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PaperclipPerfector  3mo ago (text post)   36634 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of January 20, 2025

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I noticed there is a slow drible of talk about some of Trumps Executive Orders. I kinda wanted to talk about all of them as a package, and some of them more specifically. I would advise everyone to just go ahead and read all of the executive orders (there are about 50):

https://www.whitehouse.gov/news/

They are generally short, about a page long. The titles are descriptive of the goals, so you can even skip reading many of them. And you don't need to hear about them via a second hand source.

I got the general gist of all of them within an hour or two on Inauguration day (when they were posted).

My general impressions:

  1. I like the visibility and ease of reading these. Its nothing like most legislation that goes through congress that often require a law degree, and an in depth knowledge of regulations just to sort of understand them.
  2. I don't like this continuing tradition of using executive orders to run the government. From what I remember this started in earnest under Bush 2. But its also pretty clear that congress is increasingly non-functional and uninterested in their assigned role in the constitution. Congress has delegated away its power for almost 100 years at this point, granting law-making powers to bureaucracies that are run under the executive branch. So I don't like the executive order - ocracy, but it seems there is no alternative.
  3. I care less about the culture war type orders, like renaming things. I think it is probably good to have them in there from a strategy perspective. Let your enemies exhaust themselves on silly issues.
  4. My favorite Executive order: Restoring Accountability To Policy-Influencing Positions Within the Federal Workforce. Basically people in the bureaucracy are supposed to carry out the will and directive of the president / executive branch. If they sandbag or fail to do this, then that is grounds for dismissal. They don't have to agree with the president or be loyal, but none of this "resist" stuff. It was a little ridiculous that this EO needed to be issued in the first place.
  5. The one that I think will actually personally impact me the most: Return to In-Person Work. I live close enough to DC. Traffic is going to get worse.
  6. Two executive orders have me worried. One is about cost of living: Delivering Emergency Price Relief for American Families and Defeating the Cost-of-Living Crisis. The actual text mostly talks about getting rid of barriers and harmful regulations. I hope that is where it stops. But populist politicians have often resorted to price controls to "fight" inflation. I strongly hope they avoid that pitfall.
  7. The other EO that worries me is related to trade America First Trade Policy. The basic economics case against tariffs seems air tight to me. Tariffs seem like a classic policy failure to me. The costs are distributed among all US consumers, but the benefits are often concentrated within certain sectors, or even specific companies. I was also hoping to see an end to the Jones Act, but this EO seems like it thinks that legislation is great.

Maybe this should go to the pardon thread, or even get it's own top level post, but I'm not summarizing the entirety of the drama.

In any case Ross Ulbricht is free and Trump is now the greatest president who has ever lived*. Blackpillers in disarray.

*) Ok sorry, not quite, there's still Snowden to take care of, and I don't know if there's anything that can be done for Assange, other than an official apology.

He publicly announced he would pardon Ulbricht as a favor to the libertarians months ago when they endorsed him.

Since you linked to me, and like I said, when Trump successfully deports a mere 25% of the illegal immigrant population (say 3.2 million people, and long-term settled in the US too, not border pushbacks) I’ll cease the blackpilling. Some things are easy, others are hard. It’s the difficult things that are most important.

I would also stop it if SCOTUS abolishes birthright citizenship, but I am very doubtful.

Since you linked to me, and like I said, when Trump successfully deports a mere 25% of the illegal immigrant population (say 3.2 million people, and long-term settled in the US too, not border pushbacks) I’ll cease the blackpilling

Would you settle for negative immigration for a period of years? I see the combination of these three things causing this outcome.

  1. Arrest and deport the criminals

  2. Encourage self-deportation. Crackdown on businesses who hire illegals. End federal services that give benefits to illegals.

  3. Discourage immigration. You can probably mark this one as mission accomplished. The worst thing Biden did was use rhetoric to encourage people to immigrate to the U.S. Probably 50% of the Biden wave could have been avoided if he didn't wave the welcome flag. Trump's rhetoric tells people to stay away.

I would also stop it if SCOTUS abolishes birthright citizenship, but I am very doubtful.

That is one of the EOs. Whether it works is I guess another thing.

https://www.whitehouse.gov/presidential-actions/2025/01/protecting-the-meaning-and-value-of-american-citizenship/

Yes, that’s what I mean.

Some judge in Hawaii is bound to zap it.

And then it goes to the supreme court ...

The Supreme Court will surely rule to uphold birthright citizenship, right?

Regardless of what the intent of the 14th amendment was, the language seems pretty clear to me. And, despite what liberals might think, the current court isn't just a conservative version of the Warren-era clownshow. They seem pretty reasonable for the most part and often reach a bipartisan consensus.

The Supreme Court will surely rule to uphold birthright citizenship, right?

Oh, certainly. But then, there's the question of whether Jim might be right when he says things like:

Doubtless the left will say of the order ending birthright citizenship “Hey, Civics 101, an executive order must have a basis in existing law or the constitution. You cannot change the constitution by executive order” That is normality bias. We have not had laws nor a constitution for a long time. There will be a supreme court case over birthright censorship, but it will matter as much as the Queen arriving in a stagecoach to open Parliament matters.

and:

It is normality bias to think that the upcoming Supreme court case on anchor babies matters. Whether these executive orders have actual effect is going to be resolved in a different way.

Augustus Caesar had military victory and death squads, and it still took him twelve years to get the Roman government in order. Trump has none of those, but he has made an impressive start.

We have long said that America’s problems are coup complete. When Trump was president, but not in power, and the presidency was in power, we often said that Trump should perform an autogolpe against the presidency. Trump has issued a pile of executive orders against the presidency, which look very like an autogolpe. That the border orders and the hostage rescue took effect makes it likely that the autogolpe will take effect. But, on the other hand, even after sending most of the long parliament home, Cromwell found it heavy going, and so did Augustus Caesar.

If Trump’s decrees subjecting the presidency to the president stick, all his decrees will stick, including constitutional amendment by presidential decree. If they do not, none of them will stick. I am still keeping my head down because I do not want to be J6ed.

I think the question is “and subject to the jurisdiction thereof” appears to be surplusage if it simply means anyone born in the US. So what does it mean apart from simply being borne in the US

I mean, do you think this part is clear?

No State shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States

Because the Supreme Court already neutered that part beyond recognition. Gutting the sentence immediately prior wouldn't even be novel ground.

Trump will probably get rid of the most criminal illegals, which is something at least. I’m doubting he’s going to make a huge dent in the overall population of them.

I predict far fewer deportations than expected. Same as in 2017 when everyone overestimated what Trump would do vs. what he was actually capable of doing ,which was not that much. Also, Elon and others in his inner circle are strongly pro-immigration.

I predict far fewer deportations than expected.

I think if he's actually successful, it will look more like voluntary self-deportation in the modal case rather than ICE. Making it harder for unauthorized immigrants to work and support themselves comfortably in the US makes deciding to go home easier. I have no inside knowledge here, but one could imagine this looks like more E-Verify requirements, getting serious about issuing and tracking temporary agricultural work visas, amnesty for self-departures, and possibly leveraging international relations to improve the economics of the countries in question -- direct aid sounds like something far-left, but throwing weight behind the Bukele, Milei, and similar leaders sounds very Trump to me.

I don't think Elon gives a shit about migrants crossing the border or deporting illegals.

The split over immigration that ended with Vivek exiled for criticizing American icon Ferris Bueller began over legal, skill-based migration.

Most of the party is already aligned on the illegal bit.

Elon wants the 3LA to stop fucking with him. He wants to build cars and go to space and not have bureaucrats yanking his chain because they can, and because they hate him.

Because of this, I have no faith in Musk on anything related to immigration. Especially legal immigration, which of course can become illegal immigration or stopped entirely with the stroke of a pen.

Dems need to ralize they have a very effective wedge against the GOP if they can just focus their efforts on supporting and increasing high skill immigration which pretty much every analysis finds are massively positive in expectation rather than presenting a weak flank through their advocacy for illegals crossing the border. "Shut down the border and quadruple the amount of legal migrants" is a winning formula, Dems just need to run with it.

How high skill are we talking here?

Because Canada's "skilled" immigration has been an unmitigated disaster. Housing prices have skyrocketed, community relations are trashed, and the economy has been in a per-capita recession for 2 years now.

We need actually skilled labor and not whatever the system gamers are doing to get into Canada and Australia. Simply quadrupling legal immigration without a better system is not where we want to be.

The sort of skills you'd expect from people who are IQ 120+ on average. Lower than that and they'll be made obsolete by AI well before their expected end of working life and now you're just stuck with them and their descendants forever.

You're not quadrupling the US immigration intake with 120+ IQ types. You're not getting that average even with current numbers. Family reunification alone will drop it too low.

In practice you're just going to have the H1B debate all over again

The only reason Democrats wanted immigration was that they thought that the people coming in would vote straight Democrat when they or their children became citizens. The last two election cycles have cast serious doubt on that plan. I’m not sure the Democrats themselves are going to be as bullish on mass immigration going forward.

I doubt this is all that effective of a wedge. It generates online buzz, but at the end of the day, there isn't a large constituency that's willing to go to the mat over work visas. I'm on the side that's very skeptical of importing Indian software developers as a net positive for the United States, but it's just not worth infighting over when getting rid of fake "asylum seekers" is correct, popular, and will take all of the resources currently available.

Eh, most Americans support more legal immigration from the decent and half decent parts of Latin America(places like Brazil, Chile, Mexico, Costa Rica, Dominican Republic) and from Europe, but it’s not a top issue for anyone. India/Middle East/Africa might be slightly unpopular, but it’s definitely not something anyone would stake a campaign on.

Tier 2: Close allies – Exports of advanced chips to entities in certain allied countries will be eligible for a license exception, unless the entity or its ultimate parent is headquartered outside of one of the allied countries (other than the United States). The allied countries are: Australia, Belgium, Canada, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Ireland, Italy, Japan, Netherlands, New Zealand, Norway, South Korea, Spain, Sweden, Taiwan, and the United Kingdom.

They can already identify exactly which sort of countries we should be trusting. Why can't they do the same with people?

To be clear, I am suggesting that US citizenship be limited to immigrants from the countries listed above. Other immigrants should be few and far between, and should seldom be eligible for citizenship.

Why should we lock down immigration from e.g. Hungary? We've benefited quite a lot from them in the past.

Yeah, the number of Democrats who will say "more immigration from Europe, less from India" rounds to zero. And importing massive amounts of Indians is campaign loser.

He publicly announced he would pardon Ulbricht as a favor to the libertarians months ago when they endorsed him.

I don't follow the libertarian movement as closely as I used to, but my impression was that about half of them insisted it would never happen. Same thing happened with a faction of the TERFs, who insisted he will not do anything on the trans issue.

Since you linked to me, and like I said, when Trump successfully deports a mere 25% of the illegal immigrant population

From what everyone is saying, deportations are very much on the menu. Whether they'll crack the number you demand remains to be seen, but "don't @ me until we hit 25%" is quite a take.

Right now it appears that they’re doing limited raids targeting big illegal populations and will prioritize criminals. The infrastructure doesn’t exist to detain, let alone deport millions and there seems to be no plan to build it.

I agree. I think the plan is to conduct a few high-profile immigration raids in places with a lot of journalists and Blue activists so that the resulting wailing and gnashing of teeth makes Trump's supporters feel that something is being done.

The traditional Republican base is small business owners, and particularly small business owners in the types of business where you can't compete without employing illegal immigrants. One of Trump's inaugural event speeches was squeeing about how good it is to employ legal low-skill immigrants on H2B visas (a visa which should have been abolished yesterday). He can't afford to actually deport the illegals, let alone prosecute the people who employ them.

you can't compete without employing illegal immigrants.

The nuance here is that a small business owner cannot compete against other small businesses employing illegal immigrants without himself employing illegal immigrants. That doesn't mean that he is happy about this. He may prefer that ICE deports every-ones cheap illegals. If that actually happens, he can raise prices to fund paying "American" wages, because his rivals are also having to do this. Then demand falls, and some of the small businesses fail, but the survivors of the shakeout are no longer employing illegals. If the elasticity of demand is one, the sector employs fewer people after the shakeout but has about the same revenue. A narrow focus on money would say that it hasn't even shrunk.

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