Around 1,500 soldiers on standby for deployment to Minneapolis
bbc.co.uk
bbc.co.uk
Recall Trump's comments after several US members of Congress made a video along the lines of "you must refuse illegal orders." Trump called this "seditious behavior, punishable by DEATH!"[2]
[1] https://www.veterannews.org/veteran-news/army-eliminates-sev...
[2] https://www.npr.org/2025/11/20/nx-s1-5615190/trump-democrats...
[1] https://www.military.com/daily-news/2025/02/24/people-are-ve...
10 U.S.C. S: 502
S: 502. Enlistment oath: who may administer
(a) Enlistment Oath.- Each person enlisting in an armed force shall take the following oath:
I, (state name of enlistee), do solemnly swear (or affirm) that I will support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic; that I will bear true faith and allegiance to the same; and that I will obey the orders of the President of the United States and the orders of the officers appointed over me, according to regulations and the Uniform Code of Military Justice. (So help me God)."
> I ___, do solemnly swear (or affirm) that I will support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic; that I will bear true faith and allegiance to the same; that I take this obligation freely, without any mental reservation or purpose of evasion; and that I will well and faithfully discharge the duties of the office on which I am about to enter. So help me God. (Title 5 U.S. Code 3331, an individual, except the President, elected or appointed to an office of honor or profit in the civil service or uniformed services)
5 U.S.C. S: 3331 - Oath of office
An individual, except the President, elected or appointed to an office of honor or profit in the civil service or uniformed services, shall take the following oath: "I, AB, do solemnly swear (or affirm) that I will support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic; that I will bear true faith and allegiance to the same; that I take this obligation freely, without any mental reservation or purpose of evasion; and that I will well and faithfully discharge the duties of the office on which I am about to enter. So help me God." This section does not affect other oaths required by law.
This kind of talk is needlessly optimistic. We’ve already seen how you all are, or there would’ve been more action from you all in stopping us from getting where we are now.
Give us a break from the military worship BS. Most veterans don’t have the gall to stand up against this sort of thing and we all know it.
Trump is trying to incite an insurrection so he politically gets a free hand to do whatever he wants. If Congress and the courts are too slow or too cowardly to get anything done, he might get what he wants.
> The Militia Act of 1903 divided what had been the militia into what it termed the "organized" militia, created from portions of the former state guards to become state National Guard units
the people at large however are not prevented from forming a militia or a posse, or volunteering to be deputized by a local police force.
the common element is that they are responding to a domestic threat originated from government activities.
the original conception of american government insists that the government exist at the consent of the governed, in service of the governed, and this consent is revoked when that government fails to colour inside the lines when interpreting the constitution of the USA
These forces are distinct from the state's National Guard and cannot be federalized.
The framers certainly didn't think of militias either as the professional standing force that is the national guard nor could they probably even conceive of these little gun enthusiast wannabe paramilitary groups (or maybe if they wondered what if Don Quixote was an enormous asshole and also a small group instead of just a man)
But you get a group of people together, arm them, and give them the goal of being ready to use those arms for one purpose or another... that's a militia. It's a pretty broad term lots of folks want to shove into a pretty narrow definition.
> A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.
A yes, "necessary to the security of a free State", so, what about it?
Just the possibility of an armed population resisting still gives them pause. But we're not at the level of the theoretical threat becoming realized.
If the people too eagerly exercise it they'll be used as justification for further oppression. Resistance is political. Unfortunately most of our politicians are spineless cowards on both sides.
But it is not at all a mystery about how things got to be the way they were in the 1930s. I've heard people I know advocate for atrocities.
So a "have your cake and eat it too" situation.
i have read, in various places, that the last straw initiating foment of open revolution was when the kings militia began "taking liberties" with the wives and daughters of the colonists. piecemeal resistance, consolidated to a social movement, and the "shot heard around the world" was loosed.
Nowadays, the 2A is used simply to guarantee gun access to individuals, a movement underway since the early civil rights movement in the late '50s and largely confirmed with the Heller decision in '08. Unfortunately, that movement didn't bring any right to actually resist government overreach, which is why we haven't seen citizen militias form to violently resist ICE's own violence. They'd simply be killed and imprisoned and used to justify an increase in violence.
Personally, these events have really exposed the moral bankruptcy of the modern 2A movement. They want guns, and the attendant increase in shootings that accompany that, but have brought no real ability to resist government violence along with it. So we have the negative without the purported positive.
Obviously the next Congress and President will need to reform how the Guard works and how it can be deployed, otherwise we'll see this again.
“ If you want to shake things up, you start with something small. You break a norm or an idea or a convention, some little business model, but you go with things that people are kind of tired of anyway. Everybody gets excited because you're busting up something that everyone wanted broken in the first place. That's the infraction point. That's the place where you have to look within yourself, and ask: Am I the kind of person who will keep going? Will you break more things? Break bigger things? Be willing to break the thing that nobody wants you to break? Because at that point, people are not going to be on your side. They're going to call you crazy. They're gonna say you're a bully. They're gonna tell you to stop. Even your partner will say you need to stop. Because as it turns out, nobody wants you to break the system itself. But that is what true disruption is, and that is what unites all of us. We all got to that line, and crossed it.‘
It’s like the following this recipe to break the system
"Too big" supposedly meaning orchestrating something that allows them to have the optics without the potential for fallout. This is really speculation though.
AFAIK, committing fraud does not protect illegal immigrants from deportation, which seems to be the implied conclusion here. If ICE deports illegal immigrants who are also committing fraud, I can't see how that is a minus rather than a plus.
Are you suggesting there is something inherent to being Somali that means they are more likely to commit fraud?
Both sides are bad. No doubt about it. It has always been that way. But, one side takes being bad to a whole new level.
Our choice has always been between bad and less bad. The voters decided to pull the lever for "massively bad" during the last presidential election because they could not tell the difference.
I'm not a "whatabout" guy, I'm actively opposed to both extremes. The far left is just as capable of ruling with violence as the far right, they just haven't got the opportunity in this country yet.
The politics of emotion and absolutism is the cause, which flavor of extremism you pick isn't the core issue.
How could you possibly think that the establishment dems that have formed government are 'a set of extremists'?
It's not comparable.
Elected democrats are stuck between trying to appease the radical left and trying to actually govern along with republicans and those two are very incompatible goals because the radical left knows very little about actual government policy and just has a couple of very narrow issues that most of the country opposes that their social bubble convinces them are the only important issues in this country.
Democrats lost the last election because of the radicals AND didn't get any of their goals done. Democrats needed a more centrist charismatic leader and instead they keep nominating candidates who "deserve" the nomination opposed to the actual will of the people OR continue nominating ancient relics who needed to retire a decade earlier... 6 of whom died in office over a period of 13 months in a period where every vote counted.
In short, I blame stupid leftist radicals and corrupt self-interested Democratic cowards in office for our current situation.
Pol Pot[0] was a leftist extremist. Chairman Mao[1] was a leftist extremist. As were the Red Brigades[2] and the Symbionese Liberation Army[3], etc., etc., ,etc. Who in the US Democratic Party advocates for the same things as those guys? Let's see. No one.
In fact, the only ones in the US who've shown an interest in nationalizing the means of production (c.f. Intel) or putting down the Intelligentsia and normalizing violence against those who criticize the regime are just one set of extremists. Because extremists end up going full circle -- because for them it's about power and not ideology.
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pol_Pot
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mao_Zedong
[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Red_Brigades
[3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Symbionese_Liberation_Army
>The voters decided to pull the lever for "massively bad" during the last presidential election because they could not tell the difference.
That is being intellectually dishonest, we had already had 4 years of Trump and similarly had 4 years of Kahmala with Biden.
Saying they were ignorant or didn't understand is to ignore the electorate and their issues.
My impression of the US electorate is that they don't want illegal immigration, at least not in the volume and with the openness it was happening. They don't want immigrant trains rolling through Mexico. But they don't want the brutality and violence of the current crackdown, either.
They don't want trans people on womens' sports teams, and they don't want the US taking over Greenland.
And so on.
So after four years, the majority of voters were choosing "not Biden, and not the Biden things we don't like" rather than "yes Trump".
The place where it was "yes Trump" was the Republican primary. If you want to fix US politics, get involved with a political party - either one - and have some influence on who comes out of the primary process.
Or, specifically to the situation at hand, there's yet another famous quote applicable: Conservatism consists of exactly one proposition, to wit: There must be in-groups whom the law protects but does not bind, alongside out-groups whom the law binds but does not protect.
It's completely obvious what ICE and the ordinary citizens of all blue regions are, respectively.
So what States Rights are we supporting now?
Both sides are very good at developing and using tactics against the other then acting surprised Pikachu when it is turned back on them.
Look at journalists and "Learn to Code"
If you don't come to democracy, democracy comes to you.
By what metric do you make this determination?
From a crime perspective, legal immigrants commit fewer crimes than native-born citizens, and illegal immigrants commit fewer crimes still.
From an economic perspective, immigrants of all stripes tend to work harder than native-born citizens so they can establish themselves here. They contribute to society, pay their taxes, and in the case of illegal immigrants, aren't even afforded its protections and services.
The only metric by which I could see an argument that immigration has backfired is in political unrest, but that's mostly due to the fact that the right-wing media has been stoking panic over immigration for decades - anything to distract from how easily we're being fleeced by the wealthy and powerful.
The New Colossus
Not like the brazen giant of Greek fame,
With conquering limbs astride from land to land;
Here at our sea-washed, sunset gates shall stand
A mighty woman with a torch, whose flame
Is the imprisoned lightning, and her name
Mother of Exiles. From her beacon-hand
Glows world-wide welcome; her mild eyes command
The air-bridged harbor that twin cities frame.
“Keep, ancient lands, your storied pomp!” cries she
With silent lips. “Give me your tired, your poor,
Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,
The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.
Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me,
I lift my lamp beside the golden door!”