opposition. It's no coincidence Trump has been threatening the governor of California with prison for the crime of "running for elections" at the time he's announcing deploying armed forces in California without authorization or legal standing and against the will of the governor of California.

> they inflamed society against that enemy

They blamed them for pre-existing social problems. I feel the important context was that the government had to be significantly dysfunctional for the Nazi party to even exist.

Would you describe the US government as functional?

So far, comparisons with routine life in Weimar Germany are a contortion.

There is an enemy, there are raids on civilians and due process has been abandoned.

The military are now being used for police work, and the police are behaving like the military.

This mob are creeping towards KristallMethNacht.

As bad as Trump is, Hitler was packing his political opponents in a concentration camp within month of taking power. It really isn't comparable yet.

But also, he doesn't need to be literally Hitler to be bad.

I know that CECOT is not nearly as bad as concentration camps, but at the same time it's not like Trump refrains from sending people off to camps, based on loose accusations.

What I'm trying to say, or I guess repeat after you, is that fascism doesn't have to be Hitlerian to be fascism. Or in other words, at this point it's too late anyways.

We absolutely should start comparing and measuring now, because at the point where the comparisons match 100%, too much damage will have been done.

If I was religious I'd probably pray for the US, as I'm not I'm just shaking my head in astonishment.

Trump isn't sending his political opponents to camps (yet), is my point. If you're a citizen currently in US, you can, to paraphrase the old Soviet joke, stand next to the White House and shout "Trump is an asshole", and you won't find yourself on a deportation flight tomorrow. OTOH Nazis started creating concentration camps specifically for communists and dissident journalists less than a month after their electoral victory.

I think that focusing on broad comparisons is not the best idea precisely because it's way too easy to deconstruct, and "X is literally Hitler" is such an overused political trope that most people stop listening right away regardless of how much truth there is to it. It's better to focus on the specific negative actions.

They also blamed them for non existent problems and for problems Nazi intentionally and consciously created.

Hitler was elected as a dictator, at least in spirit.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roman_dictator

The Nazis had strong support. But Hitler was appointed.

> The Nazis had strong support. But Hitler was appointed.

Well, yeah, PM’s (and the Chancellor in the German system at the time, and now, is a PM) are almost invariably appointed by the head of state after either a general election—or sometimes between them if an incumbent resigns or a vacancy occurs by other means—as the leader of the majority party (if any), the leader of the majority coalition (if there's no majority party but there is a majority coalition), or sometimes (and whether this is allowed and whether it makes a sooner next election than would otherwise be required varies) some minority party leader based on some combination of size of minority, support and opposition from other parties, and discretion of the head of state.

And, yes, Hitler was first appointed as the last and weakest kind, but that's still effectively winning the tiebreaker set out for an ambiguous electoral result, since it could only happen because no other party or coalition could form a legislative majority.

> They blamed them for pre-existing social problems.

Is immigration a new hot topic in the US?

I mean, a few years ago the US government started wasting money building a wall on the US-Mexico border whose only purpose was propaganda and dog whistling.

And is it really necessary to point out the obvious parallels between the Nazi's "vital state" propaganda and Trump's "Canada as 51st state" and "Greenland is ours" rhetoric?

If they talk like Nazis and they goose-step like Nazis, what are they? I would ask if you'd start being concerned when they started rounding up random people off the streets, but apparently that's still not enough.

The Republican party is incentivized both to have illegal immigration, and to fight against illegal immigration.

They act accordingly to those incentives.

Cheap workers that are also under constant threat of getting deported (and have no real legal recourse because of it) are awfully convenient for many business models.

I guess the Democratic party is only incentivize to have illegal immigration? Although there might be incentive to fight against it at least for votes next time around, this issue lost the election (a non-dementia version of Biden would’ve recognized this, but his family loved the power so they kept him in)

The Democrats have similar incentives (see Biden’s admin’s actions, esp. deportation numbers), but they don’t use the anti immigrant rhetoric and don’t do the ICE raids for show because they also have the progressive, moderate and educated voters, and possibly also have scruples.

They sometimes say that they want less illegal and more legal immigration.

Biden’s dementia isn’t an explanation here, that’s really mostly just political ammo.

crackdown on immigration is exactly to allow business to profit from informal and legal immigration.

it's so widely know im unsure if you're really oblivious or being sarcastic. sorry.

Because they don’t really care. It’s just about creating divisions in society to keep people voting for people that do everything against their interests.

Or maybe they just got tired of millions of immigrants flaunting the law and overburdening the system? We had unprecedented levels of illegal immigration over the last four years. Do you think it went unnoticed and didn’t adversely affect anyone?

Why jump to these conspiracy notions about division and blatantly ignore the simplest and most obvious explanation.

Both can be true

Honest question, because I don't see it here in Colorado: Who has it adversely affected? Crime rates among illegal immigrants are lower than the rest of the population [1] [2] [3] and illegal immigrants are the backbone of our agricultural system [4]

So ... who is hurt and how badly are they hurt? Because when I see the amount of perfectly legal murder, robbery and torture happening in the U.S. [5] [6] [7] [8] I just don't understand what the big deal is. I guess it's whataboutism, but when we have limited resources, why are we using them for this specific problem? How bad is it compared to this other stuff?

[1] https://nij.ojp.gov/topics/articles/undocumented-immigrant-o... (the feds took it down -- gee I wonder why -- but the facts are in the permalink)

[2] https://www.cato.org/blog/white-houses-misleading-error-ridd...

[3] https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC7768760/

[4] https://www.ers.usda.gov/topics/farm-economy/farm-labor#lega...

[5] https://www.techtarget.com/revcyclemanagement/feature/Breaki...

[6] https://ij.org/press-release/new-report-finds-civil-forfeitu...

[7] https://www.commondreams.org/news/2015/07/27/whistleblower-e...

[8] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Private_prison#United_States

https://apnews.com/article/new-york-migrants-shelter-time-li...

https://nhjournal.com/as-illegal-immigrants-swamp-mas-emerge...

https://www.foxnews.com/us/migrant-arrested-broad-daylight-r...

https://abcnews.go.com/US/migrant-custody-person-interest-ra...

https://www.nationalreview.com/news/salvadoran-illegal-immig...

https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/crime/haitian-migrant-accused...

This answers my question very well:

> So ... who is hurt and how badly are they hurt?

Your answer: not many people, not nearly as many as our prisons-for-profit our healthcare-for-profit systems. Plenty of legals rape 13 year olds, hell a legal here in my home town cut open a mom to be and tried to kidnap her fetus.

So yeah your anecdata proves my suspicion. This illegal immigration crackdown is a false flag for racism and xenophobia. As long as people have feet they're going to move, and as long as people have brains, they're going to resent and fear that.

As an American minority who has emigrated to an Asian country known for strict immigration enforcement and ethnocentrism, this is just a bizarre take to me. On HN, where there are regular posts about cybersecurity and vulnerabilities, for some reason people fail to grasp the concept of national-level Physical Access Control. For a country with a trillion-dollar security budget and an all-too-cozy relationship with the jailers of the world's largest open-air prison (Palestine), we should not have millions slipping through the cracks. We should not have repeated offenders committing high-profile violent crimes.

"Our domestic systems are broken and ruin more lives so anyone who opposes foreign criminals preying on our citizens is a racist." No. Some of us minorities appreciate law & order too.

Immigration enforcement is low-hanging fruit from a policy perspective IMO, with real, tangible positive impacts on the quality of life of the citizenry. Going after the monied class that benefits from the prisons-for-profit is a MUCH harder objective (but also absolutely necessary and SHOULD be done in conjunction with the street enforcement). I find nobody hates criminal immigrants quite like law-abiding immigrants; we end up stereotyped due to the actions of the high-profile idiots.

All that said, I find that many actions which would be "government doing its job" in other countries bring out the worst low-IQ racists in the US in support.

Yeah I totally fail to grasp the concept of national-level Physical Access Control. In the richest country in the world, with a population approaching 400,000,000 people and 7,458 of land borders (not even counting our sea borders), the phrase sounds quixotic without a lot of bounds set on it. We consume over a third of the world's resources with just 5% of the world's population. Simple laws of diffusion operate against any kind of long-term enforced border control.

What makes the violent crimes high profile? I don't see anything done by illegal immigrants that isn't done at a higher rate by citizens, be it rape, murder, gang activity, you name it. It's a well documented fact (you can look it up yourself) that illegal immigrants in the U.S. have a lower crime rate than legal immigrants or citizens.

As far as tying cybersecurity to this, sure. The only safe network is one that its unplugged from the rest of the world. Problem is it's also a pretty useless network.

What is a low hanging fruit policy wise is clearly not so low-hanging from an execution perspective.

I oppose anybody preying on our citizens, not just foreigners. While there might be a political need to control immigration it ignores basic human nature, which has been around far longer than any political system.

> Do you think it went unnoticed and didn’t adversely affect anyone?

Coming as someone living in Texas - yes, it affects no one. It's always been an hallucination. We just attribute random things to "the illegals" when, in reality, they're not hurting anyone.

In fact, if you've ever been in Texas, you'd know this state is run by illegals. I drive around and I see homes being built out the wazoo and who's on the roof? Huh? Who is it? It's not white people.

I drive down 114 and they got 2 lanes closed for construction and I look over and what is working on the concrete? It's not white people. I stop by 7/11 to buy a coke and who checks me out?

People just don't like "illegals" because they're racist. That's the hard truth, the pill a lot of y'all don't want to swallow.

Absolutely. Our country is built on the work of immigrants as much as anyone else. We should celebrate every hard worker that contributes with a path to citizenship.

I guess you didn't see what happened in NYC? Do articles like this sound like, "No one noticed they were here"?

https://apnews.com/article/new-york-migrants-shelter-time-li...

Because their actions belie that narrative? If they went after employers, people wouldn't be coming here looking for jobs.

Can you tell me how all those immigrants "flaunting the law" were affording food and rent, if not for a U.S. citizen paying them for their labor? Why are we not going after those who pay first? Nip the problem in the bud.

> millions of immigrants flaunting the law and overburdening the system?

Except these raids aren’t targeting that population. They’re going after the ones paying taxes. To the extent we have folks overburdening the system, it’s largely our native born (and refugees).

Are they? Do we have any statistical information on who is being apprehended and their characteristics?

> Do we have any statistical information on who is being apprehended and their characteristics?

As of Saturday, it was about 118 arrests, 20 of which appeared to have been targeted towards dangerous people [1]. Otherwise, the locations of the raids have been employers, e.g. the garment warehouse [2] and Italian restaurant. I am assuming they aren’t working for free. (To my knowledge, no refugee centres have been raided as part of these actions in LA.)

[1] https://laist.com/news/criminal-justice/officials-name-12-ic...

[2] https://abc7.com/post/who-is-ice-arresting-in-socal-raids-7-...

It’s not a conspiracy theory to say the powerful’s modus operandi is ‘divide and rule’. It’s been this way for thousands of years.

We gotta stop calling people working hard manual jobs 7 days a week the scroungers and start calling the people working 0 days a week and collecting rent and passive income the scroungers - they are the real drain on society.

they’re also rounding up legal asylum seekers.

Because the system is designed to allow these people in a gray zone, so they do not have access to the same rights as citizens and therefore can be exploited. The problem is not illegal immigration. It's just a political football. Our economy would fily collapse without this cheap labor to exploit.

It would not collapase. But it would shift some purchaing power from the middle class to the working class if all of them would leave, as working class salaries would go up even faster than the inflatino it would cause.

Exactly. It would rebalance the value provided by blue collar work. They could finally demand a higher wage without being undercut by illegal workers.

I find it super funny that the average Joe will condemn an "illegal" worker for undercutting another, but never ask themselves the question who employed that "illegal" worker.

How come the blame is not solely on the businesses willingly employing thousands of "illegal workers", not paying tax on them nor health benefits, and not even minimum wage, and in that way undercutting the value of blue collar labor?

Our economy absolutely would collapse. Our entire farming industry exists because of heavily abused immigrant labor, and is a job that Americans refuse to take. We've made multiple swings and attempts at getting Americans to do this work [1] but it's low pay, low benefits and grueling work. Farmers literally could not afford the actual salary needed to attract people to do said labor, and it would cause food prices across the US to skyrocket.

The only way this would stabilize is if the government came in and subsidized and socialized farm work heavily and that would also never happen.

[1] https://www.npr.org/sections/thesalt/2018/07/31/634442195/wh...

Of all illegals disappeared Thanos-style, the end result would be massively expensive certain crops, and a greater dependency on machine-farmable crops, like corn.

And some weird severe-but-short-term economic volatility.

Something along the lines of:

Now nobody is picking fruits, all the fruits die on the tree/vine, so there's none of that in the supermarket and those farms go bankrupt. Also, most of those who were paid to butcher the cattle are gone, but the cows are still there, costing the farmers money, so those farms go bankrupt. And then so do the feed suppliers for cattle farmers that don't ranch (or do but need extra feed besides the grass). But everyone still needs to eat, which means there's correspondingly more demand for the stuff which is heavily mechanised, so prices for that go way up, but because this is an instant supply shock the average person is still hungry no matter what the prices are, unless the humans start eating alfalfa en-masse.

Why would it not happen? It would be yet another opportunity for the God King to give handouts to his subjects.

Not only that, most of the construction and home services companies are usually the white American folks that come and give you a very inflated price and then send you the immigrants to do the actual hard work. It's crazy when you speak to the people doing the work how much they are getting paid vs how much you are paying.

The middle class and the working class are the same thing. If you have to work to live, you are working class, it doesn't matter how much income you make or how many investment properties you own.

The whole working class/middle class divide was made up by the rich to get you to vote against your interests, and propped up by pick-mes who want to feel like they're better than someone.

> inflatino

please tell me that's not a typo /g

> working class salaries would go up even faster than the inflatino it would cause.

Good, working class salaries need to be high! We can't function as a society without all the people who dispose of our garbage, maintain our plumbing and water supply, grow our food, provide our electricity, and support our IT infrastructure.

Only one clarification: there is no difference between lower class, middle class and working class. White collar or blue collar, we are all collared.

The middle class construct is artificially invented so the owning class (people who don't have to work for their money) have something for the workers to aspire to. A software engineer with $300k/y is far closer wealth wise to a minimum wage worker in Mickey-D than they are to your Tim Cooks, Jeff Bezos and Adolf, pardon, Elon Musk.

In a Tesla, Prius or in a old Dodge, you are still stuck in traffic while they are flying with private jets.

We are all closer to being millionaires than Jeff Bezos.

The US refuses to admit it has always had an addiction to cheap labor so it entices desperate people to come over with the implicit assumption that if they keep their head down and are otherwise law-abiding it'll "look the other way." Some of them, after years of living on the outskirts of town, commuting 1.5 hours each day to back-breaking minimum wage jobs, and years without seeing their families, are able to scrounge up enough money to pay a lawyer thousands to help them get normalized. Only now they're being spawn-camped at court hearings too.

If the US were more self-aware and honest it would expand existing guest worker programs and create new pathways for temp labor to work without obtaining citizenship the way Singapore and Middle Eastern countries do. They seem cruel but at least each side of the equation knows what it's getting and they can even visit home every year! But Americans' hubristic tendency is to look at a place like Singapore or some other new skyline in the middle east or Asia and declare smugly "borderline slaves built that."

The only reason we don't reform our work visa programs for cheap labor is because business owners do NOT want to have to pay these people minimum wage, pay taxes on them, or pay to insure them (workman's comp and similar). That's it. That's all there is to it.

As soon as you institute such a program businesses could get sued for illegal labor conditions, abuses of employees, sexual abuse of employees, violations of contract law, and more. Their expenses for imported labor would probably triple.

Would such businesses close as a result? Maybe a handful would but the real impact would be a huge drop in profits—also known as a greater share of profits going to workers.

> Americans' hubristic tendency is to look at a place like Singapore or some other new skyline in the middle east or Asia and declare smugly "borderline slaves built that."

FWIW, I bet the part of the population saying that is also the part opposed to the current immigration enforcement, namely liberals.

I can't even tell who I've offended with this comment.

The problem with that solution is that it would work too well, making it unattractive to lawmakers who need the issue to maintain their careers.

Because a certain party in this country must always have a scapegoat, it isn’t any more complicated than that.

There would be turbo-inflation

Why?

Because cheap immigrant labor is the backbone of this country in many ways, especially when it comes to harvesting and processing our food supply. They could stop immigration tomorrow if they wanted to. $10,000 per person per day fine to agriculture companies. They don't want to. They are hate-filled people who want the poorest most vulnerable people to suffer. Just like Jesus would have wanted.

I find it interesting how the same political crowd that pushes hardest for workers’ rights and higher minimum wages will also turn around and seriously argue that illegal immigrants are needed (to be paid under the table below minimum wage), otherwise food prices would spike.

It's incoherent, just like the corporate claim that we need moar immigration and moar imports to keep prices down at Walmart, even if that means none of us make enough to buy anything. Both sides have to dress up their real motives, one pretending to care about the immigrant and the other pretending to care about the consumer. Both are lying.

Yes, the side that is fighting for immigrant rights and due process is lying about caring about immigrants. Excellent point.

> fighting for immigrant rights

The side that's trying to maintain a population of illegal immigrants and explains that this is necessarily because it is necessary to have a pool of workers willing to work for illegal wages.

Republicans. Republicans want an exploitable underclass. They wouldn't have worked so hard at protecting large employers of undocumented workers (like Trump) or worked so hard to kill compromise legislation that would have moved the needle on enforcement.

Trump needed immigration to go unsolved in 2024 to have something to run on.

Liberals may make the point that removing millions of workers from the country would be bad for the economy, but you're being downright disingenuous if you suggest that is the primary reason people are upset about the raids and deportation.

It must be those republican business owners out there throwing rocks at the police because their illegal workforce is being deported.

You assert that because some violent elements of the anti-ICE protests exist, that business owners cannot have any motivation to maintain an exploitable underclass of workers by not implementing e-Verify and not passing reform legislation multiple times in the past 20 years.

> and seriously argue that illegal immigrants are needed

Nothing GP wrote suggests that. Listing some realities and effects doesn't mean you approve of them.

I know, that’s why I said political crowd rather than directing it at them specifically. I’ve seen it come up often recently.

I'm stating the reality of the world. I would be happy if the lowest paid workers in our country got paid a living wage. However, you know this, you're just upset.

This is kind of an interesting thread. thrawa8387336 says "There would be turbo-inflation" as justification for continuing exploiting workers.

Then both liberals and conservatives accuse thrawa8387336 of being a member of the opposite group, due to how bad thrawa8387336's argument sounds.

What the parent comment meant is that business owners love the illegal immigration status quo so they can rip workers off overtime and wages because those workers can't complain to the government.

Your analysis is simply off. The side pushing for worker and immigrant rights are not saying "please keep immigrants here so we can exploit them more".

transcriptase was likely referring more to thrawa8387336's comment than to thinkingtoilet's comment. thrawa8387336's comment says "There would be turbo-inflation" as justification for continuing to exploit workers.

Yep. That is the real message here. Corporations are the ones that hire immigrants, to pay less. And Corporations are the ones that off shore manufacturing, to pay less to foreign workers. But lets blame the workers, for working?

Because that would require Congress to do something useful

Because this isn't about that. This is about having a perceived enemy that only you can fight. If it wasn't immigrants (legal or illegal), it would be a different group, within or outside of your borders.

It's fascism 101.

Yeah, the whole platform is about Othering. The greatest trick the rich ever pulled was convincing the middle class that the poor are the cause of all their problems.

I'm confused. I don't recall anyone ever saying that we need to get rid of the poor, but rather that we should try to make conditions better for everyone such that fewer people are poor. Did I miss my scheduled indoctrination message?

I don't recall anyone ever saying...

Don't focus on words. Focus on actions. For example, the action of deploying the military on Americans does not make conditions better for us. Quite the contrary. The action of having a military parade for the president's birthday is expensive and doesn't benefit us. That money could be going to education, school lunches, Medicaid, building bridges, etc. But it isn't. it is only going to stroke the president's ego. Most of his actions, EO's, deals, bills, etc., fall into this category.

> The action of having a military parade for the president's birthday is expensive and doesn't benefit us.

The funds for the "United States Army 250th Anniversary Parade" were allocated before President Trump was elected, during the Biden debacle. The fact that it falls on June 14th is what is called a "coincidence".

Be careful about blindly accepting propaganda as fact.

I would agree with your "coincidence" explanation if it weren't for the consistent pattern of "coincidences" in which Trump does something dictator-like and right-wingers rush to his defense with "coincidence". It's just a coincidence that all of these foreign diplomats invest in his meme coin or some family business and then suddenly are granted meetings with the president! It's just a coincidence that Qatar sends him a luxury airliner and his rhetoric about Qatar does a 180 degree flip! It's just a coincidence that he tried to interfere in a presidential election! It's just a coincidence that he consistently claims Article I and Article III powers for himself! It's just a coincidence that he's rounding up people and sending them to foreign prisons!

I've never met someone so unlucky /s

Are you claiming that the Army anniversary date being on DJT's birthday ISN'T a coincidence?

That must take some crazy mental gymnastics...

As to your other points, most aren't coincidences, though some aren't real either.

> Are you claiming that the Army anniversary date being on DJT's birthday ISN'T a coincidence? That must take some crazy mental gymnastics...

You should read the post you're responding to. It clearly addresses this very question.

> though some aren't real either

I think you mean, "though I'm not familiar with some of those cases"--otherwise a citation is needed.

The date is entirely unimportant. I suppose it's just a coincidence that Trump is following project 2025, step by step, since day one¹. And also a coincidence that many of the people who wrote project 2025 are in the Trump administration²³. It's just a coincidence, but of course trump didn't and doesn't know anything about it. Stop playing stupid.

1. https://www.cbsnews.com/news/trump-project-2025-first-100-da... 2. https://thehill.com/opinion/columnists/juan-williams/5120168... 3. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4cnyv9qNQSI

> The date is entirely unimportant.

The date is exactly what was being discussed. I was responding to the mischaracterization of "a military parade for the president's birthday", which is factually inaccurate. Plus, the plan was made during Biden's term.

> I suppose it's just a coincidence that Trump is following project 2025, step by step, since day one

He's following Agenda 47, which was published on his campaign website. He stated he agreed with some of Project 2025, but not all of it.

It's unsurprising that some involved in writing Project 2025 are working for the Trump admin.

> He stated he agreed with some of Project 2025, but not all of it.

He's stated every stance you can on 2025. Heard of it, never heard of it, love it, hate it, etc.

https://www.google.com/search?q=trump+never+heard+of+2025&oq...

> The funds for the "United States Army 250th Anniversary Parade" were allocated before President Trump was elected, during the Biden debacle.

Um: "The Army’s 250th birthday celebration has been in the works for two years, Army officials said. But adding a parade was the Trump White House’s idea, so planning for that began only two months ago." (Emphasis added.)

https://www.cnn.com/2025/06/06/politics/trump-military-parad...

Maybe not "get rid of" but plenty of other fingers are pointed at them. They get "free housing" (which they fill with drugs and kids), they get "free food" (which they use instead to buy alcohol), they get "free cellphones" (which they use to run drug rings), etc.

It's usually about how the poor get Foo for free, which everyone else has to pay for, and also about how they misuse Foo for nefarious reasons. The commons then get riled up, either because "Hey, why do they get free housing when I have to spend tons of money?" or because of all the nefarious things they supposedly do.

When you say "they" are you talking about the local US citizens doing these things, because "they" are doing it too. Comments like yours that word it so that it sounds like all crimes are being committed non-citizens which is such a fallacy it's laughable.

I used the word "they" on purpose, because the target seems to change often. It might be lower class, it might be immigrants (illegal and even legal), it might be $racial_minority, political faction, etc,. As long as it's a group that people can blame, it works.

If people say the "free Foo" being offered, I wage many would choose to keep buying better quality Foo. These people are not offered luxury. It can barely be considered essentials.

Also: Food stamps can't buy alcohol (let alone drugs).

I agree with your point, but food stamps can be used to buy drugs and alcohol... Buyer generally pays ~50% cash value. Very common for addicts to hand the EBT card over to dealer on the 3rd, but the vast majority receiving assistance use it honestly.

Go ask the same people railing about immigrants, what their thoughts on homeless people might be.

> we should try to make conditions better for everyone such that fewer people are poor

Explain how work requirements to qualify for Medicaid makes conditions better to ensure there are fewer poor people. Doesn't this just harm people who can't work due to disability, and practically ensure they will never get better enough to work and contribute to society?

Sure saves a lot of money for wealthy people though.

The work requirements only apply to the able-bodied. Coddling people like this isn't doing them any favors.

But isn’t Medicaid just healthcare. Being able to go to a doctor when you are sick or injured doesn’t really sound like coddling someone, “able-bodied” or not. Maybe I am misunderstanding and Medicaid is actually some new fancy handbag.

If finding work is this hard maybe we should be slowing down immigration.

Most here aren't arguing it's exceptionally difficult to find some kind of a job or education opportunity to meet the requirements. We're mostly arguing about adding all the additional bureaucracy to add additional requirements that will need to be documented and validated. And arguing that many who should be eligible for exceptions will end up not eligible because of some paperwork or bureaucratic oversight.

There is about the same amount of money allotted to help states stand up new programs to validate these requirements as the federal cost of Trump's birthday party.

The obvious answer is education and vocational training programs to help people develop skills that are needed today. Unfortunately, the people most affected by the changing demands of the modern economy are also people who have been negatively polarized against education.

We're on a tech forum and Trump approved of more H1b's to be hired this year. What does that say about his policies to create American jobs?

The able-bodied should be working before they receive any kind of government assistance on the basis of being low-income.

Anyone working shouldn't require government assistance on the basis of being low-income.

Why not?

The government shouldn't be subsidizing businesses that refuse to pay sufficient wages.

The government isn't subsidizing businesses when it gives low-wage workers welfare. Those workers would be working just as hard without the welfare, if not harder.

> Coddling people like this isn't doing them any favors.

Yes. Yes it is.

Pray you never find yourself in a situation where you can't work anymore or rely on anyone. Because under Trump's, this means guaranteed death. In the richest country ever.

Trump, speaking to his nephew about their disabled son [1]: "Maybe you should just let him die"

[1] https://www.theguardian.com/books/article/2024/jul/24/trump-...

The work requirements only apply to the able-bodied.

How does the government know whether any specific person is "able-bodied"?

  > How does the government know whether any specific person is "able-bodied"?

easy, they create a new bureaucracy with lots of paperwork and inspections/visits to handle it all...

Costs that will be borne by the state and become unavailable to actually assist and help people.

Bonus points: we'll be able to remove people that should have had eligibility but failed to get the right paperwork in place. And we all know those who are severely disabled and unable to work are always excellent on filing their paperwork correctly and on-time and always make required meetings.

Don't you love all this government efficiency this year?

The same way they determined it for the draft.

Putting a burden on people who aren't able bodied is harmful to them, because it means you accept some threshold of fasle negatives -- people who aren't able bodied but who will not qualify for the support. What will they do? They can't work because they aren't able bodied, but they can't qualify for assistance because the government doesn't think they're broken enough. That person will become homeless, and then their existence is essentially criminalized in many places.

Ahh, so you fell for the spin. What about the "able bodied" laid off in the economy and no one wants to hire? What about the "able bodied" who just graduated and can't even get an interview because everyone wants 5 years of experience? What about the "able bodied" who can do basic math and realize that $8/hour can no in fact pay for rent that sky rocketed to $1200 a month?

Business and removing jobs and being rewarded with tax breaks while American workers can't find anything. Whose fault is that?

What you just described isn’t spin. The requirement clearly applies only to the able-bodied. You’re saying being able-bodied doesn’t guarantee you can get a job—so you're arguing the requirement is unfair. I completely disagree. In this economy, anyone can get a job. Welfare—whether it’s taxpayer-funded medical care, cash payments, or food stamps—should never be unconditional. It’s funded by people who are compelled under threat of imprisonment to pay taxes. No one is entitled to it.

For the pragmatic- and not -empathetic-minded, means testing still creates a huge bureaucracy, making useless government jobs and costing money to chase down people whose lives already suck

I look for the message of helping the poor, but it’s frustrating that politicians can evade it and their self-attained devotion to Christianity go unchallenged.

The phrases to look for are “infested” and “purge”. Some politicians consider low-income to be a character of a person or a group (all the way up to a nation). Those same politicians laud language from Hitler about infestations and metaphors of racial purity.

Jesus didn't believe in IRS prisons. Don't look to politicians to impose Christian beliefs on people.

You should try telling that to Ohio as of late.

Huh? "Render unto Caesar" and all that. IRS falls under Caesar, caring for the health of others falls under God I.E. a requirement to be a Christian.

Did the historical Jesus really say that? He wasn't one of the religious authorities who had a deal with Rome. Many Jews didn't like Roman occupation as seen by the revolts. If Jesus had issues with the Jewish authorities, he probably did with the Roman ones as well. Apocalyptic Jews would have believed God was coming soon to overthrow the kingdoms of the world, which were controlled by evil spirts.

That was an answer to a trick question. The inquisitor was trying to get him to admit to defying Roman rules so he could get him imprisoned. And he gave an answer that the coins that have Roman emperor faces on them belong to the emperor, implying people could stop using those coins.

Even the most generous pro-government take on that passage would have him believing that the state should be separate from the church, so church doctrine should not be imposed through state decree.

"we should try to make conditions better for everyone such that fewer people are poor" and similar arguments is how the government scams you and everyone else into their racket. You always had the option to give to the poor, you didn't need a mob going in your pockets to do that.

"But muh roads and hospitals and police." Lol, that is covered by the ~0.5% of my salary I pay in property taxes and a little extra in use taxes and county and state sales tax. The federal portion, what do I get? Massive subsidies for people who stick their boot down my throat, military provocations that make us all far less safer, the worlds largest prison population (and near the top per capita). None of it makes sense -- the stuff that matters was achieved with the feds spending 2% of the gdp (and I might add, pretty much open immigration).

"Helping the poor" is one of the worst mistakes the USA ever undertook.

> You always had the option to give to the poor

History shows we've historically been pretty shitty at doing that at an individual level.

> The federal portion, what do I get?

Ignoring FICA, a large chunk is debt servicing, public health, earned income tax credits, food assistance, SSI, science programs, global trade security, and more. Most isn't "people who stick their boot down [your] throat", unless you're someone looking to abuse workers or food production or happens to be outside in LA these days.

not "the poor". immigrants

here's the correct indoctrination message

https://www.nytimes.com/2024/03/17/us/politics/trump-fox-int...

> Former President Donald J. Trump, in an interview broadcast Sunday, doubled down on his description of immigrants as “poisoning the blood” of the country, language that echoes Hitler.

> “Why do you use words like ‘vermin’ and ‘poisoning of the blood’?” Howard Kurtz, the media critic and interviewer, asked on Fox News. “The press, as you know, immediately reacts to that by saying, ‘Well, that’s the kind of language that Hitler and Mussolini used.’”

> “Because our country is being poisoned,” Mr. Trump responded.

"They're eating the dogs. They're eating the cats."

That was the president lying on a nationally televised debate, the purpose of which was to lay the groundwork for exporting poor people who were here legally.

You willfully ignore the 'Big Beautiful Bill' which will make the poor poorer, taking Medicaid from millions of people and making the richest of the rich richer with tax breaks.

"If you can convince the lowest white man he's better than the best colored man, he won't notice you're picking his pocket" - Lyndon Johnson

This one isn't even about middle class vs. poor. The immigration crackdowns are very popular across the entire (R) electorate, regardless of their wealth. It's all about picking out-groups, making them into enemies, and inflicting cruelty on them. That's what that side really wants out of their government. They have a long list of perceived enemies who they are expecting to be able to deliver cruelty to once they're done with immigrants.

> The immigration crackdowns are very popular across the entire (R) electorate, regardless of their wealth.

Sure. The rich (R) electorate gladly watch how the non-rich (R) electorate has taken the bait and is happy chasing after the newly othered.

They won't be happy if the non-rich republicans start taking their aim at lobbying, unfair tax-breaks for the rich, or any form of taxation that prevents them from keeping their ill-gotten wealth.

This line of thinking seems out of touch with the situation in LA. I'm only watching from a distance, and I can certainly believe that the media has misrepresented the situation, but I think there must be genuine rioting there, because the mayor has declared a curfew.

https://lacity.gov/highlights/curfew-announced-downtown-los-...

While the two parties fight about specific measures (as they always do), and don't trust one another at all, they both agree that extreme measures are appropriate in LA right now.

This discussion is about the situation in LA, and not just a generic partisan dispute we could read on any political discussion, right?

The curfew is because the force escalation has inspired more protests. When they called out the national guard, it was at the level of sports fans. The subsequent provocations have caused an escalation, and the mayor’s curfew is an attempt to break that cycle - and it’s still far below the level where a military response would be justified.

if the cops are all rioting and playing murder-musical chairs with peaceful people living their lives freely, crimes of opportunity will happen.

it's the feds and the sheriffs and the police causing unrest, by intent and design.

Certainly the Trump regime are.

LAPD are trained and regularly used for crowd control and protest dispersal. The guard isn’t. And for sure the Marines have no clue about policing.

I think LAPD is choosing a 1st amendment violation as the lesser failure than permitting any escalation involving the National Guard. That would quickly turn out badly for the guard, become a pretext for ever more violent authoritarianism in response.

Well, then we find ourselves finding each other out of touch!

I think your line of thinking might be either overly naïve, or maliciously turning a blind eye:

First, "both-sides"-ing, for lack of a better word, is — IMHO — a false equivalence that treats the current democratic transgressions of rights and freedoms from the alt-right government to, for example, democrat's normalizing that saying racist stuff is a faux-pas; i.e. some goons are actively harming humans and that isn't the same as racists being butt-hurt that they were banned from some site.

Second, in this particular case — where there is push back against fascists — trying to reduce the scope of the discussion is like trying to censor police-cam footage to just the split-second segments where the cops get scared and shoot, but that leaves out how the trigger-happy cop broke protocol, escalated the situation, and berated confusing orders at the victim. So, no... We need nuance and context.

I really hope people that find themselves what-abouting for fascists are able to escape whatever information bubble they find themselves in so that they may be able to stop willfully looking past other people's humanity before we all find each other on the wrong end of a power-tripping cop that won't even have to come up with a good lie to snuff our lives out.

Hi. I used to live in Downtown Los Angeles, and would regularly walk a dog to where the protests are. My friends are saying the protests are roughly two blocks in size, in front of the administrative buildings and in the neighboring city park. Outside of that area, life goes on as normal. Inside that area, when the crowd builds up after work, people are playing music and dancing. Yes, some people (visibly different crowd than the protesters) have used that cover for some looting and vandalism. But the pretense of this needing the military is just silly. The most aggressive behavior I've seen is cops throwing flash grenades and shooting rubber bullets directly at people's heads.

Before Trump intervened, LA has had worse Superbowl afterparties than the protest was at that time. This is all very much manufactured rage.

Consider that your news sources are really biased.

Here's a live feed, watch for yourself: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U6S_OwCgKOU

And power. Like their power over this young girl trying to go home:

Edit: https://www.reddit.com/r/PublicFreakout/comments/1l88mhj/lap...

Old dead link: https://www.reddit.com/r/chaoticgood/comments/1l8ax0z/protes...

Remember, less lethal does not mean non-lethal and doesn't mean it can't cause enough damage to impact someone's quality of life forever.

Poignant video.

The cameraperson or another bystander should have called 911, asked for ambulance (and maybe fire dept) to attend. In addition to medical care, that would at least get some higher degree of paperwork going from an accountability perspective.

Definitely a disturbing abuse of power, but it's LAPD. Where's the connection to Republicans?

"Blue lives" flags are intensely fascist, unpatriotic symbology and an explicit desecration of the American flag, that might be a good place to start your research.

State-sanctioned organized crime by white supremacist terrorists, that's the connection with Republicans. They pardoned the insurrectionists that violently captured the capital building and pay off murderers whose crimes achieve their political goals. It's mostly happening out in the open, brazenly. We're not rational machines, we're easily manipulated and it takes less energy to settle into beliefs others want us to have. "Flood the zone" works but reality is still happening.

So... I come from a country where police are still mostly respected. They also don't use rubber bullets usually.

From my point of view, this person was disobeying orders from police, which gives them the right to use force. Is a rubber bullet an appropriate amount of force? Probably not, but I don't see this video as a completely one sided interaction with one party being wrong.

Please explain, because I was probably watching a different video than you.

this is more like that gilded age robber barron saying: I can pay half the poor to kill the other half.

Perceived enemy? Even the most liberal of cities touting themselves as “sanctuary cities” had to pivot and declare they simply cannot handle the influx.

12million immigrants came into the country during the Biden administration. This type of load on the system does not go unnoticed. NYC for example was drastically transformed.

Why do you think it’s just a “perceived” problem?

That’s a lie. The actual number was closer to 4 million. https://www.macrotrends.net/global-metrics/countries/usa/uni...

That page is a joke. Ignoring reality does not manufacture a new reality. Four million might be the legal migration count, hard to say.

We had caravans of tens of thousands of people constantly streaming into the US for four years. The video evidence is out there for everyone to see. News outlets that did not engage in hiding reality and promoting falsehoods had crews at the border every day for four years collecting video evidence of what was going on.

If you care about understanding the truth, go to the US Customs and Border Protection website and look around. You can also cross check with Homeland Security and other official sources. And, yes, you will find data that predates the Trump administration...so you can't blame bias. For example, if I remember correctly, there were over THREE MILLION unauthorized entries in 2024.

Imagine how long a caravan with an extra 8 million people would be. I mean, I’ve been to a Huskers football game and seen what the exit looked like, and this would be 100x more.

If such a thing were being reported by multiple reputable sources, I’d be less inclined to roll my eyes at the preposterous idea.

[flagged]

A DHS post from 2025 is not reliable information, just reading the headline should be enough to notice that. The number of unauthorized immigrants living in the U.S. has been more or less stable for the last 20 years: https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2024/07/22/what-we-k...

> A DHS post from 2025 is not reliable information, just reading the headline should be enough to notice that.

You are living in an incomprehensible fantasy my friend. Good luck.

I don't need luck, just time. This administration always fails and is proven wrong at the end.

When the President is a known liar, and has hand-picked the secretary of the department, why should people trust the department's self-reports?

The people chucking cinder blocks and protestors are unaffiliated. That is guilt by association, a logical fallacy.

Seeing immigrants and perceiving an increased in crime, and citing that they are related is post facto rationalization fallacy.

Let's see... what other logical fallacies are in here. Oh.. people emigrate and die, so the accumulation of numbers is not valid nor does that handle double counting.

AFAIK a strong US economy generates around 250k jobs per month. Further, there were more jobs created under Biden than were lost during the pandemic.

I'd also suggest if this all were a big deal, illegal entry ought to be elevated from a civil infraction. It is more severe in the eyes of the law to drive 25 hour than it is to overstay a visa.

> The people chucking cinder blocks and protestors are unaffiliated.

I didn't say they were and you have no clue if they are or are not. Even if you were personally there to demonstrate peacefully, no have no clue what forces are operating behind they scenes. And we know that part is true. One way to put it is that aspects of this is organized crime. They will eventually be discovered and held to pay for what they have done in a court of law.

> Let's see... what other logical fallacies are in here

Not a logical fallacy, but the most incomprehensible development over the years is that somehow large numbers of people think it is OK for people to just pour into the US as they wish, no controls, no admission criteria, nothing. And yet, the same people understand that this is not acceptable anywhere else in the world.

Clearly there's nothing I can say to help people who are firmly chained inside the cave looking at shadows. The indoctrination is way too powerful. Some of us try, but, sadly, the only way this insanity will pass is for people to gain clarity on their own. Not sure what it will take. Time will tell.

Perhaps this is your idea of what this country needs to become?

https://i.imgur.com/JcjpHKe.png

Not going to happen. No way.

Why then bring up the cinder block issue if it's unaffiliated?

> Some of us try, but, sadly, the only way this insanity will pass is for people to gain clarity on their own. Not sure what it will take. Time will tell.

I'd say it would take sound arguments. Meanwhile, your arguments are not sound. You did not address what I wrote. To rebut a 'guilt-by-association' criticism, you said "I didn't say they were [affiliated]". That confirms the criticism.

You did not address the post-facto rationalization criticism at all.

I also saw a person in a pokemon costume too. Until we can have some sound arguments and facts, it's very much a choose-your-own-adventure situation. Are we here to just yell at each other? I personally do think the country needs to maintain rule-of-law (with notable mention of the 1st amendment), and the full rule-of-law goes for everyone, police, protestors, and opportunists.

I understand your position. There is nothing I can say that will change it. Only time and life experience will, maybe.

Not here to yell at you or anyone. Having lived in multiple cultures and countries across the world, I bring to the table a perspective that most Americans simply do not have. I have no clue if you are American, BTW. I have had the experience of being in fear for my life while detained by military thugs as a teenager. I have seen and lived the pain and misery leftist ideologies bring to populations first hand.

Any immigrant who has actually lived these realities cannot comprehend how it is that the US does not simply laugh these people off the stage. And, to be sure, the extreme right is just as destructive, yet that is not a reality in the US at all (despite the media pushing that narrative into people's brains day after day).

So, like I said, nothing I can say to you or anyone else, that much is obvious. There are things you learn about society and ideology that can only be learned from experience. Maybe the US needs to live through a leftist utopia for a period of time for everyone to come out smarter. That would be tragic, of course, but it might also be necessary. If California does not scare the shit out of the rest of the nation I don't know what will.

Have a good one.

California is scaring the shit out of people, but not for the reasons you seem to suggest.

Rolling in the National Guard and Marines on a peaceful protest is, quite frankly, un-American. It's massive federal overreach that has led to violence in the past. Would be nice if the current administration knew its own history.

Peaceful protest? C'mon.

They were throwing molotov cocktails, rocks, scooters, mortar-like fireworks, bottles with urine and chemicals and who knows what else. They were destroying and looting stores and vandalizing everything in sight. I don't know how many Waymo cars they destroyed (it looked like five). Far from peaceful.

The moderate or peaceful majority is never the reason for enforcement actions. These are triggered by a militant and violent minority, some of whom are actually paid to cause disruption. So, you have a couple of choices. The first is to do nothing and just let it burn. We have seen that happen before. The second is to bring forward an overwhelming show of force to dissipate that violent element (and bring them to justice). That's what happened.

This is no different from control system theory. The ideal critically-damped feedback loop does not exist when dealing with mobs. Either you crank up the dampening early or you pay the consequences of doing it too late. We can't have entire business districts destroyed by thugs. You have to stop them as soon as possible. As it stands, these animals caused a massive amount of damage in just a couple of days.

Yesterday showed the contrast very well, there was a peaceful (truly, not the fake "peaceful" pushed by the media while shit is burning) protest that seemed to number in the thousands of people. Perfect. No problems. That only happened because thugs (the minority) learned within a day or two that they would suffer severe consequences for their actions.

The third option is proportionate response, which the administration danced right over. Why? Why roll in the federal forces when the governor says it's not needed? They didn't show up to protect those shops or Waymo cars anyway, so that's irrelevant; as per the Secretary of Defense's own testimony today (https://youtu.be/10itk-W8DV4?feature=shared&t=128), they were dispatched to protect law enforcement attempting to enforce immigration law against a city that does not want their citizens kidnapped off the street by an unaccountable government.

Violence happened, but not to any scale that makes a military deployment on American soil in peacetime make sense.

Does this look like a riot justifying soldiers to you? https://kolektiva.social/@jonahgibberish/114663170166350434

> This is no different from control system theory.

Rolling out the Marines is turning the `I` knob, not the `D` knob. It's teaching protestors "if you're gonna show up, come armed to deal with soldiers." Incredibly dangerous in a country where that firepower is in so many private hands.

I don't know when we became a nation so cowardly that we have to point military firepower at our own citizens. When strangers are turning out into the streets to thwart federal enforcement, maybe the problem is the law not the criminals?

> Not a logical fallacy, but the most incomprehensible development over the years is that somehow large numbers of people think it is OK for people to just pour into the US as they wish, no controls, no admission criteria, nothing

Actually, it's the other way around.

The US southern border was very porous for most of its history. Around 1986, a combination of moral panic about Latino influence on the culture and concerns about drug trade enabled the Reagan administration and Congress to tighten immigration law into something approximating the structure we have today in terms of enforcement (https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC5049707/).

This backfired spectacularly. Let people bop back and forth to Tijuana, and they bop back and forth to Tijuana. Force them to struggle to cross the border, to declare nationality, start evicting them if they over-stay... And now they have reason to choose and to fight for the choice. The result of closing the border is undocumented immigration went up (secondary statistics strongly suggesting that this was actual immigration, not enforcement resulting from more tracking of undocumented immigrants).

Regardless of the law on paper, under-enforcement was the behavior of the land for nearly a century, and this new regime is an experiment that has strongly suggested the law was sourly anti-human to begin with.

(As a meta-comment on law: you're talking to a generation that watched the War on Drugs happen. Don't be surprised Americans have soured on the notion, in general, that law and morality are closely interlocked).

What percentage of the 10 million recovered jobs were taken by incoming immigrants?

People died and permanently retired during the pandemic. It's possible the 10 million number represents a restored workforce; it's also possible it represents a changed workforce.

If the latter, that illegal immigration allowed the US to recover faster than it would have otherwise and the lesson from history is we're a stronger nation for easing immigration restrictions.

> illegal immigration allowed the US to recover faster than it would have otherwise and the lesson from history is we're a stronger nation for easing immigration restrictions.

There is no question whatsoever that immigration, legal and done correctly, is a force for good. As a legal immigrant, it understand this very well.

In fact, I understand the entire process very well, including the illegal immigration part. You see, when I was six years old, my parents overstayed their tourist visa in the US. They were then told to leave and my entire family left. Two years later, after going through proper channels, we obtained permission to come to the US legally.

I truly do not understand how people twist themselves into a pretzel to justify illegal entry into a country. Actually, it is worse than that, the only country where they seem to think this is OK is the US. Every single person who is for illegal immigration in the US understands why you cannot just move to New Zealand, for example, to stay and work there without permission. They also understand New Zealand's points system for the selection of who is granted permanent residency. Not in the US. Of course not.

Proponents also say that not enough people are let in legally or that it is too slow. Two points to be made here. The entire planet wants to come to the US, so, yeah, it will take a couple of years (as it did for my family). Second, when millions of people enter illegally, the annual quota for legal immigration cannot be increased. Doing so would exacerbate the problem. So, illegal immigration actually hinders changes and growth of the legal immigration system.

Finally, proponents of illegal immigrants are of the same ilk as those who propose raising tax rates for everyone except themselves. And, when they do include themselves, they don't lead by example and simply send more money than they owe to the government. Same with immigration. How?

I break into your home with my entire family while you are on vacation. I start paying the bills; power, water, insurance, heck, I even pay the mortgage.

Can we all stay in your home forever? You are welcome to come back from your vacation and share the home with us?

Of course not. Nobody of sound mind would accept such a situation.

How is breaking and entering into a country --any country-- justified and elevated to almost be a virtue?

While not a perfect analogy, of course, this does illustrate a fundamental idea: You don't get to grab things (your iPhone, car, home, residency, benefits, etc.) by force and keep them just because you did. If the world worked that way we would all be walking around with a firearm strapped to our leg and blood would run down every street in the nation. Violating these fundamental rights is nothing less than destructive to society.

> Every single person who is for illegal immigration in the US understands why you cannot just move to New Zealand, for example, to stay and work there without permission

Yes, of course, and this is not contradictory. "American Exceptionalism" means different things to different people, but broadly speaking: as a nation built of immigrants, there's no particular "right" time to pull up the ladder and say "That's enough immigrants now." Most people who support this position (not all, but enough to be concerning), when you peel back the veneer, support it because they want America to be "A nation of X" and America facing the reality of more people with different world experiences threatens that goal. There's a reason the protests in Charlottesville turned from being about the history of the South to chants of "Blood and Soil."

Regardless of what the law says: the reality on the ground is the American economy is relying on the labor provided by the undocumented, and they are our friends and neighbors for years running. Sometimes, when a law bends too hard against what the people actually want, you ditch the law. A government fails to grasp that to its peril; hopefully, it only results in tea wasted in the harbor.

> when millions of people enter illegally, the annual quota for legal immigration cannot be increased

Untrue; these are rules we make up for ourselves. Congress could set the number to zero tomorrow. Or infinity. It's entirely up to us.

> Finally, proponents of illegal immigrants are of the same ilk as those who propose raising tax rates for everyone except themselves

I think we'd have to agree to disagree. I, for instance, am in favor of raising taxes on myself and people in my tax bracket, as well as basically everyone above my tax bracket. No strong opinion on lower brackets. And I do send more than I owe to the government. And buy bonds.

Your meta-argument is "These people don't see the problems;" I think you are mistaken. People see the problems, they just think they're better handled with community service than with truncheons and planes to some other country.

> I break into your home with my entire family while you are on vacation. I start paying the bills; power, water, insurance, heck, I even pay the mortgage.

> Can we all stay in your home forever?

I mean, that's an argument about "squatter's rights," not immigration, but for what it's worth... yes? The law in many states does recognize your right to keep using the land if you develop it and it's de-facto abandoned. If I own so much land I can't use all of it and you find a better use for it, that's on me.

The nature of immigration is so divorced from this analogy as to make it worthless. Try this one instead: You come here, build a house, raise a family. Five years later, I come along and try to kick you out because you didn't cross an 'i' on some paperwork in 2019. Is this just, or should I leave you the heck alone because you're not hurting anyone?

> You don't get to grab things (your iPhone, car, home, residency, benefits, etc.) by force and keep them just because you did

I'm sure you're not arguing "America should be returned to the Native Americans..." But that is the argument you are making here. Are you sure you mean it?

... FWIW, I'm sorry your parents were forced out. In an ideal world, that shouldn't have happened. That would have been, what, roundabouts the Reagan presidency? Reagan's administration set us on the path to where we are today by deciding a lot of laws on the books suddenly needed enforcement where little had happened. To all our detriment.

Ha! 1969. Massachusetts.

Well, time to exit this thread. The problem with HN having become a monoculture forum is that it is impossible to have conversations. I never downvote or flag anyone, particularly those who disagree with me. The same is not true on the other side, if you don't tow the line you get attacked, downvoted and flagged mercilessly until you shut your mouth. So, yeah, you win. Have a good day.

Oh, my mistake. They got got by Nixon. Nixon set up the playbook that Reagan ran with on immigration. He needed to make your parents the enemy to sew up Southern votes. To be honest, it probably would have worked for another four years had he not been so paranoid that he spied on his political opposition and got caught out for it (back when that sort of thing mattered in American Presidential politics).

I appreciate seeing your vantage point on this topic. While we do not agree, It is helpful to see other people's takes.

I'll add another point and I am done.

Just in case you misinterpreted my story, I think it was 100% correct and proper for the US to ask my family to leave, apply for permission to come back legally and finally do so. My parents did not do the right thing by overstaying their visa and working. In other words, I do not agree that they should have been allowed to stay.

When they did obtain authorization they had to agree to not be a burden to US taxpayers for five years. I also agree with this.

Legal and orderly immigration is essential for societies to function. This is true everywhere on this planet.

The sources you consider "reputable" lie all the time...by cherry-picking, obsfucating, mis-direction, distorting, half-truths etc. They of course, flat-out lie too quite regularly too.

This is a bad argument because it could very easily go either way. Post any source of yours for the 12 million number and I'll just as easily say it's fake too.

Exactly but pretending unreliable sources are reliable is a bad argument too.

We are left in a very, very bad place when the media can't be relied on to tell the truth. But here we are..

> Ignoring reality does not manufacture a new reality.

I wish we could tell that to Trump.

>We had caravans of tens of thousands of people constantly streaming into the US for four years. T

Okay, and Biden deported more people than Trump's first term. Is that fact a joke too?

>go to the US Customs and Border Protection website and look around.

Okay, what am I looking for? The most recent news update was June 5th about building a wall in Arizona. I thought that 2016 narrative was over?

>if I remember correctly, there were over THREE MILLION unauthorized entries in 2024.

And

>In Fiscal Year (FY) 2024, there were 271,484 individuals removed from the US by ICE (Immigration and Customs Enforcement). This number represents an increase of nearly 90% compared to the previous fiscal year. This data includes removals by ICE's Enforcement and Removal Operations (ERO).

Why are we acting like Biden did nothing?

The New York Times put it at about 2.4m/year, or around 10m total: https://www.nytimes.com/2024/12/11/briefing/us-immigration-s....

That's gross immigration, not net. People leave, too. The government's numbers show the net being approximately +1M/year.

Did you actually read the article?

> Annual net migration — the number of people coming to the country minus the number leaving — averaged 2.4 million people from 2021 to 2023, according to the Congressional Budget Office. Total net migration during the Biden administration is likely to exceed eight million people.

Why try to minimize it or be defensive about the figure? The Biden administration is proud the number is high. Do you want the number high or low?

From ChatGPT:

> So, while 10–11 million CBP encounters is the most solid official figure, when you add gotaways, overstays, and parole entries, the total number of people likely entering without full authorization could reasonably be around 15–17 million during the Biden presidency.

> declare they simply cannot handle the influx

They cannot handle it with the resources being given. This is true for the red states like Texas and what not, the social services we do have struggle to handle the load. But we're choosing to let these systems struggle. We could solve it if we chose to do so.

In 2020 our population was ~330 million people. Even if 12 million people immigrated to the United States, that's an influx of 3.6%. In reality its probably closer to 4 or so million, so really more like 1.2%. We're supposedly the wealthiest country on the planet with so much opportunity and freedom and yet we can't handle adding far less than 5% of the population as migrants in five years? If that's the case, we're probably the poorest country on the planet, not the wealthiest.

And that's a population of millions admittedly including many minors and major barriers to thriving, but overall far fewer elderly or disabled people than the general population. Boosting immigration is only an economic drag if you structure the asylum/immigration process to prevent people from working, which we do now seemingly to punish communities that accept immigrants.

They are concentrated in major cities not evenly distributed across all of the US.

This does nothing to change the facts of my statement.

And even then, we could choose to do something about that. We could do more to help people settle all across the US and be well supported to succeed. But we don't. So instead, we have people crowd the areas where we turn a blind eye to hiring illegal labor and have the social impacts concentrated there and then refuse to actually do anything to help those social costs.

But these are all things we choose to do. We could choose to do something else.

You make it sound so simple, they don't want to live in a small town where they will stand out; with no social support or services.

How do you decide who goes where? What stops them from moving back to the bigger cities? How to you limit demographic displacement?

The UK is doing this, and the US under Biden was trying at a smaller scale with Haitians in smaller towns. It doesn't work, and isn't so simple.

> with no social support or services

Once again, we're choosing to not have these social supports or social services. It's a choice. We could do it if we wanted, after all we're allegedly the wealthiest country on the planet but somehow can't seem to afford anything.

> How do you decide who goes where?

I'm not suggesting we force it to be a top-down forced decision. I'm often a pretty free-market and empowering people to make their own decisions kind of guy, when it makes sense. And sure, people will tend to cluster more in large cities, that happens even for non-migrants. But in the end, we're doing practically nothing to encourage people to spread out that social cost (or worse, encouraging for forcing the clustering), and that doing nothing is a choice. And then we're doing very little to support these places experiencing such large social costs, which is once again a decision.

All of this is stuff we could do differently, we just choose the status quo (or now choosing violence!) that doesn't work well for a lot of us. Sure seems to be making some people exceptionally wealthy though.

There's many towns & small cities that have been revitalized by immigrants communities. Lewiston Maine, Charleroi Pennsylvania.

America is really struggling to support & enable a people, to create a social safety net. Opportunity is low. But often when immigrants come in from other places, they will put in enormous energy, that can bring some very sad towns back to life.

Huh? Have you driven through Iowa lately? Southern Idaho?

We could’ve done something but we ran out of money, the previous generation built up too much debt and sold off the future so now we ran out of the resources.

Guess what is also true of the US population in general...

Yes, basically this. Americans have to hustle all day in the war against "line go down". Our agency is not allowed to be put to caring for other people but the illusion the 1% alone prop up society.

So sick of Americans empty-analysis and ignorance of externalities their society puts on others; overseas colleagues see it as white Taliban. They don't see people in streets over tariffs screwing up their lives, so they've started to tell their politicians Americans (as in the public) are not reliable actors. They don't realize it, but the American publics own credibility is shot, not just their politicians.

I have taken to cutting off friends and family and shit talking anyone in public that wants to socialize; do the politic work to put me on the hook for their healthcare, otherwise I refuse to bother with their existence. Withdrawing from people's lives is a forcing function for self reflection.

You all keep me off the hook caring you exist. I just have to help make line go up. Anything to do with you all as individuals is not my responsibility. That's the choice of the American people. I'm here to profit, not give a fuck you exist.

That's what my fellow Americans taught me through their feckless political effort. Illusory idea some invisible hand gives a shit based upon the gibberish from history they read by people who were wanking their literacy rather than inventing indoor plumbing.

My government owes everything to the people inside the borders and nothing to the people outside

> In reality its probably closer to 4 or so million

your calcuation needs to account for ppl coming in on non immigrant visas too.

usa issued 10 million non-immigrant visas in 2024. not counting 5 million tourist visas.

If they were approved visa, they aren't exactly an illegal immigrant, no? That's a different issue entirely.

Also, Trump approved for. Ore H1B Visas this year.

> they aren't exactly an illegal immigrant, no?

parent and gp comments are talking about "immigrants" . where do you see illegal immigrants ?

Up the chain mentions "perceived enemy". ICE is supposedly cracking down on illegal immigration.

Are we instead saying that anyone not born in the US but comes in is an enemy?

but context was set to just 'immigrants' . Why would i go up the chain if the context was reset ?

Are you saying 'immigrants' anywhere in this thread automatically implies 'illegal immigrant' . Thats really confusing to me.

> Are we instead saying that anyone not born in the US but comes in is an enemy?

this is ridiculous twisting of my comment. I was just correcting record about population increase from immigration. population increase doesn't happen just from immigrant visas, ppl on non-immigrant visas stay in the country often for decades.

Then let me clarify, I was intending to talk mostly about illegal immigration and asylum seekers, the kinds of immigrants person I was replying to was probably mostly talking about. These are the immigrants people seem most concerned about, as they typically have a higher rate of relying on social services and welfare at least in the short term. It is these kinds of immigrants which impose the largest initial cost on society to allow in.

But sure, somewhere around 4-5 million illegal/undocumented immigrants, add another 10 million or so non-immigrant visas (which I agree, tend to have people end up staying for lots of other reasons), we're still somewhere around 15 million or so migrants with most of those having some kind of stable job lined up before they arrive. It's still less than 5% of the overall population increase with these migrants, but now a lot of these in this addition are largely economically self-sufficient from the get-go (those with work visas). You're not really changing my point at all.

In the end we're just too poor to deal with a generally pretty minor increase in population over several years while simultaneously seemingly being the wealthiest nation on the planet? How does that make sense?

Also, your claim of:

> usa issued 10 million non-immigrant visas in 2024. not counting 5 million tourist visas

is factually incorrect. The US issued around 11.5 million non-immigrant visas, of which 8.5 million were visitor visas. So not a total of 15 million visas and excluding the tourism its really about 3 million non-immigrant not-tourist visas.

> in 2024, in Fiscal Year 2024, we issued 11.5 million visas, and that’s a world record for us, breaking all previous records. Of these 8.5 million were visitor visas.

https://2021-2025.state.gov/secretary-antony-j-blinken-and-s...

lets look at data for 2023. ( I mistyped 2024 instead of 2023.)

https://travel.state.gov/content/dam/visas/Statistics/Annual...

There were 10,438,327 non immigrant visas. Out of which there were 5,902,426 b1/b2 and 29,286 B1.

looks like i din't count ppl with BCC in visitor visas.

> In the end we're just too poor to deal with a generally pretty minor increase in population over several years while simultaneously seemingly being the wealthiest nation on the planet? How does that make sense?

again, i didn't say this. i was just trying to correct the record. I honestly have no say in "how many is too many" . i have no idea how to even think about that to come up with a framewrok to answer that question

We had no problem in NY handling the influx. In fact we handled it so well that it angered the Republicans even more because they still gave immigration money to Texas AND had to give more money to the sanctuary cities. A problem they created and reaped the effects.

There were not 12 million immigrants entering during the Biden administration. Please provide balanced proof.

The only people in NY that claimed we couldn’t handle it were the Mayor who was trying to get out of his blatant corruption by appealing to Trump.

Same with Chicago. They handled it from what I heard, why did Texas struggle so even with the extra federal dollars they get?

Texas didn’t struggle. They just created the appearance that it was an influx by immediately putting people on buses and shipped across the country then covering it in the media as if a bunch of buses driving somewhere means the border is under surge.

Funny how that seems to have ended magically as soon as Trump was elected.

As a resident of Texas, yes we are struggling with migration. I'm not trying to paint migration in a negative light, but we do need to do more in terms of ESL programs and better funding schooling and similar programs in migrant-heavy areas. It's hard to have well performing schools in areas where it's hard to hire a teacher that speaks the language of the children, our Medicaid programs are struggling to provide healthcare, etc.

We all point to Texas's education department as a laughing stock of results. But we expect Texas to bear a massive part of the burden of low income non-English migrants while using the same measuring stick to compare. And we act like this is fair. And don't get me wrong, Texas' legislature is complicit for the failure! We should all do more to support these communities.

I do agree, it's largely a self inflicted problem. But things need to change to properly deal with the increase in those relying on public programs. They're underfunded, understaffed, and under supplied. We're not setting people up for success, and it shows.

> It's hard to have well performing schools in areas where it's hard to hire a teacher that speaks the language of the children,

It can't possibly be that hard to find Spanish speaking teachers in Texas.

As someone who knows many people who were high-quality Spanish speaking elementary teachers in Texas, it's hard to find skilled and qualified people willing to work at that level working for the wages being offered when the cost of living is what it is and other jobs are offering considerably more.

When you can have 80% of the take home apay but have fewer parents issuing death threats while filling tacos at Taco Bell (and they pay for your community college to go elsewhere) it's no surprise teachers choose to go elsewhere.

Practically every school district in Texas is facing a qualified teacher shortage.

There is an issue around a general teacher shortage, mostly due to poor pay and treatment. It's hard to find teachers in general. It's been exacerbated recently in states like Texas, with proposed book bans and bans on teaching history. No one wants to get punished for assigning Brave New World or teaching about slavery (and teachers don't want to lie to kids about history, either).

Of course, the Trump admin has responded to this by deciding not to fund the TQP grant program, which in part trains and places teachers in high-need areas like STEM, special ed, and bilingual ed. This struggle is mostly a self-inflicted policy choice.

I can’t tell what kind of change you’re asking for. Your state refuses to raise wages and fund education. So instead inciting a fictional immigration crises is the acceptable change? Rounding people up and locking them up won’t solve the other self inflicted problems. It will just make money for the prisons.

> Your state refuses to raise wages and fund education

I'm saying we need to change our funding for education and protect workers rights. We need to crack down on those hiring illegal labor. I agree things need to change. I think the federal government should acknowledge we're being more impacted by immigration than many other states and help more with education and other social programs. I think it was a bad choice for us to not expand Medicaid back in the day and I think its bad we're talking about restricting it more. I'm probably not the person you're picturing in your mind, I'm going to go ride a bicycle to pick up my kids from school today and I've talked a few friends of mine out of buying a pickup truck.

> And don't get me wrong, Texas' legislature is complicit for the failure!

I'm fully agreeing at least half the problem is within.

> Rounding people up and locking them up won’t solve the other self inflicted problems

I agree! I don't think a lot of what Texas is doing is good!

I try not to make judgements based on where people are from. I was just seeking clarity in your statement. You don’t sound like a drooling troll interested in spreading national politicking. You sound like a concerned citizen of Texas and promoting education and expanding healthcare is how we get out of this mess for sure.

12 million is equivalent to the average population of 2 states.

The Democrats, who love to lecture everybody about "protecting democracy", are attempting to sway voter demographics in their favor through illegal immigration. California used to be a Republican state till it was turned deep blue through immigration.

And one-party states produce the worst, most incompetent politicians, who rise to the top not through the battle of ideas, ability and accountability but through political favors and backroom deals.

Gavin Newsom is the perfect example of this.

California continues to be the largest economy in the United States (and 4th largest in the world).

If they're failing, they're failing extremely well. I wonder how we get some of that failure in my part of the country?

They have Silicon Valley and the largest population of any US state. Gavin Newsom gets zero credit for either of these things. You only have to look at how incredibly badly prepared for and managed the palisade fires were to see the level of incompetence under Gavin Newsom.

https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/u-haul-california/

So you're saying a large population is correlated to a very healthy economy?

Remind me again why we want to kick immigrants out?

No I'm not remotely saying that and I thought we were talking about Gavin Newsom? And I'm not wasting any more time with you, it's pointless.

The topic is "Marines being mobilized in response to LA protests." The protests are about ICE rounding up people on suspicion of being undocumented immigrants. Whether a place being full of undocumented immigrants is actually a bad thing is extremely salient to the topic, especially when the President has decided it's worth pointing the military's guns at our own citzenry over.

No the topic within this particular sub-thread had diverted to the competency of Gavin Newsom.

Apart from statements of Mayor Adams, could you list maybe 3 examples?

Trying to research this, I see examples like Denver and Chicago that have had struggles, anx did things like limit shelter stats to 72 hours. I found no examples though that were point blank: "we cannot handle this." Again, excluding mayor Adam's, perhaps you can help fill in the gaps with concrete examples and hopefully some verbatim quotes of "we cannot handle this?"

Chicago had taken measures to restrict migrant buses from dropping off migrants within the city limits so they were dropping them off in the burbs. under the guise of some nonsensical rules "we want orderly drop-offs with 24 hr advance notice and only 2 migrant busses total in 24 hrs"

I appreciate the specifics.

When you wrote "so they", I want to be sure that the 'they' refers to bus operators that were payed to drop off migrants in Chicago:

"The city says buses can arrive only during daytime hours so volunteers can be available to help, but bus drivers are responding by dropping migrants off in Chicago suburbs at night." [1]

The '2 buses per day' needs context. That could very well be a simple ask to not send them all at once. Further, the buses we are talking about were meant to overload the target the cities. They were sent with no notice, no coordination, just dumping a couple hundred or more people off into a random place in a random city. The ask therefore of "don't send all buses just on the same day", instead spread it out so that the volunteer resources are not overwhelmed and have a chance to work with and place everyone. I don't want to belabor this too much further, but I strongly suspect the desire for 2 buses max was a lot more about load balancing than it was rate limiting.

My impression, Chicago was more like "do this orderly, we can handle it, just don't drop off a couple hundred people all at once in some random place without telling us."

[1] https://www.npr.org/2024/01/06/1223287116/chicago-is-tighten...

> I strongly suspect the desire for 2 buses max was a lot more about load balancing than it was rate limiting.

load balance with what exactly ? there is only one server thats rate limiting. oh you mean other servers being border states that aren't allowed to do similar rate limiting?

you asked "examples and hopefully some verbatim quotes of "we cannot handle this?""

I gave you an example of exactly that but you say you "suspect" its not that. Chicago doesn't need "volunteers" to handle intake. City spent 700M dollars to migrant housing, employing thousands of people in all sorts of roles. You think they are dependent on volunteers to man a bus intake point? That was all clearly a ruse. Migrant shelters were very unpopular with mayor's core constituency[1].

> do this orderly, we can handle it

It was not like that it was "we can only take 2 buses total per day any" It was clearly stated in city ordinance. Why are you twisting it into something else. Demand doesn't just drop off just because city decided to rate limit.

I think you are being higly disingenuous here.

Edit: ok i see why from your other comments. You were making a statement not asking a question about cities not wanting migrants.

Anyways, I don't have dog in this fight. I am telling you what the mood was here in south chicago at that time.

https://blockclubchicago.org/2023/05/11/south-shore-neighbor...

> I gave you an example of exactly that but you say you "suspect" its not that

Sorry, I should have been more direct. I do not see your example is a verbatim, "we cannot handle this." Your example strikes me as a: "please don't dump everyone on us all at once without telling us first. Spread it out some, give us notice, and don't do it in the middle of the night so that the people who would help are available."

> Chicago doesn't need "volunteers" to handle intake.

I'm just quoting the source, from the previously referenced [1]: "The city says buses can arrive only during daytime hours so volunteers can be available to help."

> Demand doesn't just drop off just because city decided to rate limit.

We agree there was a limit put in place. We have not yet established the intent was to rate limit vs any other plausible explanation. Even if load balancing were not the intent, that does not prove the intent was rate limiting.

OTOH, if we did know the total number of buses, then we could infer rate limiting. Notably if there are more than 14 buses/wk, then the 2 buses per day limit would be a rate limit. If it's 10 busses/wk, then a 2 bus/day max is not a rate limit beyond the 24 hour threshold, which is exactly load balancing.

> Anyways, I don't have dog in this fight. I am telling you what the mood was here in south chicago at that time.

I appreciate that. I can understand that there would have been a tense mood. The way people were 'shipped' to Chicago seemed intended to put high stress on the community receiving them.

> strikes me as

> I strongly suspect

> My impression

so i guess its just your interpretation against mine. prbly not productive to discuss this anymore.

anyways kind of boring done to death on internet a million times before :)

Fair enough. I asked for 3 examples and we have differing impressions over just the one example you were able to provide. No other examples were provided. If you care to list other examples, I'll be willing to allow it as an exercise for future readers for whether they consider those other examples as valid as well and would leave the last word with you.

Trump would not have won if Dems had not escalated illegal immigration 2020-24. It was such an unforced error on Biden's part

That was never a real issue, it was just something pushed by Fox.

> Trump would not have won if Dems had not escalated illegal immigration 2020-24.

Do you actually have any source to support your claim? I mean, MAGA nuts have been swearing for over a decade that there was a torrent of illegal immigrants arriving each day into the country, and that somehow democrats were to blame, but even after Trump's fascist push with it's forced deportations of everyone including US citizens without due process the numbers barely reached 100k. And now we're seeing Trump's ICE thugs mobilizing a small army of agents to assault Home Depot parking lots?

Where are all those illegal immigrants?

The Congressional Budget Office estimated [1] about 10.4m immigrants during 2020-2024, more than 3 times more than under Trump's first term, and of which most was illegal immigration.

The numbers cited by Republican scaremongers like Stephen Miller were probably inflated and derived from CBP border encounters, rather than on how many people were entering the country. But there does seem to have been a significant surge, partly thanks to new immigration programs that made it easier to entering the country while seeking asylum. Deportations seems to have remained high under Biden.

[1] https://www.nytimes.com/2024/12/11/briefing/us-immigration-s...

Ah yes, you're doing the meme: if ANYTHING happens it means "fuck the Democrats"

Sure, it couldn't possibly be anything else like inflation after COVID (which happened globally) that caused incumbents to lose around the world. No, Dems just needed to get this one thing right and they're to blame for Trump. Sure.

EDIT: https://imgur.com/uPJAxEl

You're mistaken.

I'm pro Trump and have been for many years. I just don't think we would have won if the Dems hadn't handed us the victory. Thank you Democrats!

Do you think Elon was telling the truth about the Epstein files?

The meme is still applicable to MAGA voters. For example, Trump could start a riot at the Capitol and it would be Dems' fault for not doing enough to stop it.

"But why didn't Nancy Pelosi deploy the National Guard?"

I already told you I’m pro Trump. What is your point here?

Out of interest:

How has Trump improved our lives and country in his first term?

And how is he improving our lives now?

Trying to understand how you as an HNer, who I’m assuming applies logical / critical thinking, considers facts and evidence as important, can vote for someone who a) is a convicted criminal b) absolutely not interested in improving our lives.

What’s the appeal?

Why do you couch your belief in this "us vs them" system?

You are happy to agree with nonsensical statements, as long as they imply your side is winning, why?

Probably had more to do with the “weekend at Biden‘s” situation.

Even Ronald Reagan wasn't as cruel as the current regime and implemented an Amnesty for millions instead of doing what Trump/ICE are currently doing.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Immigration_Reform_and_Control...

Reagan's amnesty, like the others, was a bait and switch. The DC/corporate establishment said, "Let us amnesty the ones that are here, and we'll get control of the border and stop the flow." After getting their amnesty, the second part never happens.

That's led directly to the current mess because it taught people that the most important thing is to get into the country, regardless of legality, so you could be in place when the next amnesty came along.

Exactly right.

Except that Covid showed us that the immigrants quit coming and even go home if there is no job.

We know how to stop illegal immigration--you put CEOs in jail for employing illegal immigrants. Illegal immigration stops dead.

"Illegal immigration" is simply a dogwhistle.

True. Maybe the worst act of Trump's first term was commuting the sentence of a kosher meatpacking company executive. He was in prison for bank fraud, but he should have been there because he got busted for having hundreds of illegals working in Postville, Iowa. We should be going hard after the corporations and their executives who hire illegals and deporting the illegals.

Commuting the sentences of wealthy offenders was and continues to be a tactical decision. It aligns the interests of the wealthy behind Trump, especially folks who are wealthy and willing to break the law to gain or grow their wealth.

Commutation and Pardons under the current regime are signal about what behaviour will be forgiven, ignored, or even outright rewarded.

It’s not simple of you have been to the border. Punishing businesses works in a few cases, but it’s way more expensive than enforcing borders.

LOL. When ICE detained 900 employees from Tyson Foods who were undocumented, many provided them with written instructions from the company on how to fill out onboarding, payroll, and tax paperwork if they were undocumented immigrants, i.e., the company was perfectly aware and actively facilitating.

When they had their big press conference to announce the 900 arrests, reporters asked about plans to investigate the company based on the documentation found.

"That's not in the scope of our investigation. We do not have plans to do that at this time."

To no one's shock, they've never found time to do it since, either.

It would require an organization 4 times larger than the IRS to deal with all the court cases. If that’s cheaper than stone, count us in :)

How about starting with getting the largest republican border state to require private business to run a free simple check of the persons work status?[0] The federal gov has had a free system for that for years. But they won't and they wont create an enforcement agency to check that state government offices comply. I am sure they can find it in the 11B immigration budget to audit some businesses. They won't.

Undocumented immigrants are too important to the economy, to the tune of over 17.7 billion worth in 2005. (in Texas)

Instead they do things that look great (and check the most important box): border wall (that the US gov pays us for), security forces (that the US gov pays us for), mandating that the sheriffs work with fed agencies (that the US will reimburse them for). But passing a law that requires businesses use a free quick government service to check documents and a small agency to do random audits -- that's to too burdensome on the state's bottom line. Any one that thinks states like Texas actually wants to eliminate undocumented immigration at this point, has simply been hoodwinked.

[0] https://www.texastribune.org/2025/06/05/texas-e-verify-requi...

No, it was an honest understanding that rounding up and shipping off millions of people can not be done in a way consistent with what conservative (against a federal paper checking sweep of the nation), Christian (love thy fellow man) America was at the time. Sadly we are a much different country now and put our desire to punish 'the scary other' above checks on government power or any pretence of following Christ's teachings.

People wouldn't have continued to come if Conservatives hadn't continued to employ and build business models around undocumented labor. Not addressing the root cause of the problem, employers willing to reward people for coming to the US, is the problem with the Reagan amnesty. Nothing else would have stopped immigration like stopping the reward for immigration would have. But conservatives are addicted to their bottom lines/business special interests and couldn't bring themselves to do what needed doing to stop what they term a 'foreign invasion'. At least the dems do it out of compassion and don't see it as an invasion. The conservatives just allowed the financing of what they see as a 'foreign invasion' for a small share of business special interest dollars.

It's honestly mind boggling that some third of the country is convinced about immigrants "coming for their jobs". Meanwhile we choose to punish the immigrants coming in instead of the companies for hiring illegal immigrants for sub minumum wages.

Really shows the priority of some people here. It's clearly not getting a job.

> it taught people that the most important thing is to get into the country, regardless of legality, so you could be in place when the next amnesty came along.

That is a strange thing to think is to blame. I'll take a guess that you do not live in a (south) border state.

People were taught they could come into the country and (1) find work that (2) paid more than not having work -- when they got paid at all [0] and still less than US workers [1] and the state not only allows it but encourages it. Why? There continues to be a chronic shortage of construction workers to fill jobs. Our housing situation would be far worse if the GOP immigration stance was anything more than a dog and pony show. [2]

The state with the longest south border has refused to require businesses use the fed e-verify system to check work id's, everyone knows they use fake ids. It's not some scandal that Reagan or the "Dems" recently caused. It's simply just the way it always has been. Makes for great rage bait though.

But, we do appreciate all your federal tax dollars paying us to "get tough on immigration"!

Texas, again, failed to pass a bill aimed at conducting a "study of the economic, environmental and financial effects of illegal immigration on the state" -- just the cost mind you. The last study in 2006 found that they contributed more than they cost. Deporting the "estimated 1.4 million undocumented immigrants living in Texas in 2005 would have cost the state about $17.7 billion in GPD." [3] They have since refused to do another study. They know mass deporting immigrants would devastate the economy and growth.

For the undocumented that's been here awhile, it's just another day. Maybe they get unlucky and it's their turn to play a part in the "tough on immigration" hoax. They'll be back in a few days because the state and their employer needs them and no one will bat an eye when the cameras are off. Which is why we should be taking note of the extremes Trump is going to, there is something else to it; else his buddies in Texas would have passed those bills last month.

[0] https://www.texastribune.org/2016/12/16/undocumented-workers...

[1] https://www.fosterglobal.com/news/report_half_of_tx_construc... [pdf]

[2] https://www.texastribune.org/2025/06/05/texas-e-verify-requi...

[3] https://www.texastribune.org/2024/12/06/texas-undocumented-i...

This is the reason the GOP lost California forever. Don't expect the GOP to make the same mistake again.

In the context of finding an enemy, the admin literally tried to recreate the premise of the Michael Moore film Canadian Bacon before realizing it just wasn't sticking. I'll bet they took it as a challenge.

> It's fascism 101.

It is absolutely not. It is politics 101: you are the only one who can solve a problem.

War on Drugs, War on Terror.

That's disingenuous - all policy is inherently political. Reducing the tactics of fascism to politics is no different than the claim that all politicians are the same.

It's no mistake that the War on Drugs and the War on Terror were both radical increases in authoritarian power, both of which were implemented by Republicans as part of right-wing approaches to addressing both perceived and real threats.

Yes, those are political objectives, but the entire point of calling them out as fascist is to distinguish them from other anti-fascist political objectives which seek to reduce or constrain the power of the state, or to strengthen human rights guaranteed by the state.

> both of which were implemented by Republicans as part of right-wing approaches to addressing both perceived and real threats.

In between republican presidents there were also Democrat presidents and they did zero to put a stop to any of them. Zero. Using your logic above, both types of presidents are fascist in nature since they followed the same policies.

What I am saying is that when the state takes power from the people, it (almost) never gives it back. Just like with laws, repealing them is a gargantuan task and again, almost no will to do it. Taxes, they go up more then they ever go down.

Voted for overwhelmingly by both parties. Obama also started wars in new countries. Clinton expanded war on drugs despite criticizing it. And all dem presidents failed to deschedule cannabis and other relatively harmless drugs.

Back in 2019 during Trump 1.0, ICE raided 7 chicken processing plants in Mississippi and arrested 100s of workers.

They charges 4 low level managers with aiding illegal immigrants.

But I don't think the companies had to pay any fines or any owners face charges.

Because that would be anti-business. Illegal immigration is only a problem when you need to wind up the right wingers about something.

There are consequences for business owners, but because of complicity of govermnet in this states, it still worth the risk to run big operation on the back of illegal imigrants in semi servitude status.

> If illegal immigration is such a problem, why not fine businesses 5x salary for using the labor, for as long as it was used?

Why do you assume that that doesn’t happen?

- Chicago (2014) https://www.ice.gov/news/releases/chicago-area-company-fined...

- Texas (2012) https://www.ice.gov/news/releases/2-companies-admit-hiring-i...

- Colorado (2025) https://www.cpr.org/2025/04/30/ice-fines-colorado-janitorial...

etc.

These actions are rare. And the fines are more slaps on the wrist instead of any real action.

ACSI fined $2M for the same amount paid as wages to illegal labor. How much profit did they make from that? Sounds more like the cost of doing business than any real crushing fine.

Put the management of these companies in prison for ~~knowingly~~ recklessly hiring illegal labor. Make it likely they will be audited and caught. Make it easier to get a work permit That will solve a lot of illegal migration.

> Make it easier to get a work permit

Also for tech jobs like software engineering? Or only for manual labor?

With the rise of remote work I think US software devs need to adapt to the global cost of software development sooner than later.

This current structure of immigration status being tied and sponsored to your current employer is pretty messed up though. It does a lot to artificially drive down wages even more, these people aren't free to choose where they work.

> Why do you assume that that doesn’t happen?

You just provide proof of why it doesn't happen in the very first link. 300k fine for 604 illegal for a repeat offender. That's essentially saying: The cost to hire illegals is too small not to do it.

>Chicago (2014)

They were fined less than $400 per undocumented person they hired, or about a week and a half pay at minimum wage. That just sounds like a reasonable fee to hire someone without having to pay minimum wage, healthcare, payroll taxes, etc. If you put aside ethics, that sounds like the smart business move.

The business and employee still pay many taxes, even if undocumented - so payroll taxes are still payed, "The IRS estimates that undocumented immigrants pay over $9 billion in withheld payroll taxes annually." [1]

[1] https://bipartisanpolicy.org/blog/how-do-undocumented-immigr...

> If illegal immigration is such a problem,

It isn't remotely the problem or even in the same galaxy as needing this type of response.

The cause for the actions is racism. The protests are due to calling out racism and removing due process.

Anything else is denial or sophistry, that's the simple truth.

So all counties with strong border policies are racist? That’s preposterous. Australia has some of the strictest border policies (drastically more strict than us). Do you believe they’re just racist policies too?

I believe that those who justify cruelty with rhetoric and spread hate will one day look into the mirror and be horrified at what they see.

I wish I shared your optimism.

> So all counties with strong border policies are racist? That’s preposterous.

Your response is a straw man. Be better.

FWIW I don’t agree with OP in that there isn’t a single cause, but racism definitely plays a role.

Doesn't seem like a straw man to me. It's an extension of the unsupported claim that the cause for the action is racism. False equivalence perhaps. But I think the problem is that "The cause for the action is racism" doesn't actually contain an argument at all. It's just an unfounded opinion.

And then "Anything else is denial" shows a myopic, closed minded viewpoint, suggesting any further discussion would be pointless. As is most internet chatter on this type of matter.

I think we have a different interpretation of what a straw man fallacy is.

The person I was replying to refuted an argument that GP did not make. And one that was arguably weaker and more difficult to defend.

That’s my understanding of what the strawman fallacy is. What’s yours?

> But I think the problem is that "The cause for the action is racism" doesn't actually contain an argument at all.

Yeah this is an oversimplification and not really an actionable one. But there’s an argument buried in there and it’s not wrong. The current administration plays on existing racist and xenophobic undertones to drum up support. It’s all fear based rhetoric.

What makes you think that racism isn’t a major reason for Australia’s strict policies? It doesn’t seem like a “preposterous” hypothesis to me.

> So all counties with strong border policies are racist?

I never said that, but that's quite the strawman.

It would have been possible to reform the system, without deporting anyone the wrong color to a damn megaprison in a foreign country, or arresting people right at their court hearings, most who are here legally.

The way things are going, the protests are more than warranted, more than justified. As far as I'm concerned, anyone still defending a clear authoritarian is a traitor.

Australia, a white settler colony in the southern hemisphere, racist? Yeah, I dont find that hard to believe at all. Why would you use that as an example?

>So all counties with strong border policies are racist?

Please inform me how the US under democrats has NOT had "strong border policy"? Do you know what Obama did more than any president before him? He rounded up immigrants, placed them in front of judges to give them due process, and shipped them out of the country if they did not have a legal right to be here.

Sure is funny how that is "weak border policy"

The Biden administration proudly reversed course from Obama's stance on immigration. I never said anything about democrats vs republicans. Each administration seems to take immigration differently with no connection to party lines (best I can tell).

Yeah Australian immigration and border policy is super racist. It's not even up for debate.

Australian here, I would absolutely characterize the support for and rationale behind our policies as having a significant component of racism (and in the case of our detention centers, a violation of international human rights agreements that we have signed).

You're talking about the same country that had the "White Australia Policy" within living memory. "Are Australian immigration policies motivated by racism?" is unfortunately not a preposterous question at all.

Not necessarily racist in the strictest sense, but xenophobic, usually yes.

Lets separate headlines from reality here: Yes this is an unnecessary provocation with loads of emotionally charged elements (and federalizing California's National Guard in this context is certainly concerning for multiple reasons -considering the scale of the protests and violence ) BUT there is no sign that Active Duty military personnel are being deployed to engage civilians (yet).

It would seem most likely that the Marines were called strictly to protect federal buildings, facilities and agents. The problem I see is the latter category. I am personally fine with National Guard being used to protect people and infrastructure when appropriate and when confined to federal facilities, and I'm even fine with the use of military to protect federal facilities... however, the second active duty military engages civilians 'on the streets' we have martial law and that's a whole new can o worms with explosive possibilities for escalation.

> BUT there is no sign that Active Duty military personnel are being deployed to engage civilians (yet).

Yes, there is.

> It would seem most likely that the Marines were called strictly to protect federal buildings, facilities and agents.

So, to engage civilians deemed a threat to federal buildings, facilities, and agents.

The distinction you are trying to draw does not exist, and is simply a very weak attempt to craft a mission that can be argued not to be using the military as a posse comitatus (even though it clearly is exactly that) for the sole purpose of reserving invoking the Insurrection Act until the aggressive use of federal forces has been successful in provoking a suitably dramatic incident.

Even a fine is absurd. There are straightforward technological solutions that might even generally decrease costs of employing people. For example, imagine that there was a special kind of money transfer called “payment for labor”: the payer would send the payee $X (via their bank), and the bank would automatically verify the immigration status of the payee, generate the correct tax records, and withhold the correct amount of money and send the withheld money to the IRS. With some sensible regulation on top, this could automatically handle unemployment, etc.

Then businesses or even individuals could hire someone for an hour, a day or a year and pay them with no friction. And the check for eligibility would be automatic. Fees could be driven to very low levels by the fact that there is no creativity whatsoever in actually implementing the transfer.

But there’s a showstopping problem here: the US economy, especially agriculture, is highly dependent on employing people illegally. So a real solution to controlling illegal employment would also require the kind of immigration reform that actually allows useful immigration, and it would require a competently run nation database of employment eligibility, and good luck getting bipartisan consensus on that.

The H-2A temporary agricultural worker visa is uncapped.

It is entirely possible to hire all the migrant agricultural workers one needs using it, but most farms just don't want to pay visa fees, transportation or housing on top of a prevailing wage.

Seems like the H-2A program is too restrictive, then.

There are many problems but immigration isn't one of them.

The employers/government don't do this because the prices of existing goods depend on that cheap labor. Money printing (deficit spending) through the economy has created many chaotic distortions and as a result of currency debasement has pushed the profit margins down close to zero for many businesses concentrating them in few hands.

These businesses can continue functioning for a time thanks to money-printer loans they receive in the form of non-reserve based debt to a primary dealer, but that doesn't solve the issue that the price of good inputs and the amount of money that gets circulated through work in the economy is insufficient to purchase basic necessities (its sieving, which often happens before a deflationary collapse).

On top of this already floundering problem which we cannot address, we have a demographics problem. The old, infirm, and disabled outnumber the young who work. There is no way forward without replacement as the costs of the old far exceed the young, and the only means to do so is through taxing immigrants who come here to work.

On top of this, China wants to go to war to retake Taiwan, and so securing the border is a critical national security interest/threat.

Its called a debt trap, any historian can tell you about how this and other behaviors towards empire (hegemony) culminate in destructive cycles.

The baby boomers as a cohort largely caused this, and have been orchestrating it in leadership so that the consequences of their choices don't hit until after they die.

Romney pushed for E-Verify in his campaign. He lost and it never happened.

I think most of the voters who want this also want that but the choices are: mass illegal immigration vs mass deportations. People voting in primaries should probably take this into consideration.

False dichotomy.

- Recall back to the old republican party of just 20 years ago, GW Bush wanted a guest worker program.

- Recall back to just a year and a half ago, a big bill was in congress to drastically ramp up employment laws and increase border funds - funny enough that was rejected. That rejection by the republican party _increased_ illegal immigration

- The deportation rate under BOTH Obama and Biden has been higher to date compared to the current (second) Trump administration.

So, if you want higher deportation and laws to increase border security - apparently we need to go back to the previous administration... The facts are seemingly all very topsy turvy compared to the narrative.

I see this comment often.

you think tyson foods is paying ppl cash under the table?

Trump can't implicate himself whie pretending he cares about American labor.

Also, I'll keep saying it: the cruelty is the point. And sadly the Stanford experiment shows that people will always oblige over the change to torture others if there's no consequences.

Looking at Sweden and the issue of human trafficking in construction, cleaning and farming, the general problem is that the fine businesses are employing independent contractors from multiple layers of hiring firms, and no one seems very interesting to hold the people who is benefiting from the labor responsible.

It is a well know open secret that not only do practically every large construction site employ illegal immigrants, but there is also a tier system for who do what job. The highest risk and longest hours are given to illegal immigrants. The next tier are those that work off the books, and then last we got those that operate legit as there need to be at least a few of those. This setup seemingly works, until there is an accident or the hiring firm suddenly refuse paying the illegal workers and the miserable details of the human slavery becomes news for a day.

Why would I fine honest law-abiding willing to work people, who only want to raise our GDP and pay taxes?

I saw them, worked with them, so don't tell me they all criminals or lazy. "Legal" or "illegal" is just a label we put on the same person, but person doesn't change.

It's non-working lazy criminals we want to push against. Oftentimes those who could get their *ss off the couch and emigrate are the most active.

Also why are they chasing down chefs in restaurants and people on Home Depot parking lots.

Conspicuously nobody is checking agricultural businesses in red states.

Coincidence? Definitely not.

Yeah, there are systems. The problem is they are only as good as how we establish identity. And so long as identity theft is a widespread problem it's not going to work. Back in the 80s my mother was the victim of what I presume was this. The IRS was determined that she should either pay the taxes "owed" or get "her employer" to amend the W-2. What employer? She hadn't worked for *anybody* and couldn't find the supposed employer.

In hindsight I suspect the answer was to file that form to amend the W-2, but this was before the internet so it would have been much harder to get answers.

Neo-feudalism. Lords are punished for embarrassing the sovereign.

There's a reason you separate military and the police. One fights the enemies of the state. The other serves and protects the people. When the military becomes both, then the enemies of the state tend to become the people.

> One fights the enemies of the state

"At stake is a fundamental component of the framework of US constitutional democracy. It begins with the principle, enshrined in law, that military forces exist to protect the country from existential threats — such as an invasion or rebellion — not to enforce the law.

Most fundamentally, the founders of the American republic understood very clearly that concentrated military power, loyal to a single man, could be used to achieve total control by that person. And they had a historical example in mind: Rome — a republic governed by the people and the Senate — was transformed into an empire ruled by an emperor as a result of the Roman army being turned against its citizens."

https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2025-06-09/trump-...

> military forces exist to protect the country from existential threats — such as an invasion or rebellion — not to enforce the law.

serious question: are Countries such as Italy, France etc not a democracy?

All of them are, verbatim from wikipedia, "a military force with law enforcement duties among the civilian population.". Ditto for spain Guardia Civil, and many of the countries listed in that same wiki page: Algeria, Netherlands, Poland, Argentina, Romania, Turkey, Ukraine, Chile, France, Italy, Portugal, Spain, ...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gendarmerie

> serious question: are Countries such as Italy, France etc not a democracy?

They are, but not in the the "framework of US constitutional democracy." A system for which we have more evidence of stability than either of Italy or France's modern republics. (Note, too, les gendarmes' heritage: imperial France. Also, gendarmes aren't usually deployed overseas. They are, in a sense, more similar to the FBI than the U.S. Marines.)

I have always found confusing the existence of the gendarmes. They are indeed a vestigial force of the XIXth century, and should be transformed into a regular police force.

On the contrary, they are more relevant than ever in today's era of peacekeeping and anti-terrorism activities. They are fundamental to the stabilisation of the Balkans, for example. They fill the gap between full war and "normal" (punctual) criminality.

The issues are two-fold

1- the territorial split between gendarmerie/police within the French territory

2- the fact the gendarmes for police work report to the Ministry of Defense.

If one had to design the police system from crash, they would likely merge police and gendarmes for police work.

You forgot 3: a hatred between the organizations for ego reasons (not everyone, not everywhere).

The split is nonsense today.

Gendarmerie are simply policemen with a military status which give them some duty (like I think they cannot strike) and some benefits (earlier retirement) but they are still really a police force in reality. I don't think it would look good to send actual army to fight citizens, and I don't think the army would appreciate it either (it might have been done already, no idea)

That is not universally true. A Gendarmerie is literally a military force with law enforcement duties and many are exactly that.

In the Netherlands, the Royal Marechaussee are literal soldiers who perform military police duties and also many civilian policing duties, but all of them are soldiers first.

> A Gendarmerie is literally a military force with law enforcement duties

The second part is a huge differentiator from "normal" military. A police force even if administratively under the military has one crucial differentiator: their daily duties and training revolve almost exclusively around policing civilians from the same country. Military training and tactics are overwhelmingly aimed at dealing with foreign enemy combatants, mainly other military forces.

The methods give away the intentions and expected outcome. The US already has a very "militarized" police force. You send actual military only if you want to inflict the maximum amount of damage, and with that threat overwhelmingly scare the country into compliance.

> their daily duties and training revolve almost exclusively around policing mainly civilians, citizens of the same country.

That is the part that is not universally true. There are plenty of Gendarmeries who are soldiers first, with combat training and ethos, who also perform policing duties, the Marechaussee included.

> plenty of Gendarmeries who are soldiers first

Fair enough, but Wikipedia confirms that they all have civilian law enforcement and police duties so clearly their training, tactics, and experience revolve heavily around dealing with civilians.

I'll still take that over "soldiers only", even more with US's very active military where the soldiers routinely see active combat. Both the theory and practice shapes their "soldier vs. enemy combatant" world view. That's a hammer if I've ever seen one.

Yes, sorry, I was answering only regarding the French gendarmerie, which I thought was made clear by the fact it's a French word but it turns out to be used more broadly.

It's not the same though:

* when used domestically, it's under the Minister of Justice and Security

* there's also no Dutch equivalent of the U.S. presidency with unilateral executive control over the military

I'd argue this kind of danger is something you get more in presidential systems. Not that we all shouldn't be wary of military forces within our civilian populations.

What you say is true, but I'd add that Gendarms/Guardia Civil/Carabinieri etc.; tend to hang around carrying big guns, are responsible to the country as a whole (rather than the local community), are under the relevant defence ministry (while also reporting to the interior ministry).

In my experience they don't act at all like normal cops, and sometimes can be in conflict with them. The only interactions I ever hear of with citizens is if they beat the shit out of someone. You're not going to be going to them for a lost phone or a cat in a tree.

I don't know about the other forces mentioned here, but the French Gendarmerie are pretty much "regular police" as far as the people are concerned. The main difference with "actual regular police" is that they tend to operate in sparsely populated areas instead of large cities.

But they absolutely will do traffic police on highways, intervene to reason with a loud neighbor, etc. They'll also routinely show up during large protests in big cities.

The "big-gun carrying" Gendarmerie is a special unit, the GIGN, probably akin to US' SWAT teams. They'll intervene when "very dangerous" people are involved, think hostage situations or the like. "Regular police" also has a similar outfit.

Thank you for the correction. Indeed the main force of the French Gendarmerie (Gendarmerie Départementale) is much more like a "regular" police force than I described.

The unit I was confusing with the Gendarmerie as a whole was the Mobile Gendarmerie, whose role is more similar to the the Guardia Civil and Carabinieri.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mobile_Gendarmerie

I wouldn't have included GIGN, since I they appear to be much smaller and have a more "special”/"tactical" role.

I'll also note that the the Gendarmerie don't appear to be sending a team to the AWC (the olympics of smashing through the ceiling and shooting you in your bed) in two weeks, whereas the Guardia Civil and Carabinieri will. This may be a geopolitical thing though.

https://www.kasotc.com/14th-annual-warrior-competition

Lived in Paris 30 years ago, my experience:

Seeing Gens D'Armes on the street was somewhat common. The Gens D'Armes are akin to 'heavy' police and are a show of force. The Gens D'Armes were pretty common to see in the subways, airports, and/or just on patrol. They were Gens D'Armes stations in the city just how there were also regular police stations. Gens D'Armes patrols were a bit distinct from other police patrols, almost always larger groups, around 5 to 7 people with long-guns and plate carriers. Meanwhile regular police had much lighter weapons, no body armor, and very rarely were in groups of more than 2 or 3.

Times have changed. Nowadays, the gendarmes only show up when protests are expected to turn into rioting (so basically most of them). You don't see them around Paris in day to day life. We now have actual military patrolling the streets, "Operation Sentinelle". They're supposed to show some muscle to discourage terrorism. They are actual military, with actual military weapons. This has been going on for multiple years, I don't remember when it started.

However, regular police now wear bulletproof vests, too, even when randomly patrolling the streets. Since some years ago, we now have "municipal police", basically police which answer to the mayor [0], as opposed to the state, with somewhat fewer powers. But even they walk around with bullet-proof vests.

---

[0] In France, "the police" usually means "Police Nationale", which answers to the Prefect, who represents the State in the local Jurisdiction (département) – they are not elected, but appointed by the Interior Ministry. The "Municial police" answers to the City, but they're not allowed to conduct all the operations that the National Police do. The City means the Mayor, who's elected by the local population.

> The Gens D'Armes are akin to 'heavy' police and are a show of force

I've only seen that when they show up as support for or operating in a similar role as CRS† (crowd control, security for major events) which indeed would be Gendarmerie Mobile but that's a far cry from the range of operational responsibilities of Gendarmerie as a whole.

Turns out this is probably what city dwellers in France would only see of Gendarmerie, because Police Nationale and Municipale (city) typically have much more presence in cities than countryside, and the other way around for Gendarmerie.

† https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Compagnies_Républicaines_de_Sé...

As a French, I'd argue we're a flawed democracy. Shame on us when we compare ourselves to Scandinavian countries.

Some of the cases you mention involve "military" police who are under the authority of the Ministry of the Interior, instead of the Ministry of Defense. Many also are not the only police force, in Chile the investigative duties fall to the non-military PDI.

IMO as Chilean, it's a pretty bad thing democratically, for both historical (dictatorship) and more recent reasons. Still, there is a clear difference between when the police with deep ties to the army enforce the law and when actual troops do it.

While copper Gutiérrez and grunt Herrera both technically have the rank of corporal, one mostly writes tickets, deals with noise complaints, and has riot training, while the other only knows how to march and shoot an assault rifle.

The actually important thing is that this is testing the waters. Trump will use the troops for flimsier and flimsier reasons.

NOTE: Chilean police are semi-routinely brutal; this is not an endorsement.

In Portugal, the Guarda Civil are cops in rural areas. I have no special insight into their training or hierarchy, but I can tell you that in practice they interact with the population like cops, not like soldiers. E.g. you wouldn't report shoplifting to the army, but you can report to the Guarda Civil.

So I don't think your comment makes any sense, at least in Portugal.

There is no "Guarda Civil" in Portugal. It's called Guarda Nacional Republicana (GNR).

I haven't lived there in almost 15 years. I stand corrected. In fact I'm closer in time to having lived in Spain than in Portugal, that must be the origin of my confusion.

In any case, I hope you agree my description of the GNR was accurate in substance.

Yes you are correct. They also patrol some highways (although I believe some are the jurisdiction of PSP)

Superficial argument. The "gendarmerie" is exclusively trained in law enforcement. The military aspect is only relative to organisational aspects.

Those are bad too. Anyone that grew up in a country with a gendarmerie knows they are the most violent, unpleasant and fascist (personally, not like "all cops are fascist") people you’ll ever meet.

Having police not separated from military doesn't invalidate the democracy, it just makes it easier to subvert democracy at some point.

The spanish Guardia Civil is a very good example of a police force tied too deeply with the military. In 1981 some parts of the force attempted an actual coup, with one guy entering the parliament and shooting in the air (or ceiling).

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1981_Spanish_coup_attempt

The continuity of the Guardia Civil after Franco's dictatorship is one of many vestiges that has not been removed due to fears of creating an instability leading to some coup and a reversal to fascism. IMHO this may have been justified the years immediately after Franco's death, but should have been addressed at some point. See the 1981 coup as for why "appeasing" the oppressors usually doesn't work out, or even works out for the oppressors.

The Guardia Civil itself predates Franco, and to be fair some GC agents fought for the Republican side in the war.

True. But AFAIK they were a crucial element of the regime's oppression, especially in rural areas.

Their logo even today still contains a fasces[1] shield, which as been added during the Franco regime.

[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fasces

If the US has laws that forbid that, and other nations have laws that establish that, then the US military being used for police activities is threatening to democracy - or at least to the rule of law - in a way that it is not threatening in other countries.

Other countries can do that if they want. It may or may not be a threat to them. But in the US, it's absolutely a threat to democracy, because it's already the executive deploying the military against the law.

Well I hate to disparage a large group of people, but how often have you spoken to an American who understands this type of social-legal history of the country, and values it?

Although I know quite a lot of (what I consider) well-educated Americans, it is also the only country from which I regularly meet the type of person who doesn't care at all about how society works (also, technology, history, art, etc).

You'll probably find that HN-person is the kind of person who values this kind of argument, but HN-world is quite small.

On multiple occasions, I've met Americans who simply care about might-makes-right. It's skin-deep, as soon as you ask them why they support this or that policy, it's because they are powerful and the rest of the world is not. I've literally met Americans who thought their tax money allowed them to summon troops, more than once. (This ended up backfiring as it turns out, they did not know how to get US Marines to arrive, big shocker.)

The same kind of thinking seems to be prevalent internally. You can trample the law, because you can. You see it even in ordinary US-made popular media. What happens what a character gets in trouble with the law? Well, then of course it depends on who has the most money to hire the best lawyers.

In the current case, I suspect the government will just do whatever it wants and there will be no legal reckoning.

> You'll probably find that HN-person is the kind of person who values this kind of argument, but HN-world is quite small.

The nice thing about the HN Small World is that it can be efficiently searched.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hierarchical_navigable_small_w...

Well, one would have guessed that the service powering HN search would know about HNSW: https://www.algolia.com/blog/ai/a-simple-guide-to-ai-search

I meet these in my home country Finland all the time nowadays. They've probably been there all along but have been emboldened and riled up by the rise and normalization of the far-right.

My read is that this is even further along in many places in Europe.

> Well I hate to disparage a large group of people, but how often have you spoken to an American who understands this type of social-legal history of the country, and values it?

Quite often, and the answer is not many. It's why I've returned to a frankly elitist worldview, because this seems to be a historical pattern when power is diffused too widely. The lesson of our age may be that the Chinese political system, which seeks to restrit political competition within a small, carefully-selected group, is fitter than the American experiment.

You think the lesson that the president of a democratic country is amassing power and becoming less Democratic is to just go all the way and remove democracy?

I'll additionally note that China has famously not handled some of its major protests well and uh, calls in the military.

> China has famously not handled some of its major protests well and uh, calls in the military

Agreed. I'm saying if we're accepting this as precedent, a Presidential republic is not a stable system. We either reject the military being called in to quell protests. Or we accept it as precedent and revise our system of government to remove that power from the madness of crowds.

Why won't the Chinese system just collapse eventually? You have a small elite who perhaps currently are well-selected (besides the point) but what is preventing that elite from leaving the reins to someone who is not so good? With the added effect that the incompetent ruler will call upon the reputation for competence built up by previous rulers?

Seems like it's just cultural norms all the way down. If people want to take advantage of the system, they can break these norms while pretending to be what they used to be.

The political system that brought us Wolf Warrior Diplomacy? Being an authoritarian uniparty doesn’t make them immune to seeking political capital one way or another, and they’ve dipped into the “encouraging jingoistic nationalism” part of that playbook plenty.

> how often have you spoken to an American who understands this type of social-legal history of the country, and values it?

This was supposedly a staunch conservative stance once upon a time. The last decade clearly shifted such mentality towards one not dissimilar to Russia. I guess the cold war never true ended.

The reason is Posse Comitatus. It's in place because enough people were fed up with federal troops being used to impose "law."

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Posse_Comitatus_Act

It's also, notably, a legacy of Reconstruction. Put another way, we're dismantling infrastructure built to prevent civil war.

> a legacy of Reconstruction

Quite the opposite. It was passed in 1878 because of the backlash against Reconstruction, shortly after federal troops were withdrawn from the South in 1877, and was intended to prevent something like Reconstruction from happening again.

> It was passed in 1878 because of the backlash against Reconstruction, shortly after federal troops were withdrawn from the South in 1877, and was intended to prevent Reconstruction from happening again

You're right. Sorry, I didn't mean to suggest it was a product of Reconstruction. It was absolutely part of the process of post-civil war renormalisation.

I love that the navy wasn't covered until 2021. So although the president can't send in the troops, Trident is a-ok!

(I've the feeling that during civil uprising in dictatorship or democracy, the police tends to serve and protect the hand that feeds them, rather than the oppressed people.)

Well, in the case of Third Reich, they decisively sided with Nazi. They were not hands that fed them, but they were what police (and military) liked.

The police - especially the US police - often appeals to high school thugs who like authoritarianism, especially when it gives them power over others.

Its always been this way.

Its no surprise that some government systems more strongly appeal.

We must have a different definition of "thug" because the "thugs" in my high school didn't become police. They became the people who shoot 11 people in a weekend, steal cars at 15, and commit disproportionate amounts of - especially violent - crime.

Thug: a violent, aggressive person, especially one who is a criminal

The problem here is you've taken the last part as the whole.

There were plenty of thugs as you say that have no social inhibition and get imprisoned. But there are numerous others that got along well enough and covered for each other they kept themselves away from punishment. There were cruel bullies in my school while committing vicious acts had enough of a following they could depend on them to blame the victims as the entity that started the fight. This type of person is well suited for the thin blue line.

Thugs start as small time bullies and escalate from there. They are smart enough to know what gets them to trouble and tow the line.

Those are the ones that were stupid.

The ones that are smart behave well enough to graduate, and then go work as police, ICE, prison guards etc. Basically anywhere you can beat people and get away with it because "qualified immunity" or "the camera suddenly turned off right then" or...

I've been a part of a local right-wing militia several years ago. Out of ~20 people involved, we had two active cops and one retired. And the stories they told made it abundantly clear that most of their PD (Seattle) is like-minded.

So when push comes to shove, they will absolutely be on the side of the feds if Trump goes all in.

You should provide the source: Commander William Adama of Battlestar Galactica, speaking to President Laura Roslin:

https://www.youtube.com/shorts/sz2QN8_VvoM

So say we all!

Look at all the upvotes I got tho.

There's an entire division of the military that is literally police. They serve a similar function to their civilian counterparts. There's also intelligence and logistics units.

2/7 is an infantry battalion. They have no training or experience policing.

I was a member of an infantry battalion once tasked with doing policing in a foreign country. Let me just say that the outcome was exactly what you’d expect. We were very effective at responding with overwhelming force to attacks by an insurgency but pretty ineffective at keeping the peace.

> We were very effective at responding with overwhelming force to attacks by an insurgency

I don't think you were, since all US COIN operations in living memory have been abject failures.

Heh not wrong but I think you stopped reading at “we were very effective”

I never said we were effective at counterinsurgency ops

Well sure, but their police activities are limited to government installations. Their jurisdictions do not extend to “everywhere”

Recent anecdote from Popehat, about the 1992 riots in Los Angeles:

> /4 So “cover me” to the LAPD means “if someone pops up with a gun and shoots at me, shoot at them.” Apparently to the Marines it means “lay down a curtain of suppressive fire using your rifles.” Hilarity ensued.

https://bsky.app/profile/kenwhite.bsky.social/post/3lr2w7wo3...

> Apparently to the Marines it means “lay down a curtain of suppressive fire using your rifles.”

Is that supposed to be a surprise to someone? What do you think "cover fire" is?

That’s why the post says “cover me”, not “cover fire”.

Well, "cover fire" is a noun, and can't be used as a command.

It's called that because it's how you cover people.

If you ask someone to darn your sock, and they do, will you complain "hey, I didn't say 'darning needle'"?

A marine saying “cover fire” is asking you to shoot.

A cop saying “cover me” is asking for something the marine might call overwatch.

The fact that it meant something else to someone else is, if you look closely, the entire point of the anecdote.

And the phrasing, "Apparently, ...", presents this as if it was hard to foresee. It was definitely not hard to foresee.

And yet it apparently was hard to foresee for at least one crucial person...

What is easy to forsee in a conference room is not as easy to forsee in a crowded street with tear gas and shouting and rubber bullets flying.

But, again, Ken White seems to be having trouble seeing it in retrospect. Is that not weird? The tweet is phrased to suggest that the Marines are using unusual terminology. They aren't.

"Apparently..." would have been the perfect way to describe my reaction. I didn't realize that "cover me" meant "lay down suppressing fire" to Marines. I guess it makes sense, but that's not the meaning I would have expected. So I would probably have been just as confused as the cops in the story. I wouldn't be surprised if most cops would have been similarly confused.

So yeah in conclusion, I don't really understand the point you're trying to make.

You'll find Popehat is a heavily sarcastic poster.

Read it in the sense of "I told my toddler they can't have ice cream three times a day and apparently that makes me a meanie".

So say we all

And their training reflects this. I've served in the army, but not in the US. Some units did get crowd control training, but it was very unusual and specific for their deployments (they were going to Kosovo). Preparing these units for crowd control required weeks of training.

Crowd control is pretty much the opposite of modern warfare, with large number of troops marching shoulder to shoulder forming shield walls, even having supporting cavalry.

> I've served in the army, but not in the US.

Probably very specific, but I was in two non-US militaries and all combat corps were trained in Aid to the Civil Power, including public order, and were regularly refreshed.

> The other serves and protects the people.

I think you’d already kinda lost this? Cops seem to mostly serve themselves?

> There's a reason you separate military and the police. One fights the enemies of the state. The other serves and protects the people. When the military becomes both, then the enemies of the state tend to become the people.

It’s not just that the military has become both, the police have too. Arming your police to the level of US police is just crazy.

The police are not serving the people except if you use using "clearly the patriot act is good it has patriot in the name" type reasoning to define what that looks like. They're just serving your state and local government instead of the feds. They only serve the people in so far as doing so advances the interests of their employer. And that overlap is less than a lot of people make it out to be, especially when you look at specific issues.

Just watched a vid of LAPD trampling a person with a horse, then shooting them with what looked like a baton round at a range of 5-10 feet. That is a life altering injury, administered with direct intent, while the protestor was trying to flee. Holding my breath for zero consequences for unnecessary force. Not to mention qualified immunity. LAPD doing LAPD things.

How can one argue that the police serve the people? They don't necessarily even serve local government. They get a lot of federal funding and equipment, and in riot-control mode their purpose is to brutalize protestors until people stop showing up.

I also find it rather grotesque to watch Newsom argue that state and local police are perfectly capable of handling (i.e. crippling) protestors by themselves and don't need any federal assistance to do so.

True. Forming a Presidential Guard and have them rolling over protestors with tanks isn’t very enticing either IMHO

How can the incident (with video evidence) you describe not potentially result in criminal charges? Why hold your breath? Surely there are countless people to act on that.

What would be the point? There's almost nothing they could do that would be against the law if they're just given a pre-emptive pardon. They could put up an arena with citizens vs lions as long as it pleases Donald...

Only federal charges can be pardoned by the executive branch

Technically, yes.

Practically? The judicial branch will do it via qualified immunity. "Not clearly established law that you can't trample people on a street with a horse."

In the U.S. police are not typically held accountable for violence like this. They might go to trial, but even then are rarely found guilty.

We know from the BLM protests that police are rarely prosecuted for misconduct unless there's massive public outrage, i.e. you need another riot to get the injuries from the first one prosecuted.

Goes all the way back to Rodney King.

Presidential pardon? All jan 6ers were pardoned, despite extensive video evidence of their crimes. If you're loyal to the power in place, you can do whatever you want. That's fascism 101.

I initially thought this was a joke or sarcasm, but not everyone has seen everything that happens (the lucky 10,000 and all that). But during the 2020 Black Lives Matter protests, police, especially in Portland Oregon, used brutal and indiscriminate violence against protestors [1]. Some of the most brutal and blatant cases were eventually prosecuted [2] but most were not and never will be [3,4]. There were also multiple cases of Federal officers without uniforms in unmarked vehicles grabbing people off the streets to take them to unknown locations [5]. But there were cases across the country. In buffalo, 57 officers resigned after two cops were suspended for shoving a 75-year-old to the ground and cracking his skull (better to find a new job than the slight chance of accountability, I guess) [6].

But there was countless incidents that were not high profile that went completely unpunished. The purpose was to terrify protestors. If the police beat, abduct, maim, and injure protestors, and a year or two later, a half dozen get some light punishment, are you going to risk getting your eye shot out by a rubber bullet or your arm broken by a baton to protest the police next time?

[1] “Police here routinely embrace the violent crowd-control tactics … indiscriminately attacking protesters with tear gas, flash-bang grenades, rubber bullets, and other “less lethal” munitions. The bureau has been hit with two temporary restraining orders from federal judges: one rebuking the PPB for likely violations of protesters’ rights to free speech and against excessive force; the other ordering the PPB to stop arresting journalists and legal observers for documenting police clashes with protesters.” https://archive.ph/39lib

[2] “Donovan LaBella, 30, was peacefully protesting outside the federal courthouse in Portland on July 11, 2020, when a deputy U.S. Marshal fired a “less lethal” impact munition that struck LaBella in the face, causing brain damage.” https://www.opb.org/article/2024/11/20/portland-protester-do...

[3] “A Portland cop who chased down and beat a protest medic, in one of the most harrowing incidents of police violence from the city’s Black Lives Matter protests last year, will not face criminal charges.” https://archive.ph/6ErUo

[4] “[N]ot a single federal officer on the Portland streets at that time has been held individually accountable for alleged constitutional violations over claims brought by David and other protesters. In fact, courts have not had a chance to assess whether constitutional violations even occurred. That is thanks to the intervention of the Supreme Court, which in a series of rulings has created an accountability-free environment in which federal officials interacting with the public on a daily basis…can violate people’s constitutional rights with impunity.” https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/supreme-court/portland-prot...

[5] https://www.npr.org/2020/07/17/892277592/federal-officers-us...

[6] “the video shows Mr. Gugino stopping in front of the officers to talk, an officer yells “push him back” three times; one officer pushes his arm into Mr. Gugino’s chest, while another extends his baton toward him with both hands. Mr. Gugino flails backward, landing just out of range of the camera, with blood immediately leaking from his right ear… ‘These officers were simply following orders from Deputy Police Commissioner Joseph Gramaglia to clear the square’[John T. Evans, the president of the Buffalo police union]”. https://archive.ph/KYOIS

> better to find a new job than the slight chance of accountability, I guess

People have long argued for a national register of police officers who were terminated for cause, or resigned to avoid termination for cause.

Awesome.

Except, at last count, about 70-75% of the nation's police departments have forbidden its use in hiring decisions due to their collective bargaining agreement with police unions...

You are seeing what hatred like like up close.

Nobody should be trampled, but for some context there was a Molotov about 10 seconds beforehand, and the first trample was a horse being spooked by some fireworks.

Longer vid: https://streamable.com/bc1sog

Still doesn't make it right.

it's unclear to me if that is a firework or a police 'blast ball' both can detonate like that.

I was watching live. There are better views. I don't think you throw Molotovs at your feet.

https://www.twitch.tv/rhyzohm/clip/SmellyCourageousSardineTT...

Your linked video is in the background in my clip.

Well, I mean, not intentionally :)

Thanks though, better angle.

It's a teargas canister that caught on fire.

Last I checked, police arrests dangers, not shoot them while they are already incapacitated.

Sometimes they put the arrested in direct harm... not the sharpest knives in the drawer.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Kaw2ecckwWI

Then you haven't been paying attention to policing since its inception.

There is a misunderstanding compared to OP's intent. It's not that separating military and police guarantees that the police will make the police serve and protect the people. Rather, if separated, police has a better chance to serve and protect the people, compared to a situation where it's the military's job.

Consider the the separation of church and state. It's done so the government remains neutral in religious matters and does not favor or establish any religion. In reality, some churches are clearly favored. Or the review system in academia. Peer reviews are so that bullshit doesn't make it into published papers. Yet, bullshit and bias does make it into published papers.

This is just a system that is working somewhat well. With obvious, very large room for improvement. But the direction, separating military and police, is good. Just not enough.

yeah. A good quote from Adama, but that only applies to the US. In many places around the world the police and military are the same.

Nowhere in any western country, Heck, I've visited a bit of Africa and tons of south east Asia and a bit of South America and this ain't true neither for any of countries I visited.

Can you list these "many places"? One or two examples?

Brazil, the more extensive police work like patrols and crime prevention is usually done by military police.

Crime investigation is part of civilian police.

But most polpulation have contact only with military police. IS no coincident they look like this in Brazil: https://www.reddit.com/r/MilitaryPorn/comments/10r02yp/black...

> the enemies of the state tend to become the people

Wait, don't you mean that "the people become the enemies of the state"? Or did I miss some jab at immigrants?

It means that if you use the military to police, the military looks at people and sees enemies.

But it's still reversed - it's as if you said "the successful tend to become those who persevere". Are you perhaps translating the grammar from another language?

This is a popular quote from Battlestar Galactica:

Commander William Adama: Yeah, but I'm not going to be your policeman. There's a reason why you separate military and the police. One fights the enemy of the state. The other serves and protects the people. When the military becomes both, then the enemies of the state tend to become the people.

So say we all.

Which makes the continued militarization of the police forces across the country also troubling.

Politics aside, LA just can't seem to catch a break. Floods last year, fires earlier this year and now this.

That said, what the current administration is doing is almost like they're following a manual other countries followed on their road to nationalistic decline and all the right people in places of power seem to know this. I wonder if they're ready for it? My observation is that the previous administration had four years to pass laws and measures based on trump's first four years and they didn't, which tells me there is really no stopping what is to come.

The planned decline of America won't be like other countries because of post-WW2 "super power" repositioning of country and it's critical role in global trade, communications and finance. All of humanity might suffer, at least that's my fear.

On the other hand, I like to think that if things turn sour and gruesome very fast, the American public might react to that well enough to make a u-turn.

> LA just can't seem to catch a break. Floods last year, fires earlier this year and now this

I'm in LA right now. If I didn't read the news I wouldn't know anything is up.

Living in LA is so great. The only thing I regret in my life is not getting here sooner.

I can imagine but wait until you visit a walkable city!

Man this is America. If people had any interest in walking, our national health picture would look very different. Even huge swathes of people voting for public transit in the US are doing so because they want everyone ELSE off the highway.

It's not just about a lack of interest in walking. If your infrastructure is extremely hostile to walking, it's outright dangerous and unreliable and force people out of it.

>our national health picture would look very different.

It wouldn't, you'd need to change the food industry for that to happen.

No, consistent exercise is more than enough to make a significant difference. I didn’t say it would be fixed, I said it would be very different.

you know what they say: you can't outrun a bad diet.

I’ll take that still. It’s bananas to me that more people aren’t in favour of public transit only for that reason.

THe history doesn't help. LA is a huge area and California is traditionally very rocky and hilly. The great weather and modern industrialism is the reason people continued to flock here after the Gold Rush. But anyone playing Orgeon trails knows how rough getting to California was to begin with.

There's definitely amenities that can be done to make LA walkable regardless, but I understand that nature did not intent for this settlement to be human friendly.

LA is walkable.

However I don't really like walking everywhere or taking public transportation so LA is the perfect city for me because it has many municipal places I can park my car and then walk around.

Let me explain LA to you since you clearly don't understand it.

LA is a combination of many smaller cities. Each one, on it's own is a small micro city with everything you would expect. You can live in Santa Monica, Pasadena, Burbank, Sherman oaks, West Hollywood, Ktown, Beverly Hills, Sawtelle, etc. each one of those places has a very vibrant and walkable area with cute shops and restaurants and easy public transportation. If you live in those places you don't necessarily need a car.

The problem with LA is that you might want to go from one of these places to another and the walk would take a very long time because LA county is bigger than Delaware and Rhode Island. But you can walk it if you want.

LA is currently the only city in North America building new subway lines. And is doing so rapidly.

> LA is walkable.

You and I have different definitions of walkable.

Mostly in the 70s, sunny, sidewalks everywhere, an actual street food culture, a bus network that spans the entire county and about half a dozen rail lines. Where does the goalpost have to move for people who have clearly never spent much time in LA to see it for what it is?

> LA is currently the only city in North America building new subway lines.

That is demonstrably false. As I type this comment I can hear the sounds of excavators digging out a station for a new subway line in Toronto.

Panama Metro Line 3, too, which is underground for 5km.

All the extensions under construction to the Seattle‘s link light rail are grade separated and subway standard (or 3/4 if you count the Tacoma extension).

which Toronto? The biggest known Toronto isn't in the US.

"[...] city in North America [...]"

It's also mostly low density, single story housing which of course means that the distance to get anywhere will be quite substantial.

Density is pretty dispersed in hot pockets. You have places like koreatown with 45 thousand people a square mile.

> LA is walkable.

> However I don't really like walking everywhere

Hint: If you don't like walking, then your city is not walkable. In actually walkable places, everyone likes to walk because it's so much better.

Hint: if you read the parent comment, you see that "LA" is actually a collection of many smaller cities, and that "LA" is geographically bigger than some states and so of course it is not completely walkable. LA is 44 miles long and 24 miles wide. And that's just the city of Los Angeles. The county of Los Angeles is 4000 square miles, and has over 80 cities, most of which are only separated from each other by a road. But LA Metro is the (geographically) largest public municipal public transportation system, so you can take a bus from one of of LA county to another.

Downtown is walkable. Hollywood is walkable. Echo Park is walkable. Pasadena is walkable. Santa Monica is walkable. Long Beach is walkable. Culver City is walkable. Bevery Hills is walkable. Glendale is walkable. Burbank is walkable.

> Downtown is walkable. Hollywood is walkable. Echo Park is walkable. Pasadena is walkable. Santa Monica is walkable. Long Beach is walkable. Culver City is walkable. Bevery Hills is walkable. Glendale is walkable. Burbank is walkable.

In the same way that Everest is walkable. None are walkable cities by any reasonable definition.

100% this. The person above has never been in any actually walkable city. Can't blame them, these are very rare in the US. (I haven't seen any yet).

I'm out walking around LA all the time. Santa Monica alone is a beach town with an amazing ocean front. You don't need a car at all. I'm seriously sitting here doing the Obama shrug meme.

It's stupid that I even have to point out a few things. Like that I was born in Europe, have been to Germany and Japan, and lived near NYC for a time so I probably know better than some European about my own city.

Santa Monica *beachfront* is decently walkable. Santa Monica as a whole is not walkable. All the other examples (Downtown?) are also completely not walkable.

At least my definition of walkable does not mean "you can technically walk there" it means "if you live here you will not want nor need to use your car"

There's three new stations in downtown which extended the blue and yellow line.

Santa Monica and downtown are now directly linked with the yellow line.

Having public transport is 5% of what makes a place walkable

New york comes to mind.

Of course the entire city of Los Angeles isn't walkable. It's 500 square miles, or over 10x the size of Paris (40 square miles).

But LA has a great many neighborhoods that are very walkable, and it has public transportation connecting all those walkable neighborhoods.

And in response to your spurious claims about Santa Monica: the entirety of the city of Santa Monica is just as walkable as the cities of London and Paris, and definitely more walkable than the outlying neighborhoods like Versailles.

Downtown Los Angeles is also very walkable, and there are tourists who make that walk every day.

No matter how accessible you make it, humans in the modern era can't just walk around 15+ miles a day and do any other kind of commerce. LA is just a huge, hilly city. Even with full bipartisan support and unlimited funding, it's a fundamentally harder problem to make LA walkable compared to something like Copenhagen.

Well, yeah, that is the point.

Making a walkable LA would mean making a much smaller urban area (or series of much smaller) with much higher population density and ideally rewilding most of the LA metro area. It is functionally impossible in the current political environment.

LA with a subway system would be insanely clutch. Throw in a regional rail to SB and SD, and I won't need a rental car again when I go out there!

Have you seen other american cities outside of NYC and Chicago? LA is walkable in a lot of places,plenty of side walks. Southern cities are particularly atrocious because even if they were walkable, the heat makes walking impractical in the summer (which can be > half of the year).

Southerner here, bless your little heart, we are fine!

No, we're not. been wanting to take a walk for ~2 months now and couldn't because of the heat. Maybe in more inland cities it is nicer, but within ~200 miles from the ocean it is unbearable.

Live in Houston, and no we're not. The only break we get from punishing heat is hurricanes and floods, but that often comes with significant power loss throughout the area, making the heat even worse.

Also live in Houston; the heat is uncomfortable but is nothing that some Gatorade Zero can't fix. It's a walkable enough city if you live in the loop. Not NYC walkable but not nothing. Outside of the loop; forget about it! A small price to pay for being able to wear shorts and sandals all winter!

This is such a tired argument. Yes, YOU like it, that doesn't make an objective goal for every person on earth to achieve.

> doesn't make an objective goal for every person on earth to achieve.

The walkability of cities is linked to increased happiness in people, so there actually is merit to saying that it is objectively good. Walkability encourages you to literally walk past large amounts of people, local businesses and plenty of outdoor activities that you have the opportunity to take part in.

There are walkable parts of LA, just LA itself isn't very walkable. But if you confine yourself to westwood around UCLA, you can even walk all the way to Sawtelle for Japanese food (although it isn't a very nice walk).

maybe he doesn’t feel like stepping over needles and passed out homeless people in order to get somewhere

Contrary, I couldn’t wait to leave LA. I regretted moving there as soon as I did and I’m much happier now that I left.

I love seeing when someone finds the right place for them. Why is LA so great for you?

GOP and Dems have been nearly evenly matched for years in Congress now. There was no prospect of dramatic legal overhaul i.m.o., let alone any new Constitutional amendments.

Graph: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Party_divisions_of_United_Stat...

This is also not how Congress works as meant to work - deadlocked yes, but not a deadlock driven by partisanship.

Republicans get primaried for supporting Dems.

This creates the reality which is sold in their information and news networks. Dems always have bad bills, and see - no Republican is supporting it.

Dems have oddly bad party discipline. Obviously any D voting for any R should be immediately expelled, and yet this doesn't happen. They've not yet got serious.

> Obviously any D voting for any R should be immediately expelled

Why? If we had a couple more Manchins and Sinemas right now, you know what we'd have? A majority.

The question is whether you have more of them in addition to the rest of the party, or instead of some members of the rest of the party. 4 machins in the same number of seats would really make it impossible to do anything.

> 4 machins in the same number of seats would really make it impossible to do anything

One, we did a lot with one Manchin and one Sinema. (To the degree the former had concerns, it was well-founded ones over the inflationary effects of the Inflation Reduction Act.)

Two, not doing anything beats the status quo. A weak majority would be a check on the executive. We’re paying the price for ideological purism.

You would think so, and that would be a reading of the American Legislative machinery which is incorrect.

Simplifying: Congress was never meant to be deadlocked on simple party lines. It was always meant to have people figuring out ways to work together, even at the expense of the party, but in favor of their constituents.

That dynamic is essential to any stable democracy.

Party discipline contributes to the decline of democracy. It reduces the representation of opinions down to whomever sets the party line.

Better than party discipline would be more effective intra-party debate, discussion, consensus processes etc. It's probably slower than line enforcement tho'.

I agree in most other times. But in current dire times of this constitutional crisis, a bit of discipline is necessary. We gotta resist wherever we can and slow down process until the people can speak.

There is no constitutional crisis, stop gaslighting as if the dems do not stop attempting to force their ideals then you will see more of this “constitutional crisis” as you call it.

This would drive partisanship, probably the most immediate problem in the US and beyond. I am not from the US but the impacts of similar perspectives are sadly more and more widely spread.

If you cannot accept an idea because it was brought forward by a political competitor, you lack the necessary detachment to make good decisions.

Sometimes party discipline is sensible for political pragmatism, but in all other cases democracy is the better solution. It should be handled with care.

Rejecting this philosophy wholesale and labeling it as explicitly anti-American is the sensible political pragmatism at this point.

Partisanship is only something to be concerned with when you're dealing with functioning political parties. In America, I think the bare minimum for a political party should be that it believes in the ideals of America: a government by and for the people.

MAGA is not that, it's an explicit rejection of the ideals of the American revolution. Fundamentally they have a vision for America run by a king who has absolute authority over state, congress, and the judicial system.

There's no meeting of the minds that can be had with such a perspective, our forefathers figured that out and started the American Revolution over it.

I accept this philosophy, as this is the correct way a functioning democracy operates. Independents and Republicans are tired of the riots, the attempts at forcing ideals (such as forcing the use of pronouns, forcing deviation from one’s religion). Maybe get rid of the crazy ideas, stop spending so much money and focus on american citizens before foreign citizens and you’d have more people on your side.

> This is also not how Congress works as meant to work - deadlocked yes, but not a deadlock driven by partisanship

Yup. We let the pointers take precedence to the point that that they don't actually point at anything, we just like how they look.

And they're still nearly evenly matched and Trump is still doing what he's doing. The Democrats could have done all the same stuff Trump is doing, but for good instead of evil. The problem is that the Democrats are not willing to accept that the system is entirely broken, so they keep clinging to a belief in "institutions" that they think will somehow magically protect us, when in fact those institutions are destroying us.

You can not destroy democracy and rule of law for the good. By definition, you are destroying democracy and rule of law. Even if you believe yourself to be good, and Trump and MAGA are under that illusion, you are doing something horrible.

Democrats could not do it. If they had done it, they would be as bad as Trump is now.

The point is that what we have now (and what we had before Trump) is not democracy and is not the rule of law, and Trump's actions show that, because those actions are taken within that system. We have been living for a long time under the illusion that our governmental system was democratic when it never was, it was only due to coincidence and luck that it appeared that way. When I say "do the same stuff Trump is doing" I mean use similar methods to create a system that actually supports democracy and the rule of law.

Havimg "democracy and rule of law" isn't a question of yes or no, it's a matter of degrees on several only partially aligned axes. Something like that can slowly shift.

You make it sound like "our democracy was never perfect, so obviously we always just had a mad emperor all along"...

Sure, it's a matter of degree, but I think recent events have shown that the actual guardrails we have are significantly less than what we thought we had.

It's like, if you built a bridge to carry 10,000 tons because you need it to carry 10,000 tons, and then it turns out it's starting to fall apart under 5,000 tons, it doesn't make sense to me to say that you should just fix it so it securely holds 5,000 tons, or if it breaks just restore it to hold 5,000 tons. You need to rebuild it so it can do what you need it to do.

If it can be fixed, any civil engineer would clearly prefer to fix it rather than tearing it down and rebuilding it.

This is still not a noce analogy because tearing down a bridge is just expensive (and maybe unnecessary). Tearing down a political system isn't something you can "just do". Most people don't seem to want that and as long as that's the case it won't happen.

US citizens still enjoy vastly more rights, protection and political participation than most people in most countries. If you tear the system down, quite likely what you get will be even worse. Gradual change can be for the worse but also for the better, there's ample historical precedent for both. There's still a lot of ways this could go.

>Most people don't seem to want that and as long as that's the case it won't happen.

Most people, as usual, are apathetic and don't care as long as it doesn't affect them.

For those that do: it seems that that's exactly what they want to do. Hence 2016 pushing a supposed anti-establishment Trump (an obvious mistake, but no one ver said the people made well informed decisions). It's a shame the DNC spent the last 3 elections rejecting such a sentiment.

I think there's a lot of ways things could be fixed without necessarily "tearing everything down". More like shifting in a new foundation while leaving a lot of the superstructure intact. Like we could still have a lot of the same basic governmental functions and operations even if the constitution were entirely rewritten.

The irony is that Trump is doing the exact opposite, tearing down those "surface-level" operations without doing anything to improve the foundations ---and in fact causing major cracks in those foundations, thus making it even more necessary to replace them.

Then what was the American revolution?

It was a fight against tyranny. It destroyed the rule of a king, thereby ushering in democracy and the rule of law.

A bunch of rich, white, influential businessmen getting a better tax deal.

America hasn't actually come that far.

>but for good instead of evil

A lot of people have decided that what Trump is doing is good. A lot have decided that it is evil. It is not so clear cut.

To be precise, Biden had around 5 months of presidential immunity. He could have done a lot as a lame duck, but this was not the case when he came in.

And I think it's even simpler than that. the only bipartisan point is that both sides are bought out by corporate interests. Many reps are not looking out for their constituents.

To be fair, we now know that Biden wasn’t sure what was going on.

> The planned decline of America won't be like other countries because of post-WW2 "super power" repositioning of country and it's critical role in global trade, communications and finance. All of humanity might suffer, at least that's my fear.

Yeah, the decline of the British Empire is starting to look sedate and well-managed compared to this.

I'm sure because the USA was there to pick up any slack that Britain dropped, in a way that China is not doing with the USA.

> The planned decline of America won't be like other countries

Maybe bc americans WON'T and SHOULDN'T settle for a decline - they should violently rebel against this mindset and claw they way UPWARDS - there's more room for more growth, even if you lose #1 status and have to settle for #2 for a while you can still catch up etc.

It's good that at least the US and China are NOT infected with this degrowth and "cyclical history" mindvirus that seems to be doing the rounds in Europe and elsewhere... keep being a bastion of endless progress brothers, fight the good fight! There's a whole light cone to eat/infect (if not for us the for the successors we'll build)! Whoop, whoop!

Jokes aside though, most of the open world we live in today owes its existence to ideas, mindsets, $$$ and tech exported from the US, and I'm sure there's way more cool stuff to come from you once you properly clean up the parasitic individuals and institutions that have infected your society. Purge on and keep growing, fight for a deservedly big chunk of the Dyson sphere and beyond!

Nah, Everything has beginning and end and USA and others are very much near their end. You can't build anything new without destroying old. It is painful to live in "interesting times", but it is part of natural processes when corruption eats away society that is falling apart only this time it is very global.

The signs are there, that this is global situation before WW1 or WW2 - status quo has to change, balance of power has to change - USA does not want to start to implement any of those changes and those who are way smarter than me think that USA should stay away from epicenter of anything and join for the spoils only part.

> Everything has beginning and end

Most things of real interest do not tbh. The point should be to learn how to play infinite games. Sure, there's hard-to-impossible prices to pay, and/or to force others into paying. But what if it can be made to work, won't any price be worth it for that... ?

The epicenter is where the fun is at, even if the price might be sacrificing things of value for your average population and some unquantifiable measure of fluff like national-identity or whatever people imagine it's real nowadays.

I'm an unashamed globalist, but would rather have a "world village" with the US (despite that US being maybe quite different from what most gen-pop wants) at its heart :P Imagine all the people...

> All of humanity might suffer, at least that's my fear.

Suffer compared to what? That's the alternative? Number 1 stays number 1?

The world works in peaks and troughs, swings and roundabouts. What goes up must come down. Time marches on, change happens. This comes with suffering, but is also the definition of progress.

Nothing is the best forever, and the one's at the top who don't acknowledge that are the ones with the hardest fall ahead. That applies to complacent SV leadership as much as it applies to the average American citizen.

I can't fault this way of thinking about the world: change is inevitable, you have to roll with it. If I accept it though, the idea of "planned decline of America" is interesting to think about. If you're at the top, decline is inevitable, it's the only direction. What's the only thing you can do to mitigate the pain of the inevitable? Try plan to work with it. Not sure how I feel about this way of thinking, it feels pragmatic if nothing else.

death, lots of it. wars. famine. disease outbreaks,etc.. usaid being dismantled alone will do that. economic depressions, mass unemployment and civil wars and civil unrest,etc... mid 20th century but x10.

Decline is not inevitable. others like China can rise, there could be multiple successful and wealthy countries. heck, even in a decline, america can become like germany instead of like venezuela. the decline you're thinking of is a lot nicer than what I'm thinking of I think.

Preventing a decline requires established institutions to function as designed. America is not declining because it's like the roman empire, it is declining because the corporate ruling class are strangling the nation for short term profits. It isn't "we the corporations of america" it is "we the people". They've assaulted the foundation of the wealthiest most powerful empire in history and it is collapsing as a result.

I feel like I'm not communicating my point well and you're misunderstanding. Decline is inevitable. Not universal decline though. I believe we'll move forward as a species, but that overall progression is made up of lots of groups constantly declining and improving at different paces and times.

I think you don't understand what I'm saying because you said e.g. "others like China can rise" - my point is China has already risen, and fallen, and risen and will continue to do so: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Golden_ages_of_China. Just like the US will. And the troughs will be tragic compared to the peaks.

This is what long term empires do. They rise and fall and rise and fall, and that rises and falls include wars, famine, disease outbreak, advances in war, science, tech, health etc.

I feel civilised societies have said exactly what you've said since the dawn of man "we're civilized, we've moved beyond incivility now" when in reality, they were just in one of the many times where their society just so happened to be leading the way.

Sorry, because I know you don't believe this, and you want to believe "we the people" can stop change this natural cycling, but it's a feature of relativity. Ultimately, you're saying the same thing optimists have been saying for millenia, and here we are, war, hunger, famine is all still happening. Same stuff we've been doing for millenia, just with fancier tech.

What you're describing is human behavior and you're predicting the future based on past patterns. I get that.

What I'm saying is while you're right in that the pattern is likely to repeat with America, it doesn't have to. We are humans, we are capable of learning from history. Not only that, the amount of technology progression and destructive capability of humans has changed drastically within the past century. Lots of things are happening right now that break from historical patterns. Also consider the number of people like you that hold that opinion, your preemptive surrender is equivalent to a confirmation bias. In other words, your prophecy is self-fulfilling because of the number of people that believe in it.

If so many people like you understand history and the variables involved, is it impossible to change course? If you knew lightning will strike you tomorrow, would you not attempt to stay indoors?

Look at the US, we're all calling our country an empire but what empire in history has behaved like the US? the soft-power approach of the US is what I mean as well as using a real-time-connected global commerce/financial market where everyone relies on the US.

Rome fell, but no one depended on Rome when it failed. China has fallen many times but the world didn't depend on Chinese currency or military like it does with the US.

What is more constant than empires falling is people at a macro level acting in their best interest. Even China would prefer the US to have a healthy consumer market until it has it's own regional consumer market that can displace the US. China doesn't want to replace the US navy's fleet in policing the seas and it won't get Europe's trust like the US when it comes to the RMB to displace the dollar.

It's not that i don't want to believe (although I don't) the US will fall, it's just that those prediction have too many assumptions. When China,Rome and other empires were falling, there was no internet or wide spread mass education. Or even things like widespread democracy (a democratic empire?? lol).

The alternative would have been for competition to have a new power surpass the stagnant US, something like Taiwan. Not for US to shoot itself in the foot and completely destroy its foreign policy. There's already so much tension in the world that it wouldn't take much of a spark for WW3 to legititmatize.

If the Dems of 2020 understood that twitter is largely a fringe group of outspoken individuals, they probably would have won in landslide victories. Even if Biden had chosen a strong leader as VP rather than go with a diversity hire to appease the twitterites, we still could have probably avoided this.

> If the Dems of 2020 understood that twitter is largely a fringe group of outspoken individuals,

And Elon Musk, former presidential vizir. There's clearly power in Twitter, but it leans right as well.

The irony is that, if they hadn't fortified (to use Time's winking term) the election in 2020 and let Trump stay in office, his second term would have been much like the first, bogged down by Pence and the rest of the establishment drones around him, including his own kids. In that timeline he doesn't spend four years defending himself against lawfare in kangaroo courts and ducking bullets, and decide to get serious in his second term. He would have gotten the full blame for Operation Warpspeed and the Covid mandates, instead of sharing it with Biden. Also, Elon doesn't buy Twitter and join forces with him, so Twitter remains a safe space for the left.

Things could have been much different.

how do you mean "let [him] stay in office" ? less people voted for trump than for his opponent, in both 2020 and 2016

Read the Time article[1] on how the US bureaucratic and corporate establishment teamed up to "fortify" the election to make sure Trump wouldn't win, which uses words like "conspiracy" and "shadow election" approvingly. He was expected to win coming into campaign season, since peacetime presidents with good economies almost never lose, so much so that the Democrats ran one of their old war-horses to let him pad his campaign chest in a losing effort, their version of a Dole or McCain. Then Covid brought on mail-in balloting and the opportunities that presented, and the establishment took advantage.

However much you think that did or didn't cross the line from "fortification" to fraud isn't the point. The point is that if they hadn't done so much of it, Trump would have won the election (in the electoral college, which is what matters), and he would be a footnote now, after spending his second term building a few more miles of border wall and probably not a lot else.

[1] https://time.com/magazine/us/5936018/february-15th-2021-vol-...

Replacing him with kamala was the stupidest thing the dnc has done in recent years. What a vote of no confidence towards your own party when you actually bend to trumps bullshit ageism rhetoric and replace him at the final hour with a pick no one voted for. I just do not understand the logic behind the move for the dnc at all. Especially in hindsight when whatever it was supposed to achieve did not work at all.

First, they had to replace him after his disastrous debate performance. Second, who should they have picked? Biden only dropped out in the last minute, so there was hardly any time for building up a new candidate.

Biden insisted on running for a second term, against earlier promises, and failed to build up a strong successor during his first term. The Dems were in a very difficult position. Biden and his inner circle are the ones to blame here. What a historic fuck up!

No one sits on the fence and watches a debate to decide their potus stance anymore, lines are already drawn in the sand at that point. But still they made a move that left many dems feeling disenfranchised having to vote for a candidate that had no primary. And what do you know, trump had more or less the same votes as in past elections while the dems didn’t turn out. I still think they should have stuck it out with joe. At least people voted for him in a primary. His economy was doing well. We emerged from the pandemic under him.

To be clear: I think Biden was a decent president, he just shouldn't have run for a second term. Sticking it out hasn't been an option for the Dems because Biden's mental and physical decline has become obvious by then. His poll results were already desastrous, there was no chance he could have won. If Biden had decided not to run for a second term early on, he would be remembered as the man who defeated Trump. Now he made history as the one who (unwittingly) enabled the second Trump administration. It's a tragedy.

Maybe maybe not. I agree with the other poster they should have stuck it out. The election polled at about even the entire race. There was a small dip after the debate, Kamala got a little bump after she came in, but it all normalized back to 50/50 before the election. Given polarization in America, that was always going to be the case whether it was Biden or Kamala or someone who was chosen through a primary.

I was very confident in Biden's win because in PA where I live, he had very strong support in my community, which is working class white men. Harris lost all that support. My feeling is that Biden would have lost NC, GA, NV, NM, but he would have won PA, MI, and WI, and therefore the election.

I guess we'll never know either way. But one thing we do know is that changing candidates last minute has never worked, and that track record remains undefeated. After Biden decided to stay in, the only wrong move was to replace him.

> Replacing him with Kamala was the stupidest thing the dnc has done in recent years.

Not really. The choice between her and 45 should have been clear as day. She might have not been everybody's first choice, but she was more than qualified, more than competent, especially given the alternative. It shouldn't have even been a question, at all. But with how rampant misinformation is and how rare critical thinking is, here we are.

I think it's absolutely telling (on a number of levels, actually) that the number one Google search on Election Day was "Did Biden drop out?"

I think the neoliberal regime is the exact opposite of the ones capitulating to twitterites. Harris was vice president and in the establishment, they chose to push her instead of making an emergency primary.

> Politics aside, LA just can't seem to catch a break. Floods last year, fires earlier this year and now this.

Reminds me of the old joke about California's 4 seasons: Earthquake, fire, riots, and drought.

> the previous administration had four years to pass laws and measures based on trump's first four years and they didn't

I don't think anyone anticipated how nutbag crazy things would get and the Dems didn't have the House or Senate to pass these laws anyway. Additionally the SCOTUS ruling made the president a king.

Ahead of time, and from the inside, it looks and sounds like 'restoring proper order'.

Afterwards, and from the outside, it looks and sounds like ... well read some history about attempts to 'restore proper order'. The outcome and progression is entirely and sadly predictable.

It's been about 80 years since WWII. Are we doomed to repeat this on an 80 year cycle, when the last generation who went through this passes from the scene?

Yes. AFAIK, this is exactly the (theoretical) cause for the "doomed to repeat it" effect of "those who don't learn from history are doomed to repeat it" - the death of the last generation who remembers it from the previous iteration.

So - maybe not doomed to an 80 year cycle, as life expectancy changes, and/or as cultural memory changes due to more/better records.

But in broad strokes... yes.

As someone who got advice when I was younger and got older; I think we are doomed to not learn anything from history. This might explain the persistence of religion: Here are a set of rules that kind of worked, just follow them blindly and religiously.

The current US generation didn't go to a full blown war; and the US did little infighting in the previous decade (that requires mass mobilization). Think about it this way: Trump wants to lower the interest rate and ease monetary policy in good times. Putin maintain high rates despite him having a full blown war. Trump has never experienced hyper-inflation but Putin did.

> Are we doomed to repeat this on an 80 year cycle, when the last generation who went through this passes from the scene?

Have fun reading about https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Strauss%E2%80%93Howe_generatio...

Been thinking about this a lot lately.

Enforcing immigration laws is a repetition of WWII?

It's clear that many commenters here are operating from completely different factual bases, in terms of who did what, and in what order. Fog of war seems to be in effect.

Correct. Lots of emotions in here too. I wonder if this is an appropriate HN post.

Last I checked, emotions aren't banned from HN

No but generally this place tries to encourage curious discussion and this thread seems to have moved squarely away from an attempt to learn or understand something into venting and flame war territory.

We're in a post fact era, so ignoring facts seems inevitable in lieu of emotion.

Fog of war? Call it what it is: A misinformation campaign fueled by one of the most successful propaganda networks in history.

The funny thing is that it's impossible to know which side you belong to just by reading this one comment.

Yes it is. Funding of right-wing media is orders of magnitude more expensive than that of left-wing media. You're just muddying the waters.

The law is not on Trump's side. That makes this pretty decisive.

It takes a lot of words to convince people not to believe what they can see for themselves in video.

Everyone sees what they want to see.

Some see a Mexican invasion as the protesters are carrying flags of Mexico. Not sure why they’d expect that to garner support.

Some see violence against police / military

Some see poor people being abused by people in power.

Some see violence against powerless people

Some see actors staging fake protests (see thread for proof that some people see this)

Some see political posturing

Not really? These people will simply disregard the clips, claiming they are a piece of right-wing propaganda, and that the protest are peaceful, because how could it be otherwise? Of course fighting ICE, feds, and helping criminals (in some case drug dealers and even at least one murderer) is inherently peaceful, just like the BLM riots were.

You're one of them. Seen the protester getting trampled by LAPD on their horses? Seen the journalist getting shot gratuitously at point-blank by a cop? AFAIK, no was was hurt by protesters. The cops on the other hand...

And let's not even mention the reason behind it all: ICE's torture center, and the multiple raids they carry in the city, to abduct legal immigrants.

Because the BLM protests WERE peaceful. I went to some - man, we just walked around.

What happened was that people took clips of events in specific cities at specific times and then tried to extrapolate that out. When, in reality, most protests had no violence. Meanwhile, police were shooting rubber bullets at people while the people were just standing there.

Even now, with these "riots", most of the clips I'm seeing are actually from BLM protests years ago. Does anybody know this? Is anybody fact-checking anything? Apparently not. But, for gullible authoritarians that's all it takes. Show them a picture of a car on fire and their mind will hop and skip out of their ear.

> What happened was that people took clips of events in specific cities at specific times

In many cases, “events” performed by people later (or concurrently, but to too little attention) unmasked as white supremacist provocateurs aiming to discredit the BLM protests and/or provoke violent racial conflict, not the actual BLM protestors.

>These people will simply disregard the clips, claiming they are a piece of right-wing propaganda

As the media also ignores police brutality, reporters being shot at, and how outright illegal this whole deployment is. You can't have it both ways.

Which video? There were lots of videos. Lots of views of Saturday, Sunday, and Monday.

No data can change Belief.

Not without it being received in earnest. You can’t reason someone out of a position they didn’t reason themselves into.

I agree - there seems to be talking past each other about some very fundamental things:

How extensive is the violence of the protests? I saw some images shared of cars that were burned, maybe some buildings damaged. But also lots of images from other protests from previous years. Are the images of the same 3 cars and storefronts or many? Trump says the riots are out of control, Newsom says the protests are largely peaceful.

A basic claude search suggests the overall level of violence is moderate, and smaller than many recent protests [link](https://claude.ai/public/artifacts/ef220c3d-c6d9-4b4b-bb3f-2...)

How much of a strain do undocumented immigrants place on the US? You can answer this question from a financial and criminal point of view. From the point of view of crime, Trump and ICE are parading every violent undocumented immigrant they can, but that is not statistics. Do undocumented immigrants account for a significant portion of violent crime in the country?

Studies overwhelmingly show that undocumented immigrants are significantly less violent than the general population [link](https://claude.ai/public/artifacts/a92623b8-5c02-4c3a-84ae-f...)

From a financial point of view, what resources are undocumented immigrants straining, and is it to a significant degree?

The economic picture is much more nuanced. On the cost side, a criticized study (FAIR) reported the cost at about $182bn annually (this is likely an over-estimate). For comparison, undocumented immigrants pay about $100bn in taxes, boost the GDP, and create jobs. Mass deportation is estimated to cost $315Bn.

Studies show that the impact on wages is small.

The biggest cost factor ($78bn but estimates vary) seems to be K-12 education, and that is mostly born by states. [link](https://claude.ai/public/artifacts/29f10fcf-c8a7-4655-979f-b...).

From what I've seen the burned cars are Waymos, which have their own set of issues and the burning is probably more opportunistic than related to the protest in general. People have been protesting Waymo for years now, obstructing them with cones and other such vandalism. One big thing is that since Waymos are driverless the violence is not being perpetrated against people.

Its LA. When the dodgers won the world series they burned a metro bus in the streets. And those events were way bigger and drew a lot more chaos and crowds. But of course downplayed due to a lack of a political angle at the time to milk out of the event, unlike now.

Maybe we should send in the marines every time Ohio State wins a football game

https://www.nbc4i.com/news/local-news/a-look-back-on-2021-ri...

I was at OSU when they won the 2018 natty. They deployed the horse cops. The riot squad. Teargassed most of High st and campus. Arrested dozens. But it was legendary, and I will never forget that night and its energy.

According to LaTimes, 5 waymos were burned, so Google temporarily stopped servicing the area affected by the protests.

Excellent, so it's working. Waymo has been nonconsensually testing their unready "autonomous" cars on people for far too long.

As recently as last year a Waymo stopped at a stop sign and then accelerated directly towards me in a crosswalk.

These vehicles aren't ready and have already injured people. Lighting them on fire seems a valid defense strategy since the government's unwilling to intervene to protect its citizens.

Personally I can't wait until Waymo reaches the east coast. Within the past year, my neighbor was hit in a crosswalk pushing a baby stroller (minor injuries to mom and baby, but could have been much worse). And while walking my daughter our of an kids art school, an impatient car sped past the cars stopped at the crosswalk and were a foot or two from hitting my kids. These were both human drivers. And both cases would have been avoided if they were Waymos. In the first situation, the driver was only looking forward instead of the direction they were turning.

Any mode of transportation will cause injuries, especially since other humans are on the road. So just saying "Waymos have already injured people" is kind of a meaningless comment. I do think the type of accidents matter as much as the number of incidents. For example, the video that went viral recently of a self-driving Tesla randomly making a dramatic left turn into a tree on a rural road (possibly because it misinterpreted a shadow in the road) is not a mistake a human would have made.

> And both cases would have been avoided if they were Waymos.

This is speculative. Waymos hit people too.

I agree that pedestrian infrastructure in the USA is sorely lacking. The proven solution that worked in other countries is to take measures to reduce the number of cars on the road, not try to replace every driver with a computer that can only be trained by putting stupider computers on the road first to experiment on the population.

Public transit. A subway moves literally millions more people than car infrastructure can with significantly fewer injuries - basically 0 if the platforms are built with doors or gates. Busses and cable cars, driven by professional drivers, have far lower incidence per capita of injury as well.

The comment asking for more details died.

I chased up the old email. First, apologies, it was a Cruise driverless car, not Waymo.

I informed them of the incident, and here was their response, about 24 hours after my email to them:

> Copy of CUSTOMER SUCCESS (2)

> Hi Caleb,

> I'm sorry to hear you experienced this. At Cruise we take safety very seriously and this is not the experience we’d like you to have. This issue is being escalated to the appropriate team to be looked into further. Your input is greatly appreciated as we grow our ride-hail service, We appreciate your assistance.

> Best Regards,

> Jamilla

> Cruise Support

I never heard back from them again. The incident was on sep 4, 2023, at just about exactly 4pm, in San Francisco around potrero hill, perhaps Mariposa street. The vehicle was named "Bruschetta," I believe I saw that on the back or something.

What I was hoping to see from your post was some stats showing Waymo incidents where Waymo is at fault. I'm not actively following this stuff, but after some googling it's hard to find anything. There's tons of links with click-bait titles and then once you click into them you see things like:

    - "Waymo drove through a red light (while being driven by a human)"
    - "Waymo involved in a hit and run (it recorded a hit and run by a human using it's cameras)"
    - "Waymo was involved in a multi-car accident (while it was stopped with other stopped cars)".

I'm not saying they don't happen. I'm sure they definitely do. As a father of two little girls, I would feel much safer with them getting into a Waymo for a short trip than an Uber. With that said, I'm strictly talking about Waymo. I would never get into a Tesla Robotaxi.

To gather the data you're hoping for requires allowing the company to test its vehicles on us.

Maybe Cruise is worse, maybe it's unlucky. https://www.latimes.com/california/story/2024-05-16/woman-ge...

I understand that what I'm basically saying is that, if Cruise, Waymo, etc, want to develop self driving cars, they need to basically figure out a way to do so without testing in live environments against a non-consenting population. I understand that for you, you're down, and it's frustrating to hear that someone who might be your neighbor not wanting that means you don't get self driving cars.

I don't have a solution for this annoying aspect of democracy, other than to try to convince you that I'm not crazy for not wanting self driving cars at all - really, truly, it's just not the path we need to go down, we should be getting rid of cars almost entirely in cities and switching to public transit, with private vehicles driven entirely by professional drivers.

The company already "test[s] its vehicles on us" - what the parent was asking was that can you link any articles where Waymo actually was at fault?

The key tell is.....CNN for example is mentioning with specificity how many cops and military are on the ground but only uses the word "large groups" when talking about how many protestors and rioters there are. Mentioning the actual small numbers of protestors / rioters doesn't allow them to sensationalize this.

The police and military are giving numbers, so you can easily publish those. I don't think the protesters are counting themselves, or maybe you could use AI and drones to do a survey of how many protests are out?

reports say around 600, so we clearly have ways to estimate crowds. This pre-dates internet.

You need to do the work to do the estimate vs just getting a number handed to you via a press release.

Even with you trying to be factual, how you present this still shows your bias. Plus you rationalize the opposite arguments away (“overestimate”) and boost the ones you agree with.

From the first Claude link:

> Damage remains far below 2020 George Floyd protest levels

Ugh. Is this the bar now?

Aside from quantifications, I see the disagreement largely on the qualitative/philosophical/ideological (tribal) side. An inverse of the Jan 6th insurrection (which also caused much less damage than the George Floyd riots, and much less than now in LA, so was it ok in retrospect?). But the damage was not in property, but that the state and its laws itself was attacked. The sides are just now switched again between left/right: the former shout rule of law, the latter want resistance/insurrection.

I do have a bias, and I don't think that negates the points. I think that's the benefit of establishing a common factual basis. You can argue with the bias by presenting competing facts, or a different interpretation of the facts, but at least we can agree on what we're starting with.

I think the question is - why is the national guard and the military being sent to CA without the governor's consent?

Part of the justification for this from the administration is that the riots are out of control, are posing an immediate risk of violence and property damage. Based on what I've found of the actual violence and damage being done, this justification does not hold up, as the violence and property damage are lower than previous protests in which there didn't seem to be a need for interference.

The rule of law is a different argument. What is the rule of law that is being undermined? I think here too you can have an argument about the operations that ICE is conducting, are they lawful - given that they are being conducted in sanctuary cities? Who has jurisdiction in this case? Is the administration lawful in sending in the national guard without the consent of the governor? What about the military? Newsom is now suing Trump over deploying the marines and the national guard despite his wishes, so there is a claim that such actions were unlawful.

Based on my brief research into this, ICE was operating in an unconstitutional way and making many procedural violations. City Sancutary status is lawful and has been upheld in the court of law. Newsom's challenge of Trump's deployment of the National Guard also held up in court. [link](https://claude.ai/public/artifacts/99a64b2d-e3b6-4d37-956f-c...)

When you say that "the law is being attacked" in this case, what do you mean?

Been in effect for the last decade or so, sadly. I simply rely on my eyes and the live feed before me. LA isn't on fire and it's not even as bad as your average Lakers game.

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.

I didn't realize he had passed away.

His posts were always insightful and it is indeed sad that he is no longer with us.

I did not know him. Read his blog for a while, he was a decent man.

"Preserve, protect, and defend the constitution of the United States of America".. more or less what our soldiers take an oath to do. I don't see any of this as consistent with that oath. Our military commanders have a duty to refuse this order.

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,

https://www.npr.org/2022/05/09/1097517470/trump-esper-book-d... ("Former Pentagon chief Esper says Trump asked about shooting protesters")

(Self-reply) There was also that infamous interview about Tiananmen Square, all the way back in 1990,

https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/tiananmen-... ("Resurfaced Trump interview about Tiananmen Square massacre shows what he thinks of protests")

It’s been pretty obvious from their behavior and rhetoric since the beginning. It’s not cynicism.

Yup. It's in project 2025, it's been their narrative since the adminsitration started. They never wanted "law and order".

A conspiracy, huh?

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

Is this a QAnon quote or an original?

Back then we called it the Kent State Massacre

edit: and remember, it was a net positive for conservatives in the end.

And the optics of Kent State worked so well for the administration.

Kind of like shooting reporters with rubber bullets.

About 35% of the country supported what the National Guard did at Kent State. Deplorable is being far too kind to these people.

Not sure it would be a good idea to shoot US citizens for the 35% approval.

(But to your point, anything >0% is pretty horrible.)

That is enough to win elections.

... no it isn't. If you have 35% support but everyone else is opposed, that's not enough to win elections.

But everyone else isn't opposed.

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).

I agree. This was my point. The 35% number is the strong support. But that is not enough. If they lose all their weak support, they lose.

It demonstrably is, because of gerrymandering, electoral college, turnout manipulation etc.

You only need PA, WI, and MI

If you only have 35% of the popular vote, you aren't going to win in the electoral college.

That's what happned in 2024, right? you're not accounting for the fact that 30-40% of the country does not vote in nationals.

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.

35% is still not enough, even given those issues.

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.

Oh hmm, if the 35% number is all Americans, then sure.

But typically people are talking about percentages of voters with statistics like this.

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...).

If you're concerned about that you have a moral responsibility to campaign for secession.

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.

It depends on whether you plan to have elections afterwards or not.

If not, 35% approval is perfectly fine if that includes most of the police and the military.

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.

Nixon won 49/50 states in the next election, FWIW

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?

Where are you getting 100+ deaths from?

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.

[0]https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/brian-sicknick-fire-exting...

Question from outsider: if a Marine uses lethal force against a civilian in this case, in what court will he be tried?

Outside of military installations, a member of the US military may be subject to prosecution for any crimes committed under both civilian criminal law and the UCMJ. DUI is the most common scenario for this.

The one with the marsupials.

They'll be prosecuted by Kevin Bacon, with Tom Cruise as their defense attorney, and with Jack Nicholson giving a rousing testimony in which he confesses that he is the one who gave the order to the marines to commit the crime.

Only in LA though.

The way this is usually handled with smaller crimes (DUI) is that the local civilian court gets “dibs” but the military installation can ask to discipline someone under the military system (Uniform Code of Military Justice, UCMJ). Usually the locals are happy to let a military person be disciplined by the military. It keeps the burden off the civilian system, which usually has plenty of other cases to get through. Plus, the military can do things that the civilian court can’t, like reducing a person’s rank.

If the civilian court wants to make an example out of the military member they can opt to keep the case in their court. This can happen if the crime was egregious or there are some other circumstances. Plus, any additional civil suit brought by a victim or their family will always be a civilian lawsuit.

There are times where things are different- in particular, there are times in which something is only a crime in one system but not the other. You can be court-martialled for failing to follow orders, but this is not a civilian crime.

In terms of shooting a civilian, it probably depends on the circumstances. If the Marine was given an order to shoot and had some legitimate feeling reason to do so in the moment, the military would probably do their best to protect the marine, but it would probably be a civilian court trying them (the military won’t take a case if they don’t intend to follow through). Note that for this to be the case, there is probably now an officer who gave an illegal order and the officer would probably be tried for a crime. But there are conceivable ways in which a marine can shoot someone under lawful orders and not really have done anything wrong- self defense is the likely scenario. If a protestor starts shooting a gun toward a marine then they will get return fire.

If the marine were to disregard his orders and shoot someone because he’s trigger happy, then the military is probably going to ask to take the case, throw him in prison for life while demoting him down to E1 (the lowest rank), and generally ruin his life as much as they can. They really crack down on this kind of thing because they rely on discipline to make things work. Marines are generally trained to do as they are told, no matter how much it sucks. And marines that don’t do as they’re told get examples made out of them so that everyone else knows to follow orders.

At least that’s what would have happened in the past, but with the current president who knows how it would turn out. Because the state may choose not to let the case go- the president can pardon a federal/military crime, but not state crimes. So California might keep the case because then the president couldn’t let him off easy.

It depends. If they fire without orders, they will be brought before a court martial, and possibly before a civil court.

If they have orders to fire, then there will be no court, they just have to fill out an after-action report detailing what happened.

If it's deemed after the fact to be an illegal order which should have been ignored, I believe they can still face charges of some sort, no?

Sure. When the military murdered and/or raped 300+ villagers in My Lai, it was a very serious offense. The commander (lieutenant) was ultimately charged 22 counts of murder, and served a very hard three years of house arrest.

As you can see, the charges are quite serious, which can exceed 3 days stuck in house per instance of illegal homicide.

The court of public opinion and mob rule.

In this case, I would imagine it'd be none, because Trump as commander-in-chief would give orders to military courts to not prosecute, and grant pardons to anyone who gets dragged into the civilian court.

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).

>lacks values

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 didn't say they lacked values. They clearly value authority and order above all else.

I'm saying they lack the values I grew up believing were universal in this country.

> 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.

I say their values are evil.

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

I think the bad people are the ones hurting others and destroying property.

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.

You’re absolutely nitpicking the wrong thing out of context by quoting two words. So many bad faith arguments on here that are so transparent.

The mission so far is to protect federal buildings and employees.

> on the grounds that the people should never have the power to subvert the state.

Hmm... I don't think the second amendment gives you that right... That's called treason.

I live in LA and have been here for almost 30 years now. This stunt is a provocation designed to get a reaction. He wants an excuse to crack heads in a city he hates and that hates him back. He probably also wants us to forget about Musk outing him on the Epstein files.

Watching this unfold here is reminding me strongly of the Ghorman plotline in Andor S2: "You need a resistance you can count on to do the wrong thing at the right time."

I don't disagree with you, but after all the damage that was done by riots in 2020, there should be a desire to nip violent protests in the bud.

Why does 2020 fundamentally alter the nature of protest?

It doesn't. Just an example from recent memory of how things can get out of hand if there's no law and order. My city suffered a lot from the drstruction and violence and I would prefer it not happen again.

What I’m just not getting is how there should be this new urgency or desire is all. We’ve had protests, some of which turned into riots, throughout American history. A certain amount of law and order has always been imposed by the authorities (when they haven’t made it worse). It seems like you want that amount to change everywhere, “there should be a desire to nip violent protests in the bud,” but the only reason is because you personally experienced a lot of negative results from riots in 2020. Maybe it’s just your city?

It's not a new desire on many people's part. Many residents of eg. LA, Chicago, NYC have been lamenting the decline of law and order since (and also before) the 2020 riots. Politicians and law enforcement in these cities have shown that they either won't or can't enforce the law.

In a situation like that eventually either mobs or federal law enforcement need to get involved. Of those two choices, maybe you prefer the former. Many people prefer the latter though.

I'm a liberal (not progressive) in Chicagoland (in Oak Park, right next to Austin) and this lamentation for the decline of law and order is news to me. Homicides are sharply down since the Rahm Emanuel era.

I live in LA. You say since 2020 there’s been a decline in law and order? I haven’t seen it man.

Do you think federal agents that refuse to identify themselves, present warrants, or follow due process is law and order? Do you think peace officers that shoot munitions at unarmed civilians walking home is a fair trade for suspension of the first amendment?

That's the reason why people are protesting. If you wanna provide evidence about "your city", be specific, because places like Portland, Seattle, Austin, SF, NYC, Boston, and more are doing just fine.

My answer to both of your questions is "no."

I don't have a problem with the protesting. I do have a problem with violence and law breaking, regardless of who's carrying it out.

Historically, armed aggressors of the state don’t just give power back to the nonviolent and peaceful.

Further, peaceful protest has been happening vis-à-vis constituents contacting their representatives - and also congregating in the streets - in the months leading up to this.

You're on the wrong side of this, plain and simple.

As Newsom said, sending military on US soil is escalating violence, not quelling it.

We have some 9000 LAPD and we have sports game upsets with worse destruction than this. This was not only illegal but unnecessary.

I don't doubt that Trump's goal is to escalate and take advantage of the situation.

But the fact that LA and cities like it accept a high level of lawlessness and destruction of property as "normal" already casts doubt on their willingness or ability to handle the situation.

Their recent track record is not good when it comes to law and order, and people living there deserve to not live in danger or fear of mob destruction.

Why do you seem more concerned about damage to insured property than the civil liberties and rights of human beings being grossly violated?

You should seriously self-examine your thought process here as to why you're more upset about buildings than families and lives. It probably has a lot to do with what media and online content you consume.

I'm concerned about property owned by me as well as my personal safety and that of the people I care about. Mobs can break into my home and kill me or violate my mom. That's a valid concern.

Mobs of protestors breaking into your home to molest your mom is not a valid concern.

If you please, I would find your argument more compelling if I wasn't personally aware that the damage from protests in 2020 was very little compared to normal day to day activity in cities, or the typical damage after a popular sporting event, as well as my awareness that the most famous incidents of damage from BLM protests were from positively identified undercover police officers and white supremacist agitators.

Given these facts, can you justify moving America towards more of a police state (and abdicating more of our liberties) because of... why?

My neighborhood was severely damaged. Many people left and never came back and many stores never reopened. I live in an apartment building which could easily be compromised and then I'd be a sitting duck for whoever wants to break into my apartment. The riots got out of hand because folks were afraid to implement law and order.

Ironically, we had protests yesterday, the police came out in huge numbers and as far as I can tell everything was peaceful. The protesters got their protest and the rest of us got to keep our lives and property.

Which neighborhood? This is the first time I've heard of that level of deep scale damage, and I was at protests at least once a week that entire period.

I've also heard of not a single instance of protestors breaking into private homes to harm people there.

Sorry to be so skeptical but your experience is apparently singularly novel.

As for police keeping protests peaceful, my experience is the complete opposite - protests are peaceful, and then the cops show up and start pushing people around, or their undercover officers try to kick things off by throwing things or shoving people. American cops escalate.

I hear very similar stories from folks in the greater metro area about what happened in Detroit in 2020 to this day. I lived here then and there were no fires, looting, or destruction here at all. It's been well documented, but that perception can't be broken and they continue to talk about how dangerous and destructive it was.

I'm also realizing now that depending on the time period, stores not "reopening" in a neighborhood (for how long were they closed?) was probably due to COVID.

https://bsky.app/profile/iwillnotbesilenced.bsky.social/post...

The galaxy is watching.

So what is the complaint that tear gas was used? It's used all the time it's a normal crowd control measure. The galaxy is watching? Please.

I don't think people sitting in traffic qualify as a crowd that needs control.

This is not justification in itself. It's abused as a crowd control measure frequently. This rendition doesn't gain some special immunity to that abuse.

Funny that this "proud Mexican" has such a long story to tell but zero proof to show. Neither he nor his girlfriend were able to record any of that while sitting comfortably in their car?

We're on Hacker News and complaining that people don't want to record their entire lives on the internet?

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.

ref: https://www.brennancenter.org/our-work/research-reports/insu...

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.

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.

I read somewhere reliable Trump is not invoking the Insurrection Act.

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”

Then that makes this move illegal. Impeach him now.

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.

Third time's the charm!

According to the military release [1]:

> 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...

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.

Seems like they can do what private security would be allowed to do.

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?

Being deployed to help in a disaster is very different from being deployed to quell protests.

They're not being deployed to quell protests they're being deployed to guard federal buildings from protesters.

That's not really relevant to the disaster remediation point.

They are being deployed on American soil for their force projection.

[flagged]

ICE agents are deporting people here illegally. I don’t see anything wrong with that.

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.

> Court orders are being ignored

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.

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.

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/jun/09/los-angeles-...

The Gestapo simply detained people who were breaking the law.

Freedom of movement is a basic human right.

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.

Yes, the classic "if it's legal, it's moral" position. It was also legal to turn in Anne Frank.

This tells me a lot about you. You purposefully ignore the "how."

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.

>ICE agents are deporting people here illegally.

Well in a Freudian way this statement could be interpreted to exactly mean that what ICE is doing is illegal.

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 are also trained to assist in disaster relief and humanitarian efforts. They did a lot of that after Katrina.

They have been used in the past to quell protests (in LA), by Bush the senior in 1992. Actually he sent in more than the current number.

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.

Their job is to be deployed internationally and specifically not to be deployed domestically. That's why it's so appalling.

It's also appealing each time they are deployed internationally, but to "others".

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.

> Looking out for Americans is precisely what he's doing by deporting illegals

Nothing about deporting illegal immigrants requires deploying the Marines.

They're deployed because of the riots, not illegal immigration.

> 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.

100% people begged Republican voters to review what Trump was cooking with Project 2025. It’s time for dinner.

No.

> 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

The Insurrection Act of 1807 allows the president to deploy troops within the US to squash riots and other things.

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.

> I remember marines being mobilized for hurricane Katrina in New Orleans too

The governor of Louisiana requested federal help. Legally very different.

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.

Ok, but that's not most people in CA, so I don't know what that has to do with anything.

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.

That, or the fast road to dictatorship. Escalate until you declare martial law, never to be revoked. The end.

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.

In the LA riots of 1992 there was also the national guard and the military: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1992_Los_Angeles_riots

Andor was great. I really enjoyed it. It's the AI robots you should really worry about.

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).

EDIT: It was US President George H. W. Bush ...

> 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.)

If history rhymes, I wonder if we aren't about at Marius and Sulla, rather than at Caesar.

Republicans used to limit themselves out of of fear of a Democrat being able to do it the next time they won.

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.

> 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.

I'm sure it is baffling, why are all these stupid facts contradicting your nice simple truth? Because it's a fantasy.

> 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.

I'll really worry about both, thank you.

> In the LA riots of 1992 there was also the national guard and the military

The Governor requested federal help. Legally different.

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.

The law is not on their side in 2025. That's the difference.

The Insurrection Act of 1807 allows the President to do it without the request of a governor so I don't think there is a legal difference.

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.

It was requested by the governor. A lot different from today where the governor is actively opposing it.

What happened to all those safe active denial systems?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Active_Denial_System

> 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?

Some passages from your source:

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.

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?

I've often felt the same way as an insider. It's beyond a parody of itself.

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.

https://www.wsj.com/us-news/protests-los-angeles-immigrants-...

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.

Trump is not a demagogue. He appears like he is, but that is a misconception. He actually hates immigrants.

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.

Nope.

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.

Late stage democracy

Only three people seeking work outside HD. Hope they raise their salary demands.

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.

They raided a school during their graduation ceremony to haul away parents of children receiving their graduations.

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?

I’m not sure I understand. Are you saying ICE should deport on.. merit basis? Leave the hardest working immigrants be and deport the lazy ones?

Trump repeatedly said the administration would be targeting 'violent criminals and rapists', 'gang members', and 'heinous monsters' first.

So, you know, maybe they could try to do what they said they'd do for once?

The US is obsessed with precedence so doing something correctly once would ruin their exemption.

I don't understand what are you proposing in practice. Should ICE discover illegal immigrants and let them go if they're not heinous enough?

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.

Well, it's what Trump said they would do. So they can either do it or he's lying.

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.

Due process? Who cares?! ICE doesn't need due process and Trump said Americans aren't entitled to it anyway. Do you think Americans are special?

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.

Having evidence to prove a crime is absolutely part of due process

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?"

I apologize, I thought you were responding to my comment. I didn’t intend or desire to be in a political conversation.

Yes, punishing employers for hiring illegal immigrants works too. The two solutions are not exclusive and they can be implemented parallely.

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.

Maybe you should take a look at what Private Equity has done to construction before blaming day laborers at Home Depot.

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.

Where's you heart for the hard working black men who are disproportionately impacted by illegal immigration?

there's a reason why people remember kent state.

The real danger of Kent State is it teaches in for a penny, in for a pound.

What reason is that?

National Guard killed unarmed students.

Kent State was only, what, four people? Barely registers by modern mass shooting standards. The US is inured to violence.

For reference, Euromaidan involved the death of over a hundred protesters before the government finally collapsed.

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).

Nixon didn’t order the Kent State deployment. It was Ohio’s state governor, Jim Rhodes.

Which makes this situation all the more remarkable, since Trump called in the national guard without Newsom’s approval.

The Insurrection Act of 1807 allows the president to call the national guard to stop riots. It also allows the military to be sent in.

LA has had the marines sent in to stop riots in the past so this isn't exactly a new thing.

That’s true enough, I should have said supported and perhaps instigated (by insulting the students beforehand) rather than ordered.

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.

It's terrifying, certainly.

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...

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.

Rocks / debris came after tear gas.

The news has been startling in its mis-coverage.

> I can't overstate...

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.

I don't know about you, but I could never fire tear gas at peaceful protestors exercising their right to peacefully protest.

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.

> "watching and filming the ICE raids"

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."

I would still read that as the cops fired first.

https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2025/6/11/how-the-los-angeles...

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?

Nice bit of victim blaming there.

it is HN special :) “not the rapist fault, it was the short skirt…”

I'm sorry, you're flat wrong. That is exactly what Freedom of Speech means.

You obviously disagree with it, but that doesn't mean it's not protected.

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

The LAPD don't have a very good track record for honesty in the last few decades. I'd take anything they say with a cellar of salt.

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.

Apparently we don't call it that when the right does it. It's only the "Radical Left" that actually gets these labels. And the tear gas comes first.

Well we should. American politics needs more integrity and consistency. Politics as a team sport is destroying the country.

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 was always a well-understood risk though.

where is that in the US constitution? the part where it says anyone might be pulled from their homes?

If you are an illegal alien you can be detained by virtue of being in the US illegally, that's my understanding.

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.

ICE can even arrest you, let alone detain, if they have reasonable suspicion that you might be subjectable to deportation.

https://theconversation.com/ice-has-broad-power-to-detain-an...

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.

Okay, the president has decided to revoke your citizenship. You're now an illegal alien. What do you do now?

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.

> LAPD on Sunday night live with NBC 4 Los Angeles confirmed that most of the Sunday night looters were arrested

I trust this is true. But the comment would be stronger with a source.

  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.

https://www.nbclosangeles.com/news/local/la-protests-arrests...

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.

> the federal government actually enforcing federal law is a “coup” to you

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.

> The Marines aren’t enforcing squat.

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.

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...

> 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.

Evidence please.

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?

Maybe those agents should identify themselves as such instead of hiding like cowards, making them impossible to determine from crazed vigilantes?

The Gov of CA is not a neutral actor.

Sure, whatever, but he's also the leader of CA. Something something state's rights? I don't know, doesn't that matter or only when it's you guys?

Where’s your evidence that he’s blocking ICE agents from doing their jobs?

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:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zzdkzpQRaAM

And you know what? They were justified.

George Bush called up the National Guard and the Marines in 1992 for the Rodney King riots. At least 4000....

Because the governor requested federal assistance.

> 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?

https://www.npr.org/2025/06/09/nx-s1-5428352/johnson-nationa...

> 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.

Every immigrant being destined by ICE isn't necessarily an "illegal" immigrant.

Can you provide examples? I'm finding it difficult to seach the news due to the wording picked by media.

They are against the ICE raids and in particular the egregious ones on restaurants, farms, schools, houses of worship, etc.

Indiscriminate rounding up. We are seeing citizens detained. Families separated. Fear, which is clearly the point.

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.

Using the National Guard is clearly justified. Using the national military (in the case, the Marines) is...highly questionable.

That said, California should have been on top of this situation. It looks like Newsom is willing to sacrifice the safety of his citizens in an attempt to score political points.

The protests were all but entirely peaceful (as in, no more violent than your typical sports celebration) until the National Guard showed up. Newsom's far from my favorite person, but his handling of this situation was spot on, and he's bang on the money about deploying troops being a gross escalation.

> Using the National Guard is clearly justified.

WTF? How was this justified?

As a Hungarian, told my friends in November: "the election results, Project 2025, the newly elected president, etc... is the same old story we have already seen with Orban 10+y ago. But don't worry, the US has a much better established democracy, shit can't really go as wrong as in Eastern-Europe"

Well, I'm not so sure about that last part anymore.

I used to think that the quote "Elections have consequences." is much much more benign.

As someone born just south of the Hungarian border, I feel it is important to point out just how quickly election integrity deteriorates afterwards.

Or to quote Serbian president's freudian slip (from just two days ago): "Every living soul in Kosjerić [small town that held municipal elections] came out to vote against us, but we still managed to win."

It is fucking bullshit how a country can spend decades building up its democratic institutions and all it takes is one opportunist to get elected once to undo it all and solidify himself into power for the next 15ish years. And then after they finally leave, you have to start all over again from scratch.

Solidarity to the Serbian protests. I know they're not getting much international coverage right now.

I've watched Operation Saber recently, those quotes at the end are chilling.

At some point the "If voting changed anything, they’d make it illegal" quote went popular among the leftists. At the same time the right wing were convinced that elections are rigged.

Turns out it's all BS. Unless it already deteriorated, and no it has not deteriorated in most of the world, votes do count and you live with the outcome which may include the eventual reality of vites stop counting. It's very weird, I can't form an opinion if its a psyop or just how the societies work.

I'm Russian. We elected Putin fair and square back in 2000.

When it comes to consequences of such things, they take time to ramp up (during which time people are usually dismissive of any warnings). The trick is to get out of the country before it's too late.

To anyone who watched or lived through the ascension of Orbán and Erdogan in the 2000s it was very eerie how similar the playbook was for Trump.

The same steps, in the same direction, the competitive authoritarian[0] playbook was clearly in full play, during the first term Trump started to openly attack the free press, subjugate some democratic institutions, etc. but guardrails were still holding, some GOP Congress people could pushback, the VP wasn't entirely in the cult, the cabinet had some level-headed people.

Now in the second term there is nothing holding back, not the Congress nor Senate, not the Judiciary, not the cabinet, not the elites, not the press, and seemingly the people aren't able at all to comprehend and pushback on how authoritarian it all is.

The plan trudges along, crisis will keep being fabricated so Trump's grip on power increases, this one in LA is definitely going to be used to salami slice more and more power into the Executive, under the veil of "homeland security".

You're entering a new phase of Trump's authoritarianism, Americans, and there doesn't seem to have any power actually powerful enough to fight back.

[0] https://muse.jhu.edu/article/745953

Yeah it all feels so hopeless. I don't know what I should be doing.

I don't know anything else apart from finding communities and mobilising with similar-minded people, there's power in numbers.

At the same time it feels pretty hopeless, even more when I noticed downvotes coming to my comment right after the day rose in the USA without any rebuttal, you're among people who actually support this and do not realise the path it's verging towards.

I'm not from the US, so I may have get wrong, but didn't the Founding Fathers envision that people should be able to collectively rise up and overthrow a tyrant? Hence the right to keep and bear arms?

Of course, from a practical sense this does not seem possible, since the current US military, which a tyrant president would have direct control over, would be infinitely more powerful than a revolutionary group.

Maybe not that interesting for a non-Eastern-European, but Orbán went all mad when after his first term he lost the elections. He swore to come back and take revenge.

And then 2010-2025 happened, we saw what the revenge was.

Trump coming back feels very similar to this.

Project 2025 is just a collection of methods they used in E-Europe before. On one hand one could read and learn from history. On the other hand... It's a manual on how to do things, in case you wanna build a system like those in E-Europe.

Who was in charge before Orban? Is there a parallel with biden being a ~ vegetable by the time he left? (not being sarcastic fwiw)

Wikipedia says Gordon Bajnai, an entrepreneur aged about 41 at the time, who was in power for just one year, by choice:

> In his first speech as PM, he promised drastic measures to stop the negative spiral of the Hungarian economy, and to ease the burden of the international crisis. He also stated that he would remain in power until he had the solid majority of Parliament behind his austerity package, but will stay no longer than a year.

> The new cabinet formed on 29 May 2010. Bajnai was succeeded by Viktor Orbán. After that he retired from politics and returned to business life.

He was a temporary PM after the previous one (Gyurcsany) resigned after a motion of no confidence against him. Bajnai didn't do much, handled the 2008 crisis, and it was known he would not continue.

Funnily, Gyurcsany was removed after a leaked recording on which he said "we have fucked it up. Not just a bit, but much." [1] It's amazing that after 17 years, when Orban's huge lies and corruption is proven, people are fine with that, but when a former clown PM was complaining to his party members that "we should've done better", half the country was in riot.

[1]: In English: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/%C5%90sz%C3%B6d_speech

Before his second term came, it was the Socialist party in coalition with the (left) Liberals[1] for 8 years. I don't recall to have an equivalent of Sleepy Joe, but one of the early left wing PM certainly seemed a bit dumb.

The "real" problem was that they had too many (Russia-influenced / supported?) ex-communists and some of them were doing corrupt business in the 100k USD range; Of course this is already forgotten, Orban's friends' 100M+ USD ranging businesses seem to be fine with the voters. Not to mention Orban's and the foreign minister's regular visit to Putin.

Relevant search keywords: "Hungary Orban" + any of the following: "stadium", "castle", "rich meszaros", "corruption"

[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2002_Hungarian_parliamentary_e...

DJT has been using Orban’s playbook from day one. It’s going to get much worse.

To become a hero, you need a villain.

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.

https://www.usmcu.edu/Research/Marine-Corps-History-Division...

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.

I suspect that the current administration isn't concerned about winning the hearts and minds of Angelenos.

Very true, but I don’t think there’s been enough time to completely reverse years of training.

You suspect what is very obvious.

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.

I live in New Orleans and I assure you ICE raids have been making news here and in the suburbs and Baton Rouge.

> I’m not sure that’s true any more.

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.

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.

YMMV.

I went through 10 years ago. It was not taught then.

> Soldiers, especially Marines, are trained to follow orders and kill.

I thought only German Nazi soldiers were incapable of having morality and ability to decide, and were only capable of following orders.

any ex-marines here? how would they actually take to the orders that everyone's worried about? "no questions asked"?

Yeah. So.. a big chunk of the Marine Corps are hard-right Trump supporters but not nearly all. The Marines are different in that the leadership is steeped in the history and tradition of the Corps from the start of bootcamp. They will know they can be punished for following illegal orders, and they will already know about the last time Marines were called into LA.

In the end, it will come down to SNCOs and NCOs to make the decision because the Marines try to push down "battlefield" decisions to as close to the action as possible. Of any service, I expect your average Marine to be able to make independent decisions in the moment. That may or may not be a good thing.

Marine officer here (Reservist). The officer corps has a LOT of careerist yes-men, if the enforcement of COVID vaccinations is anything to go by. I know a surprising number of Catholic Marines who refused to get COVID vaccinations and had to deal with significant pressures from senior officers over it. I'm not confident that commanders will refuse orders on the basis that they consider them illegal.

EDIT: That said, I concur with my sibling comment that decisions are very much pushed down to the NCO/SNCO on the ground, and I expect that those young Sergeants might actually have more sense and restraint than the O-5s and O-6s (battalion and regiment commanders). Also, military demographics are changing....I bet (but can't confirm with hard data right now) that there is a substantial growth in Hispanics in the combat arms compared to ~30 years ago. I had a female Corporal working for me once who's hometown was Sinaloa (yes, cartel Sinaloa). I think even normally "eager to engage the enemy" Marines will be more restrained about escalating to violence against their own demographics.

I think the more interesting question is what happens when the right-wing paramilitaries (Three Percenters, Oath Keepers, and various assorted local militias) step in, if Trump gives the military orders to stand aside and let them do whatever.

I mean, if that were to happen I'd agree with Trump. We shouldn't be deploying the military against domestic paramilitaries, we should be deploying law enforcement or the National Guard.

What if law enforcement supports (and is partially intersecting membership) with these, and NG is also told to stand down?

But also, armed insurrection is in fact one of the legitimate rationales for deploying the military.

California has 25% of the 11 million unauthorized immigrants in the US. Last year, while Biden attempted to promote an immigration bill that did not pass, California made Medicaid available to unauthorized immigrants. 22% of California residents are on Medicaid, requiring $85 billion per year in matching federal assistance. Now the state has a $12 billion deficit projection for 2026. Los Angeles city recently issued bonds to fund a $1 billion budget gap for the current year. It didn't take long to speed run all that success into the ground with a few criminals that hijack protests and destroyed over $1 million in taxpayer funds in destroyed city vehicles. Half the people cheering this on will probably be unemployed in a few months.

The problem is that people think that because they have a degree they will not be affect by the illegal imigration crisis.

They think this is a problem only for blue collar workers, that they cannot empathize with.

11 million is less than 5% of the population. What immigration crises? Less than 5% is a working system.

We've been hearing "11 million" for decades. No one really knows what the number is because no one in charge of finding out has wanted to know, but it's far higher.

No it’s not. We know, we can calculate just like we can calculate the population from the census even though not everyone fills it out. You are a disgusting person spreading fear, uncertainty, and doubt. You’ve got zero proof of that and are trying to revert my comment to spread your fear campaign.

How do you know it's higher without a count?

1. We can't just start making things up and working backwards. Okay, you think immigration is bad, now prove it. Y'all are absolutely incapable of that so instead you're just gonna claim fake news, fake numbers, yadda yadda yadda. Come on, it's pathetic.

2. Even if it WAS 1 billion people or whatever - why is that bad? The magic question you can never answer.

Is it bad because "white genocide"? Is it bad because jobs? Is it bad because those people are criminals? What's the threat here?

Because, from where I'm standing, these people don't hurt anything. In fact, they're very productive members of society! They work hard, harder than fucking lazy fat white Americans, I'll tell you that. They're modest. They're kind. They don't commit crimes because they're scared shitless of being deported. So what's the problem?

"Half the people cheering this on will probably be unemployed in a few months." Why? California has a huge economy, a 1B deficit isn't that big of a problem. For context, they contribute 700B in federal taxes.

You were talking about billions of dollars but now 1 million is a relevant amount of taxpayer money destroyed? Am I missing something? A million is money, no doubt, but not relevant on a wider scale to any degree.

What amount should we allow to be destroyed before we take steps to protect taxpayer property?

The person I was responding to framed the destruction of a million dollars of property as constituting a reversal of a financial success on the order of a billion dollars, which is why I asked for clarification. That seems silly.

>What amount should we allow to be destroyed before we take steps to protect taxpayer property?

What steps, what assets are being destroyed, why are they being destroyed? These are all relevant questions in answering that. If a small minority of protesters destroy one cop car, I wouldn’t say the response should be to arrest anyone protesting anywhere in the city, if that’s more your question.

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.

Now, did they really destroy “everything”?

Of course. You’ve never heard of the lost city of Neverhappenda?

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.

LA had plenty of local police to handle the scale of the protests (it's something like 88 different jurisdictions in the whole region).

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.

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.

All this trump nonsense aside -

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.

I guess it needs hundreds of marines, huh? You’re deflecting from the issue as so many others are here in bad faith.

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.

https://www.fox5dc.com/news/hogan-says-defunding-police-wors...

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.

BLM wasnt on the ballot, so your vote for Trump was really just performative.

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.

> You're making it sound like the "violence" started in a vacuum.

They didn't make any such claim. They were explaining the consequences they experienced as a result of the BLM riots.

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).

[flagged]

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.

Every grocery store in a whole city? That's bonkers, which one?

Could you show me evidence of your first claims? That still seems like an overstatement.

>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.

What are you trying to get at?

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.

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.

Don't forget the Epstein files, whilst all the current events play out.

Time for a Russian diplomat to go to LA and give cookies to the protesters in show of support? [0]

[0] https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/ru/6/61/Victoria_Nula...

this might come as a shock but Kyiv is not in Russia

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kievan_Rus%27

oh you meant Lithuania https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grand_Duchy_of_Lithuania

Not at all.

"Prior to the emergence of Kievan Rus' in the 9th century, most of the area north of the Black Sea was primarily populated by eastern Slavic tribes."

Likewise Lithuania was a union of Baltic tribes.

Later Lithuania grabbed the territory of Kievan Rus' when it was greatly weakened by the Mongol invasion.[0]

"The grand duchy expanded to include large portions of the former Kievan Rus' and other neighbouring states, including what is now Belarus, Lithuania, most of Ukraine as well as parts of Latvia, Moldova, Poland and Russia."

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mongol_invasion_of_Kievan_Rus%...

Seems to me that sending the USMC to protect a burning Waymo is a bit of an overreaction.

Made up and staged need for troops. Check.

Hyped antagonism between both sides on purpose. Check.

Remember Ghorman

Not everything you dont like is nazism.

Burning the city? Check Incopetent mayor not doing its job? check Incopetent governor watching the caos unfold? Check.

"Marines have not been mobilized within the US like they are in California now since the 1992 riots in Los Angeles."

Seems to be some kind of tradition to send Marines every 33 years to LA.

You should judge a civilization by how they treat their poorest.

In this case the US is treating them with batons and rubber bullets.

Trump 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)

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.

[1]: https://www.brennancenter.org/our-work/research-reports/poss...

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.

he's hoping for a Kent State replay, using troops that aren't trained for police duty

Let’s just hope Neil doesn’t have to update his lyrics. But, given as that’s probably the point of the exercise…

What song are you referring to?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ohio_(Crosby,_Stills,_Nash_%26...

Ohio https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ohio_(Crosby,_Stills,_Nash_%26...

More and more I don't understand what's happening with all of these political articles making it to the front page of HN and stuffed full of charged comments and lots of grey.

We may be smart techies but the arguments here about politics seem awfully reductive. We're out of our lane on most of this. What's with all the hate here?

The commentary here feels like its sliding it's way towards Reddit. Maybe I'm wrong, or maybe it's accidental, or maybe it's on purpose?

Hoping not to lose my faith in the quality of discourse on this website.

You are seeing the outcome of structural problems that plague any site that puts pseudo-moderation tools into its users hands. Voting and flagging has been weaponized on this site for far longer than most HN users would care to admit.

In fact, I feel like HN is much worse about promoting echo chamber behavior than Reddit, due to the visibility differences between a comment being downvoted/flagged dead, as opposed to merely being greyed out and collapsed.

If you haven't noticed it before now, it's because the incentive structure is weighed heavily in favor of the echo chamber. Those who engage in good faith eventually get tired of their comments being hidden by an unaccountable mob and leave - and to be clear, I am speaking in the past tense, as in this has already happened to HN several times over.

I think its reflective of broader society. For this issue in specific-

You either think sending the military to break up protests against the wishes of the governor and mayor and against the bounds of the constituion is a problem, or you are insane.

When ICE wears masks and whisks people off the street and sends them to overseas torture camps without warning or due process, you are either opposed or insane.

There's honestly no room for nuance on this. We're reaching the point where Trump is sending the military to enforce his unconstitutional actions. Things are awful right now and are about to get so much worse.

To be clear- if you support what's happening here: you are a bad person. i genuinely hate you.

> To be clear- if you support what's happening here: you are a bad person. i genuinely hate you.

This is the kind of political reductionism I was referring to. It's not OK to "genuinely hate" a person (or group of people) you've never even met, based on a single binary opinion you hold.. that's some serious "othering" going on. People aren't so black and white.

If your comment was meant as sarcasm I don't get it.

No its not sarcasm.

And idk, but I'm just saying what I feel. I don't think its unique to this forum, more just what's going on in society.

The issues happening are not the type of thing where we can agree to disagre. There isn't a middle road. The ideologies behind it are based on hate and fear and greed. America's not going to be a democracy much longer and friends of mine are in life threatening danger.

I could not be friends with someone who supported this IRL or online.

> And idk, but I'm just saying what I feel.

You are saying what you feel, but what do you think?

> The ideologies behind it are based on hate and fear and greed.

Organizations across the political spectrum manipulating the emotions of the populace is exactly how we got to this massively fragmented culture where people feel it's appropriate to hate their fellow citizens.

Masked men are grabbing people off the streets and sending them to overseas torture camps in El Salvador with no chance of appeal.

If you think being mad at that is me being manipulated I don't know what to tell you.

"Being mad" at deportations in and of itself isn't the problem. It's getting to a place, mentally, where you feel that other Americans holding a position in any way contrary to your own can only be insane and/or evil.

Something shattered after 9/11 and especially after Occupy Wall Street, where Americans went from vigorous disagreement over policy implementations despite a common culture (Monday Night Football and apple pie, etc...) to constantly "othering" what should be an in-group identity and painting people as evil incarnate.

There's plenty of policy that I can agree to disagree on.

But this is such blantant, needless, willful cruelty.

Gleeful, even.

I've talked to someone with opinions like yours IRL before and one thing we disagreed on is that he was unable to name a single person that he considered to be 'evil'. Do you feel the same way?

No, I've watched enough narcosicario execution videos to know that there are objectively evil people in the world. These two guys in particular:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Miguel_Trevi%C3%B1o_Morales

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heriberto_Lazcano_Lazcano

What would you think of people who saw the same videos and cheered it on?

Who went out of their way to enable what they were doing because they liked having a strongman?

I don't think there's any satisfying explanation for people who would do that other than:

- They live in a perceived reality that is vastly different and incompatible with mine. (Ie. insane. Or stupid if you prefer.)

Imagine people seeing those videos and deciding everyone executed were so awful that they deserved their fate and the narcosicario were heroes for administering justice. Or don't believe they're real and that the videos must have been staged or overblown.

- They see what's happening and understand it and approve anyways because they genuinely like seeing people suffer, or greedily think that the victim's suffering will improve their own life. (Ie. evil).

- Some mix of the two

> What would you think of people who saw the same videos and cheered it on?

I see that all the time online, actually. I think there are a lot of broken-brained, hurt people in the world, who don't know how to channel their emotions in productive manner. I don't think cheerleading sadist edgelords are evil. Actions speak louder than words / anonymous shit-talkers on gore sites.

> Who went out of their way to enable what they were doing because they liked having a strongman?

There's a big difference between "liking a strongman" and flaying people alive. Consider asking "what is the utility people are getting from the strongman?"

> - They live in a perceived reality that is vastly different and incompatible with mine.

To an extent this hits at why many people consider multiculturalism a failure. Are the people that you consider incompatible able to carry on life within their moral framework?

> Imagine people seeing those videos and deciding everyone executed were so awful that they deserved their fate and the narcosicario were heroes for administering justice.

Actually that sometimes happens. The infamous "Ghost Rider" video features a guy getting his face melted off. The backstory, though, is the victim in that video is a rival cartel sicario who threatened to burn alive the daughter of some other cartel boss. I suppose a minority of cartels still have an honor system where they don't go around murdering children....well, this guy got captured and they didn't take too kindly to the threats he had made, so they gave him the exact punishment he was promising to inflict on a child.

I have no sympathy for him, he got what he deserved. That's an outlier case and overall I consider sicarios of all stripes some of the worst humans on the planet....but in Mexico they somehow have some "Robin Hood" appeal in some communities, from what little I've read.

Look, cards on the table, I believe what ICE is doing is evil of the same caliber as the sicarios.

They just found a "loophole" around the Convention Against Torture [1]. And before that have been simply ignoring judges who have brought it up. They are reopening Guantanamo Bay to be used as a detention center. Beyond a shadow of any doubt these people are being tortured.

The people they're sending are given no due process. There is no trial. And not that illegal immigrants deserve torture but some of the people they're sending are not even illegal immigrants [2].

This is indiscriminat wanton gleeful torturous violence by unidentified masked goons against people whose only crime was wanting the same standard of life we happened to be born into (if even: some committed no crime at all and without trials we may never know)

> Actions speak louder than words / anonymous shit-talkers on gore sites.

In this case at least, the supporters actions directly lead to whats happening and they continue to support it and take actions to make sure it keeps happening.

> To an extent this hits at why many people consider multiculturalism a failure. Are the people that you consider incompatible able to carry on life within their moral framework?

I think it should be the goal of all goodly people to treat everyone as humans with dignity and ensure that the type of people who are incapable of believing that way are never allowed to taste power. I'm indifferent to multiculturalism and I hope that neoconservative culture is stomped out with extreme prejudice, much like was tried with Nazi culture.

1. https://www.vox.com/scotus/416163/trump-supreme-court-deport...

2. https://abcnews.go.com/Politics/ice-admits-administrative-er...

>They just found a "loophole" around the Convention Against Torture

Colonial Outcasts on YT regularly makes the point that "Techniques of Imperialism used against The Colonies eventually rebounds back domestically in the form of fascism". Snatching people and sending them to questionable countries for imprisonment/intel extraction/torture is what the CIA was doing in conjunction with the help of the Assad regime(!!!).

https://www.sbs.com.au/news/article/comment-when-assads-horr...

> I think it should be the goal of all goodly people to treat everyone as humans with dignity and ensure that the type of people who are incapable of believing that way are never allowed to taste power.

I can agree with this sentiment, but:

"The avalanche has already started. It is too late for the pebbles to vote." -- Kosh, Babylon 5

It's why I displaced to Asia, where I'm supporting high trust, reasonably well-functioning societies, and can minimize my contributions to either America's domestic insanity or America's material support (intel, munitions, diplomatic cover, etc.) for the Gaza genocide. I'm trying to distance myself from shitbag regimes for a few more years until my retirement, and then reduce my family's relationship with The West to only being a source of hopefully-ancillary passive income thereafter.

Sounds like we pretty much agree then.

(Should have been obvious :p, you have been lovely to talk to)

Its horrific what the CIA has done and continues to do. So many of the world's evils can directly be traced back to them. And the colonisation project as a whole of course.

I also agree that its very unlikely we will be able to work our way out of a system that nobody can comprehend and seems to have evolved to trap and perpetuate itself.

Penelope Scott describes it beautifully in https://penelopescott.substack.com/p/what-does-mysteries-for... imo.

But I stand by that there seems to be some percentage of the world that takes pleasure in the suffering of others and the knowledge that they have something others lack. And their influence has made things much harder for everyone.

I still feel like I have the right to be frustrated and the people who seem to be deluded as to what's actually happening, and scornful of those who actively aid & abet the crimes against humanity going on around us.

For myself, I carry no stocks as it aligns myself with the corporations and investors who are a huge factor in our evil. I refuse to work for big tech or anywhere where the user is the product. I go to protests despite the futility of it. Probably I should move, like you, or find other ways to do more.

I don't fault people for drawing a different line on what's reasonable and practical to do in a society designed to make ethical behavior impossible.

I still take flights despite it killing the environment, pay taxes to the US despite it mainly going to genocide, eat meat, buy consumer products made with slave labor, hoard wealth past the worldwide median. So I know I'm on shakey ground.

But the people actively opposed and working against peace movements I can't find any love in my heart for.

> It's not OK to "genuinely hate" a person (or group of people) you've never even met, based on a single binary opinion you hold

It absofuckingloutely is. Child rapists. All rapists. Wife beaters. And on and on.

Actually there is a very long list of people that I have no interest in spending a single second with.

If a person thinks having heavily armed masked men who refuse to show ID whisking people off the streets with no due process is OK, then that person does not deserve to live in a civilized democracy, and should remove themselves so they are subject to the living hell of uncertainty.

I very strongly agree with you. I do think there are a group of people who are just in denial, though. Not very smart people, but nonetheless they can’t seem to believe what they are seeing. I don’t know how large this group is. Perhaps it is small. The person who you replied to seems to be one of them.

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.

> We will not tolerate riots or destruction.

Well, unless it's done in furtherance of our agenda and against Congress...

I haven't seen where LAPD is tolerating riots or destruction. This is propaganda.

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.

It makes you wonder about agents provocateurs

The best quote I heard about the BLM / Floyd protests:

"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!"."

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.

> protesters not arrested

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.

>protesting is not illegal.

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.

> 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.

I'm confused, you consider yourself quite liberal but you think it's bullshit for Mexicans in the US to celebrate their heritage?

Puhleese. Yeah, the guy in this video is simply "celebrating his heritage", https://nypost.com/2025/06/08/us-news/mexican-flag-waving-ma....

They do, to say otherwise is uninformed or dishonest.

Can you provide some examples?

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.

The irony is that one of the main rails upon which the MAGA train rides is States rights. But then, Trump was always going to be a rule breaker, not least to his own supporters, in the end all that will be left will be absolute fealty to the chief

Does Newsom have the right to defederalize the National Guard? Put another way, who is currently the supreme commander of the California National Guard?

> The irony is that one of the main rails upon which the MAGA train rides is States rights.

No it's not. They just like slavery. If it was about states rights they wouldn't support sending in the military.

What I find shocking about comments like yours is the reminder that propaganda works. Someone in the republican party decided "guys, advocating for slavery openly doesn't go over well, let's tell them it's actually about states rights", and loads of people actually believed it.

> If it was about states rights they wouldn't support sending in the military.

I'm not in support of administration or MAGA.

But, to be pedantic, you can be for states' rights, but against states overstepping Federal powers.

Immigration is, currently, a Federal power.

Who is and is not a citizen is not a state's decision.

Just because you're in favor of state's rights (I am), does not mean you think every single issue should be a state's issue.

Maybe you'd like each state to fund their own SS and Medicare. But that's not how it is. And it's unlikely to ever happen.

“States Rights” ,as a political slogan in the US, has always been code for the dominant White population’s privilege to oppress others, originally primarily via slavery, but over time through other alternative means (mostly designed to approximate the effect of slavery without the precise legal condition.)

> Someone in the republican party decided "guys, advocating for slavery openly doesn't go over well

It was the Democratic party that historically supported slavery and opposed the civil rights movement. The "states rights" euphemism was invented by the Democratic party not the Republican party.

The only states rights they care about is the rights of their states when they control their legislatures.

There's no need to give legitimacy to the lie.

Because the CNN article seems to have accidentally omitted it, allow me to paste the full text of 18 U.S. Code § 1385, the Posse Comitatus Act:

> Whoever, except in cases and under circumstances expressly authorized by the Constitution or Act of Congress, willfully uses any part of the Army, the Navy, the Marine Corps, the Air Force, or the Space Force as a posse comitatus or otherwise to execute the laws shall be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than two years, or both.

Presidents are immune from all charges and can pardon themselves in any case

> Presidents are immune from all charges and can pardon themselves

None of this is legally established.

Didn't the supreme court determine that presidents have 'broad immunity' for 'official acts'? Of course, they gave future justices some wriggle room with the somewhat vague wording, but the current court seems very sympathetic to the unitary executive theory.

> Didn't the supreme court determine that presidents have 'broad immunity' for 'official acts'?

Broad immunity for official acts, and absolute immunity for core Constitutional powers. Nothing about "all charges" or self or preëmptive pardons.

> the current court seems very sympathetic to the unitary executive theory

UET concerns itself with how much power the President has to exercise executive power [1]. Not the boundaries of executive power per se.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unitary_executive_theory#Termi...

> for official acts

True. But the kicker is that the president has an effective Carte Blanche to determine what is an official act.

> But the kicker is that the president has an effective Carte Blanche to determine what is an official act.

I think this is where the interpretation of the ruling is wrong: common reading is that it gave the president more power.

Textually, whether it does or doesn't entirely turns on the definition of an "official act" which the Supreme Court very notably left for lower courts to determine on a case by case basis.

>> The immunity [for official acts] the Court has recognized therefore extends to the “outer perimeter” of the President’s official responsibilities, covering actions so long as they are “not manifestly or palpably beyond [his] authority.” Blassingame v. Trump, 87 F. 4th 1, 13 (CADC).

Including in Trump v United States, which was still ongoing at the time Trump won reelection.

>> On Trump’s view, the alleged conduct [of contacting state and other election officials] qualifies as official because it was undertaken to ensure the integrity and proper administration of the federal election. As the Government sees it, however, Trump can point to no plausible source of authority enabling the President to take such actions. Determining whose characterization may be correct, and with respect to which conduct, requires a fact-specific analysis of the indictment’s extensive and interrelated allegations. The Court accordingly remands to the District Court to determine in the first instance whether Trump’s conduct in this area qualifies as official or unofficial.

>> Whether the communications alleged in the indictment involve official conduct may depend on the content and context of each. This necessarily factbound analysis is best performed initially by the District Court. The Court therefore remands to the District Court to determine in the first instance whether this alleged conduct is official or unofficial. [...] Unlike Trump’s alleged interactions with the Justice Department, this alleged conduct cannot be neatly categorized as falling within a particular Presidential function. The necessary analysis is instead fact specific, requiring assessment of numerous alleged interactions with a wide variety of state officials and private persons.

https://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/23pdf/23-939_e2pg.pdf p5+, p24

Since it was dismissed without prejudice, it's entirely possible a subsequent Department of Justice reopens it and proceeds with the District Court fact finding the Supreme Court directed.

Which makes sense or else every DA in the country would have effective veto power over the president.

> Which makes sense or else every DA in the country would have effective veto power over the president

Trump v. United States was decided with respect to "a federal case that was ultimately dismissed by federal district court judge" [1]. It was about the limits of U.S. executive power. Not "every DA in the country."

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trump_v._United_States

Do you think that matters?

The only check on presidential power that seems to exist is the impeachment process

Even that one hasn't actually been tested to remove a US president.

> Do you think that matters?

Yes. Abrego Garcia is back in America, isn’t he?

To be charged for multiple felonies, do jail time and then be deported again.

> To be charged for multiple felonies, do jail time and then be deported again

By our courts. That is the difference between the President defying the courts to disappear a suspect and due process.

I would rather let his home country pay for that. The US have too many incarcerated as is. We should be focusing on dealing with our citizens.

> would rather let his home country pay for that. The US have too many incarcerated as is. We should be focusing on dealing with our citizens.

Then you're empowering the President to detain someone solely on suspicion of being a noncitizen. Which will be mighty convenient for a future President when someone says or does something they don't like. (Irrespective of whether they are or are not a citizen.)

Also, these Marines are being deployed against American citizens exercising their Constitutional right to assemble and speak. Whenever the bill comes in, it will easily have costed many orders of magnitude more than the cost of even a death-row inmate.

All human being have the right to due process in the US. Period.

That is not my understanding. If a person is a known illegal immigrant they can be deported without ever stepping foot in a courtroom. That has been the case for as long as I can remember.

> If a person is a known illegal immigrant they can be deported without ever stepping foot in a courtroom. That has been the case for as long as I can remember.

You're describing expedited removal, a power enacted by the IIRIRA of 1996 [1].

It only applies to those who "make no claim to lawful permanent resident status, and do not seek asylum or express a fear of persecution." It requires specific procedures be followed that are absolutely not being followed by ICE right now.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Expedited_removal

If you're not willing to protect and defend the Constitution of the United States then you don't really deserve its protections for yourself, I think.

Presidents may not be able to pardon themselves, but they ARE immune from prosecution through the regular legal system for any actions taken as part of the office as president.

The only way to go after them (given the current SCOTUS, who made the ruling above), is impeachment. And for that, the president has to do something so bad that 67 senators are willing to find the president guilty.

> except in cases and under circumstances expressly authorized by the Constitution or Act of Congress

They are arguing there's an insurrenction in California.

There isn't. So don't repeat this 'argument' like it has any substance whatsoever.

As someone who knows absolutely nothing about what’s happening in LA, it is actually useful to hear what the govt is claiming as a justification, then the reader can judge how valid it is.

Not everyone will critically assess the validity of the government's claims. When the press repeats such statements without scrutiny or fact-checking, it does real harm. Many people will uncritically echo what the government says, simply because they already support them.

A statement like "The government is scrambling to justify an unnecessary escalation, driven solely by a president who has praised violent authoritarian leaders, by labeling it an 'insurrection.' When asked for evidence, officials mocked reporters and threatened to exclude them from future briefings." offers verifiable context and reflects the serious threat posed by a leader who appears intent on pushing the country toward chaos.

Sure, but this is HN. The level of critical thinking is far higher IMO.

I personally believe that especially on a forum such as this, it’s fine to expose the administrations claims to daylight and let them be examined and criticized and even mocked.

"My Mexican flag. Green, white, and red! That's my flag! Not this flag. Fúck this flag! I pledge allegiance to Mexico. Nobody else. Not this country."

https://www.archives.gov/founding-docs/bill-of-rights-transc...

>> Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.

People can say whatever they want. Only violent actions qualify as insurrection.

"My Confederate flag. Blue, white, and red! That's my flag! Not this flag. Fuck this flag! I pledge allegiance to the Confederacy. Nobody else. Not this country."

We have seen what happens to the traitors flying the Confederate flag.

They are listened to, cuddled, and pardoned.

Is there an official definition? I'm not American but I'm looking at images of locals and foreign nationals burning down cities flying the Mexican flag. ChatGPT tells me the following:

> The authority for the President to use the military in cases of insurrection comes primarily from the Insurrection Act, codified in 10 U.S. Code §§ 251-255. This act provides the statutory exceptions to the Posse Comitatus Act.

> When unlawful obstructions, combinations, or assemblages, or rebellion against the authority of the United States, make it impracticable to enforce federal laws in any state by ordinary judicial proceedings. (10 U.S.C. § 252)

> When an insurrection, domestic violence, unlawful combination, or conspiracy in a state hinders the execution of state and federal laws, depriving people of their constitutional rights, and the state authorities are unable, fail, or refuse to protect those rights. (10 U.S.C. § 253)

> When an insurrection opposes or obstructs the execution of U.S. laws or impedes the course of justice under those laws. (10 U.S.C. § 253)

The last time this Act was used was in 1992 during the Los Angeles riots and it withstood all legal contests. This time around it is a stated intent of these rioters to specifically obstruct federal law enforcement efforts. That's their stated goal which they are very consistent and very loud about in interviews. This clearly satisfies the criteria for the Insurrection Act.

I understand that this is a concerning action, but the law is black and white. If the U.S. and Congress and the House didn't want Presidents to have this power, the country has had more than 200 years to amend it.

  > Is there an official definition?
  > the law is black and white.

You more than tipped your hand here. You flipped it over and announced it.

I made a case and asked the other person if they had other information, ideas, or an argument. That's kind of how discussion used to work before we decided pithy soundbites was a suitable replacement for reasoned discussion.

> If the U.S. and Congress and the House didn't want Presidents to have this power, the country has had more than 200 years to amend it.

Kind of like using the Insurrection Act to suspend habeas corpus and then threatening judges if they dare to question its legality?

> This time around it is a stated intent of these rioters to specifically obstruct federal law enforcement efforts.

Or, one might argue, "petition the Government for a redress of grievances".

> Kind of like using the Insurrection Act to suspend habeas corpus and then threatening judges if they dare to question its legality?

The President does not have a legal right to suspend habeas corpus. Only Congress.

> Or, one might argue, "petition the Government for a redress of grievances".

No, a petition is a piece of paper or in verb form, lobbying politicians. Burning down cities and attacking officers does not fall under the definition.

> No, a petition is a piece of paper or in verb form, lobbying politicians.

I would say that mass groups of people gathering on the streets protesting the same cause is a form of "lobbying politicians".

> Burning down cities and attacking officers does not fall under the definition.

Sure, if that's what is actually occurring. AFAICT they are mostly peaceful protests with a couple of examples of limited unlawful behavior but that's what the news is showing because burning cop cars make for good ratings.

It's not like the people of LA don't know how to put on a proper riot or anything...

We can actually read the argument, I don't know why people are linking to CNN: https://www.whitehouse.gov/presidential-actions/2025/06/depa...

The argument seems to be more of a no-confidence move because the Californians can't keep order. They'll presumably treat the wording seriously but I think the "form of rebellion" is more a jab at the people who keep harping on about insurrections. Looks like a bad argument from any angle I can think of (they aren't invited and there isn't an actual rebellion to put down).

That's from June 7th, before the deployment of Marines. It only justifies the federalization of the National Guard, but as far as that goes, it appears to be a very reasonable interpretation of the law:

Whenever...the President is unable with the regular forces to execute the laws of the United States; the President may call into Federal service members and units of the National Guard of any State in such numbers as he considers necessary to ... execute those laws.

https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/10/12406

Orders for these purposes shall be issued through the governors of the States

Notably, it doesn't say the governor has the right to refuse those "orders". If the governor had that right, they would be requests, not orders.

A very interesting article about this situation from a Georgetown law professor was posted somewhere deep in this discussion and is well worth reading.

The professor is strongly opposed to the deployment, and calls it "dangerous" and "pernicious" among other things. Nonetheless, he "thinks the federal government has both the constitutional and statutory authority to override local and state governments when it comes to law and order" and that "this [clause] is better understood as a purely administrative provision than it is as giving a substantive veto to the governor."

https://www.stevevladeck.com/p/156-federalizing-the-californ...

According to Governor Newsom he wasn't communicated with at all.

In an interview with All Things Considered host Juana Summers, Newsom said the mobilization order was not done with communication to or approval by his office. [1]

[1] https://www.npr.org/2025/06/09/nx-s1-5428342/per-california-...

The President has authority to do so under the Insurrection Act of 1807. Note that President Eisenhower did the same thing when he forced desegregation in Little Rock, Arkansas in 1957.

I'm pretty sure you were aware of this but cite the Posse Comitatus Act to make it sound like what Trump is doing is illegal.

You can absolutely argue that what he's doing is unnecessary, disproportional, evil, provocative, etc, but it's not illegal.

> The President has authority to do so under the Insurrection Act of 1807. Note that President Eisenhower did the same thing when he forced desegregation in Little Rock, Arkansas in 1957

Super unclear.

Governor Wallace of Alabama was overtly rejecting a court order to desegregate. There was a law passed by the Congress. A U.S. court making an order. And the U.S. President enforcing it, including with the military. Wallace was defying the U.S., not just President Eisenhower.

The facts and circumstances here are different. The immigration laws being enforced are clear. But the Marines aren't being deployed against illegal immigrants, they're being deployed against mostly-American protesters. There have been zero court actions specific to these protests. This is being entirely done by the President. Moreover, neither Newsom nor Bass are interfering with ICE. So it's a bit ridiculous to compare a former Confederate state's governor personally blocking a U.S. court decision to mostly-peaceful protesters (and where not, being processed by local and state law enforcement) exercising their Constutional rights to speech and assembly while ICE continues to do what it does relatively unimpeded.

The President has not invoked the Insurrection Act, as required, because they are using a different justification for their actions.

Without invoking it, it just is not relevant here.

> but it's not illegal

This is where I find the extremely lawful mindset idiotic. Laws try to encode good behaviour, but can't define it.

Active duty can guard federal buildings and federal agents. Not sure that is how they will use them. When I was active duty I assisted in multiple weather related catastrophic events and I am glad they did not argue against our use. We helped many citizens in a time the national guard would not have been sufficient.

That is a really hopeful read of the situation. But, all we have is hope.

For a better article on the legal distinctions: https://www.reuters.com/world/us/does-us-law-allow-trump-sen...

To fill in the negative side of authorities, Trump cannot use the mobilized Marines to enforce US laws (aka act in a law enforcement capacity).

As you said, they are restricted to protecting federal buildings and federal agents.

I'm sure you can agree there is a difference between disaster relief and "suppressing a rebellion".

After the first Gulf War they sent us to Greensboro, NC to march in some parade and no one argued against that either because we weren't being used in any law enforcement capacity. Honestly, if we were there for 'riot control' I doubt they would have given us such a warm welcome.

Speaking of rebellion since you guys are experts on this I want to know who is bringing in all the violent rioters from other parts of the US and handing them the same size, shape Mexican flag that are all folded the same way same creases. Is it the same US taxpayer funded NGO's that were smuggling them into the US? And why the Mexican flag? Isn't that the very place they are trying to stay out of and wouldn't a Mexican flag imply an invasion from Mexico? I would think they would want to wave around a US flag since they want to stay here. Several things are just off about all of this. It feel like I am watching a movie produced by really lazy script writers. Is it just me? I am fine with them burning the US flag since they are following the flag protocol of the United States of America, but it just doesn't make any sense to me.

> Speaking of rebellion since you guys are experts on this I want to know who is bringing in all the violent protestors from other parts of the US and handing them the same size, shape Mexican flag that are all folded the same way.

No one is bringing people in, the flags being waved aren't all Mexican and the Mexican flags are a variety of different sizes and the LA local community, including its ~3.5 million residents of Mexican ethnicity, has quite a few Mexican flags of all shapes and sizes without needing any people or flags brought in from outside.

> Isn't that the very place they are trying to stay out of and wouldn't a Mexican flag imply an invasion from Mexico?

Mexican flags are a common symbol of pride in and solidarity with the community of Mexican ethnicity, rather than serving as agents of Mexico-the-republic, just as Confederate flags are a common symbol of pride in the White racist community, rather than serving as agents of the long-defunct putative regime.

> It feel like I am watching a movie produced by really lazy script writers.

Yeah, well, I won't comment on the “really lazy” part, but unless you are present watching it with your own eyes, you absolutely are watching something packaged for you as propaganda: everything you are seeing is edited to present a narrative by the people presenting it.

everything you are seeing is edited to present a narrative by the people presenting it.

That much I can agree with for sure. I've watched media that align left, center, right along with YT influencers that align left center and right. Each spin their own yarn. One would think they are all looking at different events but I can see what they are looking at.

Are they official Mexicans now? How many ways are there to fold a flag?

Marines have been sent several times to combat mass rioting and violence in the United States under several Presidents. Was done in LA earlier as well.

And just like that the Elon/Trump thing and Trump/Epstein no longer leads the news. How convenient

Wasn't this roughly spelled out in Project 2025?

What was spelled out? Can you elaborate?

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.

https://www.axios.com/2025/06/10/los-angeles-protests-trump-...

"Putin does it, ergo I can do it"

I originally turned to HN to get away from politics, so it's disappointing to see one of the last remaining refuges being overtaken

There's a little button called "hide" next to each post on the frontpage.

You cannot "get away" from politics. Burying your head in the sand will not insulate you from what is happening.

Plato: "One of the penalties of refusing to participate in politics is that you end up being governed by your inferiors."

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.

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.

[flagged]

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.

[flagged]

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.

I'm interested. Any examples? I feel I'm on the same page as you.

Why are you posting this on some brand new dummy account? If you feel so strongly about this, post your opinion on your regular account.

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.

To be "unpolitical" is a political statement in itself.

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.

> Marines being mobilized in response to LA protests

Finally, the American people fights for democracy, after centuries of oppresion. /s

I always find it difficult to understand how the press sometimes misunderstands cause and effect. While this military intervention is being implemented now, it's not like there weren't protests before, or in other cities (including Trump's native New York).

What happened immediately before Trump started sending in armed groups to the streets of Los Angeles was Trump getting credibly accused by Elon Musk of associating with Jeffrey Epstein.

So the correct title here is "Marines deployed to LA in response to Trump's association with paedophile Jeffrey Epstein being widely discussed on Twitter".

This allows people to correctly infer cause and effect, and most importantly, intent.

It's funny how so many Americans claim having loose gunrights is necessary to guarantee a free state, and protection against a federal army. Now same people have elected a government that really tries its best to turn that free state into an authoritarian dictatorship, using American military as its tool.

We'll see how far Project 2025 will go within Trump's term. I'm not optimistic.

If this is an "invasion" then Trump should invoke Article 5 against all nations where the illegal immigrants originate from.

Article 5 isn't invoked "against" anybody. It is a call for help from a NATO member after being attacked, which each other member state can respond to by taking "such action as it deems necessary." Trump could certainly invoke Article 5, but the likely response from other NATO members would be, "no action necessary."

Why doesn't Trump just send in the same goons that marched for him on the capitol.

They are already, in masked ICE uniforms

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?

Newsom is too busy performatively harming homeless people and platforming fascists on his podcast to cook up anything like this.

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.

The hapless imperial waymo droids summoned into the middle of the uprising to provide the right visuals are a nice touch. "Who Are You? LA Edition"

Lots of very vocal yankees thought it was great when "pro-democracy" protesters in Hong Kong waved American flags and firebombed police and public buildings. That went on for about 6 months, if I recall. Karma's a bitch, America.

P.s. China never deployed the military in the Hong Kong insurrection.

2k NG, 9k Police, and LA is still burning. The protests are still violent. I'm not sure how this ends without a continued escalation and some very violent night that gets dubbed the "California massacre" in the history books. Deploying military members who are trained to put two in the chest and one in the head all but ensures this.

But then again, how are people protesting ICE doing their literal job? The other side of the coin is that anyone can come into the united states and live here. Which is an unsustainable policy.

I don't have the answers here, but i pray the violence stops.

More Americans think the US is on the right track than at any point during the Obama administration

https://news.gallup.com/poll/1669/General-Mood-Country.aspx

38% is still deep in "F" territory.

The last time we got a "C" (70%) was December 2001. That probably means something regarding what this poll is measuring.

Your entire lifestyle is depending on, respectively subsidized by, the exploitation of imported labor from 3rd world countries. That is why a sizeable portion of you guys is so upset about these ICE immigration law enforcement actions.

You are probably posting from your Californian gated communities, afraid to lose your Mexican gardener, Venezuelan housemaid, Philippina babysitter, or your Cuban pool boy.

This might be the worst take I've seen yet. I'm watching this from the other side of the ocean and what I see is a wannabe autocratic leader trying to stay relevant through defining an enemy that doesn't exist.

I also see people who just want to live a normal life being kidnapped.

I also see judgement without fair trial.

I see hate becoming the main driving factor in a country I used to love for being so welcoming.

Also, you seem to forget that your food and housing and many other parts of your country are also depending on foreign labor. If Trump deports as many immigrants as he wants to (he can't and won't), the US will have a massive labor crisis.

I live in a flyover state, and do not have any "staff" of any kind, and you are full of horse hockey.

Exactly why is this HN appropriate? Nothing that is not already in the papers and nothing particularly interesting to the HN crowd per guidelines. I came here for HN and I got reddit.

"Off-Topic: Most stories about politics, or crime, or sports, or celebrities, unless they're evidence of some interesting new phenomenon. Videos of pratfalls or disasters, or cute animal pictures. If they'd cover it on TV news, it's probably off-topic. "

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

I think it's interesting to see how much panic, head burying, and fascist apologia there is around.

Everything is a constitutional crisis now, because nobody really knows what a constitutional crisis is. We're just numbing people down and normalizing the words until they mean nothing, because we aren't using them when they really matter. The details of this do not seem like they warrant calling it a constitutional crisis. When we actually face one, there won't be words we can use to describe it anymore, because we've wasted them.

DJT just talked about arresting Newsom. When asked why by reporters he said because he was a bad governor.

We can bury our heads all we want, but this seems like a constitutional crisis to me. Said another way, hiw many signs do we have to ignore before we call it one?

What you're talking about is the rhetoric and politics surrounding the current times as opposed to the reality. Trump says a lot of things and he is a man of action, so that makes him a credible threat whenever he says he's going to do something. At the same time, it's pretty normal that whatever he does goes through a team of lawyers first.

This is convenient for Trump, because anything he says that people get riled up about ends up discrediting them as ridiculous, because the reality ends up being less surprising. In the US you can only be president so long as you remain within an operable window of reasonability, which Trump remains within despite his character.

Now, does that mean you just ignore the rhetoric and stop paying attention to let it normalize in your mind so that when something actually bad happens it can just feel like a minor iteration rather than a shocking leap? No. That said, the rhetoric is the rhetoric and the reality is the reality.

Trump also said to lock Hillary up, yet that never happened. Sure, you shouldn't have to be a constitutional lawyer or understand entirely how the country works to get a decent sense for what's really happening, but ideally high quality journalists help fill that role to contextualize important events, grounding viewers in reality. The problem is that people get so much of their news from entertainment comedy shows and emotional opinion shows now rather than actual boring (good boring) journalistic media. It becomes celebrity clickbait.

I agree with most of what you're saying. The only adjustment I'd make is the idea of a Trump's statements being a trial balloon. He says crazy things to see how people will react.

I agree that most of it is theater, for now. Some things have moved into reality, though. Ignoring judges orders. Sending US citizens to foreign jails. Going after media companies and extorting millions. Going after law firms and extorting millions. Before he did those things, they were just like all the other crazy things he said. Now, they're part of our reality.

He says crazy things to expand people's possibility space, increasing their tolerance for a less bad version of it that might have otherwise been harder for people to accept. This is in Art of the Deal.

Same thing with Gaza becoming some kind of glorious lavish supermall. Same thing with the Ukraine and Russia peace deals. This is just how he is.

It has extra upsides and downsides when used in politics at this level, to be fair.

> "When we actually face one"

Can you give an example of a bona fide constitutional crisis?

The US is unique compared to basically every other country on Earth, so an actual constitutional crisis would take more here than in other countries.

A constitutional crisis would be if an entire generation of Americans across a majority of states were educated to hate the constitution. It would be if the military only served the president rather than the constitution, but in reality the military serves the constitution first and foremost and operates across many states. It would be if the supreme court was getting filled with judges that do not believe in the spirit of the constitution.

If someone does something that is actually against the constitution, it's not necessarily a crisis so long as it doesn't set a precedent to ignore the application of the constitution there in an unrecoverable momentum kind of way. That said, what Trump is doing here is neither against the constitution or even unprecedented.

What if the current president didn't want to leave office after losing an election, and summoned a mob to prevent his successor from being certified by way of killing and/or terrorizing the Congress? Would that be a constitutional crisis if that happened or no? And if not why?

No, because it doesn't work that way. What people thought January 6th was and what they thought it meant, are not what it was. That event might be meaningful in any other country, it was not meaningful here in the US except in whatever meaning media decides to give to it.

Media kept calling it an insurrection which made no sense to me, and even the FBI determined that it wasn't an insurrection.

Just because a process like that is interrupted, does not mean the process does not happen. Regardless of interruption, the process continues by law.

That entire building could have been nuked and the country would still go on just fine, with presidential elections and new presidents. I mean that absolutely literally, just so you know the US is not like some country you can just walk into the court house and take over. The US doesn't work that way.

Now that said, there is the parallel matter of whether Trump could run for a 3rd term. Well, there is precedent since we have had a 3 term president before during war time. If China attacks Taiwan and we get dragged into a war, I don't think it's outside of the realm of possibility. Nobody has the taste for a forever president though.

If I looked around me and saw lots of people wanting some kind of one-party one-leader system for decades then I might be concerned, but I see that nowhere.

Actual constitutional crisis as more than a phrasing used for emphasis is a high bar.

> That entire building could have been nuked and the country would still go on just fine, with presidential elections and new presidents.

I don't understand how. You're saying the President could literally murder the entire Congress, and things would just go on fine? Who would ever run for Congress after that, knowing that if they ever defied the President he could murder them without repercussions?

> If I looked around me and saw lots of people wanting some kind of one-party one-leader system for decades then I might be concerned,

Are you saying there can only be a constitutional crisis if it's popular and endemic to disagree with the constitution? If that's the case, how can we ever stop a constitutional crisis from happening if you can only recognize it after it's set in?

> I don't understand how. You're saying the President could literally murder the entire Congress, and things would just go on fine? Who would ever run for Congress after that, knowing that if they ever defied the President he could murder them without repercussions?

That's not what I said. Even then, if the president nuked congress they wouldn't be president anymore. Kind of self defeating. Also, the president doesn't control the nukes, the military controls the nukes and the military serves the constitution.

> Are you saying there can only be a constitutional crisis if it's popular and endemic to disagree with the constitution? If that's the case, how can we ever stop a constitutional crisis from happening if you can only recognize it after it's set in?

Fortunately it takes time to poison people against their own country, so we measure these things and react.

You said:

> That entire building could have been nuked and the country would still go on just fine, with presidential elections and new presidents.

So you mean if some other country nuked Congress.

But that's not what I'm getting at. What I'm asking you is: what if the President of the United States, in some way shape or form aims to kill Congress. If he succeeds, is that a constitutional crisis?

> Fortunately it takes time to poison people against their own country, so we measure these things and react.

I would say this has easily been happening over the past 10 years. Don't you think that on the road toward a constitutional crisis, a lot of people would point out the inflection points along the way, as they've been doing? But you seem to be dismissing them as hyperbolic, rather then heeding their warnings.

> But that's not what I'm getting at. What I'm asking you is: what if the President of the United States, in some way shape or form aims to kill Congress. If he succeeds, is that a constitutional crisis?

It depends on what happens afterwards. It's not necessarily a constitutional crisis. If the president was then jailed and new congress members were voted in, then no. It would basically be an isolated event with the constitution continuing to operate the way it should.

> I would say this has easily been happening over the past 10 years. Don't you think that on the road toward a constitutional crisis, a lot of people would point out the inflection points along the way, as they've been doing? But you seem to be dismissing them as hyperbolic, rather then heeding their warnings.

So, there has been a rise in Marxism under different names, some taught to college students. There has also been steady increase in rhetorical temperature over the past 30+ years. The sort of recipe ingredients for discontent have been increasing since the 1970s oil situation, but maybe delayed by technology and cheap goods from China. Then China and technology increasingly became part of the problem rather than the solution.

Hyper-individualism making strong community formation a little harder. Less civic involvement, the decline of civics in schools. Demographic imbalances don't help, housing supply limitations too.

So, some things are more an expected increase in frustration from many dynamics. Others are things we can react to, or resolve. It's not the first time the US has faced some of these issues and come out of them alright, so it's a bit premature to call it a constitutional crisis.

In other ways, we just have to tighten up our ship to prepare for a potential war with China as deterrence. Part of the reason more powers were given to presidents with congressional oversight is out of acceptance that congress can be too slow. Especially now, congress is so bogged down right when we need to be able to take decisive action.

In that sense, it wouldn't be strange in the context we're entering for the US to lean towards more sharper, action oriented usage of power that people can label as authoritarian all they want. Those powers can be taken back by congress or denied by the supreme court if necessary, unless they are constitutional in which case separation of powers comes into play.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com