Wait, wait, I stand corrected, the president thinks we can deport citizens now.

Although I'm not sure if they'd be deportable under _this_ law, or if laws are even things that might still exist in any manner or we just operate by the whim of the president.

BTW, am I misremembering, or did an immigrant do something that resembled Na.zi salute twice at the presidential inauguration? The president of Belarus said about that, and I quote, 'They cannot say anything to justify it. This is an open Na.zi salute, the Americans and Mr. Musk have simply taken this too far.'

That feels like it might actually qualify as 'adverse foreign policy consequences', having the American people in general being accused of openly be Na.zis by a foreign leader! Clearly that gesture has damaged how Belarus sees us! Even if this 'Mr. Musk' did it _completely accidentally_ (I dunno, someone should check if he does this sort of stuff all the time), it still had adverse foreign policy consequences.

Although I'm not sure if those consequences would qualify as 'serious'. But it's certainly more serious than some antisemitic said by random protestors at a protest.

Did anything ever happen with that Mr. Musk guy?

*check notes*

Oh, he's apparently a citizen now. I guess the US government can't do anything about him.

When does this end up in front of an Immigration Judge?

Luckily, it appears this one _will_ in up in front of a judge. Who will likely slap it down.

Judges have actually questioned the constitutionality of this part of immigration law, on two separate grounds. The first is the obvious 'The government is not supposed to make laws restricting freedom of speech', but there's actually a more important objection!

Specifically, that law is literally unknowable, you cannot know what behavior is disallowed under it, and thus it cannot be valid law. This is, hilariously, a level _above_ the first amendment, above constitutionality. You can't pass laws that do not clearly explain what people cannot do, that people cannot read and understand what behavior is barred.

US foreign policy is not only gigantic, it's _not entirely public_. And it's not specifically 'US foreign policy' anyway, it's 'potentially serious adverse foreign policy consequences for the United State'. You can be deported under it because some other country objected to something you did in a way that caused foreign policy implications for the US.

In other words, this law appears to requires an immigrant to somehow _determine the entire foreign policy of the entire planet_. How on earth is anyone supposed to know how every random country in the world is going to react to everything they say? Hell, even if they did try to research that, again, foreign policy is not a list of regulations people can follow.

Moreover, that itself has strange first amendment implications, as now other countries can punish people in the US for their speech by using US law. All Russia, for example, has to do is say 'We do not like what that immigrant in the US said about Putin, thus we are less likely to agree to a ceasefire with Ukraine', and that allows the US government to somehow punish that immigrant by deporting them? What?

The US government can't punish people for their speech because the US government doesn't like it, so the idea that US government can punish people for their speech because _other countries_ do not like that speech is just flatly absurd.

The only reason this law is still on the books is that literally no one has ever been deported under _just_ it. It's been included on reasons before, but never by itself, and I'm not sure the _speech_ part (The part that requires the Sec of State to personally sign off on it.) ever has been used.

Everyone understands the Trump administration could just ask and get him back.

The question is what happens when they claim they cannot.

BTW, in case people do not understand how much fascism is wrapped up in gender politics, I present this absurd article:

https://www.21cir.com/alexander-dugin-ukrainians-are-collective-transgenders/

Does anyone else find it infuriating how the media is reporting that the tariffs are paused?

No, the nonsensical calculations are gone, and everything is just at the 10% minimum now.

That is...about four times higher than it was before. So still pretty big.

But on top of that, the tariffs with China were the major harmful ones, and they are still there. Our three largest trading partners are Canada, Mexico, and China. Put together, that's almost half of what we import. And those are the exact same places the Trump administration is putting large tariffs! Right now.

It's really funny to mock how uninhabited islands are being tariffed, but that literally doesn't impact us. Nor does us stupidly tariffing coffee...price will go up, demand will go down, people will live. Whatever. We taxed the EU, 10%, oh no, car prices might go up.

Canada, Mexico, and China are, uh, important. Both to actual consumers, and to companies that rely on them for sourcing for stuff they make.

Eh, I’m not a fan of tariffs at all. If the other guy is shooting himself in the foot, why join him?

Tariffs shouldn't be used to counter other tariffs, I agree. Where I think they should be used to is to counter unfair trade practices like a government deliberately subsidizing an industry to let it beat an American one, and then later raising prices after America's industry collapses.

But that requires a lot of smart people, and also requires a lot of decisions about what 'subsidizing' is. Are other countries subsidizing workers because of socialized medicine, for example? That's not there as a trade policy, but it could make things cheaper...OTOH, if both corporate and personal taxes are higher because of that, it's _not_ doing that.

Etc, etc.

This is a place where smart people belong in figuring this out, and we should use our soft power to work on things, and...well, I'm pretending it's three months ago, aren't I? We pretty much just burned all that down.

As for the whole labor rights/workforce safety standards thing, I get it and wouldn’t want to argue against it but those things are gameable in practice with Potemkin factories and the like and it’d end up being a pain in practice (though I get it in theory).

You'd have to have a pretty competent organization that watched for all that. I will admit, I'm not 100% sure it's possible, or could scale, but it's not crazy to try.

And the entire concept of setting up _someone else_ to do it is that we would not have to deal with it. Some independent group that we just dump some money in and hopefully we don't have to worry about. Maybe part of the WTO or something.

And, let’s face it, if I wanted to argue for tariffs at all, easy mode would be “reciprocal tariffs against fellow first world nations”

This is already pretty much how it was, though. First world countries occasionally use a tariff to protect an industry that actually exists (Unlike, say, our _coffee_ industry), and other countries then slap a tariff on something to protect something of theirs.

And no one tariffs entire countries, because that fundamentally makes no sense.

The fact that a non-zero number of fellow first world nations reluctantly dropped their own tariffs would be an argument *FOR* reciprocal tariffs in practice even for someone who is a market fundamentalist in theory.

...what are you talking about?

First world countries tend to average about 2.5% tariffs with us, which is about what we charge them. China is 3%, Japan is 1.9%, the EU is 2.7%, Australia is 2.5%, Singapore is 0% somehow.

Which are close to ours tares. It's hard to find details, but our average incoming tariff is (was?) 1.9%. But we, rather obviously, apply higher rates to things from wealthier countries. I'm not going to bother to track down and average the exact numbers, but we're within 20% or so. If someone wants to argue tariffs should be slightly higher, hell, you can join my club.(1)

https://www.cnbc.com/2025/04/04/trumps-tariff-rates-for-other-countries-larger-than-word-trade-data.html

I have no idea if you'd include India in 'first world countries', but there is one notable outlier, as India charges stuff from us at at 12%. I am not sure why.

Incredibly oddly, our top exports and imports from India _are mostly the same things_: Pearls and semi precious stones, electrical machinery and equipment, nuclear reactors, and mineral fuels and oils. Why we've decided to trade those things back and forth is unknown. Seriously, not making a joke here, I don't understand that. The only difference is they also get 'lenses, microscopes, medical instruments' from us, and we also get 'pharmaceutical products' from them, which makes it sound like we're supplying their pharmaceutical labs to make drugs for us! (Which at least makes sense, unlike trading nuclear reactors back and forth. WTH?)

1) My pro-tariff club says (Or said, this is nonsense now since Trump destroyed the world order) that we should tie tariffs to labor rights and workplace safety standards, and we should set up some sort of independent monitoring agency, maybe not even run by the US, but internationally, and say: The tariff are currently 4% on textiles from China (Or whatever they are), and next year they will be moving _up_ to 4.1% on that, _unless_ your company voluntarily complies and allows spot checks from these monitoring agency, at which point they will be 3.9%. And they will keep going up and down 0.1% points a year until they hit 5% and 3%, respectively.

You...think he's lying about the people he directly quoted and usually linked to the quotes of int he article?

Go anti-woke, go broke:

https://www.vox.com/on-the-right-newsletter/407623/trump-tariff-culture-war-hanania-khan-ferguson

Relatedly, man, conspiracy theorizers are so keen on finding evidence of a conspiracy that they’ll latch onto literally anything. Though Slade already said that better than I.

Yeah, the thing I was pointing out is that the idea that Covid was active in Wuhan in October (Which actually, as a conspiracy theory, is not too unbelievable.) completely undermined one of the big claims about a lab leak, in that a researcher at the Wuhan Institute of Virology got sick _after that_, which is, itself, claimed to be the lab leak.

Ad yet this article seems to think it _helps_ that theory. Because that's how conspiracy theories work. Anything that they can even vaguely paint as supportive is listed, even when it's directly contradicting other parts of the theory.

It's like how 9/11 Truthers will seize on the fact that the leaseholder of the WTC, Larry Silverstein, got an insurance policy a few months in advance that 'covered terrorism'. When in reality almost no insurance excluded terrorism at the time, and also the tower _had been the site of a previous terrorist attack_ (Which also was covered!), so, duh, probably should make sure any new insurance covers that...although taht would be easy because you'd have to deliberately find a policy that didn't. Also, he got that insurance two months before because _that is when he was required to insure the place because he had just become the leaseholder_. But this 'He got insurance right before that covered it!' allows conspiracy theorists to claim he was warned or knew about the attack.

Hey, weird idea: If the government came to me and said 'The thing you literally just signed a lease on and are now legally required to buy insurance for...might want to make sure that insurance covers terrorism', I'd be WTF are you talking about?! Do you know something? And I certainly wouldn't stay quiet when a terrorist attack happened two months later!

He lost a boatload of money there. He did manage to sue under the grounds it was two incidents instead of one so the damage-per-incident cap should be twice (Which feels like clever lawyering, but I can't object.) and got like 1.3 the damage cap, but he did not make out well on that entire thing at all. (Not that I feel sorry for billionaires, but objective it was pretty bad for him.) Trying to bring him into the conspiracy significantly weakens it, but conspiracy theorists do not actually care about logic.

ThTh1 = This is the point where I say:

Welcome to the world of trans people, where this has been happening for the past five years, and it sure is nice how the media has managed to perfect the process of mainstreaming absolute nonsense about trans people as science...so they can do it for vaccines too. And whatever else scientific bullcrap they try to pass off. I'm sure climate science is next.

I would say I told you so, but what is the point?

It's worth pointing out how insane this article is, because it postulates this somehow _confirms_ the lab-leak theory.

When in fact it does the opposite, because a huge chunk of the lab leak theory is that a researcher in the Wuhan Institute of Virology because sick with something that might have been Covid (although it was tested and appears not, but let's ignore that) in _November_ 2019.

Work the timeline with me here:

The incubation period for covid is 2-3 days, and we can postulate a few more days before it becomes bad enough that someone is going to the hospital for what would appear to be a cold. So let's say a week. And let's pick the first possible interpretation of 'November' and go with November 1st. That means the first possible date they could have it and be infecting people is October 24th or so.

So, if that researcher who got sick is Patient Zero...those seven service member, all of who had left the country by October 27th, would all have to be infected by that researcher, right? Literally all of them? Because there's no time for someone else to have been infected and passed it on.

What, is the premise that this researcher somehow _participated_ in these war games? That seems very unlikely and something someone would have mentioned.

Even if you try to fit one additional infection in there, it still seems incredibly unlikely. Basically, this is postulating that of the first ten or so people infected by Covid, 70% somehow happened to be visiting US soldiers! That can't make sense. (Barring additional conspiracies, but you have now officially left 'lab leak'.)

And this is on top of the idea that the researcher got sick November 1st, which...probably isn't true. Like, that's a pretty silly assumption to have allowed to start with.

No, if you have the virus around enough to infect _seven American service members_, people who presumably did not have free reign of the city and would be with the US military, then it seems extremely likely that Covid was pretty widespread by that point.

Which is in fact what a lot of people actually think, that China covered up the infection for a month or so. Which honestly doesn't sound implausible, and I think that theory, unlike a lot of conspiracy theories, could easily be true, although it as it's almost impossible to tell the difference between 'did not know' and 'willfully ignored', we'll never know.

But the virus starting that early completely destroys one of the main premises of the lab leak theory, because that sick researcher is way too late to be the cause of anything.

You know, these phrases it much better than I can:
https://www.lawyersgunsmoneyblog.com/2025/04/today-on-the-shadow-docket-assisting-trumps-arbitrary-deportations-to-slave-prisons

Seriously, imagine saying this with a straight face: The majority also said detainees under the act “must receive notice after the date of this order that they are subject to removal under the Act. The notice must be afforded within a reasonable time and in such a manner as will allow them to actually seek habeas relief in the proper venue before such removal occurs.” The majority emphasized that it wasn’t ruling on the government’s interpretation of the act itself.

In other words, what is happening is not legal, the government must allow people to seek habeas relief before removal, but we're going to remove the TRO currently stopping the government from continuing its actions of removing people without habeas relief. But they better not do that anymore!

What the utter hell are the conservatives on the court smoking? How is this even slightly supposed to be credible?

The conservatives on the Supreme Court go for 'complete and abject rejection of reality' as a way to deal with things:

https://www.msnbc.com/deadline-white-house/deadline-legal-blog/supreme-court-trump-alien-enemies-act-judge-boasberg-rcna199052

They are openly asserting that of course 'the detainees are entitled to notice and an opportunity to challenge their removal', while their decision removes the only thing stopping the only order from being removed without challenge.

They're basically just trying to pretend 'Yes, the Trump administration has to follow the constitution, and OF COURSE we would stop them from failing to do so, if challenged, but until that point we're not going to let the lower court restrict their behavior'

Or, to quote them: "This case presents fundamental questions about who decides how to conduct sensitive national-security-related operations in this country — the President, through Article II, or the Judiciary, through TROs"

SENDING PEOPLE TO A FOREIGN PRISON IS NOT TIME-SENSITIVE, YOU FASCIST APOLOGISTS. NO ONE IS SAYING THEY CANNOT BE DETAINED, JUST THAT THEY CANNOT BE SHIPPED TO A PLACE THAT THE US GOVERNMENT IS LITERALLY CURRENTLY ARGUING IN COURT IT CANNOT RECOVER PEOPLE FROM IF SENT THERE BY ACCIDENT.

It's honestly amazing. I would point out they are burning their crediblity on this, but that would require pretending they had any to start with.

And let’s face it, who would trust Trump to make an honest deal at this point anyway?

People need to understand how fascism works, philosophically. Fascism is, ultimately, a belief in natural hierarchies extended to the natural conclusion. This applies to everything. The part people tend to misunderstand is that they think this is _logical_. That you can make agreements to be subservient, and those agreements will be honored.

It is not. It is all lizard-brain nonsense. The lizard brain has a vague sense of where people belong, and a sense if if they 'know their place'.

This is, for example, why it doesn't require people to think they're at the top. It has a vague sense of where it belongs, too. It has as much genuflecting towards people above them as it expects genuflecting from people below them. This is why you get people like Trump cowtowing to people like Putin. He thinks Putin is above him, and it's entirely natural for him to give deference to him.

This also means, in their little lizard brain, that they see people who did not know their places but were forced into agreement with what they say not as 'making a deal', but that such people not only rightfully belong below them, but need to be forced there, forever.

Columbia caved to Trump instantly, and he decided to continue to destroy them. He will continue to humiliate them, forever. He thinks they challenged him, and they are forever his enemy.

Resistance, meanwhile, tends to actually scare them. Because if they have to back down, it make their lizard brain reprogram you into into an equal, because the other option is somehow their lesser beat them. So you must not actually be long there.

Practically speaking, you can remain safe from bullies, and fascists, and whatnot, by doing vaguely what they say, never challenging them, and never becoming their enemy, and hoping you never fall into a class of people they go after. Never look weak or like an easy target, but never strong enough to challenge them. Staying under the radar _does_ work, I will admit that.

But once you _do_ become their enemy, it doesn't matter how much you cower and beg and plea and agree to do what he says, he will continue to hurt you.

Foreign countries appear to mostly be understanding that they fall into 'a class of people the fascists go after' as a general rule, and are not going to cave. They're already his enemy, he already thinks they 'don't know their place', and they fully understand this.

I am suspecting the lawyer will wake up Monday morning, be at a ‘bring your toothbrush’ to court moment (Aka, they might throw me in jail on content and not let me leave.) on Monday when he shows up without the detainee, and will instead be quitting his job this weekend.

Ah, that decision just got easier for him. That lawyer, whose name is Erez Reuveni and was the acting deputy director for the Office of Immigration Litigation, just got placed on leave by the DOJ. So he will not be walking into court on Monday. And hence will not be the person sanctioned.

For "failure to zealously advocate", which I presume must mean 'Failure to make the Trump Administration's actions legal somehow'.

And his supervisor, August Flentje, a Deputy Director, was placed on leave for "failure to supervise a subordinate".

I am not sure who still exists in the Office of Immigration Litigation at the DOJ and who is going to show up in court Monday. What I am 100% sure of is the judge will give absolutely no leeway or delay because the government has decided to fire their lawyer.

We are getting near the point of mass resignations of lawyers at the DOJ, simply because this situation is untenable: Their clients keep doing illegal unjustifiable things and they have to walk into court and explain that to the judge, somehow. And failing to get the judge to go along with the administration's illegal action results in them being punished by the administration.

I'm going to petition the US government to fix my _huge_ trade deficit with the local Walmart by having Walmart charge me 50% more sales tax.

The pain will be sharp, but needed, and eventually I'll start making my own stuff at home.

And here we go with the constitutional crisis: A Federal judge Paula Xinis has ordered the Trump administration to bring Kilmar Abrego Garcia back from El Salvador _right now_. To have him back in the US by _Monday_.

https://www.politico.com/news/2025/04/04/el-salvador-deportation-ruling-trump-administration-00272872

In fairly usual move by the government and is seen more often in 'criminal defense attorney has to make excuses for his client', the lawyer for the DOJ was begging to get another 24 hours so he could convince _his client_ to do what the court asked without issuing the order.

Shortly before the judge ruled, the visibly frustrated attorney pleaded with Xinis for 24 hours to try to persuade U.S. officials to try to seek Abrego Garcia’s return without intervention by the court.

Which is basically a straight up admission of 'My client is not going to follow your orders and things are about to get really bad for us, but my client is a complete moron and doesn't understand that'.

Which they are. The government is operated by idiots who do not understand that asserting that they cannot get get people back from El Salvador puts them in violation of all sorts of laws and will make the courts incredibly reluctant to allow them _ever_ put _anyone_ there or, indeed, do anything at _all_ WRT immigration.

Also, interesting fact: The Attorney General has been signing these legal papers, a thing which the AG would not normally do, which makes _her_ legally liable and avoids any possible claim of irregularity if she gets hauled into court to explain the government's position. It seems very strange for her to volunteer to do this, but not when you realize that lawyers have been probably been very reluctant to sign their names onto the Trump administration's legal theories, and having Bondi also sign means they cannot be thrown under the bus...and also means they can resign from the case and just throw her under her own bus. I am suspecting the lawyer will wake up Monday morning, be at a 'bring your toothbrush' to court moment (Aka, they might throw me in jail on content and not let me leave.) on Monday when he shows up without the detainee, and will instead be quitting his job this weekend.

We do not have a lot of chaos in this. We have court system that functions, and we have whatever Trump is doing.

Or, alternately, we're just doing it on purpose:

https://bsky.app/profile/onestpress.bsky.social/post/3lluyzh2sdc23

That's why we elected Trump, to start a war with China.

The funniest thing Venezuela could do at this point would be to treat it like a declared war and sue for peace in the UN and promise to unilaterally cease all aggression and return all territory. Plead for 'status quo ante bellum', aka, 'returning the situation that existed before a war'. Aka, 'Sorry, and let us pretend our invasion never happen'

Which normally is how you lose a of aggression war and try to keep the same government, but in this case, as Venezuela has neither committed no aggression and seized no territory, would mean nothing at all.

BTW, if these actually are being detained because we're at war with their 'country', which is apparently Venezuela (?), that both Venezuela and the US are signatories to the Geneva Convention, and this is literally the exact sort of humiliation propaganda photograph you are not allowed to do with prisoners of war.

A quick search to see see if anyone else noticed this...yup:

https://www.mediaite.com/opinion/kristi-noems-el-salvador-prison-photo-op-might-have-violated-the-geneva-convention/

Anyone remember how Iran, who had captured US sailors who had wandered into their waters, showed pictures that they were being humanely treated? And the right tried to pretend that was a violation of Geneva, and everyone pointed out 'Showing capture soldiers being feed and treated well' might be propaganda, but it's the exactly what Geneva wants, 'prisoners of war must at all times be humanely treated and protected against acts of violence, intimidation, insults, and public curiosity'. You're _allowed_ to produce propaganda bragging how well you treat your prisoners. (As long as you don't force them to participate. You can ask for volunteers to do that, but you cannot punish them if they do not, or for what they say in that propaganda. Although, obviously, you probably won't distribute it if they don't say good things.)

Well, conservatives, in case you're wondering, this. This is what you are not allowed to do. On top of the obvious intended humiliation, this is fairly clearly a photo op that all these prisoners were forced to take part in, and even forced to partially disrobe for. And it's intended to show people how _badly_ they are being treated.

And that's just the photo part. Obviously, mistreatment itself is a worse crime. Also, their government (Venezuela?) need to be notified, and captured POWs must be allowed, within the week, to write home.

Imagine if we lived in a country where posting a picture which looks like it came straight out of a concentration camp, full of people who have not been charged with a crime that we shipped to another country, makes you look good.