State of the Discussion

It's only sane if you believe it's going to result in major reinvestment in low skill manufacturing in the US, so things may be (way) more expensive but there are more jobs that may or may not be preferable to restaurants and retail. Of course you have to be stupid to believe that's a likely outcome, which he is.

The only tariff that makes any sense are those on China and that's only because some sacrifice is worth it to strangle a motivated, highly hostile adversary wherever we can. What we should really be doing is loosening and harmonizing trade with the free world and not exactly free Asian countries on condition they impose similar restrictions on the Chinese.

I can't even with this sane washing: "Trump’s Tariffs Are Latest Sign of His Second-Term Appetite for Risk

President Trump’s announcement went beyond most predictions, showing a greater willingness to follow his instincts even when critics — and some allies — consider failure a likely outcome."

https://www.nytimes.com/2025/04/03/us/politics/trumps-tariffs-risks-second-term.html

One China in theory, two in practice. For example, Taiwan has long had permission to buy almost leading edge US weapons systems that China would never get. Taiwan has purchased both Patriot and HIMARS missile systems. There is active discussion to let them buy Excalibur artillery rounds. Remember when F-35 deliveries were curtailed after it was discovered that some parts supplier had included Chinese magnets? The F-35 incorporates integrated circuits fabbed in Taiwan without any complaints.

On this 'liberation day' I'm reminded of Norm's clip about going to war ... with the World.

Maybe just start with a hemisphere or some ripe continent spoiling for a fight and see how that goes first.https://t.co/Qque9xdxQ2

— Marchmaine (@Marchmaine) April 2, 2025

It's also right after we were breathlessly and repeatedly told Biden was showing no signs of age.

The other massive issue is: How big a problem is this? It could be first-sign-of-fascism-torture... or it could be extreme outliers selected for being extreme outliers.

Trump's people could illegally arrest/imprison/deport 100 US citizens this year and it would be a serious improvement because the system averages 200.

We have about 11 million illegal immigrants living in the USA at the moment. In a normal year ICE will deport about a quarter of a million. If Trump tries to deport our way out of this mess then we will see a massive uptick in deportations that will be easily noticeable, negatively affect the economy, and won't be hidable.

If you want to worry about illegal immigrants then worry about hundreds of thousands, not dozens.

The Bar Associations still control access to the courts through licensing and since most legislators have a lawyer background, that isn't going away. Plus the attempts at using AI in law have been an utter disaster, especially in the Court room but I'm guessing AI will make a muck of contracts, wills, and other legal documents as well.

One of the big problems that is going to have to be overcome is the whole "that's not true! That's a conspiracy theory!" thing.

Remember when TDA being in charge of an apartment complex in Aurora was a conspiracy theory? Well, as it turns out, it ended up being true. The authorities (including the 4th Estate, for some reason) was very interested in making sure that we all knew that the rumors of TDA being in Denver were exaggerations.

Oh, so now as part of the cleanup, we find out that TDA was here and all that? And in getting rid of TDA, we're getting rid of people who aren't part of TDA?

You're going to have to get the really good people in charge of asking for empathy. Having them be the same people as the folks who sneered at the conspiracy theorists is going to have results that you're not going to like.

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.

It's 8 for them to remove them just because one person decides, if it's 6 or 7 they have consult a supervisor.

It is worth pointing out that this basically means they are counting everyone who lives with a claimed member of TDA as themselves a claimed member of TDA, because they'd hit all 6 points of 'Association' and probably have at least Symbolism (b) in that there are certainly social media posts that include pictures of people they live.

Same logic with family members: Documentations and Communications (a) is worth 6 and is literally just phone calls. Add a picture in there, there's 8. Your brother, who you don't associate with, is living in another state, is in a gang you have nothing to do with, and he posted a picture to his social media, and the called you to bail him out and you refused? Tada, eight points, you're a gang member.

And that's assuming that their idea of what gang symbols or gang tattoos are make sense. Which they don't. They have managed to college at least three people for gang tattoos who are gay tattoo artists or makeup artists. Tren de Aragua, for the record, is not weirdly progressive gang that is fine with gay gang members.

At least one of them had entered the US to _attended a prearranged asylum hearing_. He petitioned for asylum, at the border, like he was supposed to, did the proper paperwork, the US let him in, he's working through the system, like he's supposed to, and Trump grabbed him off the street and shipped him overseas.

Meanwhile, and it's worth point this out: The guy that Trump Administration is 'oops we accidentally sold this guy to El Salvador despite having a judge's order' was randomly pointed at back in 2019 by other people being investigated by immigration as a member, INS arrested him, an immigration judge (Remember those?) not only said he was not a member but determined that he _could not_ be deported because he was at risk of being murdered by gangs, and he needed to stay in the US until a proper refugee status could be worked out.

He almost certainly was deported because he had 'credibly statements identifying him as a member' (As in, a judge, said they were nonsense) and he was 'indicted for being a member' (An indictment for a crime later he was _found innocent of_ by a judge.)

We HAVE an immigration court in this country. They are completely ignoring it because they have decided to pretend a law says something different.

Well, no. They're completely ignoring it because they are, and this cannot be emphasized enough, actual fascists who are deliberately attempting to torture people because it makes them look strong to their fascism followers. They are starting with randomly accusations of some members of this outgroup (brown immigrants) being gang members, as sort of a test, and they're offshoring their torture to another country. Baby steps. They will move on.

That is, literally, what is happen in this country right now, and people need to understand that.

It's also worth explaining that about 75% of this system was _already in place_, and INS has always been extremely fascistic. This is something we built, over the last two decades, to operate mostly like this, and it has absolutely no problem shedding the tiniest vestige of due process and leap whole-heartedly in this.

8 points of a possible 87 will get you labelled as a TDA member. We already have several examples of people being deported because of tattoos that have nothing whatsoever to do with that gang. Plus, comment 1 states that even a low score doesn't disqualify for consideration as an enemy alien.

https://www.archives.gov/milestone-documents/alien-and-sedition-acts

Not only that, the law cited requires "a declared war between the United States and any foreign nation or government, or any invasion or predatory incursion shall be perpetrated, attempted, or threatened against the territory of the United States, by any foreign nation or government". Further, it allows only for deportation of males.

Aside from relying on a 2 century old law, the current administration isn't even following it. They'll most likely continue on this lawless path because the people they're intent on deporting are unsympathetic. The Trump administration is not intent on following the law, it's just looking for grist for the social media mill.

The entire plan, such as it seems to be a coherent plan at all, is to let Trump do whatever he feels like while Musk and Trumps other hangers on run around damaging as many government functions (especially tax collection) as they can while trying to generate enough distraction that the GOP will somehow be able to eviscerate the safety net legislatively and pass an even bigger deficit exploding tax cut. The longer-term hope seems to be that somehow the voting rubes won't be angry enough to give Dems a big enough or long enough majority to undo the damage and tax the fish out of the plutocrats to pay for all their chicanery.

I'm not sure that she has a whole lot in common with the other speakers that have been shut down over the last dozen years or so.

Isn't that a requirement for a blacklist? A common theme?

Well, other than the "potentially harmful" thing?

It's not "my" article, but it does lay out what actually happened and what the given reasons were. I thought that basic information might be useful. Hence the link.