ICE Shot a Journalist and Threw Him in Detention. He's Approaching 300 Days | Hacker News Reader

ICE Shot a Journalist and Threw Him in Detention. He's Approaching 300 Days

theintercept.com

142 pointsJimmc41463 comments

I'm convinced that the patterns of the federal judiciary freely supporting egregious misconduct by multiple agencies will last until roughly one week after the funeral of the current POTUS. Old age, complications, whatever, the pendulum will swing back.

The best case scenario for that swing-back is a prolonged and entirely civil witch hunt of the judges and attorneys involved, by force of intimidation by state governors threatening expulsion of federal personnel and nonpayment of funds to the Treasury unless a witch-hunting organisation is allowed to operate. This sounds horrible, but it is the option that most safely diffuses the tensions of implied violence. It's mirror, an entirely uncivil (force of arms) witch hunt, has historical precedents in other countries that suffered catastrophic civil wars and is the worst-case option.

Like it or not, every country has the pendulum and it can only be managed.

Ah yes, the famously fair, famously well thought out "witch hunt for thee, but not for me".

How about acknowledgement that there was a reason these people got elected and the addressing of grievances that brought that about. Problems heard and addressed.

Cry all you want, the people are demanding justice for the egregious crimes of the trump administration and his pathetic, sycophantic supporters. I think they will have it, one way or another.

The grievance was that not enough journalists were getting thrown into jails without proper procedures or medical care?

Nobody has a magic wand to produce the best option and they instead have to make do with the least bad physically possible option.

The constituency for the immiseration of the masses is unfortunately bipartisan. It predates Trump (and Biden) and was embraced by Trump (and Biden) to the opposite of their rhetoric. However, the historical consensus on tolerating extralegal behaviour by the executive and judiciary anywhere else on Earth is that it has a 100% track record of making immiseration worse. No other improvements can first occur without removing that state of affairs which bottlenecks everything else, by the least harmful physically possible method.

You want a better option? Go find a genie.

>there was a reason these people got elected

Starting a war with Iran?

They warned me, all over Fox News they said “if you vote for Kamala we’ll be at war with Iran in a year!” and well, I voted for Kamala and here we are at war with Iran.

> How about acknowledgement that there was a reason these people got elected and the addressing of grievances that brought that about.

How about acknowledgement of the tremendous damage that their decision made and addressing the grievances that resulted from the consequences of their action?

> Problems heard and addressed.

LOL

I don't think we should assume that there is a universal law of gravity that will automatically swing this pendulum in other direction.

I'm not aware of any historical counterexamples, but I'd love to learn if you have any.

It's called the survivorship bias. But you can go ahead and ask all the dead liberals in Chile if you want confirmation of that.

If Trump dies, Vance becomes president. If Vance dies, Mike Johnson becomes president. What do you know about those people that I don't that convinces you the hammer will come down once Trump is dead?

The electoral strength of the Trump base is their ability to identify with Trump, which makes the political component of open defiance a guaranteed loser. None of Trump's presumptive successors have his advanced age, imagery of an unregimented approach to self-care, comfortable ease with crude mannerisms or showmanship.

A USA where the economy is poor and the Gen X and older cohorts have returned to 2010 levels of apathy is one where Newsom, Walz, Kelly, Booker, Ocasio-Cortez etc openly directing anybody they have authority over to disregard all instructions of federal personnel up to indefinitely detaining federal personnel does not stop them from sweeping in 2028.

I've never understood how there's a cult of personality around Trump when he's not got any redeeming qualities.

I don’t either, but he does.

A big part of his draw is that there are a lot of truly reprehensible people out there, and Trump gives his base permission to say and act out their worst instincts.

For example, before Trump, it was slowly becoming increasingly unacceptable to openly espouse racist and sexist beliefs in public and among your peers. Now, we have official government communications and executive orders including blood and soil rhetoric.

He's loud and annoying, which many perceive as confidence. He's not confident, make no mistake, but people think he is. Someone smarter and better spoken will perform worse. They want a "simple man". Of course Trump is not actually simple, but because of how stupid he sounds they think he is.

However, he tries to portray himself as smart and knowledgable but is clearly quite stupid. That doesn't track with his supporters both believing what he says and also thinking that he is stupid.

In contrast, Boris Johnson (ex-UK Prime Minister) deliberately made himself look like a blundering fool (messy hair, stumbling over words etc.) whilst being very smart. Unfortunately, he lied a lot and abused his power, so we eventually got rid of him - not the kind of person you want to have power, but the type of person who seeks power.

He's funny as hell. I don't like him as a politician but he's an extremely effective showman.

Is he? He comes across as an overbearing, bossy boor. Do you have to be the right kind of person to find him funny or something?

Vance has the charisma of a moldy potato and Johnson is a fucking weirdo. Trump is (justly) hated by many but he was a celebrity with decades of fame behind him and billions of dollars to throw at the presidency.

Do you think that Vance or Johnson really have the skill and charisma required to stay atop the twitching corpse of a horse that used to be the republican party and keep it moving?

Here's a general rule and a hint - (aspiring) dictators and authoritarians always fill the positions closest to them with people who are semi-competent, but not competent or ambitious enough to threaten their power. That's because the greatest threat to their power is from their allies, not their enemies.

If Republicans found a spine or some love for their country one day they could easily impeach and remove Trump - there's no doubt the Democrats would vote for it. And, if Republicans ever do the math and decide that Trump is more of a weight than a boost, they will do exactly that.

This dynamic is why we've got Pete Hegseth running the military instead of someone... sober.

This country is owned by the super rich, it is over. 241 years of the US constitution was a nice run. Too bad the courts allowed this to happen.

very naive

it will take a CENTURY to rebuild the US just from what they've done to this point, imagine two more years

every part of government now has been corrupted to the point where all you need is the next Heritage Foundation pick in place (JD) and it all keeps going on exactly like now, maybe even worse once they see they've gotten away with it

if the Dems don't get the Senate the Supreme Court will become unstoppable

btw only full impeachment will get his name off everything, even then maybe not everything, and there is still the existing corruption in place to sabotage even more on the way out

those last few months November 2028 - February 2029 are going to be 100x worse than anything we've seen to this point, they will burn it all the ground, hopefully not literally

De-magafication / de-trumpification is a notion that's been floated.

Wikipedia has a pretty good overview, only a few days old:

<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/De-Trumpification>.

What specifically it might entail isn't clear, though my suggestions would be very widespread impeachment followed by disqualification from any Federal office (an option but not requirement under US impeachment law), extensive civil prosecutions (not subject to Presidential pardon), as well as State criminal and perhaps ICC / CHR prosecutions (likewise, though not presently supported by the US).

Most of that would require a 60+1 seat majority in the US Senate, which would require support from GOP members even with a substantial normal opposition majority.

https://archive.is/N9hmS

admittedly, i don't know anything about this case, but the person at the center of it seems to be Carlitos Ricardo Parias.

the intercept (source link) was rated far left by AllSides (https://www.allsides.com/news-source/intercept-media-bias) and the press release from justice.gov has a very different perspective (https://www.justice.gov/usao-cdca/pr/illegal-alien-mexico-ch...).

it's very unclear what can be taken at face value.

The Intercept is not far-left, they are Blob-aligned via Pierre Omidyar.

Reading this meter you linked from AllSides, it appears that the main purpose of that meter is to enforce the boundaries of the Overton window using faux-objectivity as a cover.

makes it doubly hard when you can't trust a media bias website, either.

solving for "trust" is one of the hardest problems out there in 2026.

even just reading the article the left-lean/bias is clear here.

At this point, is any .gov domain a trustworthy source? We're in an information deficit currently.

irs.gov is without a doubt the SOT ;)

btw another crime by ICE that has not been widely covered is they are FORCE FEEDING PRISONERS FOR MONTHS

that is recognized as torture and illegal and should never be happening by our government

* https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2026/aug/05/ice-force-fe...

* https://www.pbs.org/newshour/nation/ice-force-feeding-detain...

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