On this day in history, President Abraham Lincoln was fatally shot while attending a play.
There’s a phenomenon where someone writes an essay about this or that but someone else wants to discuss something that has not yet made it to the front page.
This is unfair to everybody involved. It’s unfair to the guy who wrote the original essay because, presumably, he wants to talk about his original essay. It’s unfair to the guy who wants to talk about his link because it looks like he’s trying to change the subject. It’s unfair to the people who go to the comments to read up on the thoughts of the commentariat for the original essay and now we’re talking about some other guy’s links.
So!
The intention is to have a new one of these every week. If you want to talk about a link, post it here! Or, heck, use it as an open thread.
And, if it rolls off, we’ll make a new one. With a preamble just like this one.
This ad showed up in my feed. It’s a young man running for Governor of Colorado (so it most likely won’t show up for you).
What *I* found interesting is the “useless degrees” part. It seems like “useless degrees” is showing up more and more as a political talking point. It was merely an undercurrent for the debt forgiveness debate but now people who are running for political office are just up’n saying “useless degrees”.Report
He ran for congress last year IIRC and made headlines for shopping which seat to run forReport
He’s going out of his way to not mention his party affiliation.
Republicans would *NEVER* vote for a Democrat and Dems would *NEVER* vote red.
Independent? Hell, everybody would vote for an independent!Report
He is also almost certainly not going to win.Report
The Bukele presser is going about as horribly as one can imagineReport
https://bsky.app/profile/did:plc:sefgphqp2xqwh2hawaixykwz/post/3lms4dic6mk2l?ref_src=embed&ref_url=https%253A%252F%252Fwww.lawyersgunsmoneyblog.com%252F2025%252F04%252Fan-elite-institution-finally-understands-the-shot
Harvard fights backReport
Trump asks Bukele to build prisons for American citizens. Don’t pretend Trump is just joking. He means this literally and seriously. El Salvador will be a gulag for American dissidents:
https://www.rawstory.com/will-trump-deport-american-citizens/Report
Poe’s Law is a harsh mistress: https://bsky.app/profile/virginmedianews.bsky.social/post/3lmrlfegsbo24
A crew of six women, including pop star Katy Perry and Jeff Bezos’s fiancé Lauren Sanchez, is set to blast off today on an 11-minute Blue Origin flight.
It marks the first all-female space mission in 60 years — hailed as a breakthrough for gender equality in space tourism.Report
While Trump buddies up with Elon Musk, it’s been Gwynne Shotwell that has built SpaceX into the powerhouse it is. She was employee #7, hired by Musk to find a COO. The story goes that whenever she suggested someone, Musk said, “They’re not as good as you are, why don’t you just take the job?” Eventually she did. According to folklore, she’s one of the very few people on Earth that if she says, “Elon, shut up and listen for a minute,” he shuts up and listens.Report
The online right is having their are we the baddies moment: https://www.nytimes.com/2025/04/14/opinion/dissident-right-trump.html
Nathan Cofnas, a right-wing philosophy professor and self-described “race realist” fixated on group differences in I.Q., wrote on X, “All over the world, almost everyone with more than half a brain is looking at the disaster of Trump (along with Putin, Yoon Suk Yeol, et al.) and drawing the very reasonable conclusion that right-wing, anti-woke parties are incapable of effective governance.” (Yoon Suk Yeol is South Korea’s recently impeached president.)
Scott Siskind, who blogs under the pseudonym Scott Alexander, has been an influential figure in Silicon Valley’s revolt against social justice ideology, though he’s never been a Trump supporter. Last week, he asked whether “edgy heterodox centrists” like himself paved the way for Trump by opening the door to once-verboten arguments. In an imaginary Socratic dialogue, he wrote, “We wanted a swift, lean government that stopped strangling innovation and infrastructure. Instead we got chain-saw-style firings, total devastation of state capacity in exactly the way most likely to strangle innovation more than ever, and the worst and dumbest people in the world gloating about how they solved the ‘grift’ of sending lifesaving medications to dying babies……
When liberalism was firmly entrenched, its discontents could treat authoritarian ideas as interesting avant-garde provocations. Authoritarianism in power, however, was always going to be crude and stupid.
Trump’s tariffs have pushed some to the breaking point because they reveal the immediate material cost of that stupidity. The decadent cynics of the new right could dismiss Trump’s lies about the 2020 election as mere hyperbole. It’s harder to be sanguine about a collapse in one’s own net worth and economic prospects. “It kind of made the consequences seem real,” Hanania said of the trade war.”Report
They doxxed him *AGAIN*. Jeez louise, those guys.Report
I think definitionally doxxing can only happen to someone once, right? After that there’s nothing new to reveal. Redox is a thing in chemistry but not so much in anonymity management.Report
Jan 6th was more than 4 years ago and proved conclusively that Trump was unfit for office. At that point ideology doesn’t really matter.
The flaws in “wokeness” are an issue but that’s a different conversation.Report
China is now doing what it can to undercut loudly rather than quietly.
There’s a bunch of people explaining that *REAL* Gucci or Hermes or whatever are made in Europe and that may be true, but the point is that China is saying “you can buy our replicas of the luxury items that cost a couple of orders of magnitude more elsewhere”.Report
China has suspended exports of rare earths and rare-earth magnets. Not just to the US, to the world.
https://www.nytimes.com/2025/04/13/business/china-rare-earths-exports.htmlReport
Now would be a pretty good time to revisit the EPA regulations on rare earth processing.Report
Living downstream from mines that are still leaching toxic stuff into the surface water more than a century after they were abandoned, I’d be happier to see rapid commercialization of some of the new extraction technologies. Eg, the U of West Virginia has developed a method for extracting from the toxic runoff out of abandoned coal mines a couple of tons of rare earth elements per mine per year. A couple of public research universities, working with the DOE’s national labs, have methods for extracting REEs from coal ash ponds.
[sarcasm] But tending an extraction facility that uses somewhat sophisticated chemistry isn’t a manly job, like driving big earth movers to shovel whole mountain sides into giant ore crushers, and using a few million gallons per year of concentrated hydrochloric acid that no one knows how to dispose of nicely. [/sarcasm]Report
It depends on how badly we want the magnets, I guess.
If we can get by with vibes, we can get by with vibes.Report
It’s not an either-or situation. Well, I guess it is if you start from the position, “I want REEs mined and refined in the US to be as cheap as what China produces.” It doesn’t have to be an either-or situation. We can produce REEs in much cleaner fashion if we want to pay somewhat more.Report
“We” need only to declare a national emergency. That should speed things up bigly.Report
Just so I’m clear, because I’m curious, is the hydrochloric acid needed for the extraction process of mining REE’s or for the recycling REE’s from coal ash ponds?Report
HCl or other solvents are routine in the case of REEs in “normal” ores. In coal ash, they can take a different approach.Report
Thank you.Report
Trump is “completely underwater” & has broken his own record with the lowest net approval at this point among independents (-22 pts).
His economic net approval with indies at this pt is so low (-29 pts) it has “no historical analogy”.
Most indies (66%) oppose the new tariffs-Harry Enten on CNNReport
Good.Report
Columbia University seems to be developing a spine again: https://www.nytimes.com/2025/04/15/nyregion/columbia-trump-president-response.htmlReport
The law firm agreements are exactly what you expect: “One reason we know they’re not legally enforceable agreements is that what Trump is threatening is clearly illegal. Indeed, one can go quite a bit further than this, as TPM Reader AK suggests, and say that if the agreements are agreements then the agreements themselves look like bribery. Trump agrees to forego threatened illegal actions in exchange for $100 million or $125 million of services. That amounts to services of great value in exchange for government inaction and, critically, this part of the agreement is with Trump personally, not the U.S. government. It involves causes Trump supports, and this part of the agreement applies “during the Trump Administration and beyond.” So if you follow the purported logic, a 90-year-old ex-President Trump will still have pro bono work credits to assign in retirement.
But it’s also all just smoke and BS.
Almost every part of the agreements are worded in ways that make the purported commitments basically meaninglessness. So for instance, each agreement has the firm agreeing not to do “illegal DEI hiring.” But that’s easy for them to agree to, as far as they’re concerned, because they don’t think whatever DEI or affirmative action hiring they do is illegal. So whatever “illegal DEI hiring” might be, they don’t do it. End of story. And the same applies to pretty much all the other fairness-related commitments.
Even the pro bono work, which now includes “other free legal services,” is a bit less than it appears. I noted above that this part of the agreement appears to be with Trump himself apart from the presidency and continues past the duration of his administration. But the same language means that the notional commitment to either $100 million or $125 million in pro bono work is over an indefinite and actually unlimited period of time. So by the terms of the agreement, Kirkland & Ellis or Cadwalader can run down that commitment over a century. Or two. Any amount of time is okay. Maybe Trump will still be assigning free legal work when he’s 200. I think Ronny Jackson said he’d probably live that long.
My point here isn’t to say these agreements are fine. It’s that they amount to agreements to lie to each other. And everyone else. Except to the firm’s own staff. They get the real story. Or what the management committee believes is the real story. Or anyone else who says the firm has betrayed their principles. They get told the firm didn’t really agree to anything.”
https://talkingpointsmemo.com/edblog/whats-really-in-the-white-house-law-firm-agreementsReport
I’m starting to think I need to write something about how fascism works, because these last two comments of Saul’s are very instructive and somewhat easy to miss what they say.
The confusion I’m seeing a lot is where people think of this as _extortion_, which it’s not, it’s just ‘bullying’. A normal extortion racket would have the extorted person agree to pay the extortion, and have some reasonable belief they had solved the problem for some span of time.
But the Trump administration doesn’t care about results, just like a bully does not care about lunch money. They care about demonstrating power dynamics. We all sort of understand how bullies think, and we know Trump is a bully, but we sorta lose track of that in the overt fascism…except fascism is the same thing. Or, maybe you can regard bullying as a very VERY scaled down version of fascism, what happens when you take someone with almost no power but the same mindset.
Fascists see everything as hierarchies and power dynamics. You have to stop thinking like it has any sort of goals, and realize it is entirely about perceived power imbalances (Which has almost nothing to do with actual power in any real sense.) and how they think over people perceive power imbalances, and how they can affect that.
Columbia is the person who was ordered to hand over their lunch money, caved and did so, and realized they would be forced to hand over more and more money. That was a very wrong move. It marked them as lower in the hierarchy of Trump.
Other colleges have refused, and in doing so, have challenged him. This means either he is either going to back down and hope we forget about it or just pretending he won. Or he will see that other people think he is weak and attack some more.
I am not sure if what these law firms did is a smart thing. It sorta depends if they can get it in _his_ head as an agreement between equals or near equals. Considering how much Trump has fought lawyers in his life, he might actually see them as a threat and consider them equal enough that he will stop. Maybe?Report
I am not sure if what these law firms did is a smart thing. It sorta depends if they can get it in _his_ head as an agreement between equals or near equals. Considering how much Trump has fought lawyers in his life, he might actually see them as a threat and consider them equal enough that he will stop. Maybe?
Well, that was answered quickly:
https://www.nj.com/politics/2025/04/law-firms-sold-their-souls-to-trump-now-hes-rubbing-their-noses-in-it.htmlReport
I agree. Trump’s basic MO is one of a third rate mafia boss shaking down for extortion money and his primary fanbase seem to be the kind of people that do not understand Scarface was not an instruction manualReport
Dollar down 10% since inauguration day as investors abandoning it due to tariff chaos. Yikes.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2025/04/15/dollar-investors-treasuries-safety/Report
Lovely. Just in time for my UK vacation. I wonder if the people who voted for Trump because they want “government ran like a business” stopped to consider the businessman they elected bankrupted a casino.Report
This has to be unprecedented in modern US history in terms of being totally self inflicted. It’s going to be a kick right in the balls to the average household. All I can say is I hope his supporters learn their lesson, and if they haven’t yet, well, I’m sure we can count on many more opportunities to come. We aren’t even a tenth of the way through.Report
They’ll come back. The dollar is pretty much invincible, not because it’s great but because all the alternatives are so much worse.Report
Newsweek is reporting that Letitia James may have a residence problem.
Apparently, back in 2023, she changed her primary residence to Norfolk, Virginia.
And, apparently, New York State Law says: “When an officeholder removes his residence from the territorial limits required by statute, the office is rendered vacant.”Report
Uh, this sounds like nonsense.
Signing a document that says you intended to change your residency pretty obviously can’t _actually_ change your residency.
Moreover, this entire thing seems incredibly vague. If you actually parse the article, it seems to say that she signed a document giving power-of-attorney to Thompson-Hairston saying that (What? Since when do power-of-attorney documents include where you intend to live?) and Thompson-Hairston, the _actual resident_, signed the mortgage documents, and also signed some ‘other document’ saying they both intended to live there.
I’m going to need a lot more information to parse that one out. For example, what this oddball power-of-attorney said, why would it have someone’s residence on it? And also…I don’t really see how lying on your power-of-attorney can be illegal? Also, what is this ‘other document’ that is supposedly important? I can sign a document saying anything, it doesn’t make it legally actionable.
The situation here, as presented by Newsweek, makes very little sense. Is this even Letitia James’ mortgage at all?
But, regardless, this cannot actually impact Letitia James’ actual residence for the purpose of her office. You can’t just sign documents saying you reside somewhere and magically legally reside there…imagine the tax nonsense if you could. In fact, let’s quote New York residency requirements:
Furthermore, your New York domicile does not change until you can demonstrate with clear and convincing evidence that you have abandoned your New York domicile and established a new domicile outside New York State. This means shifting the focus of your life to the new location. It is not enough simply to file a certificate of domicile or register to vote in the new location. All aspects of a person’s life are considered in determining whether a person’s domicile has changed. – https://www.tax.ny.gov/pit/file/nonresident-faqs.htm#income
(And that’s just a ‘domicile’, you can be a residence even if you are not domiciled there if you spend part of over 184 days in a year in NY. But it appears you are always a residence if you have a domicile, even if you don’t spent that much there.)Report
The New York Post has a newer article. Apparently it’s not about whether she was domiciled in New York but has to do with saying that it was something related to mortgage applications and how primary residences have different (looser) mortgage requirements than secondary residences.
So it’s just a civil thing, not a criminal thing.
Does messing up on finance paperwork really matter that much?Report
It matters if it harms someone’s else. That’s called fraud.
The question is to what extent any of this does.
You may notice that we are still talking about ‘unproven things people wrote in blogs’ and ‘letters that people in the Trump administration wrote’, things which, it should be pointed out, have absolutely no requirement to be anywhere near the truth, and are very much hedging that these supposed misstatements ‘might’ have provided a benefit to her.
Also, it’s worth mentioning that mortgage documents from 1984 and even 2000 are extremely outside the status of limitations, so that loan co-signing with her father is fairly irrelevant. (In addition to being a rather obvious mistake because that is utterly irrelevant to getting a loan and no one would do that on purpose.)Report
The Newsweek article talks about stuff from 2023.
But, hey. People make mistakes. Does the government really need to make a civil case out of honest mistakes?Report
Apparently, a guy went down to the address and, when the lady who lives there came out of his house, he asked her if Ms. James lives there and the woman said that she hasn’t seen Ms. James for a long time.
So there are *NO* residency problems. Letisha James does not live in that house.Report
Oh yes, the notoriously straight-laced New York Post.Report
The New York Times has a newer article.Report
Variety reports that Snow White has been banned in Lebanon.
But it’s okay because it’s about Gal Gadot and not because of how the movie is bad.Report
Any of our free speech absolutists want to weigh in on MTG having her constituents removed and tased for expressing dissent with the policies she supports?Report
You know, the first thing I thought of? The “don’t tase me bro” incident.
Anyway, the heckler’s veto is an interesting opportunity to discuss stuff like peaceful assembly and free speech and all that.
For what it’s worth, if it was the same situation that you described, I’d be against it. As it is, I’d rather discuss the limits of peaceful protest during a speech that you don’t like and how I’m not opposed to removal of disruptive protestors (though, granted, not their arrests unless they get rowdy).Report
You’d rather discuss hypothetical Limits then implications of actual events? And you wonder why people think you are a bad faith troll.Report
See, you say “hypothetical limits” when I think back about a few decades’ worth of various speakers getting shouted down. Like, not hypothetical ones, but actual ones. And you know what? That’s what happened here too. Protestors tried to shout down a speaker and were then removed from the venue.
Is the argument that protestors should be able to shout down speakers?
Because even free speech absolutists acknowledge stuff like “well, the heckler’s veto *DOES* create *SOME* problems, in theory.”
Even people who mock the idea of freeze peach should acknowledge that.Report
Elected representatives who have their constituents removed by force because they don’t like what the constituent is saying are not exercising a hecklers veto. They are denying the protestors 1st amendment rights in real time. It should be an abomination to this nation to do so.Report
My goodness. Is there footage of the event?
We should be able to determine whether this was a case of “protestor shouting down” versus “constituent speaking to politician” pretty quickly, if there’s footage.Report
I don’t think that that should be argued that way.
I think it is, and should be, perfectly legal to remove people like that.
However, the media should still cover it as an abomination. Just because something is legal doesn’t mean it isn’t something we should have elected representatives casually do without criticism.
A lot of people seem to fall into a weird hole thinking that legality and acceptable behavior should be the same thing. They are not. There are things that is entirely legal for elected people to do that should be seriously criticized, not because they are illegal, but because they are things that elected officials should not do!
And talking about legality obscures that fact because they can just point to the fact those things are not actually illegal.
Oh, and as for tasing to enforce compliance, I don’t think that should be legal, period. And I would ask people who have a problem with it _here_ why they think it’s okay in other circumstances.Report
She sucks, of course, but as someone who has principles other than who and whom, I think the details matter quite a bit. If you rent a room, depending on the terms of the contract, you likely have the right to eject people, and if they refuse to leave, you have the right to use force. As a…sigh…Congresswoman, she might be under additional First Amendment-related restrictions regarding kicking somebody out for content of speech, but if the people were being excessively disruptive, it would still be fair game to eject them on time, place, and manner grounds.
Would be super cool if she could get to work on ejecting the President, though.Report
That’s funny. You want her to do her constitutional job? Hahahahahaha.Report
We may yet find out if the judiciary has any teeth:
https://www.npr.org/2025/04/16/g-s1-60696/judge-contempt-alien-enemies-act?Report
From LA’s ABC affiliate: Nearly a third of LA’s fires last six years involved homeless people, new report shows
What makes this headline so infuriating is that we agreed to use the term “people temporarily experiencing houselessness” years ago. (Also, the person who wrote it needed an editor.)Report
The bulk of the increase was rubbish fires, not structure or wildfires, in case that’s not clear from the linked article.Report
Fires temporarily experiencing rubbish.Report
Commenters temporarily experiencing shitposting?Report
The good news is that the article itself goes back to the good term:
Gotta work on those headlines, though.Report
Having a philosophy background, I’m sure you’ve thought a lot about language and thought (the house of being, speech acts, and so on), and you might even be aware that labels tend to cause us to think in essentialist terms, that is, e.g., when we call someone homeless, we tend to see it as being the result of something inherent and possibly immutable about them, so trying to avoid essentializing labels is one part of a strategy to change the way people think about people who fall into a social category.
Again, focusing entirely on language, or harshly policing language (calling out instead of calling in, as the kids say), are generally bad, but so is a stubborn resistance to language change (a resistance usually explainable, obviously, by the fact that it really does affect how people think).
Anyway, like I said, I’m sure you know all this, but you are temporarily experiencing ressentiment.Report
Eh, it’s fixing the problems you can talk about instead of the problems you can’t talk about.
And, as you know, of that which one cannot speak, thereof one must be silent.Report
One of the interesting things about homelessness is that we don’t want to spend resources on people experiencing it, because we think about them in highly essentialized ways, but we end up spending a sh*t ton of resources on them anyway, as in the article you initially linked. One way to fix this vicious cycle would be for people to think about homelessness differently, and in particular, in a way that doesn’t involve moral judgment of people who are experiencing it, and language change is way we can help people get there.Report
The extent to which that thought is comforting compared to “the government is feckless if not malicious” gives me pause.
What if stupid/malicious people are just not very good at doing stuff?
More funding? More sensitivity education for people who do stuff like read newspaper stories about audits?Report
Members of my extended family are homeless or headed there. They make terrible choices because of some combo of mental illness and addiction.
Give them a business and they’ll destroy it. Give them money and they’ll spend it in insane ways. Try to be friends and they’ll emotionally abuse you. They can’t make deals. I assume everything they tell me is a lie because that’s normally correct.
My moral judgements aren’t the source of the problem. For my own sake I refuse to deal with them.
There are no good solutions. One of the problems is showering them with money is rewarding what should be punished and will have side effects we dislike more.Report
Once upon a time, when I lived in certain neighborhoods and took buses from certain stops (and going back further, to when I hung out in downtown Nashville 30 years ago), I spent a lot of time talking to people experiencing homelessness. I learned a lot from those conversations, but the biggest lesson is that for most of us, homelessness is way closer than we’d like to think. The cracks in the system that lead to homelessness are quite large, and all it takes to fall through it them are one of many pretty common precipitating events, e.g., a head injury, abuse at home (particularly for teenagers and women), surprisingly minor mental illness (though homelessness itself has a way of exacerbating most mental illnesses), or drug addiction (either what we think of as illicit drugs, or prescription drug addiction, which often comes from relatively common injuries), and a lack of resources and support (from family, community, or state).
With this in mind, it makes no sense to see people experiencing homeless as an other, defined by some feature inherent to themselves that makes them homeless, and differences on which make it difficult or impossible for me to become homeless. However, this is how people tend to see homelessness: as a straightforward result of bad choices, caused by something inherent to the people who make them. And this is why people experiencing homelessness remain one of the few social categories, and in particular one of the few vulnerable social categories, that it’s OK to treat poorly.
It’s interesting that, given the language so many people use to talk about homelessness, the only language people like Jaybird are interested in is the language people trying to change how we see homelessness ask us to use. If I were a better Freudian than I am, I’d say it has something to do with our deep need to not see how alike people experiencing homelessness and we are.Report
“[F]or most of us, homelessness is way closer than we’d like to think.”
Well, yes; I guess if I ran away from my current life to a far-off city where I had no family or friends and then decided that I didn’t need to think about anything more complicated than getting high, I’d probably end up homeless pretty quickly too.
Like, these are intentional choices I’d be making to screw up my life, not some completely out-of-the-blue “every possible source of support and assistance instantly vanished along with all my skills and knowledge”, but sure, not too far away.
” it makes no sense to see people experiencing homeless as an other”
see you say this like we’re supposed to fall down on our knees and break into sobs and realize that we save ourselves by saving them or some manure like that but what I’d say is that I don’t see them as “an other”, but that means I have even less sympathy because I think about how many times I would have to knowingly choose “worst option” to get where they are now.Report
Bend the knee and find your face covered in sh+t
https://www.nytimes.com/2025/04/16/us/politics/law-firms-deals-trump.htmlReport
In more Free Speech Absolutism news, Sebastian Gorka suggests that supporting due process for people like Kilmar Abrego Garcia, who have been lawlessly trafficked to El Salvador by the Administration, may be “aiding and abetting terrorism”, which is, of course, a crime.
Lest you think I’m just nutpicking Gorka, who is indeed a fringe weirdo idiot, the Administration decided to make this fringe weirdo idiot their senior director of counterterrorism.
https://www.thedailybeast.com/top-trump-official-claims-defending-due-process-is-aiding-terrorists/Report
Sadly, substantial numbers of people agree with that kind of sentiment in general, and always have agreed with it. Our modern notion of free speech is a relatively recent legal development and not especially popular.Report
Yeah the real problem, of course, is not that you can find idiots who believe this, or will say it out loud on Newsmax, but that those idiots who will say it out loud on Newsmax hold senior national security positions in the governmentReport
I think there was a really sad , destructive, and downright cynical in many corners complacency about the mostly, relatively normal for a Republican administration, appointments during Trump 1.0. For v 2.0 we are running an experiment to see what happens when you put the dumbest and craziest people possible in charge of organs of the state.Report
“Ha! Where are the people who were arguing against me when I was arguing for limits on free speech *NOW*?” is not as devastating a question as you think.
I’m curious as to whether the upsides of free speech absolutism are a bit more obvious than they were when you were arguing against the absolutists.
For my part, of FREAKIN’ COURSE IT’S NOT AIDING AND ABETTING TERRORISM.
And now I look forward to the next time that my speech is chilled because of this or that new fatwa that the left issues.Report
“Next time”? When was the first?Report
“When has the left ever tried to chill someone’s speech?”, he asked in the thread where someone opened with “where are the free speech absolutists now?”Report
If you don’t want to answer the question asked* rather than the one you put (and didn’t answer), that’s your prerogative.
*JB: And now I look forward to the next time that my speech is chilled because of this or that new fatwa that the left issues.
Me: “Next time”? When was the first?Report
The first happened during my childhood (note, I’m in my early 50s). Why do you ask?Report
Because I thought, silly me, that having brought your experiences into the discussion you might want to tell us more about them. But if you don’t, that’s your business.Report
Oh, I thought it was building up to some variant of “that wasn’t a big deal and you’re silly for thinking it was” or “but that was good though” instead of some variant of “of course freedom of speech needs some limits but even members of the outgroup should recognize that this is a bridge too far!”Report
That would depend on what you told us about what you experienced. I wouldn’t dream of telling you “that wasn’t a big deal” or the like unless I knew what “that” was.Report
Okay, Boomer.
I’m sure that things were awesome when you were a kid.
That’s one of the things people are complaining about. That stuff has changed and you haven’t even noticed.Report
I was there. They weren’t.Report
“Ha! Where are the people who were arguing against me when I was arguing for limits on free speech *NOW*?” is not as devastating a question as you think.
It actually is because I was, in fact, arguing that criticism, protest, disassociation, and “cancellation” all fell under the umbrella of free speech, and objecting to them on the basis of free speech was incoherent
The Right, all along, has rejected this formulation, especially when it comes to protest, not only defending lethal violence against peaceful protesters, but endorsing it with, e.g., the pardon of Daniel Perry
But the modern face of “free speech absolutism” is all about focusing on the “chilling effects” of other people’s speech, while winking at, or, more frequently, outright endorsing, state coercion being used against people whose speech they disagree withReport
“Punishing people for speech falls under the umbrella of free speech!”
Here’s what you ordered, sir.
I hope you enjoy it.Report
Private speech that serves to punish people by causing them economic and reputational harm is free speech
Saying that arguing in favor of that is the same as arguing that the government should bring charges against people for their speech is bizarrely backwards, like accusing me of violating the Fourth Amendment if I walk up to the sergeant’s desk at the local police station without a warrantReport
The norm of “free speech” does not exist to protect Right Wingers from the wrong (perhaps even evil) things that they might want to say out loud.
That is a by-product, sure.
But that’s not why it’s important.Report
Well yes, that norm of “free speech” doesn’t exist to protect the Right from the consequences of saying awful things all the time, because it is too incoherent to exist at all. Instead we have endless epicycles to try to explain why this criticism or boycott or cancellation is opposed to “free speech”, while that criticism or boycott or cancellation is an exercise of “free speech”
It’s dumb. We can, and should, decline to engage in it
(And yes, it mirrors similar and similarly fruitless debates on the Left about, e.g., “punching down”.)Report
It exists to prevent the day when you will be crying out “where are the people who believe in free speech?”Report
I never for a second believed that my question would be anything but rhetorical when the day cameReport
Well, do everything you can in the meantime to explain how “freedom of speech doesn’t mean *THAT*” to people. “Of course it has to have limits!”
Personally, I hope you fail to win that argument.
I suspect you’ll succeed at making it, though. Good and hard.Report
I’m not the one who argues that free speech has to have limits here, dudeReport
Hey, you’re just acknowledging that, sometimes, actions have consequences.
Hey, have you seen that Popper’s Paradox of Tolerance has been used to explain why anti-American students should be deported?
It’s going around! Hey. Actions have consequences, after all.Report
Sometimes actions have consequences, and inactions have consequences, and imaginary phantasms have consequences, and when those consequences come in the form of people exercising their free speech, freedom of association, and control over their consumer dollars, the consequences may be bad, or good, but one way or another it isn’t anti-free speech because it’s just free speech
If you don’t like it, well, I guess you can react to bad speech with more speech, and many people react to that bad speech with more bad speech in the form of incoherent attempts to build “free speech norms” that… shockingly… end up being all about trying to use social and economic pressure get people to change their speech!
Because that’s how you enforce norms!
Which is all fine if very silly until you decide that protest and boycotts are dire threats to free speech, but lawless detention and threats of prosecution leveled at dissenters by the federal government aren’t.Report
I wonder if Trump has gotten involved and is giving “ignore due process and make this happen” orders. He listens to the news and this looks pretty abnormal.
In a “normal” situation the gov would say “my bad”, ship him back, and call it a day.
They deal with absurd numbers of people a day. It’s acceptable if they drop the ball occasionally and there doesn’t seem to be any reason to view this guy as a threat.
What you don’t want to do is jeopardize your entire “ship them to a foreign prison” program over some guy you can’t defend keeping there.Report
The Fourth Circuit disagrees: https://www.nytimes.com/live/2025/04/17/us/trump-news-updates
A federal appeals court has shot down an effort by the Justice Department to stop Judge Paula Xinis from conducting an investigation into whether the Trump administration violated court orders to “facilitate” the release of a Maryland man, Kilmar Armando Abrego Garcia, from a prison in El Salvador.
In a strongly worded order, a three-judge panel said the government’s request to bar Judge Xinis from opening her inquiry was “both extraordinary and premature.”
“It is difficult in some cases to get to the very heart of the matter,” one of the judges, J. Harvie Wilkinson III, wrote. “But in this case, it is not hard at all. The government is asserting a right to stash away residents of this country in foreign prisons without the semblance of due process that is the foundation of our constitutional order. Further, it claims in essence that because it has rid itself of custody that there is nothing that can be done. This should be shocking not only to judges, but to the intuitive sense of liberty that Americans far removed from courthouses still hold dear.”Report
These past several months have made me wonder exactly how dear Americans still hold their liberties. Many appear to prefer privilege to freedom. Hopefully this is not yet a majority.Report
In response to the 4th Circuit, Pam Bondi promoted Garcia to being an MS13 gang leader. They have unlimited supplies of chutzpah and mendacity.Report
This is indeed true in the south. Mostly because they believe privilege conveys freedom.Report
The “When Must We Kill Them?” essays have started making the rounds.Report
Who on Earth is Nick Decker?Report
Grad student from GMU. Or a Fed. One of those.Report
As a bellwether, I think it’s a bit less shocking than David Brooks calling for a general strike in The New York Times.
He suggests, at the end, that we have “nothing to lose but our chains”.
David Brooks.Report
They have already taken away the salad bars from Applebee’s.
They have taken away the Ponderosas.Report
I think it’s worth reminding people that the Republicans are setting precedent after precedent that would, in their minds, be _absolutely disastrous_ to let Dems have.
They don’t expect to ever give up power.
I’m going to be honest here: While I knew this country was going to descend into outright fascism, because I paid attention and _knew_ what Trump had tried to do the last time he was in office, and had been stopped by the ‘sane people’ around him that he would not have this time…
…but I really did not expect concentration camps in the first three months, or open threats to jail people for dissent.
They’re really trying to speed-run this, aren’t they?
Meanwhile, David Brooks is still an idiot, and can’t resist adding this: Many have allowed themselves to become shrouded in a stifling progressivism that tells half the country: Your voices don’t matter. Through admissions policies that favor rich kids, the elite universities have contributed to a diploma divide. If the same affluent families come out on top generation after generation, then no one should be surprised if the losers flip over the table.
I’m not even particularly a fan of ‘progessivism’, really, but I’m pretty certain they have been essentially the one meaningful voice _against_ legacy admissions at universities. Or, you know, stopping ‘the same affluent families coming out on top generation after generation’, via things like, uh, taxes.
It really amazing how good conservatives are at conflating ‘The wealth often have very milquetoast liberal-sounding values’ with ‘This means the left must like the wealthy more than the right’. It’s that whole ‘teams’ thing that people keep blathering about instead of actual policy.Report
As far as I can tell, the Republicans have a “whatabout” for every single “precedent” that the Democrats claim are being set.
The rubicon, they say, has already been crossed.
As such, the argument “what if the shoe were on the other foot?!?” becomes toothless. “What, you mean like last time?”Report
There’s a thing the left says ‘It’s always projection’. The right always wants to do very illegal things, so it just builds entire structures that lie and say that is what the left is doing.
So when they do it, they can point at the lies.
Republicans held an entire investigation that deliberately mislead people that an ill-conceived IRS setup that investigated a huge influx of politically-named charities, on _both sides_. Republicans did this by literally ordering investigation into _just_ the charities on the right that were looked into. And by ‘looked into’, I mean ‘Asked a few more questions’, not ‘rejected’, or ‘audited’, or anything. They just said ‘Hey, this preclearance you want us to issue needs a few questions answered’.
And now, we have President Trump openly calling for the IRS to revoke (Not investigate, just outright revoke), the tax exempt status of Harvard explicitly for political reason.
I’m sure this is claimed as an escalation by people _who believe the original lies_, but those lies are, in fact, lies.
Same with ‘Bill Clinton might have hypothetically said something about the investigation of Hillary to Loretta Lynch on the tarmac’, and how merely the slightly appearance of that required investigation. Do you remember that?
That wasn’t even ‘a lie’, that was just complete nonsense from top to bottom, creating allegations out of thin air.
But now we have…I don’t even need to pick an example of how the DOJ works now, where it’s basically a direct appendage of the White House instead of having any separation at all.
I’m sure that all started with Democrats, with that meeting on the tarmac, somehow.
Over and over and over, Republicans just outright lied about crap, and the media went along with it, and not only did that help them then, it means, somehow, when Republicans actually wander into outright fascism, it means the Democrats did it first because a speaker got protested at a campus somewhere and that’s _sorta_ like the US deporting people for their political views, right?Report
In “Where are the Free Speech Abolutists?” discourse, apparently Karmelo Anthony is having a press conference and Austin Metcalf’s father has been asked to leave.
The police have been called.
What’s the right play, people who cry out for where the Free Speech Absolutists are?Report
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Killing_of_Austin_Metcalf
I’ve been following that one and I don’t think there’s a case for self defense.Report
I’m not talking about whether the alleged death was justified. Who can say? People are innocent until proven guilty in a court of law, after all.
I’m asking about the free speech rights of Austin Metcalf’s father to attend a press conference.Report
Of course he can stay. Or he could hold his own press conference if he wanted to spout off.Report
I don’t believe he was spouting off.
He was merely present and, when asked to leave, refused to.
The cops were called on him.Report
I’m not sure if it was an “invitation only” event or “open to the public”. I know the White House can dis-invite people so there’s that.
I can see why the family of the killer thought having the father of the victim there would end poorly.
I’m not sure if “poorly” mean “dualling press conference” or accusations. Austin Metcalf’s father has handled his son’s death pretty well thus far so it’s unlikely he was there to kill him (and that assumes Karmelo would be there which is unlikely).
From the raw police reports and reviews of the same; Karmelo looks guilty of inviting a fight with the intention of instantly stabbing the other guy “in self defense”. At best he felt he was being disrespected and killed him because of that.
Karmelo and his family suffer from having no case. Their best move at this point is to place the race card, lie to the media about what happened, and throw mut at the victim.Report
I believe that there is a restraining order against Mr. Metcalf as it pertains to Karmelo. Given that Karmelo was not there, the restraining order was not being violated.Report
Far as I can tell, most press conferences are not open to the general public. That seems to be what the cops who took him away thought.Report
Notice how it only becomes a white wing cause celeb when a white person is allegedly attacked by a non-white person or undocumented immigrant.Report
The alleged incident isn’t the focus, Saul. I’ve said that already.
I’m asking about the free speech rights of the father to attend a press conference.
You can scroll up and see how we’re talking about Free Speech Absolutism above, if you’re interested in getting some of the context of the question.Report
Very true.
It’s newsworthy only because it’s rare. These sorts of “respect” killings (assuming that’s what this is) don’t normally happen in that zip code. Neither school is especially disadvantaged, both have median incomes significantly above the average.
These sorts of “narratives” created by cherry-picked data show more about where the listeners’ heads are at than any sort of statistical reality.
I’ve pointed that out when the nation pearl clutches over a white cop killing an unarmed black man.Report
I have to say, while I am not a Free Speech Abolutist, I am very confused.
I didn’t know you could abstractly have press conferences. I always assumed all events that happened in this universe happened at locations that were legally controlled by specific people, and when you gave press conferences you specifically invited members of the press, not general passerbys.
Meanwhile, um…like, if a family member has been accused of a crime, or was the victim of a crime, do not show up to surprise the other person’s family members. Like, either way. If you want to reach out for some good reason, after thinking long and hard about it, that’s what lawyers are for, or at maximum some sort of impersonal contact they can not engage with, like a phone call, or, better, a letter. Do not show up at their frickin press conference.Report
I’m pretty sure that we’re *ALL* members of the press. When the First Amendment was written, “the press” was just a guy who had one. That’s it.
If we want to argue that Mr. Metcalf was acting inappropriately by being somewhere that he wasn’t wanted and that the people there had every right have him leave, well… I suppose that’s one of those things that we’re going to find the limits of in the next few months as the story unfolds.Report
I’m pretty sure that we’re *ALL* members of the press. When the First Amendment was written, “the press” was just a guy who had one. That’s it.
You might consider yourself a member of the press, but when a private citizen, or even a company, calls a press conference, the press is whoever they want it to be.
We can talk about rights if it’s some government agency. Indeed, the Universal Life Church, in addition to ordaining ministers, will give out ‘Press Passes’ that they say are as good as any newspaper for legally getting access to government press events, although that’s very ‘three decades ago’ as the rules changed as bloggers started issuing their own to themselves.
But that’s not what happened here. This appears to have been a private event and thus the people invited are whoever the people holding it want invited.Report
Well, the good news is that the cops were called and the guy was removed without any particularly weird tasing incidents.Report
Law enforcement is easy when you’re dealing with the law law-abiding.Report
Looks like he was swatted last night.
FA.
FO.Report
Luigi Mangione has been indicted with something or other that makes him eligible for the death penalty.
So we get to get ready for *THAT* argument.Report
One never wants to predict an outcome but I would think chances are high he gets it. Message being sent right back kind of thing.Report
Pre-meditated murder is not, generally speaking, the kind of conduct one should engage in if one does not want to get the death penaltyReport
True, but no death penalty in NY. I believe it’s the feds pursuing it.Report
It’s in NY, against an unpopular victim, with an attractive killer whose motivation was presumably social justice, with a well funded the defense.
The Death Penalty is unrealistic.Report
I am throwing this out there everywhere I comment in case relevant to anyone including any lurkers. It came to my attention yesterday that Pam Bondi’s brother Brad is running for president of the DC Bar association. I typically don’t pay attention to these but any other DC barred attorneys should vote just to vote against him. Voting open until June 4. I don’t know that the DC Bar does anything important but the last thing we need is another hanger on of these people getting authority over anything, no matter how small.Report
It’s kind of hard to believe there’s anything worth bombing still in Gaza, but I guess when you run out of buildings there’s always people.
https://deadline.com/2025/04/gaza-photojournalist-cannes-doc-killed-israeli-strike-1236370699/Report
Nothing to be done, I guess.Report
Perhaps if Israel agrees to disarm as well.Report
Nothing to be done, I guess.Report
I mean, not doing genocide is something that could be done.Report
1. Van Hollen managed to meet with Garcia in a hotel. Bukele and/ Trump are frightened.
2. David Brooks used his column to call for an uprising/Aux Armes, CitoyensReport
I don’t know why you’d think Trump is scared but one hopes this combined with the strongly worded 4th Circuit decision yesterday is a step back from the brink. They need to bring the guy back, have his hearing, then hopefully promptly send him back to El Salvador where he belongs.Report
He doesn’t belong in El SalvadorReport
He does though. He entered the country illegally and has been arrested twice now in the company of gang members, plus his wife has filed a protective order against him. He is a bad fit as an immigrant and should ultimately be repatriated to his country.
Dude was caught with his little gangster buddies at the IKEA I shop at. I can already see the local news headline in 5 years when he he’s arrested for some serious crime yet people are mystified as to how someone like this was still in the country despite being apprehended twice by the authorities.Report
1. There is no evidence besides the Trump administration and Bukele and online right-wingers saying so that he is a gang member. And pardon me but the “evidence” used so far to transport people to Bukele’s gulag is risible and worthy of nothing but heaps of contempt. It is going to take a lot to get me to give credence to Trump, Musk, Bondi, Miller, and their enablers in the lying and propaganda-filled right-wing press.
2. There is a specific legal order that he cannot be sent back to El Salvador.
3. He married an American woman, has three special needs kids, and raises them well on a small amount as far as I can tell.
4. There is such a thing as compassion and mercy in justice.
“The government asserts that Abrego Garcia is a terrorist and a member of MS-13. Perhaps, but perhaps not. Regardless, he is still entitled to due process. If the government is confident of its position, it should be assured that position will prevail in proceedings to
terminate the withholding of removal order. See 8 C.F.R. § 208.24(f) (requiring that the government prove “by a preponderance of evidence” that the alien is no longer entitled to a withholding of removal). Moreover, the government has conceded that Abrego Garcia was wrongly or “mistakenly” deported. Why then should it not make what was wrong, right?”
Now is not the time for being in a mushy middle, it only aides and abets Trump and his goons.Report
Sure they need to make it right but all that means is bringing him back and giving him his hearing. I have no idea whether or not he is a gang member but someone in the country illegally caught twice with people who apparently are gang members is enough for me to say he should not be allowed to stay. I’m on the side of the rule of law and rewarding guys like Garcia makes the law an ass.
Regarding the politics of the situation I see it differently. The last thing we want to do while we are trying to preserve our system of government from an authoritarian maniac is to make a cause celebré of an illegal alien who spends his time in front of big box stores with MS-13 members.Report
The gov isn’t arguing in court that he’s a gang member. It doesn’t even come up because every court that has looked at it has ruled otherwise.
The gov’s argument to the Supremes openly claims that he was deported because of an “administrative error”.
https://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/24pdf/24a949_lkhn.pdfReport
That is not accurate. His initial encounters with the courts stemming from the 2019 arrest indicate that they saw at least some merit to the government’s allegations of gang affiliation. From additional reading the best breakdown of the situation prior to the 4th Circuit holding last week is here:
https://www.wakeuptopolitics.com/p/25-facts-about-kilmar-abrego-garcia?
What they are calling an administrative error is deporting him to El Salvador, which based on the withholding of removal, was the one country he was not supposed to be deported to. He could have been deported to any other country at any time without additional process, had there been one willing to take him. It is of course understandable that to date there had not been another country that would take a Salvadoran national.Report
Interesting. Thanks.Report
We will never find a perfect victim to defend from the tyrants who have seized control of the country
The evidence that he’s a gang member is not, generally, what we would regard as particularly strong, even if it would be sufficient to justify detention or removal in the bizarre and dysfunctional twilight system of US immigration law[1]
And of course they’ll always come up with arguments that the people who they’re persecuting are worthy of persecution and unworthy of protection, even when they pardon people of actual serious crimes like seditious conspiracy despite those people having much, much stronger adjudicated gang ties, and then propose that the DOJ should pay those people money
Even when they openly fabricate charges (like “human trafficking”) against Abrego Garcia, bring out an “Angel Mom” to stand next to Trump to insist that Abrego Garcia shouldn’t receive the benefits of due process because some different guy committed a murder
Maybe stop defending the indefensible actions of the worst, least honest people alive because the optics are somehow imperfect, a standard that is never, ever applied the other way around
[1] Somehow the brokenness and dysfunction of the system is only ever used rhetorically to argue against the interests of undocumented (and for that matter documented) immigrants, even though it really should cut both ways. Looking at the evidence you cited below against Abrego Garcia it’s hardly a slam dunkReport
Maybe stop defending the indefensible actions of the worst, least honest people alive because the optics are somehow imperfect, a standard that is never, ever applied the other way around
Personally, I would have run with the Mencken quote about scoundrels.
That wouldn’t have invited whataboutery.Report
Every criticism of Republicans invites whataboutery
For example, if you straightforwardly condemn Greg Abott for pardoning a white supremacist for murdering a BLM protester in the street, you’ll be treated to multiple rounds of whataboutery about left-wing DAs not prosecuting shopliftersReport
Instead of someone bringing up different pardons? Huh.Report
I don’t think one needs a perfect victim for the proposition that the president needs to comply with the decisions of the judiciary period, end of story.
Regarding Garcia I think that anyone pushing the human interest side of this should be praying no more information comes out than already has. Impressions of him have nowhere to go but down. If we get pictures of his wife after he hit her with his shoe (as she alleged) or the father of her other children comes out with some damning story about how everyone knows he’s in MS 13, the children fear him, etc. it’s going to be a disaster.Report
I mean who knows what else might be out there, but I am skeptical that there’s a ton of damning information just floating around out there when the White House is running with the storyline that it’s fine to ignore a court order in Abrego Garcia’s case because some entirely different dude from El Salvador is a murdererReport
Ooooooof.
Sorry, that’s all I can say to this. He may have entered the country illegally, but when he was arrested, he was here legally, and there’s 0 non-circumstantial evidence that he’s a gang member, and even the circumstantial stuff is pretty sketchy and relies on us to trust an administration and federal agencies that are known to lie their asses off, and to treat even the slightest connection (like a tattoo of a crown) as evidence of gang membership. It’s very weird to see non-MAGA buy this nonsense.Report
No, he was arrested the first time in 2019 with a group of people at a Home Depot, 2 of whom were (apparently) MS 13 members. He was not legally in the country at that time and could have been deported, but won a withholding of removal order from an immigration judge. He was legally in the country subject to that order when he was picked up the second time in March, this time loitering outside of an IKEA, and again with a group of people that (apparently) included MS 13 members.
As I said, he needs his day in court based on that withholding of removal order. I have no idea whether he is a gang member but we cannot keep letting people caught repeatedly in these types of circumstances stay in the US and I do not think you have to be MAGA sympathetic to see it that way.Report
“Arrested at Home Depot with a group of immigrants” just makes it sound like he was looking for day work. You’re not helping the case here.
Last summer, I went to a game between the Venezuelan and Jamaican national teams. 95% of the people in the stadium, and literally everyone within 10 rows of me, was Venezuelan. Assuming there were at least 2 gang members at that game, is anyone arrested at that gang (no one, to my knowledge, was, but hypothetically) therefore also a Venezuelan gang member? This is the same logic.Report
I’d ask if you are sure you’re helping yours.
I’m not the one whose position on this and related issues needs to constantly find ways to accommodate illegal entrants who some how, some way, keep having encounters with the authorities, including in a jurisdiction where there is no collaboration with federal immigration enforcement.
Re: the game I don’t think the deduction is as strong from a group of (I assume) thousands and thousands in an arena as from a much, much smaller group in a parking lot (I believe in each instance 5 or less). But if an investigation of gang members at the game also turns up some other people of unclear affiliation who are not legally in the country I see no reason to give them the benefit of the doubt in light of their status.Report
Thinking further I want to put a finer point on where my positions are coming from. You’re a leftist, and you are not afraid to state and defend your principles. I respect that and find our exchanges interesting because of it.
I have principles too, that land me somewhere in the moderate Democrat camp. I view the Trump situation as a 5 alarm fire. But experience with Trump 1.0, and his propensity to ‘flood the zone’ says to me you have to be smart about how you fight him. I think the most advantageous ground to do that is with tariffs, the bond market, his unilateral destruction of the economic outlook for regular working people.
Conversely I do not find it useful to spend news cycles litigating the particulars of some borderline case that serves to highlight the problems huge numbers of voters have with the immigration system, and which has plenty of smoke for the right wing media to kick up. My principles say you quietly hold firm in the courts on due process, but beyond that? I think its insane to try to fight Trump on his strongest issue (immigration), on a case where who knows what other facts may emerge, and when he is opening up a massive flank to exploit on trade. Sadly I’ve seen enough of Senator Van Hollen to know how clueless he is about outside perceptions but we should not be encouraging it. Moreover I think the coalition needs to understand that regardless of whether or not he is a gang member, someone like Garcia shouldn’t have been here to begin with. Give him his day in court but there just isn’t a lot more to it than that.
I am certainly not expecting you to agree with me on any of this, but I try to be as transparent as I can.Report
You and everyone to your right keep talking about how these people shouldn’t be here. No one talks about all the people that hire them. Thus creating economic demand that isn’t otherwise fillable.
But sure let’s keep making our immigration problems about the migrants.Report
You will not see me balk at enforcement against employers, if the GOP will ever take yes for an answer on anything, which we all know they won’t.Report
Chris is right. This is more than an immigration issue. It is a basic due process issue. Also the polling indicates that Trump’s oppressive heavy-handedness on this has reversed polling from being in his favor.
The polling on immigration was always more nuanced than believedReport
1. He has endeavoured to prevent the population of these States; for that purpose obstructing the Laws for Naturalization of Foreigners; refusing to pass others to encourage their migrations hither…
2. He has obstructed the Administration of Justice, by refusing his Assent to Laws for establishing Judiciary powers.
3. He has made Judges dependent on his Will alone, for the tenure of their offices, and the amount and payment of their salaries.
4. He has erected a multitude of New Offices, and sent hither swarms of Officers to harrass our people, and eat out their substance.
5. He has kept among us, in times of peace, Standing Armies without the Consent of our legislatures.
6. He has affected to render the Military independent of and superior to the Civil power.
7. For transporting us beyond Seas to be tried for pretended offences:Report
Given that we all know they won’t take yes for an answer on measures that would actually go a long way towards addressing their stated concerns about people who entered the country illegally, why are we supposed to constantly give them the benefit of the doubt that any of their stated concerns have an iota of good faith behind them?Report
Because orderliness and rule of law inherently favors liberals over fascists.Report
I get where you’re coming from, and I’ve seen other moderates say something similar (there was even a piece in Axios with moderate House Democrats saying effectively this).
My position is different: I see a very slippery slope from denying non-citizens, documented and undocumented, due processes, to denying citizens such. That is to say, this is not merely an immigration issue, it’s a basic Constitutional issue, and more fundamentally, a basic issue of rights, and whether we have them in any meaningful sense.
So yes, Trump tanking the economy is very important, and we should be pushing back on that, but Trump sending anyone to an El Salvadorian prison without due process (and fankly even with it), revoking visas and green cards for political dissent, ICE showing up at schools demanding to see immigrant children for “welfare checks,” etc., should freak us all the hell out.
I admit I’m a bit more freaked out about this stuff than moderates are likely to be, because I share some of the political views of the people who are losing their visas and green cards. I’m already anxious enough about my politics that I go out of my way to avoid discussing them anywhere my name might be found (though I’ve been doxed by local conservatives, who have been to my house and gone after my and my partner’s jobs, and you can find my name on the leaked member lists of certain left groups). Even before Trump, it would not have been an exaggeration to say that my politics could cost me my job, and now with Trump, what might they cost me? Or more pressingly, my friends who are non-citizens with similar politics?
Point being, I see all of this as not only a general threat, but a personal one as well. And I think just about everyone else should.Report
Townhall now has a column: Did the Trump Administration Set a Trap for Democrats and Media on the ‘Maryland Father’ Case?
Yes, yes. Guy Benson, Townhall, Fox News, etc.
But he touches on some of the dynamics of this situation and, yeah, it’s not great. There’s a drip drip drip of new information that, if not calculated, is unfortunate enough to suspect that it was calculated.Report
No, they didn’t.
If anything, they took one issue where Trump had a slight advantage and lit on fire like they always do.
https://www.newsweek.com/donald-trump-approval-rating-immigration-polls-2060973Report
Surely it’s good news.
If the polling goes down hard enough, even the rats will moderate.Report
There’s a drip drip drip of new information that, if not calculated, is unfortunate enough to suspect that it was calculated.
No, they are much too stupid to do that, just like they are much too stupid to bring him back, have a immigration trial, and deport him.
Meanwhile, the fact his rendition (1) to El Salvador was against court order, which has resulted in legal proceeding moving a lot faster than they would have otherwise, so if this was calculated, it was calculated by…idiots, okay, I guess I changed my mind, it certainly could have been calculated by the Trump administration.
1) Again: Not deportation. Deportation results in you being free in the county you are deported to.
There’s a specific term for transferring custody of prisoners between governments, and it is not deportation, it’s ‘rendition’. Extradition is rendition. Prisoners swaps are rendition. (Although those usually result in the person being freed immediately.) The Bush administrations’ illegal renditions were renditions.
The difference is important, because deportation is generally considered to be a lot less harm. You’re free at the end of it, just…not here. We can use very lax immigration courts for it, we have looser standards and things that are not actually crimes that people are held to, etc.
Whereas rendition results in an imprisoned person at the end, and thus people have a lot more rights. We can deport people for things we could _never_ extradite them for.Report
Yea I mean I don’t want to keep speculating. I have my differences on public policy but in my heart I’d rather be aligned with Chris and Saul.
Who knows what tomorrow will bring but my spidey sense is that the Democrats will be right on the basic principle but woefully wrong on the politics.Report
Eh, Trump has two major things going his way when it comes to the Dems.
1. The whole desire to fact-check. Trump says something like “A third of X are Y!” and the media will trip over itself explaining that Trump was lying because it’s only 31% of X that are Y. Four Pinocchios!
2. The “Directionally Correct” thing that we saw with, for example, the tariffs. “I agree that tariffs are good but we should use them like *THIS* rather than like *THAT*”. (And it only gets worse if this or that politician has actually read Uncle Milty.)Report
“the Democrats will be right on the basic principle but woefully wrong on the politics.”
It’s a dilemma — the basic principle (due process for everyone, even if all signs point to their being rotten) is not necessarily popular, so there’s an eagerness to find a straightforward and sympathetic story of an injustice. But it sounds like this one wasn’t so straightforward, and a few folks got too far out over their skis.Report
And therein is the fundamental difference between the left and the right. No leftist would ever declare due process as a thing that isn’t or shouldn’t be popular across the board, since due process affects everyone across the board.Report
No, he was arrested the first time in 2019 with a group of people at a Home Depot, 2 of whom were (apparently) MS 13 members. … He was legally in the country subject to that order when he was picked up the second time in March, this time loitering outside of an IKEA, and again with a group of people that (apparently) included MS 13 members.
I honestly do not know how to phrase this, because my first five tries were very direct personal attacks, but let me try: It is literally impossible for you to seriously believe ‘A bunch of Hispanic undocumented immigrants loitering outside of a Home Depot and an IKEA’ is anything over than ‘undocumented immigrants looking for work’. And they were almost certainly stranding ‘near’ each other because _that is where the undocumented workers trying to get hired were standing that day_.
You KNOW this a deliberate misrepresentation of a very common situation. Every American who has ever gone to Home Depot and looked at ‘Bunch of Hispanic guys standing over to the side’ understands exactly what is going on. That isn’t some gang loitering, that isn’t some social club, that isn’t a group of friends, it’s where you go to hire cheap and almost certainly undocumented labor. They might literally have met ten minutes earlier.
But you don’t like illegal immigration, so you have decided to pretend it must be something else.Report
So the whole ‘this is a torture prison that the United States has repeatedly found is a torture prison and barred people from being an extradited to, under the UN convention against torture’ has just slipped right past you?
Along with the ‘people are not deported to foreign prisons, that is not how deportation works. Deportation results in you being free at the end’
The problem here is not merely the goddamn lack of due process. The problem is that this guy has been renditioned to a foreign gulag in a way that is utterly illegal under American law and there is no possible way to reach that outcome even _under_ due process.Report
I’ve said he needs to be returned and if the Trump admin ultimately refuses to comply with clear as day court orders then we are truly entering a new and frightening era.
But no, I don’t have a problem with Salvadorans being returned to El Salvador. If some of them want to try their luck entering illegally and hoping for a reprieve then the minimum they need to do is avoid somehow finding themselves being brought into custody with gang members, to say nothing of having protective orders filed against them.Report
Again, you cannot _possible_ believe that ‘arrested for standing Hispanically in a Home Depot parking lot’, and two people nearby included gang members, can even _possibly_ be an indication of gang membership that would withstand any legal test.
You are not that stupid.
As for the protective order: His wife is literally advocating for his return.
He also was never actually charged with a crime. We do not punish people for having protective orders against them, because _getting a protective order does not require due process_.
If they want to charge him with assault, they can. Of course, it would be a pretty stupid case as the only witness is his wife, who, duh, they can’t legally compel to testify against him.Report
Lab Leak is now the official position of the USG.Report
Coincidentally, actual researchers have just shown pretty strong evidence that it came from raccoon dogs. https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-025-00426-3Report
Is that the article from February again?
(Clicks link.)
It’s the article from February again.Report
Do you know who you are dealing with in terms of monomania?Report
And I should give this addle-paddled conspiracy sh+t deference and respect because?
We are not exactly talking about a crew known for their veracity and trustworthiness.Report
Oh, you can continue to believe Fauci. No one will censor you for bragging about doing so.Report
And no one will “censor” you for the opposite. Pointing and laughing isn’t censorship.Report
The weird thing is that people were, in fact, censored for the opposite.Report
I recall the late Lars-Erik Nelson on C-Span, pre-internet, listening to someone rant about how the press was covering up Clinton administration scandals upon which he reclaimed in great detail. Nelson congratulated him on his wealth of information and asked, “Where did you learn about them?”Report
“Well, the censorship wasn’t *ABSOLUTE*. Therefore, it didn’t happen.”
At least “private companies can do whatever they want” had the benefit of acknowledging what happened rather than trying to deny it.
(But maybe we’ll get to “but it was good though”.)Report
Meta has long since proved itself to be a spineless organization no matter who runs the government. They could have said “no,” to everyone who “pressured” them, whatever that means.Report
“Therefore, censorship didn’t happen. Q.E.D.”Report
Well, yes. The government has a right to ask publishers not to publish something it thinks would not be in the public interest to publish. And the publisher has the right to tell the government to pound sand. But just as freedom of the press is for people who own one, freedom of speech is for people with the gonadal endowment to speak. Now if the government threatens to have the FCC pull your broadcasting license or does something else a lot worse than jawboning, that’s another matter, but there’s no reliable information on that.Report
” But just as freedom of the press is for people who own one, freedom of speech is for people with the gonadal endowment to speak. ”
are you actually standing up in public and saying with your entire mouth that anyone who gets oppressed by the government deserves it for being a wimp-ass bitchReport
Um, no. Try reading.Report
I dunno, maybe you could explain in more detail what you meant by “freedom of speech is for people with the gonadal endowment to speak”Report
He means those who have the stones to keep speaking truth to power in the face of the speech police.
Which, I suppose, is true as far as it goes (it’s got a robust sense of reality!) but doesn’t contain a moral element.
The speech police? They’re just speech policing from the smack dab middle of their consensus that they’re enforcing. Not good, not bad, just is.
The people who point out that ACAB? Well, if they get censored… first you have to deny that they did, then you have to point out that they should have just talked louder in the face of being squelched. No morality, no discussion of incentives, just the will to power.Report
If you didn’t understand, you could have said so, but now that you’ve asked…..
Free speech as we currently understand it in America is roughly 100 years old, and has never been popular when push comes to shove. There is a long history of who tries to crack down on it when and how far they manage to succeed. As a matter of legal, political, and social fact, we are freer to speak now than we have been in living memory — though that may change, owing to the ongoing efforts of the political heirs of those who have, in the past, been most successful at imposing actual, tangible punishments for disfavored speech. (Bill Maher might do well to remember who actually succeeded in getting him cancelled and who merely annoys him.)
Note the “actual, tangible punishments.” It has never been the case, will never be the case, and there is no reason that it ought to be the case, that you can say unpopular things and expect to be popular. Loose talk about speech police and leftist fatwas is just that — loose talk. Bubble-wrapped sophomores who feel inhibited from saying things they think they think, and might even believe they stand for, that are predictably unpopular with some crowd that, for whatever reason, they care about, have a right to free speech. But what does that mean? It means they can say what they want (assuming it’s germane — you can’t interrupt a chemistry class to espouse race realism any more than you can interrupt it to bemoan the management of the New York Giants). And they can’t be fined or imprisoned or deprived of generally-applicable benefits and protections. (Including such things as generally-applicable “platforming” rules. Nobody is obliged to platform anyone, but they can be held to whatever rules they say they have.) What it doesn’t mean is that people — even government people — can’t talk back, point and laugh, or refuse to give you the time of day. All of that is their free speech; there is no first speaker privilege. It doesn’t mean the government can’t ask you, or try to persuade you, not to publish something, like the Pentagon Papers or medical misinformation. As I said, you are free to tell the government to pound sand. Not everyone has the balls to do it, that has always been the case, and always will be. But unless the government does more than talk, “government oppression” is more loose talk. We know that Meta, for example, is spineless in a bipartisan way, folding in the face of talk. (If there were actual or implied threats going beyond talk, we would probably know about them. And if we don’t, claims that there was some undue pressure are simply expressions of distaste for whatever administration Meta folded for.)
Ultimately, for the time being, we have more freedom of speech than most of us have any interest in using. Social pressure is a real thing, and it would be a lot easier for people to exercise their free speech if we were all more polite about it. But we can’t insist on it without infringing free speech itself. And any attempt to create rules of discourse protecting those who haven’t the courage of what they think are their convictions from the honest reactions of people who don’t like what you want to say is futile. (And whenever I hear someone try to formulate such rules, my reaction is almost always: “You first.”) Robust free speech is often contentious and rude. It’s a contact sport. It has ever been so, and always will be. Most people don’t want to play, and that’s their right. Free speech is not a free ride, and you can’t make it one.Report
Well that sure was a whole bunch of words which didn’t address the question of what it means when the government says “Dear Colleague, you might want to be careful about what sort of speech you allow on your platform because otherwise the regulatory agency that determines whether you’re allowed to be in existence might find itself compelled to regulate differently”.Report
Look back up-thread. And do try to work on your chronic reading comprehension problem.Report
From the crew who brought you Kung Flu.Report
The sweeping humanism of the Trump admin: https://www.thewrap.com/white-house-trolls-kilmar-abrego-garcia-deportation-el-salvador/Report
At least one Immigration Judge in SF who was appointed by the Biden administration but still in her prohibitionary period was fired by the Trump administration for probably being too liberal.Report
American born doctor from Connecticut with the very foreign sounding name Lisa Anderson receives a letter telling her to leave the United States:
https://www.nbcnews.com/video/american-born-doctor-receives-dhs-email-telling-her-to-leave-u-s-237725253544Report
May 2020 at the height of COVID had 51 ships blank sailing. April 2025 has over 80 ships blank sailing. That is without cargo.
https://bsky.app/profile/did:plc:q5wqr7zofdqyqwoki4cby36x/post/3ln2gkuls4k2r?ref_src=embed&ref_url=https%253A%252F%252Fwww.lawyersgunsmoneyblog.com%252F2025%252F04%252Ftrump-kill-ports-and-transportationReport
This should worry us way more then it does.Report
One of the best indicators for SF has shown up: There’s a newspaper article talking about windshield repair shops struggling.Report
The Supreme Court has stopped deportations to El Salvador for now in a very out of character ruling issued at 1:00 a.m. EST
This is the 250th Anniversary of the Midnight Ride of Paul Revere and the Battles of Lexington and Concord. Once again, the Old North Church hangs its lanterns: https://www.instagram.com/p/DInYck_OPPD/Report
Regardless of the ideological makeup of the overall Court (and opinions of certain posters here) you really are unlikely to get away with telling the US Government to Eat It.Report