Flowersignup
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User ID: 3556
Flowersignup
1yr ago
I think the most disturbing type of argument around Ukraine is the one that pretends to be doing it "for their own good". Like "Why don't you want peace, why don't you want peace? Why do you want your people to die?" to the victims of a dictator invading their home, bombing their cities, kidnapping their children and stealing their land. If they aren't settling for your offer it's probably because they don't think your offer is good enough to actually protect them. They're in desperation, if an offer was convincing they would take it. So why not?
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They've been promised security before, they gave up their nukes for it. They sign a deal that Russia won't punch them in the face, Russia violates it twice and if they don't want to just sign another without a stronger third party guarantee, it's not because they don't want peace. It's because they know Russia can't be trusted.
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They don't think American investments means much, before the war there was that joke rule of "no two countries with a McDonald's have ever been at war" which was essentially emblematic of this concept. That international business interests for peace were simply too strong for a country to overcome, and yet the war happened anyway.
If someone doesn't want to support Ukraine fine, there's lots of other bad stuff we ignore and don't help out with. But those people spreading this idea that "they must want to be invaded and die so not helping them is actually the best help", I just find that really sickening.
Flowersignup
1yr ago
The 4th US Circuit Court of Appeals declined to lift the order on the executive to "facilitate" the return of Abrego Garcia and I recommend reading it
It's written up by judge James Wilkinson III, a Reagan appointee and Bush era short list candidate for the supreme court and he's quite well respected in the legal profession. This guy has been a conservative for longer than many people here have even been alive, and the stance of seasoned judicial figures like him with old style "respectable" political ideologies are an interesting way to see the change in the rest of politics.
Most importantly in that it incidentally addresses many of the questions and concerns people have about this whole situation.
Like does it matter whether or not the executive's allegations against Garcia are correct?
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. 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?
What does the Supreme Court's decision actually say?
The Supreme Court's decision remains, as always, our guidepost. That decision rightly requires the lower federal courts to give "due regard for the deference owed to the Executive Branch in the conduct of foreign affairs" Noem v. Abrego Garcia, No. 24A949, slip op. at 2 (U.S. Apr. 10, 2025); see also United States v. Curtiss-Wright Exp. Corp., 299 U.S. 304, 319 (1936). That would allow sensitive diplomatic negotiations to be removed from public view. It would recognize as well that the "facilitation" of Abrego Garcia's return leaves the Executive Branch with options in the execution to which the courts in accordance with the Supreme Court's decision should extend a genuine deference. That decision struck a balance that does not permit lower courts to leave Article II by the wayside.
The Supreme Court's decision does not, however, allow the government to do essentially nothing. It requires the government "to 'facilitate' Abrego Garcia's release from custody in El Salvador and to ensure that his case is handled as it would have been had he not been improperly sent to El Salvador." Abrego Garcia, supra, slip op. at 2. "Facilitate" is an active verb. It requires that steps be taken as the Supreme Court has made perfectly clear. See Abrego Garcia, supra, slip op. at 2 ("[T]he Government should be prepared to share what it can concerning the steps it has taken and the prospect of further steps."). The plain and active meaning of the word cannot be diluted by its constriction, as the government would have it, to a narrow term of art. We are not bound in this context by a definition crafted by an administrative agency and contained in a mere policy directive. Cf. Loper Bright Enters. v. Raimondo, 603 U.S. 369, 400 (2024); Christensen v. Harris Cnty., 529 U.S. 576, 587 (2000). Thus, the government's argument that all it must do is "remove any domestic barriers to [Abrego Garcia's] return," Mot. for Stay at 2, is not well taken in light of the Supreme Court's command that the government facilitate Abrego Garcia's release from custody in El Salvador.
An interesting difference between the role of the executive and the rule of the judiciary
And the differences do not end there. The Executive is inherently focused upon ends; the Judiciary much more so upon means. Ends are bestowed on the Executive by electoral outcomes. Means are entrusted to all of government, but most especially to the Judiciary by the Constitution itself.
Are the claims that this could be used on citizens valid?
The Executive possesses enormous powers to prosecute and to deport, but with powers come restraints. If today the Executive claims the right to deport without due process and in disregard of court orders, what assurance will there be tomorrow that it will not deport American citizens and then disclaim responsibility to bring them home?" And what assurance shall there be that the Executive will not train its broad discretionary powers upon its political enemies? The threat, even if not the actuality, would always be present, and the Executive's obligation to "take Care that the Laws be faithfully executed" would lose its meaning. U.S. CONST. art. II, § 3; see also id. art. II, § 1, cl. 8.
On the contradictions between both government's public claims of authority and/or responsibility.
Today, both the United States and the El Salvadoran governments disclaim any authority and/or responsibility to return Abrego Garcia. See President Trump Participates in a Bilateral Meeting with the President of El Salvador, WHITE HOUSE (Apr. 14, 2025). We are told that neither government has the power to act. The result will be to leave matters generally and Abrego Garcia specifically in an interminable limbo without recourse to law of any sort.
Are there previous major examples of an executive following a court order it did not like?
It is in this atmosphere that we are reminded of President Eisenhower's sage example. Putting his "personal opinions" aside, President Eisenhower honored his "inescapable" duty to enforce the Supreme Court's decision in Brown v. Board of Education II to desegregate schools "with all deliberate speed." Address by the President of the United States, Delivered from his Office at the White House 1-2 (Sept. 24, 1957); 349 U.S. 294, 301 (1955). This great man expressed his unflagging belief that "[t]he very basis of our individual rights and freedoms is the certainty that the President and the Executive Branch of Government will support and [e]nsure the carrying out of the decisions of the Federal Courts." Id. at 3. Indeed, in our late Executive's own words, "[u]nless the President did so, anarchy would result." Id.
And if you're wondering "Why do the courts even get a say here to begin with about the executive's actions?", here's a basic primer.
Flowersignup
1yr ago
I think MattyY has a pretty decently evidenced take on this. https://x.com/mattyglesias/status/1907764231484686635#m
https://www.slowboring.com/p/trumps-tariffs-mean-big-opportunities
Tariffs are bad for many industries due to increasing their import costs and trade, so you can use the exemption process to pick economic Winners and Losers which even assuming there's no corruption whatsoever is still prone to mishap. And assuming no corruption in the Trump admin is a pretty hard sell.
This policy essentially forces the Commerce Department to turn itself into a little central planning office for the American economy. And even if you assume perfect good faith on the part of all the political appointees and career staff,2 it’s not reasonable to expect them to do a good job making all of these technical decisions.
One good example goes to Apple in the previous admin.
But it’s a high-profile company, and as Republicans know, middle class people don’t like to pay higher taxes. During Trump’s first term, he initially vowed that Apple would get no exemptions in the spring of 2019, but then in the fall, there were a lot of stories about how prices on Apple products might go up. By September, Apple was winning limited exemptions. Then, in December, Trump reached a “Phase 1” trade deal with China, which was used as a pretext to exempt iPhones, and in March 2020, Apple won an exemption for Apple Watches, too.
Any highly discretionary process becomes political.
Theoretically, the waivers are granted on a technical basis. But there’s only so much capacity to do technical and legal analysis from scratch. In practice, agencies are relying in part on the strength of the cases that are submitted to them by the people making the requests. Some of that is the actual strength on the merits, but some of it is the quality of the lawyers and lobbyists these companies can afford to hire. And, of course, if your company is in a swing state or has close ties to a member of Congress the White House cares about or (like Apple) is salient in the media, other people start getting involved in the meetings to decide what should happen. You can be optimistic that a well-run administration won’t let political considerations run roughshod over everything else. But realistically, you can’t take the politics out of politics. In a discretionary process, the interests of companies with political clout will be weighted more heavily than those of outsiders or startups. And companies will need, at the margin, to shift their time and attention to the process of getting waivers and away from making good products.
Essentially risks standardizing widespread corruption, and becomes what is essentially a planned economy based off personal favors and ties to powerful politicians. Something that already happens to some degree but on overdrive like what happened to ruin Argentina.
This seems like too big of a fuckup to put in just "whoopsie we made a mistake" territory. If a journalist can just get accidentally added onto it without them constantly doing security checks then what about all the highly motivated and talented bad actors from foreign nations?
China or Russia isn't going to tell us "Oh yeah we have eyes on X and Y private conversations because they're incompetent and don't actually check things." They're gonna sit there and eat their free lunch and just like seeing one cockroach means you need to be ready for more hiding around, one basic security mistake is a strong reason to worry about others that haven't been revealed.
And it apparently being done through improper channels is even worse because it incentivizes people who fuck up to keep silent about it cause they just don't have the fuck up to contend with but their own improper choice they have to answer for as well. It's also the complete opposite of any smart Cover Your Ass strategy because now any failure is on you because you went around the proper and official path.
The rallying cry of the pro-Abrego Garcia camp is: "If they can do it to him, they can do it to any of us." In other words, they see no meaningful difference between him and a legal US citizen, and so there is no Schelling Fence that can be drawn between the two. On other hand, the pro-Trump camp who wants Abrego Garcia to stay in El Salvador are not at all concerned that they will be next, because in their view citizens and non-citizens are two morally distinct categories.
You seem to be missing the point entirely. If they can grab a person and send them off to a foreign prison for life without the system of due process afforded to US citizens to do things like prove they're a citizen in court, then they can grab a citizen and send them off to a foreign prison too because that citizen will simply not be granted the due process they're "supposed" to be owed. And once the citizen is out of the country and in a foreign nation, the government shrugs and says "well we can't do anything, they're elsewhere not here, we made a mistake sending a citizen but oh well"
And they're already making mistakes mixing up citizens with illegal immigrants
It violates the very concept of habeas corpus, a fundamental of modern legal systems. If we can just One Easy Trick around the basic structure of freedom and civil liberty in the country, then we have a major problem.
And it's not like it's a conspiracy theory the Trump admin plans this One Easy Trick on citizens, they literally say they're planning it.
I think more people could understand the depths of this debate better by steelmanning the pro puberty blocker/pro HRT side a little and seeing that allowing people to go though puberty normally is also not reversible. And a lot of transgender adults (and teens off the very basis that they are seeking out hormones) openly express that they wish they didn't have to go through their natural puberty.
So from their perspective what bans can end up doing is that instead of the person getting to decide which irreversible thing they go through based off their own desires, it's the government choosing for them.
There is no simple choice here, someone will be upset by permanent changes. A teenager who makes a mistake and gets on hormones without consideration, or a teenager who is forced to go without care and ends up as a sad trans adult who just wishes they had the autonomy given to make choices about their own body when they were younger.
And blockers came up as the compromise solution and promoting them as the free space where everything can be reversed seems just like wishful thinking from everyone. Because if it's true then it's a very easy solution that won't cause any harm.
Smash away and let's see what happens. If for no other reason to prove that you can do something different, alternatives are possible, even if you may indeed get burned.
Pouring gasoline all over my body and lighting a match because the experts told me not to (and how dare they tell me what to do?) is a completely different type of thing than nuanced risk taking and experimentation.
We can do things differently, improve on our flaws and take healthy risks. We can challenge the orthodox opinions of professionals. We don't need to light ourselves on fire to do this.
Flowersignup
1yr ago
"Oh the Urbanity" a Canadian YouTuber just put out a video titled "Donald Trump is 100% serious about annexing Canada" where I think he puts forward a really convincing argument for the title argument, and for why it needs to be taken seriously.
I won't force you to watch the video but here it is, I'll give you his 13 points for it and explain them.
1: "Repeated preoccupation"
This isn't just a "one off brain fart" like a lot of Trump's rhetoric, he's been consistent about it over and over again. From Trump himself "So when I say they should be a state, I mean that, I really mean that"
2: "Aides say he's serious."
Includes a tweet from White House Deputy Chief of Staff to take him at face value and sources to CNN reporting other aides say similar, take his claims seriously.
3: "Canada says he's serious"
Some of the politicians in Canada believe that Trump is very serious about this threat too.
4: "Questioned our border"
He's talked about believing the Canadian/US border to be illegitimate (Something he also points out is that Trump has not done the same with Mexico) and that this is the rhetoric used before trying to take over another country.
5: "Loves big real estate deals."
Trump is narcissistic and loves to put his names on things and claim big accomplishments. "Is there any bigger real estate deal than doubling the land mass of the USA?"
6: "Fits into his world view"
Urbanity believes Trump has a view of great powers dominating over their local spheres of influence
7: "Threatened other countries"
He's talked about this with other countries like Panama and Greenland, showing the expansionist mindset. Along with the reported plans being developed for a potential Panama invasion.
8: "Consider his influences"
People that Trump likes are Pat Buchanan (who has talked about taking Canada and Greenland before) and McKinley (Trump's favorite president) who annexed multiple territories.
9: "Admires Vladimir Putin"
Trump has shown a lot of respect to Putin before and often victim blames Ukraine for being invaded.
10: "Pretexts like Drug Cartels"
They're trying to claim that Canada has been taken over by drug cartels and they need to wage a war to take it back from harming the country. It sounds like the Bush administration talking about WMDs.
11: "Spins Canada as abuser"
They talk about things like Doug Ford putting a tax on electricity exports as an "act of war" by Canada, and treat retaliatory tariffs as unprovoked aggression.
12: "Information Bubble"
Trump lives in an information bubble where the main sources he listens to are the ones that feed from him like Fox News. His ideas about Canada wanting to be taken over from Fox News talking about "Maple MAGA" likely reinforce his desire even more.
13: "No Personal Morals"
Urbanity views Trump as a man who has scammed people before with various business projects, shitcoins and the like. There's little reason to expect he wouldn't disregard the sovereignty of other nations.
While he doesn't mention this, I personally think another major point to consider is that Trump is not consistent on what he wants from Canada. One day he says it's the trade deficit, next day he says its drugs, then the next day its immigrants, the next day he says nothing can be done at all and he just wants the state. It sounds like excuses just being made up based off how he feels that day.
Urbanity goes on to argue that even if the threat isn't likely, it is no reason to take it as less serious. The main thing being that Trump is enacting a trade war, which is still causing serious harm to the Canadian economy and their people.
Like if a mafiaso moved in next door and started joking about killing you. Even if the chance was low, it's understandable to take their words seriously. "Threats don't have to be higher than a 50% chance to take them seriously"
He draws a corollary to Ukraine where there was a lot of disbelief and doubt about Russia invading in 2022, until as we're all aware, it happened. "But they did it"
All in all I think this is very convincing that Trump really does want to annex Canada and that we as a society should be taking that possibility seriously. And as Urbanity also points out, even if it's unpopular now, Trump's followers and the Republican party have been shown to be rather flexible at following his lead against their prior beliefs. They might be against him in 2025, but what about 2026 or 2027 when they've had years of Fox News and Trump speeches repeating the stories of Canadian Cartels and "Acts of War"?
So for discussion, there's a few questions.
Do you think Trump has serious intentions to annex Canada? Is it right of him or wrong of him to do this? If he does ramp up rhetoric (or efforts) to annex or invade, would you wish for the Republicans to oppose him or continue to support him as duly elected president? And how likely is it that Trump will transform from his rhetoric to serious action (beyond the trade wars)?
Flowersignup
1yr ago
Nearly every country on the face of the earth has tariffs against US goods. It's working out fantastic for them.
That's both not true in a meaningful sense, most of our meaningful trade partners have only limited tariffs on a small number of industries or businesses which is not anywhere near equal to large tariffs on everything and not true because the US economy is substantially stronger and better than most other countries in the world.
Maybe we were the ones pouring gasoline all over our body and lighting the match because the experts told us we have to.
Lots of countries have tried autarky before, somehow despite it being incredibly effective apparently, none of them ended up doing well. If we're pouring gas on ourselves, it's strange how rich and powerful America has become doing so.
Also important, free trade is historically the revolutionary idea. Free trade economists like Smith and Ricardo were the ones who pushed back on the mercentalist mindset that dominated the elite class of the time, and the countries that adopted trade grew up strong.
There was a discussion last week about the DOT vs MTA case re congestion pricing and there's an interesting new update. DOJ attorneys intended to upload a letter to the courts to Judge Liman regarding their expectations for documents added to the administrative record.
Unfortunately it appears they made a mistake and accidentally sent an internal letter meant for Erin Hendrixson, the senior trial attorney at the DOT regarding his apparent request for litigation risk in this case and it is quite revealing.
The three DOJ Assistant United States Attorneys internally seem unconvinced that the FHWA (federal highway administration) cancellation by Secretary Duffy is in accordance with law and thus is unlikely to be upheld by the judge.
Here's some choice bits
For the reasons outlined below, it is unlikely that Judge Liman or further courts of review will accept the argument that the CBDTP was not a statutorily authorized "value pricing" pilot under the Value Pricing Pilot Program ("VPPP")
...
It is very unlikely that Judge Liman or further courts of review will uphold the Secretary's decision on the legal grounds articulated in the letter. Defending the case on this basis, with the most likely outcome being vacatur of the Secretary's decision or demand to the agency for further administrative process will only serve to delay FHWA's elimination of the CBDTP.
Moreover, based on a preliminary review of the documents provided for inclusion in the administrative record, it appears that other than the Secretary's decision itself, there is no other material supporting or explaining the DOT's change in position with respect to the two points identified above that would not be subject to deliberative process or attorney-client privileges ... While we would strongly contest any request for extra-record discovery, it is always a possibility in cases where there is very little written justification for an agency's action.
They also highlight an alternative strategy for cancellation since they believe this current one is likely to fail. Instead of termination as a matter of statutory construction, they suggest an attempt at the change-in-position doctrine instead. That method could be a difficult sell too given the above bit about not having much written justification on the matter. The change-in-position doctrine requires a "reasoned explanation" for the decision and must consider "serious reliance issues" of regulated parties and must not be arbitrary or capricious, which would be hard to do with the current lack of written justification for their decision so they'll likely go through the internal decision making process for it first.
It is not possible to perfectly predict the decisions of Judge Liman and the respective agencies, but the internal memo at least suggests the DOT believes it is fighting an uphill battle, one that it is unlikely to win on the current merits. They also haven't sought a preliminary injunction against the MTA yet (explanation here for why the onus is on the DOT)) and the slow response would reflect this internal lack of confidence if they feel they can't reach the bar required for one. Some unrelated legal scholars have also commented on the case suggesting the DOT was unlikely to win and that the fight (if Duffy and Hochul wishes to drag it out) could inevitably end up at the Supreme Court.
Currently at least the MTA seems poised to win the case that this particular attempt was unlawful by the DOT, and in response to this likelyhood it appears the DOT is planning some alternative options it hopes will be more defensible under existing law.
One final note ironically NEPA, the same regulation that ended up with a 4,007 page document (thanks in part to New Jersey's challenges) impeding the implementation of congestion pricing for three years might also kick in with this strategy, forcing a new NEPA analysis by the DOT for termination of the program. Will the villain of the congestion pricing storyline from the early 2020s become its hero in the mid 2020s?
and also evaluate whether a new NEPA analysis is required to assess the environmental impacts of terminating the CBDTP.
Paradoxically, this happens in part because we don't spend enough on homeless shelters. People don't realize this but a lot of shelters are closed during the day and will literally kick out the people using them and tell them to come back that night.
This presents an obvious issue, if the shelters are where you're supposed to go when you're homeless but they're not open, where are the homeless using them supposed to go? Some places have daytime shelters but as illustrated by this thread often the answer is just "go to the library". Some others (across multiple threads, you can find quite a few discussing where to go when the shelters close) include heading out to the woods, the mall, a movie theater, setting up a tent, coffee shops, a university/community college, even a storage unit or go do their day job (something like 40% of homeless have a job and that number is rising).
Now maybe if we do get plentiful and reliable day shelters where homeless can go, there will still be some shitty stragglers at the libraries and parks and buses. There probably would be a few at least and we can figure out how to get them away then but until the option of daytime shelters is at least available we can't be expecting anything else. They have to exist somewhere and they're gonna choose a place that is open to the public, air condition and feels safe.
Trump seems to have a legitimate hard-on for tariffs going back decades (as some people point out even most of his 2016 announcement speech was about tariffs and thinking free trade is bad) but he also seems to be a scaredy cat who keeps backing down anytime it causes actual trouble. He's delayed stuff like what, 4-5 times already?
At some point the market is just going to stop reacting because they'll internalize the large majority of tariff threats end up fizzling out. High chance he backs down on China some too, or at least that they allow some obvious workaround like China > Vietnam > US or something.
Edit: And it's already starting https://www.foxnews.com/politics/trump-says-hell-take-look-exempting-some-larger-us-companies-hit-especially-hard-tariffs
Flowersignup
1yr ago
What stands out to me is that twice in the thread they mention OPSEC
But we can easily pause. And if we do, I will do all we can to enforce 100% OPSEC
And
We are currently clean on OPSEC
I don't know outside of them straight up texting "This topic is sensitive and shouldn't be available to the outside" if you could get any closer to expressing that very idea. They literally say it's something they're taking OPSEC measures on, it's a hard sell to me that it's not a security breach then.
Flowersignup
1yr ago
Illegal: Clean up, do the dishes, tend to the garden
Agent: You're about to have a real bad day
If that would actually count as work when caught then I think we have an issue with the definitions being used. I had a friend over from the UK myself last year for about 2-3 weeks, he stayed in my spare bedroom and I made him clean up after himself (obviously) and he helped me with a few chores like doing dishes and vacuuming throughout because he was temporarily living there and when you're living with someone you help do the things. I made meals sometimes, he did sometimes. Sometimes I did the driving, sometimes he would. And hell I left the house at one point to get groceries and left him in charge of my niece when she was spending the night over. Because again that's all just part of being with a person living in their space.
I don't think any reasonable person would hear "you can't work on this visa" and understand it to cover basic chores like that.
Literally just lying might work fine in business as long as you avoid legal troubles, the same way that stiffing contractors might end up working out perfectly fine if you're the bigger company but proper governing is a different beast entirely. Risk taking like that in real estate just means you might pay for a few fines if the zoning board says no, risk taking in government can mean tons of people lose their jobs, lose their homes, or even die depending on what you're taking a risk for.
And unlike with venues or contractors where there's plenty of fish in the sea so pissing them off isn't too bad, there is not another Canada or UK or EU to turn to. You can poke the bears a little especially with a country as powerful as ours but this is an iterative game and defecting is way less useful. Likewise there's a reason why his measures still have us at -8% from 6 months ago and Polymarket has been hovering around 50% chance of recession, people and the overall market want and need long-term reliability.
Edit: And not even to mention, what are we getting out of it? Even if we settle into a "win" for him on getting high tariffs implemented, there's plenty of strong evidence that it will hurt the economy, reduce downstream jobs that use those inputs, and make us poorer.
Edit2: Also here's a really great example of how this approach seems to be failing, Canada. Everything was lined up for a Conservative victory, it was basically taken as a given. PP would have been really Trump friendly. Instead he rallied the Canadians so hard that the odds have shifted massively and Carney will be elected not just as a liberal party pick, but an anti-Trump pick.
Politics is an iterative game, and defecting so hard with aggression towards Canada has most likely lost him in the long run. And there is no other Canada to turn to, he can't just run off like you could with contractors or venues or city zoning boards. Our closest and friendliest neighbor economically and geographically has been pushed away
The mad man has done it. He’s stopped listening to anyone who isn’t a complete sycophant or the market, and enacted a tariff policy more extreme than we would have seen under what most thought was the worst case scenario. The formula of “reciprocity” being used is so stupid I approach the topic with awe, and have an almost superstitious feeling that if I even describe it I’ll somehow become stupider myself, though you can read about it here. I don’t think this ship can correct course. The Trump movement has been selecting for loyalty to Trump above all else, and we’re seeing the results. As Vice President Vance said during his trip to Greenland, “we can’t just ignore the president’s desires.”
This is an even deeper issue than just Trump. Any leader be it government or business must be regularly exposed to views and information that upset them and they disagree with so they can maintain a hold on reality. And Trump has captured the conservative party and media so tightly that they essentially function as echo chambers for him.
In the first administration he had to deal with the regular Republicans who were hesitant to yield to his nonsense under the worry that he would be a fad. He lost the popular vote and didn't have a full grasp on the media yet. Mike Pence's refusal to play along with the fake electors is a perfect example of this.
But this isn't the first admin, you do not survive in a 2nd Trump government if you confront him too much. And Fox News, Trump's favorite source might as well be Trump News now. Trump will say something out there and unexpected and instead of being distracted with a new shiny toy like before, he gets reinforcement. His obsession with Canada as a state is being rewarded in his eyes when fox news tells him about Maple MAGA and how much the Canadians totally love his ideas. They'll run stories with Russian envoys saying how he prevented WW3 (No seriously, they did that), heaping lots of over the top praise on him.
He lives in a world that says everything he does is so amazing and so smart and all the people love him for it. Even the former Trump critics like Vance realized this, the Republican party is the party of Trump right now. It also makes me wonder where the GOP can go when Trump finally kicks the bucket, a lot of candidates who try to emulate the man aren't doing well electorally. The electoral magic exists in Trump himself, not an idealogy.
The author and his brother needn't worry anyway, Polymarket chance of recession is at almost 60% already and that's with the high levels of uncertainty that Trump might just fold. There'll be plenty of unemployment and moving in with parents to go around again if we go into recession territory.
Especially since as we tend to see with businesses from steel and sugar tariffs, all the downstream employment depending on those inputs gets way more fucked than jobs in the industry being protected get grow.
Unsurprisingly, there has been nothing said about the flagrant disregard for rule of law by the executive of New York.
Has the actions of New York been ruled against yet in a court of law, and have they continued to keep congestion pricing despite that ruling? That is how these conflicts get legally settled after all.
If so, then Hochul and others should be held in contempt of court. If not then the comparison I assume you're trying to make is not equivalent. From my understanding the relevant lawsuit is still in process
Edit: Better link, not directly to a PDF.
Edit 2: also to add this bit in
While Sec. Duffy has issued threats to NY for noncompliance, and FHWA gave NY an April 20 deadline to turn off the tolls, at the pretrial hearing on Wednesday, counsel for the Federal government indicated that no action is imminent. The plaintiffs in the case made clear there would be “irreparable harm to the MTA, TBTA, and the people of New York if tolling ceased” and that further they don’t intend to turn off the tolling system short of an order from judge directing them to do so.
While it of course remains to be seen in the future, they do not state an intent to disobey the courts. This is par for the course when a legal conflict occurs, disagreements between parties are settled by the judicial branch.
I suppose I'm just not enough of a lawcuck to understand why this is being blown up into such an ordeal.
That's fair, which is why I think it's good to look at what the seasoned legal system is doing to get an idea at what is important and why. In this case, there's a reason the Supreme Court went 9-0 (with a reminder three of them were appointed by Trump himself), there's a reason why the appeals here was 3-0, there's a reason why the Trump admin keeps getting ruled against so much on this case in general.
These are experienced judges, many of whom have deep histories of conservative sided judicial idealogy.
There was some minor procedural error, therefore we must make an elaborate show of correcting it, at great expense, to achieve an outcome that will immediately collapse back to the current status quo. This is your brain on legalism.
Maybe it will just collapse back to the status quo, doesn't really matter. That's not the concern of the courts anyway. The court system doesn't really need to care what happens as long as it's not unconstitutional or against a constitutionally valid law, it does care how it happens if it breaks those though.
Edit: As was written after all
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. 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)
But then, something happened around 2010 and one side just stopped fighting.
Yes that something was a Supreme Court case legalizing same sex marriage across the entire country under the concept of civil liberties. Of course you stop fighting as hard when the supreme law of the land says that it's legal.
And within 15 years, almost everything about this consensus was proven wrong.
What evidence do you have for this? I don't see any large scale proof that a large number of gay people are trying to actively "convert" straight kids into same-sex marriages when they're adults. And don't be citing campaigns based around accepting LGBT students, it needs to be widespread proof that they're trying to convert children since that was your wording.
Evidence could look like a gay version of conversion therapy where straight kids are sent to centers to shame them into gayness, or maybe a large lgbt organization like GLAAD admitting they want to turn straight kids gay. Or something along the lines that there is an active and widespread attempt to take straight children and make them homosexual instead of a genuine (even if poorly executed) attempt wanting gay teenagers to be accepted.
Sports gambling? Mistake theory.
Marijuana legalization? Mistake theory.
Or perhaps, people just have different values for civil liberty like the libertarian viewpoint and the negative externalities of a freedom to gamble or smoke weed is not convincing enough for them to change their mind on that. It's not a "mistake" for people to have different views on a trade-off between freedom from government restrictions and societal health.
Flowersignup
1yr ago
So howcome I have never seen a "made in USA" label
American manufacturing is actually really strong https://www.cato.org/blog/united-states-remains-manufacturing-powerhouse
Simply put, the United States remains a manufacturing powerhouse. In 2020 it was the world’s fourth‐largest steel producer and in 2021 was the second-largest automaker and largest aerospace exporter. Accounting for nearly 16 percent of global manufacturing output in 2021—second only to China, which has four times the population of the United States—the US had a greater share than Japan, Germany, and South Korea combined. By itself, the US manufacturing sector would constitute the world’s eighth‐largest economy.
There's not as many jobs in manufacturing because automation. There's absolutely no reason to cuck ourselves employing people to do things that machines have been able to do for decades, and it's freed up labor into other goods and services. And again this has made the US into the economic marvel that it is too.
and why is the local agribusiness periodically shiitting bricks at the prospect of dropping tariffs on food?
Free trade actually benefits a lot of agriculture too. Even the Trump admin knows this given they subsidized farmers during the first trade war and are planning more now https://www.nytimes.com/2025/03/31/us/politics/farmers-bailouts-trump-tariffs.html
They could give steelmans sure, but there's always been one issue with steelmanning as a concept and that it's sometimes equivalent to just making up ideas that don't actually exist in the person's head.
There's a lot of different reasons given by the Trump admin. From fentanyl, to trade deficits, to immigration, to bringing back American manufacturing, to replacing domestic tax with it, to take revenge on other countries with tariffs, to fight China, etc etc.
Some of these are even contradictory. Raising a significant amount of money to fund government with tariffs doesn't work if people stop buying foreign and start buying only those made in America from the ground up. And neither of those work as well if the goal is for them to lower their trade barriers for a bilateral drop in tariffs and protectionism on both sides.
Steelmanning just a single point (like if tariffs can help american manufacturers or if they could be used to punish foreign protectionist policy) has to just straight up ignore everything else being said. It has to be unaware of the rhetoric and reasons given in order to substitute with some "Well imagine if it wasn't actually that?" fanfiction.
I'm sorry, but do you not understand that the elections for governor and the elections for local school board are different elections for different positions? Of course winning a governorship has little immediate impact on the decisions of any individual school because state governors are not meant to be elected kings. They have specifically given powers and limits.
Those particular limits can change as states have pretty broad freedom, but even that still requires more than the governor. It requires a state legislature (something else people vote for).
And if you think it's particularly biased, I recommend looking at North Carolina which has a Dem governor and yet the legislature leans heavily Republican to the point they normally have a supermajority and constantly overturn vetos. In fact just recently they overturned a veto on a law that limited the power of the positions the Democrats won. As supermajority winners of the state legislature, that was their legal right to do and no amount of Dem voting for governor can change that because the governorship is not a king position that assumes full and direct control of everything in the state.
Flowersignup
1yr ago
So one of the older members of the Tories, Graham Stuart, has publically declared "We have to consider the possibility that President Trump is a Russian asset.". While these accusations have certainly been made more before, I don't think I've seen it so straightforward from parties that are traditionally allies for the Republicans. Graham isn't the only Tory seeming to turn either, Robert Jenrick (who once said if he was American he would vote for Trump and went to his inauguration) and Nigel Farage are two other examples of traditional conservative allies in the UK who have been increasingly critical of Trump's stance on Russia, although not as far as Graham Stuart has gone.
Which got me thinking, let's set aside all these accusations themselves and look at what I think is a better question.
If I was a secretly Russia aligned president who had been elected while hiding those views, who knew that I could not just take blatantly pro-Russia stances but I could perhaps slowly nudge public opinion of my supporters to be more friendly towards them and less friendly to Ukraine while taking pro Russian action under cover, what kind of things would I be doing and saying?
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Main thing, I'd slowly start to split and incite America's international allies. A stable West is one of the main things that Russia is scared of the most. Destabilize NATO, NORAD, ANZUS, etc.
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I'd have some underlings talk about how Russia shares conservative values eventually taking this discussion to the big stage and mentioning one or two things we can get along with. Play up the similarities we have with Russian culture while attacking the culture of other western democracies.
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I'd continually frame it as a waste of money, claim Ukraine has been committing fraud and focus on total values instead of the main thing that has been given of outdated weapons and technology. Argue that it's just so much money that it's in the US's best interest to stop funding because they're using it on other things anyway.
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I'd hide it all under a veil of trying to end the war. I'd direct blame towards the Ukrainians saying they aren't willing to compromise and that they don't want to end the assault on them, say that they aren't trying hard enough to stop being from conquered and killed. Instead of asking who is killing the Ukrainians going off to fight (Russian forces), I'd instead center it on Ukrainian leaders being responsible for the deaths.
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I'd slowly ramp up the discourse more and more, trying to make each step seem natural and more of a reaction from the previous. Picking an early fight gives me cover for picking the next one which gives me cover for the next and so on.
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I'd start a trade war with allies using classic protectionist rhetoric (an easy cover to deploy) while ramping down sanctions and trade restrictions on the Russian markets. Slowly putting American business connections back into Russia and away from western allies.
None of these on their own is necessarily a sign of pro Russian beliefs or actions, the point after all is to make for plausible deniability. Anything I do will be under reasons (protectionist rhetoric, "preventing fraud with the aid", etc) that ostensibly aren't pro Russia, as I slowly ramped up public opinion to turn on the west and view them as enemies.
The ambiguity and slow ramping is the point, make the callouts start from the radicals to give the appearance that accusations are always baseless and train people to ignore them from historic allies and partners. Make anyone who says this seem crazy by acting unpredictability and everyonce in a while lurching back to Ukraine when the heat turns up, but never going back fully. Slowly cranking more and more to Russia.
So for discussion what sorts of things would you do if you were a secret Russian operative in the White House trying to stay disguised? How would you try to manipulate American opinions over time while not being too blatantly obvious about it that you don't have built in deniability?
And then the point of the exercise, how does that differ with what we're seeing now? Do these actions line up like Stuart says and we should be considering the possibility, or do they not match and it's just alarmism from the Tories?
So the White House finally released some demands for lifting the tariffs and it just highlights the economic illiteracy behind their thinking even more. https://www.whitehouse.gov/briefings-statements/2025/04/cea-chairman-steve-miran-hudson-institute-event-remarks/
What the Trump admin seems to think is that other countries work like centralized command economies where he can demand a leader buy more from the US and have the country follow through, rather than individuals and businesses making their own personal purchasing decisions in aggregate.
Even if all trade barriers (including the nonsensical things he includes as trade barriers) are completely gone, there is no easy way for say, Australia to force their businesses to start buying more American made products. They're not a communist nation and unless we want our allies to turn that way, they can't reach down the hands of government and force private business to do so.
Ignoring the absolutely laughable "just give us free money" fifth demand and the "just don't fight back" first demand, the only thing that these countries can truly do without going into command economy mode is half of the 3rd demand, increasing defense spending.
It's like they expect the EU, UK, Australia, etc to essentially issue orders from the government forcing their wealthy investors and businessmen to spend their money and resources in the US. Now many of those richer nations might have wealthy investors who want to do so anyway, but what about the poorer nations like Lesotho or Vietnam with barely any capital? They can't suddenly flip around and start buying large amounts of US goods when they can barely even afford their poor lifestyles.
It also shows that good faith tariff negotiations are doomed from the start. They truly believe that trade deficits are being on the "losing end" of trade, and his view of them as centralized command economies slots into that neatly. In the same sense there's a weird attempt to tie in the US account deficits as some major loss, which also serves as evidence they view western economies less like open market economies and more as this weird form of centralized government command economy. Again these are individuals and businesses conducting the trade and any method you take to reduce this requires big government to interfere.
They also just keep repeating this claim which we already know to be false.
We already know that the reciprocal tariff formula has absolutely nothing to do with trade barriers and is simply the U.S. trade deficit with a country, divided by the value of the goods the U.S. imports from them. Not only that but as many point out, including conservative think tanks, it's not even done correctly.
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