Hacker News Reader

Comment by cdrnsf | Hacker News Reader

Everything the current US administration has done has been an unmitigated disaster. Tariffs are taxes. Manufacturing is still declining, not returning and a man who could not run casinos successfully is not going to change that. His economic and foreign policy are dictated entirely based on who flatters him the most. Add to that continued environmental damage, domestic policy dictated by a regressive religious minority and a lack of interest in performing the duties of the position in favor of caring about only what it can be leveraged for. A failing state operating on grievances and stupidity.

View on HN

I get that statistics can be manipulated but...

https://www.ismworld.org/supply-management-news-and-reports/...

> Economic activity in the manufacturing sector expanded in July for the seventh consecutive month, say the nation’s supply executives in the latest ISM® Manufacturing PMI® Report.

> The report was issued today by Susan Spence, MBA, Chair of the Institute for Supply Management® (ISM®) Manufacturing Business Survey Committee.

> “The Manufacturing PMI® registered 55.6 percent in July, 2.3 percentage points above the June figure and the highest reading since May 2022 (55.9 percent). The overall economy continued in expansion for the 21st month in a row.

PMI is a sentiment survey of 400 manufacturing executives. Vibes only.

Are you saying PMI is a survey of 400 manufacturing executives about the status of manufacturing, and you don't think it carries meaningful signal about the status of manufacturing? I wonder what you think _would_ carry meaningful signal, if you're not satisfied by asking the people that are doing said manufacturing?

Hard numbers. Like output, or investment made. Like number of cars, tons of steel, etc. Things that actually reflect reality

Executives aren't exactly the ones doing all the manufacturing. If you want to look at employment in manufacturing, the most you can say is that's it's stabilized after the first year of this administration: https://fred.stlouisfed.org/graph/?g=1XUKx

ironic given top comment on this thread is pure vibes. interesting you chose to repond with this "vibes" comment to this instead.

While the top comment is pretty vibey, it's not presenting itself as firm statistics.

Manufacturing has never really declined in US, not in absolute terms.

It's simply facing the same fate of agriculture: automation.

Politicians want to sell to people they can bring back manufacturing jobs, but it's not like in china they making cars or batteries or chips by hand. It's all automated everywhere.

Have you seen that SmarterEveryDay video about trying to make a grill brush in the US? That obviously would’ve been possible in the US 50 years ago but is borderline impossible today because every manufacturer laughs in your face and just says “make it in China, we can’t help you”

This is the most recent of those videos:

https://youtu.be/vS6HEes8daw

(edit: seriously? Who downvotes this. The preceeding comment mentions a video, I share the source, wtf. Don't shoot the messenger.)

Paid actors mostly.

  > it's not like china they making cars or batteries or chips by hand

That was true a while back but less so now. Chinese companies are moving to "dark factories", which can function autonomously without humans (hence no need for lighting).

https://www.reddit.com/r/ArtificialInteligence/comments/1jci...

I think you've misunderstood the sense of the comment you're quoting

They mean it is not the case that in China they make these things by hand.

> Manufacturing has never really declined in US, not in absolute terms.

Is a factory making 2GB RAM chips twice as productive as one making 1GB RAM sticks?

Because if manufacturing output is merely constant while chipmakers’ output has skyrocketed (on paper, as PCs went from 32MB RAM to 32GB over a few decades), other manufacturing output must have fallen a great deal.

Tariffs end up being worse than taxes. They get collected, passed on to consumers, overturned by courts, and then handed to the companies that raided prices.

They are worse in other ways as well. They reduce incentive for local businesses to be competitive. They also make it harder to be competitive because access to top manufacturing equipment becomes harder. To get incompatibility similar to Galapagos effect as tariffs remain.

Argentina and Brazil should be a warning example to everyone. The paper Argentina Paradox by Taylor gives good insights into how trade barriers played a fundamental role in hurting this once very prosperous economy.

I think they proved last year that most of the tarrifs were not going to consumers. It actually worked as an excellent business tax that did not get passed on. High tariffs are leftist ideology.

Reference?

Here is an article from the newyorkfed with an excerpt which isn't in line with what you are claiming. And it is quite likely that even those that didn't raise prices initially, aren't going to keep absorbing those costs forever (no such thing as free-lunch), these studies were done only 3 months into the tarriffs.

https://libertystreeteconomics.newyorkfed.org/2025/06/are-bu...

"Consistent with textbook economics, tariffs generally resulted in higher prices to customers. Indeed, roughly half of businesses reported raising prices of goods directly subject to tariffs. Interestingly, a significant share of businesses also reported raising the selling prices of their goods and services unaffected by tariffs. Many businesses indicated they increased prices to cover other rising costs such as wages and insurance, though it is possible that in some cases, businesses were taking advantage of an escalating pricing environment to increase prices. For example, something similar happened in 2018-19 as firms increased their prices on dryers when tariffs rose on washing machines from China, even though dryers were not subject to tariffs."

Liberals had forever been linked to unions and Unions are linked to making products in the United States. All of the unions have shifted to the right because they're now the ones making the tariffs. Clinton sold them out.

Ever visit Alibaba and learn that the importers are still paying $1200 for 12 washing machines and then reselling it to you with a Maytag logo on it for $1200 EACH?

Oh you think they did, huh?

Pack it in everybody! This guy thinks they worked as intended, that’s all the evidence needed! Case closed!

Ignore the way everything is more expensive. Ignore the way everything on digikey has a dedicated tariff column. Ignore the general chaos and the rest of what your lying eyes see, a hackernews throwaway account is pretty sure that the new tax on imports is unrelated to imports being more expensive.

Food and rent are not affected by tariff money. Food is grown locally in the US more than nearly any country, so people will survive if their solar inverter is $205 instead of $200 (and the asshole that imported it is paying $100 instead of $50)

Food and rent are affected by everything else getting more expensive. Fuel is used quite extensively while farming - in case you haven't ever been on a farm - and with this idiotic war with Iran fuel costs have gone up massively. Tractors and farming equipment are not just domestically produced, they make heavy use of imported parts and raw materials. Now with these tariffs, imported metals and components are more expensive.

You don't have to take my word for it though! I don't even know why you're trying to make this argument when you can just go look through a grocery store and see how much more expensive food is now than just a few years ago.

>His economic and foreign policy are dictated entirely based on who flatters him the most

Are you sure, it seems mostly based on illegal share trading. Murdering foreigners and sending soldiers to die is a lever Trump/his handlers keep pulling because they 'win' $millions every time.

One could call facilitators of his self-enrichment and abuse of office "flatterers".

> Manufacturing is still declining

Do you have evidence for this?

Hope the voters remember this for the next couple election cycles.

I'm not sure how old you are, but shortly after Obama took office in 2009 there was quite a bit of reporting claiming that the Bush administration had been so disastrous and young people had been so thoroughly poisoned by Republican policies, that it would likely be a generation before the Republicans had the chance to win the presidency again. Remember, Bush left office in the depths of the Great Recession. Instead, it took less than 8 years for us to get MAGA.

I don't know how old you are, but the MAGA movement is an offshoot of the Tea Party movement which, although begun under Bush, became massively popular under Obama.

Sure, lots of people were not happy with Bush dragging the country into two wars, but most Republicans remained Republicans, and the angst (based on facts or otherwise) against Obama is what made the Tea Party Movement so big.

(Of course, there was the whole social media thing that became huge around the same time, but the design of social media doesn't favor one side over another...)

In 2024 Trump got some of the youth vote, still not a majority. Trump never won Gen X (or at least Millennial) and below.

So the prediction sounds right? The Republicans have burnt the youth vote pretty badly and have never really recovered.

In the 2024 election, Trump's strongest margins appear to have been with Gen X, where he was roughly +10% over Harris, even stronger than his results among the Baby Boomers.

(See, e.g. https://www.pewresearch.org/politics/2025/06/26/voting-patte... and https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/2024-elections/exit-polls. Annoyingly, the polls don't cleanly break down into generations; Gen X would be the ~44-60 crowd for that election.)

Thank you for the correction! Does seem a little bit unclear given those age buckets but definitely enough to walk back my previous claim.

They didn't in the last couple. Those elections went 49% vs 51%. I don't hold out a lot of hope for the next couple. They feign surprise, but it isn't like it was a mystery as to what he was going to do. He campaigned on everything he is doing.

The last few elections have been the most active in history, especially in 2020 essentially everyone voted.

Which should inform the credibility of anyone declaring one issue or another would definitely motivate voters to come out and vote for whatever policy they want to say is a winner: the last two elections, despite enormous new voter activation, the split in preference followed polling trends anyway.

The great fiction of American politics at this point seems to be the belief that the non-voting population are definitely an election margin who'll definitely come and vote for you provided you support <commentators preferred policy here>.

The vast majority of voters don’t ever understand why they’re being screwed by economic policies, they just know when they are.

It’s much worse than that. People just feel like they’re getting screwed whether they are or not.

This might stem from the simple fact that the average American is constantly getting screwed. It's just a sliding scale of how badly.

Both parties are against them, owned by oligarchs and mega donors that are actively trying to increase the wealth gap and make average Americans fight each other over the petty dilemma of the week, rather than the real fight of the whole country vs maybe a couple thousand ultra rich douchebags.

This is exactly the type of cynicism that's destroying the country.

I'd argue it's the wealth hoarding and vast lobbying that's destroying the country.

I'm sure you would!

Yes.. that's why I said I would.

When is the last time the American government didn't screw at least 70% of its voters?

This is exactly the type of cynicism that's destroying the country.

No, the government is destroying the country by always screwing 70% of its voters.

Nope, it's worse than that, the democracy actually works and the voters are just dumb.

And they’re too dumb to remember who caused the problems and just blame the other team no matter what.

This is difficult even for experts paying attention because economics is cyclical and policies can take time to show their effects

That's a part of the whole issue, isn't it? People have been trained to disregard (and disrespect) nuanced factual information un favor of political platitudes.

> been trained to disregard (and disrespect) nuanced factual information

I don't think anyone here was ever trained on nuance, so how are they going to separate that from political platitudes???

Many of the findings of mkultra and adjacent clandestine programs of the 20th century are about precisely how to steer the mindsets of large groups of people with psychological trauma.

And blame the other side lol

They don't even know that, come on.

They won't. I have industrial clients who are financially eating shit from all this and they have posters of Trump hanging on their office wall while extolling his antics. The workers think the same way. We're boned unless these morons wake up (they won't.)

What is the hook for them?

> What is the hook for them?

They like the way his administration has been terrorizing brown people. Dig in with any of these ~simpletons~ undecided voters and it’s literally that simple.

They will never say that, though - you have to infer it from their behavior and what they do say. Which requires a lot of observations. Meanwhile they can quickly refute it by having a black friend.

It's all cultural. It's pretty bonkers that you can tell who someone voted for in 2024 with a high degree of accuracy just by the shape of their sunglasses lenses.

Now, I’m curious. What side wears which sunglasses?

Example:

https://x.com/TheZackLethal/status/1270823526178664449

So aviators and oakleys I guess?

Straight arms (no curve around the ear), 95% chance the wearer is a Trumper.

They honestly believe Trump is telling the truth, is doing the right thing by America, trying to help them. IMO, the problem is a lot of these people are well intended, and in many ways good people, but they lack critical thinking (I'm being nice here.) I certainly think they can be changed but it takes a very careful, gentile approach. No one likes being told they're wrong -- you have to let them come to that conclusion, not beat them over the head with it.

I despise this current administration. Yet, when I talk to people, I treat them with the same respect as I would my own parents -- don't matter who they are. I have had fun conversations with near toothless factory workers, literal walking stereotype caricatures of MAGA guys, who really aren't bad. They're just trying to live life and keep their lives together yet here's the world, changing all around them. Then this big mouth assures them it will be all right if you vote for him. They get worked up about things like DEI, LGBTQ, foreigners, etc. Sure it sounds stupid but it is what it is, you deal with it using tact. And here I am, born and raised NYC who was a minority at my public high school (may time the only white kid in class), dated the rainbow, and have a lot of experience with a lot of culture. I usually have a hard rock/heavy metal look so I fit in and they feel comfortable. I just tell them fun or funny stories about cultures and all variety of people I knew. These stories help to clear up misconceptions. Like literally the dentally challenged MAGA fellow I mentioned before told me on my way out that he enjoyed my stories and that he learned something new about people. That's the magic -- story telling and gentile nudging of opinions. Rome wasn't built in a day.

I'm actually hopeful in my own way, but the current political environment is being shaped by adult aged children on both sides and it just gets worse. Though they always say, it gets worse before it gets better. Keep nudging that knowledge.

The voters watch Fox. They will not see this.

I don't think it's helpful to suggest that "both sides" are equal in American politics, but I do think you have to be a least a little understanding that the democrats aren't an attractive alternative to most Americans. I'm afraid a pretty large minority of Americans have landed in the lose-lose position of "if i can't make it better, i might as well make it worse faster".

My Bangladeshi immigrant mom and her sister are complaining on Facebook that they were "good Democrats" until "Obama, AOC, and Bernie" brought their "radicalism." Democrats wave away this stuff as "performative," but people feel it viscerally and it subdivides and splits the coalition.

Most people don't vote based on policies and data. They are naturally skeptical about whether your five-point plans are actually going to have the intended effect. Instead, they vote based on their assessment of your judgment and whether you broadly share their ideas about what "good" and "bad" are.

Anyone who says Obama, of all people, was radical clearly listens to too much Fox News and conservative talk radio (which is an entirely different problem).

The only way Obama was objectively radical as a politician and president was the color of his skin.

My mom watches CNN and liked Obama as President. But my parsing of her comment—I haven’t talked to her about it, just saw it pop up when my aunt responded “me too, sister”—is that she views Obama as the patriarch so the buck stops with him to police the party messaging.

This is maybe an odd view for an American but it makes sense within a Bangladeshi social context. And democrats are the ones who chose to cultivate an electoral map based on immigrants like my mom in states like Virginia and Michigan.

> Obama as the patriarch so the buck stops with him to police the party messaging.

Sanders is not a member of the party. AOC didn't run for office until Obama had been retired a few years.

I get that you are trying to state facts but to the average person they are all Democrats so it don't matter.

Yes, this is part of why it was so stupid for Sanders to not actually join and support the party. Had he done that, it's entirely possible he could have won the support of the actual voters he needed to win the presidency.

Also, it's still insane to expect Obama to police e.g. AOC's language 10 years post-Presidency. That's just an insane expectation. Reality is many voters are crazy.

He’s the elder statesmen of the party. In my mom’s part of the world he’d still be de jure in charge of the party. Then if he wasn’t replaced by another man of similar stature, control of the party might pass to Michelle (like happened at least four times in Bangladesh, India, and Pakistan).

Its not like it’s totally alien in America. After Biden’s disastrous debate in 2024, Obama was the one who swooped in to lead the party through the chaos. And if Michelle ran for the nomination, she’d probably win. If she had stepped in in 2024 she would’ve won the nomination and the election.

> He’s the elder statesmen of the party.

In US politics, that mantle holds until someone else takes the nomination. That role is Biden's. It seems really odd that a former leader other than the most recent would be in charge of the party anywhere. (Remembering here that Biden is still alive and generally capable if suffering age-related decline. Also contextualizing with the fact that the sitting president is also obviously suffering age-related decline.)

> control of the party might pass to Michelle (like happened at least four times in Bangladesh, India, and Pakistan).

Yeah, I can see how someone from one of those countries might project onto US politics things that are not commonly done here. Relevant here is Obama beating Hillary for the nomination in 2008.

> After Biden’s disastrous debate in 2024, Obama was the one who swooped in to lead the party through the chaos

I am a political sicko, and I do not remember this happening. Are you perhaps elevating the importance of a single speech Obama gave?

> Yeah, I can see how someone from one of those countries might project onto US politics things that are not commonly done here

Yes, that was my point. Someone asked me why my mom lumped Obama in with “radicals” and I tried to explain that she probably thinks it’s his job as the most senior man. Biden isn’t because he’s too old and sick. The patriarch is someone like Obama’s age. Gray haired but still vigorous.

> Someone asked me why my mom lumped Obama in with “radicals” and I tried to explain that she probably thinks it’s his job as the most senior man.

Another explanation is that she is misinformed and brainwashed by all the Facebook memes targeted towards boomers. It's not exactly a secret that Meta continues to push right wing propaganda in order to help elect conservative politicians.

No she watches CNN in a loop. But she left an unstable third world country and viscerally dislikes what’s going on with DSA, immigration, etc. That said she also hates Trump’s Queens immigrant affect, unpredictability, populism, etc. She loves Obama’s Anglo-Protestant affect and mannerisms but seems to dislike that he’s so tolerant of the DSA types.

You said she's also on Facebook, that's why I guessed.

> But she left an unstable third world country and viscerally dislikes what’s going on with DSA, immigration, etc.

What does she dislike about DSA, immigration, etc.? What does she think of the rhetoric coming from the Republican party that America doesn't need and want third world immigrants such as herself and her family? And that you should be rounded up, denaturalized, and deported back to Bangladesh (see Laura Loomer's recent comments).

> That said she also hates Trump’s Queens immigrant affect, unpredictability, populism, etc.

I guess it's a rite of passage for all American immigrants to hate on immigrants. "I got mine and I'm the 'correct' type of immigrant. Others are not."

> What does she dislike about DSA, immigration, etc.?

She thought the future would be Bangladeshis acting like British people instead of Bangladeshis acting like Bangladeshis in Britain.

> What does she think of the rhetoric coming from the Republican party that America doesn't need and want third world immigrants such as herself and her family?

She doesn’t want “Little Bangladesh” in Queens to be happening anymore than Trump does. One of the few things she agrees with him on. We came to a red state in 1989 and a county with a Republican congressman who ran unopposed most years, and everything was fine because we were trying very hard to absorb the local culture instead of changing it with our own. Nobody had a problem with Bangladeshi immigrants when it was just a handful of people who left their culture of origin at the door. Americans are extremely tolerant and accommodating people.

> She thought the future would be Bangladeshis acting like British people instead of Bangladeshis acting like Bangladeshis in Britain.

I don't quite get this. What acting like Bangladeshis or acting like British people mean? And what does it have to do with DSA?

> She doesn’t want “Little Bangladesh” in Queens to be happening anymore than Trump does. One of the few things she agrees with him on. We came to a red state in 1989 and a county with a Republican congressman who ran unopposed most years, and everything was fine because we were trying very hard to absorb the local culture instead of changing it with our own. Nobody had a problem with Bangladeshi immigrants when it was just a handful of people who left their culture of origin at the door. Americans are extremely tolerant and accommodating people.

So similar to Little Italy or Chinatown and other ethnic places? Why do you have to leave your culture of origin at the door? I thought one of the great things about America was that everyone can celebrate their culture. What local culture did you try to absorb if everyone left it at the door? Or are you specifically talking about white vs other ethnicities? Are you ashamed of your ethnicity and country where your parents immigrated from?

"We are the right kind of people, not the others" Internalized racism is such a weird thing to me.

> I don't quite get this. What acting like Bangladeshis or acting like British people mean? And what does it have to do with DSA?

There's a lot going in Pakistan / India / Bangladesh that's been shaped by the effect of British commerce, manipulation, and rule over a long period.

The Brits imposed a local civil service structure that itself became one of many forms of caste, classism and hierarchy, this one associated with British dress, language, and mannerisms.

You can see similar attitudes in the UK from the now old and historic first waves of post WWII immigrant uncles and aunts, overly formally British in dress and manners and looking down on their own descendants for pushing back on that and adopting other attitudes in dress and speech.

Educate her.

My mom grew up as a woman in a socialist muslim country in the 1960s. I grew up in a comfortable virginia suburb. What wisdom do I have to impart onto her, lol?

You have the wisdom and lack of ego to know when something should not be done. :) (High praise)

Media literacy and critical thinking.

He also signed Obamacare, a bill written by Republicans, approved by Democrats and then watered down by Republicans who held a majority. All Obama did was sign it as he was legally required to.

Democrats had almost an 80 House seat majority and 57 Senate seats when Obamacare was enacted.

That's the prime example of why casting Obama as a radical is ridiculous.

Having the power to ram something more partisan-palatable through and choosing to negotiate with the opposition to find a more mutually-tolerable consensus is the antithesis of radicalism.

I don’t think Obama is a radical. But he had radical people in his orbit from his “community organizer” days.

I can't see much of their agenda that made it through into radical policy. Are there specific examples I'm missing?

It made it into the street level advocacy, which was my point above.

> they vote based on their assessment of your judgment and whether you broadly share their ideas about what "good" and "bad" are.

You can't really simplify it to such a degree. I believe humans are creatures of action. We like it when things happen. Sometimes, not all the time but sometimes, our morals are downstream of that desire to "be effective". We will align ourselves, no matter the violence we have to do to our own senses, with what is useful.

Specifically, their willingness to skeptically engage with your five-point plan demands that you're actually able to execute it. If you categorically can't make anything happen, then people will cling to an explanation and a morality that can. American democracy has been at a standstill for upwards of 30 years, If the American people have to believe that all their politicians are pedophiles to get some sort of movement again. Then that's what they are going to believe.

Kind of funny that most Republicans wouldn't even consider you or your parents to be Americans while your family is concerned about "radical Democrats."

Biggest myth is left vs right, when it's upper vs lower.

Also known as right (upper) vs left (lower). The biggest myth is that out of the two parties, the one which is left of the other must also be left on the absolute scale. It isn't - they're both right. Actual left is people like Bernie, AOC and Mamdani, who are an extreme minority of politicians.

True.

According to polls democrats are the worse side, they are the most unpopular party maybe in history and are at an extreme low in terms of their approval rating. Trump is almost 20% more popular than the Democratic Party and they are polling below AI and ICE, they are right around the same approval rating with the American people as Iran.

And still they refuse to back down on a number of policies that have been proven to be extremely unpopular.

Part of that is because progressives also hate the Democrats for being hypocritical and/or ineffective. Doesn't mean they're going to vote for an R, though.

This is definitely a problem the dems seem unable to rectify, and for good reason. I'm very left, and i think the democrats are awful at their jobs - or good, if it benefits them right? And that's the rub, most leftists don't like the democrats because they tend to align with business interests and their own enrichment. It very much feels like "well of course we do that, everyone (with a D or R) does it!" and that's pretty deflating for people who want _better politicians_.

I want to vote for someone who sticks to their plan, who is as honest as possible, who actually cares about Americans instead of saying some catchy phrases and looking good on camera while shaking hands with lobbyists and harmful industries - it's ludicrous!

I agree with the sibling comment that the dems rank lower because their base is made of people who begrudgingly vote for them when the time comes and spend the rest of the time being frustrated that it's our best option.

Not based on the special election results the past year, and primary turnout along with gains in polling numbers of Democrats compared to their Republican counterparts. Just look at Texas, Maine, Ohio, North Carolina, Alaska, Iowa, even Kansas. Bunch of red seats in play.

What are some of these unpopular policies that “they” refuse to back down from?

Your comment is spot on. Don't know why you're being junked.

-Independent..

Here's the problem: as bad as republicans are, democrat governments have the tendency to let most everything they did in place, and even add more as a way of playing a "bipartisan" game. The result is that democrat governments don't change the economy in any substantive way that can give a reason for people to support them.

They won't. Hope to be wrong though

Voters don’t go and actually look at the data themselves. They rely on pundits and the news to tell them the salient points.

The problem is that the media has essentially lost most of its usefulness as a bulwark against the most egregious excesses of crony capitalism and cozied up to it instead. It feels like the Gilded Age again, but the people are somehow more insufferable. Cramming the “light of human consciousness into the stars” apparently requires we create CSAM generating machines powered by nitrogen oxide belching gas turbines. Even the folks at non-profit news outlets like Pro Publica have leadership that refuses to understand that it is difficult to prevent AI errors at scale. Nobody reviews drafts with such detail, we make a lot of assumptions, we trust that the person/machine is not feeding us trash.

This is, of course, doesn’t even bring up the fact that a lot of people in the US now get their news—similar to folks in India via WhatsApp (that became such a problem that Meta was forced to curtail the number of forwards you could do in the app)—by passing trash, hate fueling articles around on social media.

In essence we took the grand market place of ideas, and then let it get completely owned by a few firms.

The media, where it isn’t outright compromised, is dying to survive on any revenue stream. local news outlets which are the backbone of solving actual Issues for citizen are not profitable and dying.

We have platforms, which instead incentivize for the largest viewer count, so local content is sacrificed at the altar of the zeitgeist.

"But...but...but what about gender equity in high-school sports?" - Voters

Social issues are just as important to voters as the economy and attacking them for caring about this issue, one that very clearly the people have asserted their opinion on, is dumb. If dems would stop dying in the hill of unpopular social policies they’d be winning more elections.

Anyone voting on the basis of the issue is the dumb one, sorry.

It’s a manufactured controversy with only a handful of trans athletes (usually at high school level) in the entire country. It does not make the slightest difference to the lives of the vast, vast majority of voters. If you let it outweigh factors that actually affect your life then you’re a dumb voter.

It affects woman and parents of girls. It's seen as men taking things women had to struggle to get and safety issues. I can see how it would affects women in general but I agree has little affect on those men who do not watch sports and are not pro women.

“It’s seen as”

Is the crucial statement there. Not “it is”.

> It affects women and parents of girls

No it doesn’t. It’s a new boogeyman to demonize that isn’t actually a factor in almost anyone’s lives. Not to mention that the people pushing this issue are proposing things like genital inspections to ensure the boogeyman never arrives:

https://www.newsweek.com/kansas-republicans-pass-bill-genita...

As the parent of a girl I’m a hell of a lot more concerned about that than I am of a trans kid wanting to play sports.

No-one is asking for "genital inspections". This is a claim invented for the purpose of sidestepping the fairness argument.

Oh really?

https://www.opb.org/article/2026/06/05/washington-students-s...

Yes. Read the text of bill linked from that article. There is nothing in there that mandates "genital inspection" for the purpose of sex verification in sports. It merely provides an option of reusing existing health data that has already been collected.

But of course data reuse isn't a sufficiently controversial framing, so a "genital inspection" angle is pushed instead by the author of the article.

The initiative would require students who want to participate in girls’ sports to provide “a health examination and consent form or other statement signed by the student’s personal health care provider that verifies the student’s biological sex, relying only on one or more of the following: The student’s reproductive anatomy, genetic makeup, or normal endogenously produced testosterone levels.”

There is no fairness argument, only ignorance. For amateur sports, giving even a little bit of a shit is just pathetic. The risk of accusing cis girs/women of being trans is obviously extremely damaging. And discouraging trans folks from participating in amateur sports is also incredibly cruel.

For professional or top-tier competitive sports, virtually every sports organization has had rules in place to handle this for decades. The IOC started using testosterone levels as the barometer for fairness in 2003. The entire right-wing apparatus works by feigning ignorance, pretending nobody has ever thought about the fairness of trans folks in sports, all to infuriate easily suggestible rubes. It's beyond absurd.

You have demonstrated another method of sidestepping the fairness argument, which is to pretend it doesn't exist and claim that no-one should care anyway.

The genitals inspections are a result of trans issue. Not concerning yourself with one issue that creates the issue you dislike is shortsighted.

I agree with "seen as" vibes think of the children era being foolish but its what liberal parents are talking about. Mega followers never accepted trans in sport or life so this doesn't change viewpoints.

The genitals inspections are a result of trans issue. Not concerning yourself with one issue that creates the issue you dislike is shortsighted.

The "issue" is only an "issue" because some people on Fox News told you it was an "issue." Ask what you're being distracted from.

What are you even talking about? Trans folks didn’t suddenly pop into existence in 2014 or whatever, and force conservatives to recognize them. There’ve been trans people since the beginning of human civilization. As with so many of these culture war topics, this outrage was just pulled from nowhere one day to rile up Fox News viewers after they’d adequately calmed down about Obama’s tan suit.

Suddenly, not wanting trans folks to participate in civilization, Conservatives have gone all in on the transvestigation bullshit that includes genital inspections, accusing conventionally less feminine-looking cis women of being men, etc.

These people are just bigots.

Since you supposedly care about women so much I’m sure you can tell me how many trans women were playing in college and professional sports in 2020 versus today. Go ahead. Give me numbers.

It's such a small fraction though and it completely ignores the needs of trans and non-binary athletes. They're not all going to be able to compete on the men's side.

If dems would stop dying in the hill of unpopular social policies they’d be winning more elections.

I don't disagree, fundamentally, but the voters are prioritizing minor issues that affect one in a million people over major issues that affect everyone. That's not good judgement, it's stupidity. It's why wedge issues work so well.

It's Republicans who are dying on the hill of unpopular policies. Nobody cares about men in womens sports to the point of dying from diarrhea or closing shop.

You're funny

Today in manufacturing: I saw one time use mouthwashes at target (ugh). Made in china. We can’t make overpriced pouches or mouthwash here

That’s the point. He wants to crash the monetary market and he has allllll the investments in digital currencies, ai, data centers, energy, computation & weapons. Why prop up a system that literally tried to kill him and will wreck havoc on his family after he’s outta office stripped of power. Dude is operating on death ground right now.

> That’s the point. He wants to crash the monetary market and he has allllll the investments in digital currencies, ai, data centers, energy, computation & weapons.

I think you’re giving him too much credit. He is just a mouthpiece for various people, he can’t make a plan and stick with it, and never has.

"regressive religious minority" yes, Israelis and the evangelicals that worship them.

A lot of people who voted for Trump aren't surprised by this. The didn't vote for Trump to win as much as they voted for Democrats too lose. What does it take to lose to Trump twice, and by some accounts three times?

Not absolutely everything. You can make a very strong negative claim without hyperbole, and be a more trusted source in the process.

Genuinely interested in understanding why you need this level of precision. To me it would seem you are removing some abstraction and getting to the details. If this something common in your line of work? E.g. in your peers? If that's the case, would you mind sharing the field you're active in? Do you have a hunch why you would need this level of detail e.g. Education, culture?

Because labelling all policies as negative by association isn't an actual evaluation of the merit of the policy. If you mark all policies as bad because they must all be bad, you're almost certainly excluding good policies from future consideration. Is not the goal good policies?

As a non American, curious to know what has not been a disaster under Trump II specifically

Nuclear stuff. btw what's more probable - every single thing that has been done under this presidency is unambiguously negative, or it's mostly negative? It's so easy to just NOT take the most extreme stance, and almost certainly to like 10 9s more accurate. Yet I'm downvoted for it.

If the only good thing you can name is "nuclear stuff" it’s not a stretch to say it’s a complete disaster though. When people say "everything" they don’t mean "everything", it’s just easier than saying "everything except that 1 thing".

That's kind of my point. It is a stretch that's called lying. Why not just relax the claim instead of insisting the world understands it's hyperbole

If someone were to list out all the things this admin's fucked up during this term alone we'd be here all day. Seriously; on his watch, there's been food poisoning and child imprisonment; transparent market manipulation; rolling back of various laws and policies which represented protections for workers, marginalized groups, endangered species and national parks; direct participation in the corruption of dozens if not hundreds of US federal agencies; extortion of both US states and foreign nations; threats of violence against strategic allies; waging actual wars of aggression; striking civilian infrastructure and populations during those wars of aggression; engaging in undeclared/irregular warfare; performing strikes against targets which were not clearly combatants; kidnapping a head of state; engaging in warfare and policy shakeups which are timed too perfectly to market close/market open for it to be anything other than market manipulation; engaging in IP infringement against the Nintendo corporation; pushing the morale of the crew of an aircraft carrier strike group so low that sailors were reportedly jumping overboard; engaging in chronic suppression of the press despite the first amendment right to press freedom; reducing or withdrawing the US presence from the ROC and ROK, threatening regional and arguably global stability in doing so; undermining the financial prospects of US beef farmers by federally subsidizing Argentine beef, blaming US citizens for accidents or crimes which in some cases Trump himself may have had a hand in, lying to constituents on a variety of topics (knowingly), deepening the political divides of a country that's already deeply divided, undermining the fairness of both the presidential election as well as threatening to do so to the midterms, supporting the increasing consolidation of US private media largely on the basis of friendliness to the current admin (often as expressed through donations)...

Half of these (or at least, instances of these) happened in the past week or two; most of the rest have happened in the past 2-3 months. I'm not even being exhaustive. You could

"Everything" is an understandable shorthand in this case and while technically hyperbolic it's really understood that it really means "most things that matter on a domestic and foreign policy stage."

This is such a weird hill to die on dude. People are angry and it's been an embarrassing disaster filled with fraud on the highest scale, jumping on the fact that 1 out of 500 of his policies hasn't been bad just makes you look like you've completely missed the point

I don't like false statements, fuck me right? Accurate models of reality matter. If you stick to the belief that 100% of trump presidency is negative, you will eliminate from your options the policies that were positive.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com