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.

It's a Hollywood blacklist redux. How long before we revive HUAC?

"Are you now, or have you ever been, in opposition to the war in the Palestinian territories?"

We used to get Level 3 Engineers from the best and brightest of the Level 2 Engineering pool.

I don't know where we'll get Level 3s after they stop making Level 2s.

Maybe we'll make it so that AI is so good that we'll only need Level 4s. That'll solve that problem.

Yes, my prediction is that the pipeline will also constrict. Clients will still want a guy or gal with a little grey in his or her hair and the bedside manner breaking down the brass tacks but the path to becoming that person will be narrower.

Given what I've seen AI do to coding, I'm expecting AI to do similar to lawyering.

That is: you won't need paralegals or entry-level staff anymore... hell, you won't need junior partners.

Just Level 3 Engineers and up.

I honestly think Canada should have justified their retaliatory tariffs not as retaliatory, but due to the fentanyl going the other way.

Which is higher. The US is a net exporter of fentanyl over the border.

Actually, the funniest possible thing would be for Canada to say 'Yes, there are things coming across the border illegally, this is a good thing Trump has set up, indeed, we demand a formal treaty that _automatically_ scales tariffs based on outlawed things smuggled over the border.'

Anything illegal. Not just drugs, but _guns_.

Which would not only put Canada far ahead, but Mexico also.

Freedom of Speech doesn't mean Freedom of Reach. The doctor can still say whatever she wants, the university just said "you aren't entitled to say it *HERE*".

If it prevents violence, you have to agree that it's the right decision.

I think we have to be more constructive. The female coded thing is something I feel good telling people to get over. I fully expect that by the time I can retire (if I ever can, God willing) that law will be female coded in a way it was not when I started out. That's what the pipeline looks like and there's no harm in it.

The question becomes what you can do to create mass work at a time when technology is slowly but surely eliminating the demand. Maybe it's FDR style paying people to go out and clear scrub brush. Maybe it's, I dunno, paying people to coach little league. Of course you then have to deal with every dollar being spent on that not being spent on the latest ship killer drone that blows up amphibious landing vessels while they're still out at sea.

What does that have to do with the fact that the Telegraph (And thus Yahoo News) is repeating very obvious unsubstantiated propaganda about how some pro-Israel guy said he looked at some stuff and found some discrepancy that he's apparently not going to make public in any way, and then most of the article is about another pro-Israel guy talking about what those people probably found.

That cannot possible be 'news' in any sense. 'This guy said he discovered some stuff, although produced no evidence of that, and we have another guy here to guess at what he probably discovered!'

Just to add you look at that situation with the longshoreman and port automation. On the one hand those people have good jobs and you hate to see them go. On the other, is it really in the strategic interest of the US to refuse to automate its ports, while China speeds ahead with the technology? It isn't easy stuff.

Well, we are now at the time of year where the Fed reports on how things look, and a lot of companies are required to make _legally accurate_ predictions about future revenue.

This is the things they're saying on anonymous surveys to the Fed:
https://www.dallasfed.org/research/surveys/tssos/2025/2503#tab-comments

Um...not looking so good.

Meanwhile, Trump keeps saying on Truth Social that people are fighting his tariffs on fentanyl. I would quote the entire thing, but it's an unreadable mess: https://truthsocial.com/@realDonaldTrump/posts/114266599439835683

But here's the first sentence: 'Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, Susan Collins of Maine, Lisa Murkowski of Alaska, and Rand Paul, also of Kentucky, will hopefully get on the Republican bandwagon, for a change, and fight the Democrats wild and flagrant push to not penalize Canada for the sale, into our Country, of large amounts of Fentanyl, by Tariffing the value of this horrible and deadly drug in order to make it more costly to distribute and buy.'

I'm...pretty sure we haven't put tariffs on fentanyl to make it more costly to distribute and buy.

Yea, on the one hand financialization and globalization have wreaked havoc on low skill manufacturing. On the other times and technology really have changed in important ways.

Over on Yglesias' substack someone shared a rather glib tweet (xeet?) about the lack of upside to bringing back the sock factories from Cambodia. It's harsh but MY isn't totally wrong about that.

While we need to on-shore or friend-shore any number of strategic industries those are probably mostly of the high tech manufacturing variety, and importantly not the type that leads to mass low skill employment with unions and good benefits, etc. like in the days of yore. They're jobs for smaller numbers of people who may still need degrees and/or significant training to operate the mostly automated tools.

So what do you do for those guys? They probably don't make enough for tax cuts to mean anything. Resistance to subsidy is bolstered not just by pointy headed economists but by senses of worth and dignity. It's still not clear to me what you can do for them that doesn't work against creating and holding the other forms of strategic advantage.

Yea it's all good food for thought. Parts 1 and 2 seem like the kind of thing that could even have bipartisan legs. Part 3 I think may he fundamentally in tension with Parts 1 and 2. Constraints on trade for the greater good of our way of life may well be necessary (I agree that they probably are) but the result of that is going to make us poorer in the aggregate, as is re-arming. Not a lot left over to put your fingers on the scale for working families in that environment.