ICE protester says her Global Entry was revoked after agent scanned her face

Everything can be exploited by a bad actor if the bad actor is put in a position of authority over it.

There's no democratic system of government that's completely immune to a majority of voters actively trying to erode and damage the system.

Every government is always able to turn totalitarian. That's why voting is important. You don't vote for the totalitarian.

SCOTUS has already ruled on cases that were presented to them and now we're contending with a mad king.

How on earth can you say that with a straight face?

> Attached to this order is an appendix that identifies 96 court orders that ICE has violated in 74 cases. The extent of ICE’s noncompliance is almost certainly substantially understated. This list is confined to orders issued since January 1, 2026, and the list was hurriedly compiled by extraordinarily busy judges.

> ICE has likely violated more court orders in January 2026 than some federal agencies have violated in their entire existence.

Ref: https://storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.mnd.230...

This is an official filing--facts, not a news report. A judge placed his job on the line and said these things in a written, filed, official ruling.

The problem isn't judicial rulings; the problems are petulant bullies who simply ignore the rulings; and completely subservient sycophants who only can say "As you wish, master."

There were some. They all got dismantled. Loyalists have been systematically installed into all relevant positions. What system is immune to this? There is none. Voters have to take responsibility for what they voted for, which is the complete destruction of the United States of America as a political unit.

Goverment is corrupt. Solution - more goverment. Give me a brake.

The problem is that it does represent a lot of people in America. A very vocal and active part of America. It’s not some tiny demographic either. It doesn’t represent the majority but the majority doesn’t vote, doesn’t take action, and is overall extremely passive in their political position. Some of this is good because most Americans are wildly uneducated. Problem is that people are more likely to try to protect what exists than try to move towards a new paradigm. That’s the biggest reason we have such a slow moving system in the US. Most people in the US are very wary of change at this point because they’re not educated about anything.

looks like objective data to me. Look at our democracy number, it's lower than a ton of other countries!

LOL, the first list also seems to use the US as the cut-off & first country that is a “deficient democracy”. The magic number must be between somewhere between 0.811 and 0.821.

Having spent a good chunk of my life in Canada and the US, a list that has Canada as more democratic doesn’t make any sense to me. In the end, it’s just a random mix of different measurements, weighted to tell whatever story you want to tell.

See also this metric, showing how fast the US is falling away from a democracy:

https://www.ft.com/content/b474855e-66b0-4e6e-9b73-7e252bd88...

Who knows, but ICE agents are terrorizing people with the threat. It’s fascinating that the Ministry of Information is trying to redefine terrorist to mean something other than the people who try to induce mass terror for political gain:

https://newrepublic.com/post/205629/ice-agent-threat-domesti...

As if the DHS cares about your ID.

you know this sounds like a dystopian storyline.

due to the vehicles recent usage:

it starts with a rental car trip, an "incidental roadrage" incident while travelling, then the surveillance and whistle blowing starts at a rest stop, and then the complete lockout from any business, lodgings, or financial dealings.

no fuel, no food no water...

i wonder how the story ends.

ICE routinely (and illegally) puts on fake plates, claiming sovereign immunity to violate state law.

It seems easy enough to not cover your face, not look like you're itching to kill someone, and honk your horn in support when you see some protestors. I'd be more worried that they had been smoking meth in the car.

> With the protestors entering in rental car license plates of ICE or suspected ICE agents into their own database, I wouldn't want to rent a car anytime soon - the possibility of getting a car previously rented by ICE or suspected ICE, and being assaulted by having whistles blown in my ears, is off-putting.

Oh this, 1000 times. I believe some of the protesters are also targeting cars out-of-state plates.

I recently had a rental with out-of-state Texas plates, which just gave me another reason to avoid any place where there was ICE activity. Otherwise I'd have to show my passport to one group and I suppose point to my child car seat to the other, just to avoid getting caught in the middle.

Maybe this is not helpful either, but I wonder if that person is correct. The national debt is already bad. With the trillions of new national debt from the Trump administration, and also the destruction of basically every foreign relationship, how will the country manage its finances? I feel like the only way out is to print money and cause extreme inflation. But that also means the death of the US dollar as the global reserve currency.

Not at all, most of us want to live in peace and prosper.

Why the fuck would I want the country most capable to destroy us all to deteriorate?

No it doesn’t, when the US influence wanes you think that void is just gonna sit there untouched?

Yeah, but there is quite a gulf between possible and even likely.

I can think of very few time seen the state give up extra powers it gives itself in emergencies, and the few places where I see it give up powers are at the behest of industries demanding "de-regulation".

Even, say, cannabis decriminalization can be understood (from the stand point of the legislators) as pro-business.

So serious question: when has the US given up powers? It'd do my brain a lot of good to have a picture of how this has happened in the past so I can be less cynical in the present.

You might site the Church commission, maybe, but that seems to be exactly the kind of thing that is both likely and wholly ineffective beyond a the 5-10 year timescale.