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PaperclipPerfector  8mo ago (text post)   31448 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of April 28, 2025

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There is a recent poll on DEI[1][2][3]. DEI seems to be viewed more favorably than not.

A majority reject the following:

  • DEI discriminates against white people: 33% - 41%
  • DEI is a threat to public safety: 29% - 47%
  • DEI has made the U.S. military weaker: 34% - 45%

They agree that:

  • DEI compensates for the discrimination faced by people of color and women: 36% - 31%
  • DEI crease a more egalitarian society: 31% - 22%
  • DEI promotes better decision making by enabling the exchange of diverse perspectives: 48% - 27%

There are a number of questions about whether people should receive DEI training; a majority is in favor of DEI training in all cases, most strongly in the case of police officers (69% - 31%) and least strongly for private sector employees (64% - 36%).

The document provides some comparable numbers which are claimed to come from October 2024, but that appears to be a mistake; the previous polling on DEI was done in January 2024[4].

A lot of the public doesn’t have strong views on DEI. 92% of respondents have heard the phrase “Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion” (up from 72% in January 2024), but when given the option “neither agree of disagree,” many respondents chose it. For the DEI training questions, “neither agree of disagree” was not an option.

When asked what the top three priorities of the Trump Administration should be, 2% selected ending DEI programs as the top priority, and 10% included it in one of the top three. 19% of Republicans, 6% of independents, and 2% of Democrats included ending DEI in their top three priorities.

The poll didn’t ask about people’s own experience with DEI, but I found a Feb. 2023 poll that did[5], which presumably gets a more knowledgeable pool of respondents. People who worked at a place that had a staff member whose primary job was to promote DEI said that having such a person was:

  • Very positive: 23%
  • Somewhat positive: 37%
  • Neither positive nor negative: 29%
  • Somewhat negative: 7%
  • Very negative: 4%

In the same poll, 56% of respondents said that “focusing on increasing diversity, equity and inclusion at work is mainly a good thing,” 16% said it is mainly a bad thing, and 28% said it is neither good nor bad.

So DEI seems to popular but controversial, with one third of the country and 65% of Republicans saying that DEI discriminates against white people.

Links:

[1] https://www.umass.edu/political-science/about/reports/2025-8

[2] Top line results: https://umass-my.sharepoint.com/personal/poll_umass_edu/_layouts/15/onedrive.aspx?ga=1&id=%2Fpersonal%2Fpoll%5Fumass%5Fedu%2FDocuments%2FPoll%20materials%20uploaded%20to%20website%2FViews%20on%20DEI%2C%20Trans%20Rights%2C%20Higher%20Education%2C%20and%20AI%20National%20Poll%20%2D%20April%2022%2C%202025%2FToplines%20Views%20on%20DEI%2C%20Trans%20Rights%2C%20Higher%20Education%2C%20and%20AI%20National%20Poll%20%2D%20April%2022%2C%202025%2Epdf&parent=%2Fpersonal%2Fpoll%5Fumass%5Fedu%2FDocuments%2FPoll%20materials%20uploaded%20to%20website%2FViews%20on%20DEI%2C%20Trans%20Rights%2C%20Higher%20Education%2C%20and%20AI%20National%20Poll%20%2D%20April%2022%2C%202025

[3] Crosstabs: https://umass-my.sharepoint.com/personal/poll_umass_edu/_layouts/15/onedrive.aspx?ga=1&id=%2Fpersonal%2Fpoll%5Fumass%5Fedu%2FDocuments%2FPoll%20materials%20uploaded%20to%20website%2FViews%20on%20DEI%2C%20Trans%20Rights%2C%20Higher%20Education%2C%20and%20AI%20National%20Poll%20%2D%20April%2022%2C%202025%2FCrosstabs%20Views%20on%20DEI%2C%20Trans%20Rights%2C%20Higher%20Education%2C%20and%20AI%20National%20Poll%20%2D%20April%2022%2C%202025%2Epdf&parent=%2Fpersonal%2Fpoll%5Fumass%5Fedu%2FDocuments%2FPoll%20materials%20uploaded%20to%20website%2FViews%20on%20DEI%2C%20Trans%20Rights%2C%20Higher%20Education%2C%20and%20AI%20National%20Poll%20%2D%20April%2022%2C%202025

[4] https://www.umass.edu/political-science/about/reports/january-16-2024

[5] https://www.pewresearch.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/20/2023/05/ST_2023.05.17_Culture-of-Work-DEI_Topline.pdf

hmmm those are pretty surprising results; let’s look at the poll study author

Tatishe Nteta

Oh

This is so low effort it's barely even a critique. Normally I'd leave it at that, but you've now been told about eight times to stop the low effort sneer-posting and that you were heading for a permaban. I dislike permabanning someone for a post that would normally be just a warning, even if it is like strike nine, but I think it's appropriate at this point for you to go away for a while. Thirty days, and don't come back unless you're going to stop doing this.

30 days seems harsh considering they did bother to look at the poll closely enough to notice a relevant fact and then bring it to light for further discussion. I think it’s a valuable comment broadly and got the point across without padding the post with extraneous words. I understand you’d want to discourage low effort posting on average but 30 days for this specifically seems unwarranted in my opinion

What was the point, in your opinion?

I can't see anything other than bare-faced racism because the name doesn't mean anything to me.

Black people with moderate opinions on race, or even 'when we say "kill all white people" we don't really mean "kill all white people"' opinions on race, do not name their children 'Tatishe'. African immigrants use biblically inspired names, Caribbeans use normal Anglo or Hispanic names, and AADOS use distinctive AADOS names which might be weird but which are recognizably not deriving from the Niger-Congo languages.

Tatishe

I tried finding that name, and it had two hits worldwide (0.001% of "Steven", for reference). The second result in my search was the study author, and the third was a Spanish (or at least Spanish-language) musician. Maybe I have to brush up on my linguistics, but I still don't see any notable connection between that name and any region, let alone any political stance.

Your multi-sentence specific explanation wasn't enough to convince me, so I stand behind my criticism of their brief dismissal.

It flags a very obvious conflict of interest.

"Discriminating in favor of black people is good and popular, says study by black man" naturally invokes suspicion.

Yes, it's an ad-hominem argument and not a replacement for drilling carefully down into the details of the study (assuming it's not one of those surveys where they just make up the results, which are rare but do exist). But the prior for this study's rigor and truthfulness should be set lower than would otherwise be the case.

When it comes to categories like race/sex/age/nationality, some level of presumptive conflict of interest is inevitable. Would a White researcher come off as unbiased in race research in your opinion?

No, of course not. That’s why everyone likes a convert - somebody who benefits from or was attached to position A telling you that B is true instead.

Would a White researcher come off as unbiased in race research in your opinion?

In the social climate of the past 30 or so years? Quite possibly, though if the researcher themselves capitalized white that would be a signal that increases the prediction of bias. That's part of how we ended up with Biden.

Is Nteta widely known? I've never heard of them, so highlighting the study's author, alone, doesn't provide me any insight.

It’s not concise, it’s not valuable. Is everyone supposed to know who this is? If so, the comment is straightforwardly disallowed; if not, I think as part of the compact of making non-sneering comments you are obligated to at least gesture at saying something informative and you know, make an actual point.

I agree that the commenter should not have darkly hinted, but I feel like you're being deliberately obtuse here...

To make the point explicit - the name "Tatishe Nteta" strongly suggests that the author's race is sub-Saharan African (and we can look at his faculty page to clear up any doubt), so the fact that he carried out a poll that supposedly shows public support for DEI (i.e. state-backed anti-White discrimination) gives another example on a long list of non-White (but especially Black) intellectuals for whom almost all of their published works are attempts to critique and undermine White people/identity.

I'm guessing, beyond the poor forum ettiquette, you also take issue with what is actually being darkly hinted at here. Perhaps you just don't believe in HBD (in which case there isn't much to say, since I would agree with academics like Ntete under ~HBD) - but if you do believe in HBD, then what do you think is wrong with what Magus implied?

My honest first reaction was simply what I said: “is this guy supposed to be famous or is there some in-group reference I’m missing?” Even linking his faculty page like you did would have been a more effective point and IMO a valid comment. In fact, pointing him out as someone with an obvious career stake and bias towards finding bias IS a good point. I just strongly believe (and the rules are aimed at) putting a little extra effort into being explicit about things is healthier for discussion. It’s not good to habitually rely on people guessing at meaning, and deliberately underbaked comments allow the worst kind of motte and bailey because it necessarily involves some degree of projection.

My honest first reaction was simply what I said: “is this guy supposed to be famous or is there some in-group reference I’m missing?”

You're saying that you didn't think to yourself - "that sounds like a Black man" (even given that the topic of the OP was DEI in the US, a practice that heavily rewards Black people)?

Even linking his faculty page like you did would have been a more effective point and IMO a valid comment. In fact, pointing him out as someone with an obvious career stake and bias towards finding bias IS a good point.

Sure, but that is an additional point, going beyond the original comment. The point of the original comment is just to point out that the author is Black - we can infer he has a particular bias towards finding bias because he is a Black intellectual (so the alternatives to systemic racism would be especially unflattering to him) - Magus' point still makes sense even if we couldn't see any of his works/publications.

You might believe that judging him on his race is morally or factually wrong. But I don't think that expressing such beliefs should count as a rules violation if done plainly and in a calm tone, so while this comment is rule-breaking, the implied point should still be expressible on the forum (e.g. if Magus had explicitly said "the author is Black"), without having to add further justifications and context about his career choices, publications, etc

I had the same reaction as @EverythingIsFine - the name, alone, isn't clearly indicative of anything (unless you're attuned to what seems to be tacitly acknowledged to be a genuine racial dog-whistle). See, also, the comment by @ulyssessword about the name:

I tried finding that name, and it had two hits worldwide (0.001% of "Steven", for reference). The second result in my search was the study author, and the third was a Spanish (or at least Spanish-language) musician. Maybe I have to brush up on my linguistics, but I still don't see any notable connection between that name and any region, let alone any political stance.

More comments

Tatishe Nteta" strongly suggests that the author's race is sub-Saharan African

It also strongly suggests he was raised to be an activist. Normie Africans name their kids things like ‘John’ or ‘Mary’ and normie AADOS use names which are, yes, dumb, but recognizably Anglo.

Normie Africans name their kids things like ‘John’ or ‘Mary’

Not uniformly. African-origin names are common in many Commonwealth Southern and West African nations.

  1. You can embed links by enclosing the link text in brackets: “[[1]](https://www.umass.edu/political-science/about/reports/2025-8)” becomes “[1]”.
  2. A summary of links is not, on its own, enough substance for a top-level comment. Please try to add some of your own commentary, theorizing, etc.

Thanks. I'll keep these in mind for the next time I post.

DEI discriminates against white people: 33% - 41%

It remains interesting that people are simply misinformed about the facts. DEI policies, factually, are discrimination against white people (and Asian people). They literally cannot accomplish their stated goals without doing so, they are definitionally policies that implement discrimination. That's not an ironclad argument for or against them from where I sit, it's just the starting point that we all need to be aware of in order to have these conversations.

I would guess that when a person says that DEI policies don't discriminate against White People (and others depending on context), what they understand the question to be is something like "Are white people, on net, discriminated against as a result of DEI policies?" Which is a tougher question, and one that one can interpret in a lot of different ways once one starts slicing and dicing what counts as White and what counts as Discriminated Against.

This was the form of cope I most frequently ran into at selective law schools regarding DEI policies of the time: that they didn't really matter. Sure, as a result of diversity initiatives black kids might get a +1 while white kids get a -1, but for a whole host of other reasons black kids were already functioning with a -5 and white kids were carrying a +3, so on net it doesn't matter, there's no real discrimination against white people.

The point of the linguistic judo has always precisely been not to have the discussion and indeed to make the discussion impossible to have or think about. And specifically stated as such by the people who coined all these terms.

Even the terms that make the acronym themselves are subversive language tricks to an Orwellian degree.

Have you ever heard people call initiatives or departments "100% diverse"? And what to say of "Equity", a term so transparently designed in a lab to supplant "Equality" because it sounds too absurd to normal people when you're justifying discrimination in the name of equality.

DEI is just Applied Cultural Marxism. And I'm allowed to say this because I learned about it in university in those terms before its activists started to pretend that correctly identifying their ideology is a conspiracy theory.

Can we have a survey on how that is perceived by the public mayhaps?

DEI is just Applied Cultural Marxism. And I'm allowed to say this because I learned about it in university in those terms before its activists started to pretend that correctly identifying their ideology is a conspiracy theory.

I’ve heard this term bandied about for years but never directly encountered someone who uses it. Can you explain what on earth it means?

Some potential meanings I’ve considered and discarded:

  • dividing the world into oppressor and oppressed
  • some sort of natural outgrowth of Marx from the Frankfurt school
  • Marxist analysis somehow applied to culture?
  • centered on critique of capitalism
  • use race or sex instead of class

Most of the “applied cultural marxists” and postmodernists seem to outright reject Marx and any similarities in their thinking (e.g., oppressor and oppressed) seem to pre-date Marx.

So I’m left not understanding what people mean by it precisely. It seems to me at this point the phrase is meant to just tar by association, but I’d really like to hear if there’s something more meaningful to it.

This was my resource on Critical Race Theory, and seems relatively even-handed. It covers some of the inspiration from Marx and Critical Theory.

Link

I’ve heard this term bandied about for years but never directly encountered someone who uses it.

Because people were using it back in the 80's and maybe late 70's, and when the term started attracting too much negative attention, they promptly started pretending it's a conspiracy theory.

Also, "never met someone who uses the term directly" is an argument that's applied extremely selectively.

Most of the “applied cultural marxists” and postmodernists seem to outright reject Marx and any similarities in their thinking (e.g., oppressor and oppressed) seem to pre-date Marx.

Critical Theory proudly takes inspiration from both Marx and postmodernism.

Some potential meanings I’ve considered and discarded:

Those are fairly decent nutshell descriptions, and there's no reason to reject them.

Can you point me to some instances of people self describing in that way from the 70s and 80s? That is the most compelling argument I think—that they described themselves this way until it became a liability.

I didn’t mean it as an argument, my point was I haven’t had to chance to ask someone what they mean so I’m eager to seize the opportunity.

If those are decent nutshell descriptions then let’s take “oppressor/oppressed analysis” for instance. What’s the justification for calling that Marxist specifically? Is the claim that he invented or pioneered it in the form of his class war analysis? It just seems incredibly vague making the tie to Marx specifically tenuous to me.

Can you point me to some instances of people self describing in that way from the 70s and 80s?

Emily Hicks, Richard R. Weiner, Douglas Kellner.

If those are decent nutshell descriptions then let’s take “oppressor/oppressed analysis” for instance. What’s the justification for calling that Marxist specifically?

That Cultural Marxists themselves thought that they are taking inspiration from Marx:

We are, in Marx's terms, "an ensemble of social relations" and we live our lives at the core of the intersection of a number of unequal social relations based on hierarchically interrelated structures which, together, define the historical specificity of the capitalist modes of production and reproduction and underlay their observable manifestations. ”

— Martha E. Gimenez, Marxism and Class, Gender and Race: Rethinking the Trilogy

This is extremely helpful and exactly what I’ve been looking for—thanks!

And specifically stated as such by the people who coined all these terms.

Mind if I ask your source? I'm certainly well aware of SJ's extraordinary capacity for deliberate meme warfare; I would just appreciate receipts on this particular one.

The best way to convince yourself of this is to read Herbert Marcuse and see how his ideas inspired the scholarship around what is now called DEI.

I think much of One Dimensional Man is applicable, but a seminal work that is now of obvious significance is Repressive Tolerance which I encourage you to read in its entirety as well as his Essay on Liberation. You'll come back with I think the same conviction I do that SJ ideas and tactics have this New Left lineage and that they are indeed deliberate tactics rather than any emergent production.

I could go into more detail but I think it's a bit pointless to do it in extenso when the one thing that James Lindsay can be commended for is that he fairly accurately mapped out all the philosophical underpinning of this political movement. His video on Marcuse's influence I find to be broadly accurate to what I've been taught and seen for myself.

Now of course Marcuse isn't the whole of the school of Critical Theory and kritik isn't the sole influence on this movement, but it is the main source of their political tactics, hence their focus on language and control of the frame rather than more traditional Marxist struggles.

If you want to trace this influence closer to DEI itself, you can look for yourself throughout the scholarship of the 80s and 90s. For Equity's origin as a linguistic weapon, you'll be able to find its genesis in all the papers that discuss the "dilemma of difference".

DEI seems to be viewed more favorably than not.

I mean, yes? Duh?

DEI is racial spoils politics for non-whites. And, to some degree, depending on context, spoils for white women as well. People like it when you give them free stuff. The majority of people alive are not white men. So, most people by default will be predisposed to viewing DEI pretty favorably. And a lot of white men have been convinced that it’s a good thing too, even though it actively and explicitly harms them. So that tilts the scales even more.

It takes a rather strong principled ideological commitment to arrive at the position that DEI is a bad thing, so it’s unsurprising that it’s a minority view.

A majority reject the following: DEI discriminates against white people: 33% - 41%

It's hard to interpret survey answers like this, presumably the 41% are expressing support by picking the more positive-sounding answer but how durable is that support? How they would respond to additional information or a different context? How much of this is pure partisan affiliation that doesn't translate into supporting specific policies at all?

Lets say they were working as recruiters and their managers said "The DEI report indicates our numbers aren't good enough, please trash all applications in the hiring pipeline from candidates that aren't female, black or Hispanic." What percent would respond with "Sure! Some bigots would call it discrimination to throw out the white/asian male candidates, but DEI isn't discrimination against white people."? What percentage would say "I thought DEI didn't entail discrimination! This is wrong and I won't do it."? What percentage would be somewhere in between? And of course most aren't going to be personally involved in implementing DEI policies, so how would they respond to more distant narratives, like a political debate about a discriminatory policy that has more specifics than just the DEI label?

53% of the people in this survey said that their employer-mandated DEI trainings were "very helpful" or "somewhat helpful". That's the baseline against which all numbers in this survey should be judged.

I talked about two different surveys. The “DEI discriminated against white people” question was from a poll of the general public. The one on about whether workplace DEI trainings and/or meeting were helpful comes from a survey of workers. If you didn’t find DEI training/meetings helpful, that would place you in a minority. That could be a reflection of the DEI training you received; perhaps most people would rate that particular training as unhelpful.

If you wouldn’t have guessed that large numbers of people find DEI training/meetings helpful, that’s the point of conducting surveys: to learn what people are actually thinking, rather than generalizing from you own experience or the experience of a few people who happen to be in the same bubble as you.

The report that a majority of people report that they find DEI training helpful is surprising to me, yes.

Everywhere that I have worked, from retail to food service to white-collar knowledge work, such "training" is "watch this endless slideshow of videos in which corporate HR types give banal examples, and then take a trivially easy quiz at the end (which you could have passed using common sense immediately without watching the videos, except that the course is mandated by law to be at least 2 hours, and then print out a certificate for HR to file away in a drawer forever".

Given that, some hypotheses that would explain the 53% number:

  1. People actually learn a lot from the slideshow of videos saying that you can't use slurs in the workplace.
  2. Most workplaces put more effort into these trainings and I just got unlucky at every place I've worked at long enough to have to take one of these trainings.
  3. The slideshows suck, but most peoples' actual jobs suck more and they're paid the same to watch the slideshow.
  4. People lie on surveys.
  5. The set of people who will answer a survey like this is not fully representative of the general population.

I personally expect it's mostly (5), with maybe some (3) thrown in there.

[1] https://www.umass.edu/political-science/about/reports/2025-8

[2] Top line results: https://umass-my.sharepoint.com/personal/poll_umass_edu/_layouts/15/onedrive.aspx?ga=1&id=%2Fpersonal%2Fpoll%5Fumass%5Fedu%2FDocuments%2FPoll%20materials%20uploaded%20to%20website%2FViews%20on%20DEI%2C%20Trans%20Rights%2C%20Higher%20Education%2C%20and%20AI%20National%20Poll%20%2D%20April%2022%2C%202025%2FToplines%20Views%20on%20DEI%2C%20Trans%20Rights%2C%20Higher%20Education%2C%20and%20AI%20National%20Poll%20%2D%20April%2022%2C%202025%2Epdf&parent=%2Fpersonal%2Fpoll%5Fumass%5Fedu%2FDocuments%2FPoll%20materials%20uploaded%20to%20website%2FViews%20on%20DEI%2C%20Trans%20Rights%2C%20Higher%20Education%2C%20and%20AI%20National%20Poll%20%2D%20April%2022%2C%202025

[3] Crosstabs: https://umass-my.sharepoint.com/personal/poll_umass_edu/_layouts/15/onedrive.aspx?ga=1&id=%2Fpersonal%2Fpoll%5Fumass%5Fedu%2FDocuments%2FPoll%20materials%20uploaded%20to%20website%2FViews%20on%20DEI%2C%20Trans%20Rights%2C%20Higher%20Education%2C%20and%20AI%20National%20Poll%20%2D%20April%2022%2C%202025%2FCrosstabs%20Views%20on%20DEI%2C%20Trans%20Rights%2C%20Higher%20Education%2C%20and%20AI%20National%20Poll%20%2D%20April%2022%2C%202025%2Epdf&parent=%2Fpersonal%2Fpoll%5Fumass%5Fedu%2FDocuments%2FPoll%20materials%20uploaded%20to%20website%2FViews%20on%20DEI%2C%20Trans%20Rights%2C%20Higher%20Education%2C%20and%20AI%20National%20Poll%20%2D%20April%2022%2C%202025

[4] https://www.umass.edu/political-science/about/reports/january-16-2024

[5] https://www.pewresearch.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/20/2023/05/ST_2023.05.17_Culture-of-Work-DEI_Topline.pdf

> Be me

> Load entire thread into a text to speech app

> Surely no one would just dump incredibly long naked links into the motte dot org.

> go upstairs to fold laundry

> oh a naked link, that's fine, how long can it be

> literal minutes later go downstairs to make this comment.

By quoting the links in their entirety all you've done is ensure that when you get back to relistening to this thread now you'll be spending twice as long listening to garbage!

For reference, from the link, the questions were

  1. Overall, how do you think each of the following affects people’s ability to be successful where you work (Being white / Being black / Being hispanic / Being asian / Being a man / Being a woman): (Makes it a lot easier to be successful / Makes it a little easier to be successful / Makes it neither easier nor harder to be successful / Makes it a little harder to be successful / Makes it a lot harder to be successful / Not sure / No answer)
  2. In general, do you think that focusing on increasing diversity, equity and inclusion at work is mainly… (A good thing / A bad thing / Neither good nor bad)
  3. When it comes to how much attention your company or organization pays to increasing diversity, equity and inclusion, would you say your company or organization pays… (Too much attention / Too little attention / About the right amount of attention / Not sure)
  4. Regardless of how diverse the place where you work is, how important is it to YOU PERSONALLY to work at a place that… (Has about an equal mix of men and women / Has a mix of employees of different race and ethnicities / Has a mix of employees of different ages / Has a mix of employees of different sexual orientations): (Extremely important / Very important / Somewhat important / Not too important / Not at all important / No answer)
  5. Regardless of how accessible the place where you work is, how important is it to you personally to work at a place that is accessible for people with physical disabilities? (Extremely important / Very important / Somewhat important / Not too important / Not at all important / No answer)
  6. How well do each of the following describe the place where you currently work (Has about an equal mix of men and women / Has a mix of employees of different race and ethnicities / Has a mix of employees of different ages / Has a mix of employees of different sexual orientations): (Extremely well / Very well / Somewhat well / Not too well / Not at all well / Not sure / No answer)
  7. How accessible is the place where you work for people with physical disabilities? (Extremely accessible / Very accessible / Somewhat accessible / Not too accessible / Not at all accessible / Not sure)
  8. As far as you know, does the company or organization you work for have any of the following (A staff member whose main job is to promote diversity, equity and inclusion at work / Trainings or meetings on diversity, equity and inclusion at work / Policies to ensure that everyone is treated fairly in hiring, pay or promotions / Groups created by employees based on shared identities or interests / A way for employees to see the salary range for all positions): (Yes / No / Not sure)
  9. What type of impact do you think having each of the following has had where you work (A staff member whose main job is to promote diversity, equity and inclusion at work / Trainings or meetings on diversity, equity and inclusion at work / Policies to ensure that everyone is treated fairly in hiring, pay or promotions / Groups created by employees based on shared identities or interests / A way for employees to see the salary range for all positions): (Very positive / Somewhat positive / Neither positive nor negative / Somewhat negative / Very negative)
  10. Are you personally a member of an employee affinity group or Employee Resource Group (ERG) – that is, a group created by employees, based on their shared identities or interests such as gender, race, or being a parent?
  11. In the past year, have you participated in any trainings on diversity, equity or inclusion at work?
  12. Overall, would you say the diversity, equity or inclusion trainings you have participated in at work have been… (Very helpful / Somewhat helpful / Neither helpful nor unhelpful / Somewhat unhelpful / Very unhelpful)

Who are these 53% of people who think that their mandatory DEI trainings through their employer are helpful? That result makes me pretty doubtful of the results of this survey as a whole.

In case it isn’t clear to anyone following along, we are talking about the 2023 poll of workers. About 10% of the workers were self employed or owned their own business. Another 8% worked for organizations with fewer than ten employees. 52% of the remainder, or about 43% of the total sample, said their company or organization had DEI training or meetings.

My impression is that DEI training is very common in the corporate world and pretty close to universal in government, so the numbers don’t seem implausible to me.

Specifically, what I was referring to with "53%" was

ASK ALL EMPLOYED ADULTS WITH ONE JOB OR A PRIMARY JOB AND IF WORKS AT A COMPANY/ORGANIZATION WITH AT LEAST 10 PEOPLE, AND PARTICIPATED IN DEI TRAINING AT WORK (DEITRAIN1=1) [n=2,099]:
DEITRAIN2 Overall, would you say the diversity, equity or inclusion trainings you have participated in at work have been…
[DISPLAY RESPONSE OPTIONS IN SAME ORDER AS DEIPOLICY2]
BASED ON NOT SELF-EMPLOYED (JOBTYPEMOD=1-3,5,99) [n=2,086]:
Feb 6-12, 2023

15Very helpful
38Somewhat helpful
34Neither helpful nor unhelpful
8Somewhat unhelpful
6Very unhelpful
0No answer

15% + 38% is 53%, and this is the 53% I was referring to. I was not referring to what fraction of the sample of workers who worked for certain organizations had DEI training or meetings.

Thanks for posting the questions. Note that 11 doesn't specify mandatory trainings or training content, beyond the DEI buzzwords, so 12 may be influenced by self-selection or normal "workplace orientation" having been given DEI window-dressing.

what kind of sample has a majority its participants go through a formal DEI training? That excludes almost the entirety of the blue-collar and tradesman, as well as a plurality of the service industry. I hate to go diving into crosstabs to discredit a survey, but this sounds very suspicious.

5 and 7 are about building accessibility. If they conflate 'wanting your building to have wheelchair access' with 'I support DEI', they are being willfully dishonest.

ADA is pretty closely aligned with the literal meaning of the words "equity" and "inclusion".

Right. That makes it completely different from DEI.

This is funny to me.

I mean, my interpretation of your comment is that DEI is everything indefensible (from your perspective), and everything that's defensible is not DEI.

I mean ADA can't be DEI, it's one of the most successful programs in the history of the world in terms of creating real outcomes for people who do not have the same abilities that the median individual has.

So I guess we just have to wait for that gentle slide of the Overton window for it to turn into DEI?

I mean, my interpretation of your comment is that DEI is everything indefensible (from your perspective), and everything that's defensible is not DEI.

Wouldn't it make more sense and be more charitable to distinguish that the ADA predates DEI as an acronym by 20 years?

I see. So any policy that predates "DEI" as a boogeyman is safe from being labeled DEI? Bummer that affirmative action was collateral damage.

The literal meaning is kind of useless. Is a truck with duallies "four wheel drive" just because its drivetrain is connected to four wheels?

Yes. I will die on this hill.

Upvoted for boldness and your flair. Do you call also "all wheel drive" cars with four wheels "four wheel drive?"

Yes, and I call onewheels all wheel drive.

If a four wheel vehicle with all open differentials loses traction on one wheel and spins it, while the remaining three stop receiving torque, is it four wheel drive, one wheel drive, or zero wheel drive (or something else)?

How should the ability to link wheel speeds be denoted, in your opinion?

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I hope that hill isn't too poorly graded or sandy, then. :)

I'll be fine, my truck is 4 wheel drive.

Its more the 'You aren't against wheelchair access are you? Then approve our racial quotas!' that gets me riled up.

They bundle these things together to get 'inclusion' to do the heavy lifting for 'diversity' and 'equity'.

I have come across some interesting "The ADA is one (of several) well-meaning laws that keep us from building cool stuff" takes that, while I still endorse the broad principle, have made me question some of its aspects.

Can you give some examples?

Sure! The universal requirement for ramp and elevator accessibility in most places is probably the biggest culprit. It sounds great on paper, but in practice makes it really hard build new things outside of greenfield construction.

  • NYC is still trying to bring subway stations into compliance a generation later, and only plans to have 95% compliance by 2055. It's also clearly hampering expansion: of 472 stations, none were built between 1989 (the ADA passed in 1990) and 2009. Only five have been built post-ADA. New York is perhaps the most obvious example, but I think any older places will have the same sorts of issues.
  • As mentioned elsewhere in this thread, it requires scope creep for modifications to non-compliant (often historic) structures that can make landlords put off nontrivial renovations. ADA-compliant spaces are larger (wider bathroom stalls, wider hallways for wheelchairs to pass and turn, wider doorways, ramps) in ways that clearly add to the cost of a building -- this may be worth it, but it shouldn't be swept under the rug.
  • It limits architectural freedom in subtle ways: split-level designs and walk-up apartments are hard to build. There is a certain "planar-ness" to ADA designs that, while I suppose functional, feels a bit grating after you see it everywhere ("the bar area is two steps higher than the dance floor, letting you see out over it to the stage").

It limits architectural freedom in subtle ways: split-level designs and walk-up apartments are hard to build. There is a certain "planar-ness" to ADA designs that, while I suppose functional, feels a bit grating after you see it everywhere ("the bar area is two steps higher than the dance floor, letting you see out over it to the stage").

That's what I was looking for - challenges of updating pre-ADA designs are one thing, but "keep us from building cool stuff" is another.

The interaction between historical preservation and disabled accessibility is particularly problematic. There are a lot of buildings where the options boil down to "stay in the lane that allows you to be grandfathered out of disabled accessibility" and "abandon the building and the lot it stands on because it is too historical to refit or demolish".

My first impression of this is that the press release was written before the study, with some blanks filled in. And I noticed some of the odd results others noticed in the crosstabs. Hopefully the name of the author Tatishe Nteta isn't itself worthy of a ban. The linked page has his capsule bio as

My research interests lie at the intersection of the politics of race and ethnicity, public opinion, and political behavior. More specifically, my work examines the impact of changing demographics and shifts in the sociopolitical incorporation of racial minorities on the contours of American race relations, campaigns, policy preferences, and participation.

The word "intersection" seems a bit forced there, honestly; it's like he's trying to write a bio that doesn't actually show his biases while dog-whistling them loud and clear, but dog-whistling doesn't work -- that's a train whistle.

His undergraduate was in African American Studies. His name, though, he comes by non-politically; his father was lefty activist Christopher Nteta a black South African immigrant to the US.

His past work includes papers claiming to demonstrate that "racial resentment" really does measure anti-black prejudice and not just conservative belief, and that Nikki Haley lost because Republicans are sexist.

I would not consider a study authored by him to be reliable. In theory, scientific methods work regardless of who uses them. In practice, there's a lot of ways to put one's thumb on the scale.

My post was about the poll, which was conducted by YouGov. YouGov is a legitimate polling organization; FiveThirtyEigth gave them a B+ rating. It’s unclear who wrote the press release, which quotes Tatishe Nteta and three other professors.

YouGov ran the poll under Nteta's direction:

“Hours after assuming the presidency, Donald Trump signed a string of executive orders aimed at ending the federal government’s DEI programs, policies and mandates,” says Tatishe Nteta, provost professor of political science at UMass Amherst and director of the poll.

About a year ago I made a post (with motte discussion here) about an immigration reform bill that would have handed Republicans a major victory on the issue with the most conservative comprehensive reform in a generation. Dems would have agreed to the bill since Biden's whoopsie defacto-open-borders made the issue a huge liability for them. Trump tanked it for purely cynical reasons, and the discussion hinged on whether the legislation was somehow a "trap" since Dems were agreeing to it, and whether Republicans should risk getting nothing if they lost in 2024. I contended that Republicans should take the deal and then maybe do additional legislation that was even more stringent if they won, that way they'd have something even if they lost, which was about at a 50% chance on betting markets at the time. But MAGA and Trump won out, going all-in on the double-or-nothing strategy.

In a sense that bet paid off, since Trump won and got a trifecta! There's just one little problem: he's not actually trying to pass any comprehensive enduring immigration legislation. There was the Laken Riley act, but it's quite small in scope. Overall, it's back to his first term tactics of mangling the interpretation of laws through executive orders, and hoping the courts don't stop him. It's likely to be about as successful as it was in his first term. Why do it this way? Why not just ask Congress to give you the powers to do what you want so you don't have to gamble on the courts? Matt Yglesias has a potential explanation in his mailbag post

I think this is pretty easily explained as the intersection of the filibuster, Trump’s authoritarian temperament, and Republican Party domination of the Supreme Court.

We saw progressive versions of this kind of thinking in things like The American Prospect Day One Agenda from 2019 or the late-Obama effort at dramatic climate (Clean Power Plan) and immigration (DAPA) policy via executive branch rule making. But Democrats get much less leash from the judiciary than Republican do, because the Supreme Court is very conservative. We never got to see what the universe in which Biden halts all new oil and gas leasing on federal land looks like, because he just lost in court.

At the same time, Biden genuinely did not have the Trump-like aspiration to be a plebiscitary dictator. When he lost in court, he mostly folded and moved on. If anything, his administration was happy to be able to tell the Sierra Club that he tried and then reap the economic benefits of record oil and gas production. Biden really enjoyed legislative dealmaking, was very good at getting bipartisan bills like CHIPS and IIJA done, spent decades in the US Senate, and was frequently the Obama administration’s “closer” on the Hill. There’s a reason Frank Foer’s admiring biography of Biden is titled “The Last Politician.”

To Biden, shooting the shit with other elected officials and striking bargains was the peak.

Trump, despite the art of the deal bluster, has never shown any interest in legislative dealmaking. At no point during either of his terms has he attempted to engage with Democrats on passing some kind of immigration bill. He spiked the bipartisan border security bill from the Biden era, and has never gone back and said something like, “If we tweak these three provisions, I’m okay with it.” It’s just not of interest to him — he wants power. And the broader conservative movement has become weirdly deferential to that, both because it’s a bit of a personality cult and also because the filibuster has acculturated everyone to thinking of this as being the way the government ought to work.

A bunch of people have asked me whether the 2024 election outcome doesn’t make me glad that Democrats didn’t scrap the filibuster. But honestly, I feel the exact opposite. I would be much more comfortable with a world in which the answer to the question “Why don’t you just get Congress to change the law?” wasn’t just “Well, Democrats will filibuster if I try.”

So MAGA as a political movement has a better chance to change immigration than Republicans have probably ever had, and they're pissing it away with Trump cultism. They'll try to hide behind excuses like the filibuster, which could be ended with 50 votes in the Senate, and Republicans have 53 right now. Alternatively they'll try to hide behind political nihilism and say that passing laws doesn't matter since Dems could just ignore anything they pass -- this is wrong because the laws could help Trump (or other Republicans in the future) do things while there's a friendly president in power, and they could do a variety of things to try to force the Dem's hand when out of power like writing hard "shall" mandates in laws, giving Republican governors or even private citizens the standing to sue for non-enforcement, attach automatic penalties like sequestration-style clawbacks if removal numbers fall below some statutory floor, add 287(g) agreements with states giving local officers INA arrest authority, create independent enforcement boards, etc. None of these are silver bullets obviously since Dems would always be free to repeal any such laws (there are no permanent solutions in a Democracy, just ask Southern Slavers how the Gag Rule went), but that would cost them political capital or otherwise force them to try gambling with the courts if they tried to circumvent things by executive fiat.

But doing any of this would require telling Trump he needs to actually do specific things, and potentially punish him in some way if he fails to enact an ideological agenda he (vaguely) promised. That's very unlikely to happen.

As an aside, I think it's in bad taste to use the term MAGA as if it was some kind of entity or group. You only do it once in the top-level post, but you use the term frequently in your replies below.

First of all it's extremely vague. There is no club of MAGA card-holders. You're just using the term to vaguely gesture in the direction of Donald Trump's supporters. When you say "MAGA won" what exactly do you mean by that? What is MAGA and what did it win? If you're referring to the Republican Party's trifecta victory in the 2024 election, I think it would be more appropriate to refer to them by their proper name. If you're referring to something else, then I think you should define what this "MAGA" entity is and what exactly you believe it won.

Secondly, it's disrespectful to refer to an entity or group by a term it does not use to refer to itself. I would say the same thing to someone who went around ranting about "SJWs" or "Feminazis" or "the Deep State." If you have something important to say about the United States civil service or a particular group of activists, your point is not diminished by calling them by their proper name. If you need to refer to them by a derogatory nickname to make your point then that's a clear sign that you don't actually have one.

I use the term MAGA specifically since I was advised to use it as opposed to "the alt right" that I used on my old article. The Trump-aligned right is now doing the same voldemorting tactics that the woke left used to use, so I can post FDB's old article and flip the partisan valences and it'd be correct. It's pretty telling that you don't actually tell me what alternative I should use.

I think it's pretty telling that you switched from the vague term "the alt-right" to the equally vague term "MAGA" without ever stopping to define who it is you're talking about. Especially since it's not at all clear that "the alt-right" and "MAGA" even refer the same group of people.

This isn't Voldemorting. I can define any term I care to use. My question is, can you? I still have yet to learn what it is you mean by the term "MAGA," despite the fact that you replied to my post. How can I tell you what alternative to use when I don't even know who this "MAGA" group is supposed to be?

Is it all Republicans? All Trump voters? Donald Trump himself? Is Joe Rogan MAGA? Is TheMotte MAGA? Is Pierre Pollievre MAGA? Inquiring minds want to know!

MAGA would generally refer to the political movement of Donald Trump along with his supporters, especially those who strongly identify with his policy agenda, style, and brand of populist-nationalism. Most people readily understand what I mean when I use the term. Again, your line of argument very closely mimics the old debates we'd have against wokes/SJWs/social justice leftists/political correctness/identity politics. If you truly think another term is better, please state it rather than further charging out into the bailey of "because you use this descriptive term I don't like, that ought to give everyone carte blanche to ignore everything you're saying". This new term would need to fulfill the following conditions: 1) people intuitively understand what it means without having to define it every time I use it; 2) the rest of MAGA could get behind the term and would see not see it as just another step on the euphemism treadmill; 3) the term is short enough that it flows nicely. I could find + replace every time I use MAGA with "supporters of Donald Trump, especially those who strongly identify with his policy agenda, style, and brand of populist-nationalism", but that would be extremely tedious and wouldn't flow well at all.

Wokes could never find a reasonable term that satisfied all 3 conditions, and I doubt you could in this situation here either.

MAGA would generally refer to the political movement of Donald Trump along with his supporters, especially those who strongly identify with his policy agenda, style, and brand of populist-nationalism.

Is there a reason you can't just say "Trump supporters" or "Trump and his supporters"? Or, heck, how about "Trump's political movement"? That seems to fit in nicely with what you're saying.

"Trump's political movement has a better chance to change immigration than Republicans have probably ever had," is shorter than what you actually wrote, and it's very specific about who and what it's referring to. Doesn't it feel so much more professional? Especially when you compare it to using MAGA as a noun, which has real screenshot-of-tabloid-headline-posted-on-Facebook-by-Boomer-relative energy.

Again, your line of argument very closely mimics the old debates we'd have against wokes/SJWs/social justice leftists/political correctness/identity politics.

I really don't think it does.

The takeaway from that fight was not that using derogatory nicknames is good. The takeaway was that you must name yourself or you will be named by others.

The thing is, you're just referring to Donald Trump and his supporters. This is not a nebulous political movement championed by thousands of activists who often contradict each other and yet all push in the same direction. It's one guy and the people who voted for him. He already has a name, so you can and should just call him by his name.

"Donald Trump and his supporters" has a moderate clunkiness issue, with it taking 31 characters (or 24 if "Donald" is omitted) as opposed to 4 for "MAGA". More importantly it's fairly ambiguous on what "supporters" means here. To a lot of people that could plausibly mean anyone who voted for him, or to people who are supporting him on specific issues. But that would be overbroad, as a reluctant moderate who voted for Trump as the lesser of two evils against Kamala is not who I'm typically referring to when I talk about MAGA. Likewise, Mitch McConnell is a Republican like Trump, and explicitly supports him on issues like SCOTUS nominations, but he's not part of MAGA.

So are they wrong for acting like "MAGA" is "some kind of entity or group"

I don't know because, as I clearly said, it's unclear what "MAGA" is supposed to be. Is it everyone who voted for Donald Trump? Is it the so-called "base" of diehard Trump voters? Is it the Republican Party? Is Ted Cruz part of MAGA? Is Mitt Romney part of MAGA? Is Joe Rogan part of MAGA?

The answer is that it's wrong in two different ways: It's using a disrespectful nickname for some collection of people, and furthermore it's also badly-written because it's unclear exactly who it being referred to by said disrespectful nickname.

The proposed deal would have allowed in thousands of migrants a day, over a million a year, iirc.

I covered that in my post that I linked. The notion that the bill was "open borders up to 5000 migrants per day" was just egregiously false.

Yeah it was actually open borders all the time forever with no limits, because it would have handed 100% of the control of the border to a small cult of DC activist judges.

This wasn't true to any serious extent, other than how laws are always interpreted by the judicial system

  • -10

How many illegals are here?

How did they get here?

Given that they are in fact illegal, how and why did existing laws and enforcement mechanisms fail to keep them out or remove them once they were in?

Why were these failures not anticipated when the laws were written? Should they have been?

If many previous laws did not work, why should we believe that passing additional laws would change things?

To what extent are these failures the result of willful policy? How would the new laws prevent such policies?

The last major legislation was in 1986, and it was a mess of compromise and had some incoherencies that would later become evident. Add those issues on top of being 40 years old, and yeah, I'd say it's hardly a surprise things aren't exactly in the best shape today.

The reform bill in 2024 would have gone a long way to fixing it. With that dead, Republicans could have (or could still do, I guess) their own party-line bill now that could fix a lot of the issues.

Is there something specific you're looking for? I'm not sure how much of what you wrote were genuine questions, or whether they were just gesturing at political nihilism and implying that since we didn't get it perfect 40 years ago then there'd be no point in doing anything ever.

The last major legislation was in 1986, and it was a mess of compromise and had some incoherencies that would later become evident.

The last really significant federal gun control legislation was also in the 1980s, IIRC. This does not appear to have impeded enforcement of those laws when the Federal Government considered such enforcement desirable, despite similar "compromises" and "incoherencies". We also see very inconsistent and lackadaisical enforcement of these laws in a large majority of cases, the straw purchase prohibitions being a particularly egregious example, but it really does seem to me in these cases that the problem exists between chair and keyboard, not within the text of the laws. We also have examples, several of which @gattsuru has laid out at some length here, of how legislation Blues find inconvenient is simply ignored; the Protection of Lawful Commerce in Arms Act is my preferred example, but it seems to me that there are plenty of others.

It seems to me that political nihilism is spreading because it offers superior predictive value to the process-is-legitimate frame you prefer. If you disagree, I think it behooves you to engage on the details, rather than simply arguing by assertion. We can directly observe that the Feds and the courts routinely decline to enforce laws they don't want to enforce and have been doing so for decades, and often enforce "interpretations" of laws that do exist that converge on simply making shit up. We can directly observe that even repeated Supreme Court "victories" on specific questions of law change nothing, and we can infer that the Supreme Court backs down when faced with sufficient resistance from the states and executive.

The reform bill in 2024 would have gone a long way to fixing it.

How? What is the core of the problem? Is it that laws say "may" rather than "shall"? Where can we see this actually making a difference in this or other issues of public policy? Why did they write the law so poorly, and why should we be confident that a new law would be written better? Because the nihilist argument is that ten years from now, whoopsy-daisy, it turns out this new law also had "compromises" and "inconsistencies" that, gosh darn it, mean we have to let in another twenty million illegals wouldn't you know it shucks howdy.

Is there something specific you're looking for? I'm not sure how much of what you wrote were genuine questions, or whether they were just gesturing at political nihilism and implying that since we didn't get it perfect 40 years ago then there'd be no point in doing anything ever.

I'm looking for anything specific. I'm looking for a nuts-and-bolts argument about why the process you're pointing to actually matters, preferably with examples of it mattering in a way that resulted in durable facts-on-the-ground wins for my tribe, because the alternative is that we are being invited to accept paper "wins" that will turn out to not actually be wins when it's too late to do anything about it. I think our interests are better served by taking a blowtorch to the legitimacy of our "shared" political institutions, rather than trying to reform them. I'm open to arguments that I'm wrong, but it seems to me that table-stakes for such an argument is some actual examples of my side winning through the "legitimate" process. Otherwise, if your argument is that every law my side writes just turns out to not be written properly to give us what we want, and every law the other side rights is unquestionably perfect and does even more than they claimed it'd do when they wrote it, that seems odd to me.

You're running out of trust. The institutions run on trust. If one person doesn't trust the system, that person has a problem. If a hundred million people don't trust the system, the system has a problem. It's pretty clear to me that at this point, the system has a problem. You may think that's stupid and unfair, but at some point you have to engage with the realities of the situation.

If you're looking for any specific thing, my old article goes into the asylum fraud loophole that the bill explicitly would have fixed. And yes, "may" vs "shall" is a very important distinction when writing legislation. Most things are written in "may" terms as a rule to give the Executive flexibility to respond in reasonable ways if situations change. Of course that leeway can be abused which happened with immigration, and that's when "shall" is necessary if you think the Executive isn't going to do its job. If you want an example of this in action, look up 8 U.S.C. §1226(c) and court cases Nielsen v Preap as well as Johnson v Guzman Chavez

If you want another example of what legislation could fix, look up US v Texas (2023). Republicans tried to sue the federal government to get them to enforce immigration restrictions, but were thrown out for lack of standing. That's something that could be addressed by legislation.

I'm not really going to touch the rest of your post on the legitimacy of the system more broadly, since we're so far apart that I doubt it would be productive.

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To add on to this, it seems obvious to me that Trump is focusing on the march through the institutions. He doesn't care about legislation because he's operating under an older theory of power: removing his opponents from positions of power and installing allies in their places.

Given that Trump single-handedly mitigated the vast majority of the border problem in about a month, we now have definitive proof that the entire border issue was a deliberate intentional undertaking by Joe Biden. So we're left with two possibilities:

  1. democrats other than Joe Biden don't actually want an open border. In this case, all a future democrat president needs to do is not deliberately throw open the gates of the border and invite billions in. Seems easy to me.

  2. democrats desire an open border with a fiery passion that burns with the heat of a thousand suns, and they are willing to stop at nothing to facilitate a flood of billions of migrants into the United States. Of course if and only if this is the case, then a future democrat president will throw open the gates of the border and deliberately invite billions in.

If option 1 is true, then no border bill is necessary. Successive administrations can continue the current secure border. Buuuuut, if option 2 is true, then it's extremely positively strong evidence that the democrat written, democrat supported border bill that the democrats tried to pass alone with zero republican support, is actually designed to increase migration.

Of course to your other point some new border laws would be nice, and I hope congress can at least make an attempt to do it. I haven't seen anything indicating they won't try, it's just that congress critters seem preoccupied with other bullshit like the budget fight right now.

Given that Trump single-handedly mitigated the vast majority of the border problem in about a month, we now have definitive proof that the entire border issue was a deliberate intentional undertaking by Joe Biden.

We actually don't. Even assuming your logic behind that (Biden could've done something but didn't) is true, that doesn't prove whether his lack of action was deliberate or the result of incompetence.

Rather than lack of action, it was actually Joe Biden's deliberate action to throw open the border and invite them in.

I covered this in my earlier post. Yes, the flood that happened under Biden was his fault, although it didn't seem deliberate. It seemed like he wanted to roll back Trump's immigration vibes in nebulous ways, but they way they (Biden or his handlers) effectuated that had unintended consequences that were functionally open-borders via loophole. I know a lot of conservatives on this site take the approach of "never attribute to incompetence that which can plausibly be explained by malice if it involves the outgroup", but the Dem response to immigration afterwards sure made it seem like they knew they fucked up and had dropped a grenade at their feet that they never intended.

Coalitions in the US are large and amorphous, so both your points 1 AND 2 can be correct for different Dems, and they occasionally rotate turns at the wheel depending on who wins elections or who has dementia.

Better immigration laws are needed because the US system is fundamentally broken in ways that only Congress can fix. Executive orders can help (or hurt), but they're just bandaids on a bullethole. You can try mangling interpretations of laws created decades ago and hope the courts don't notice, but they have the annoying habit of saying "hey bro, you can't just ignore Congress" and striking things down. In the status quo, the best conservatives can hope for is Obama-era levels of immigration. At worst, they can expect open borders with next to no recourse. Changing the laws on the books could significantly help that.

  • -11

the Dem response to immigration afterwards sure made it seem like they knew they fucked up and had dropped a grenade at their feet that they never intended.

Major mens rea issue divining the difference between they incompetently wanted to undo anything Trump did versus they competently wanted (approximately) open borders but backtracked after the last minute once they finally realized it was it was such an electoral albatross.

Joe Biden literally flew in half a million illegals in the chnv program, and kept going until his last day in office. I can't see how that can be unintended, and not a single democrat opposed the program.

That type of program was probably more typical of the type Biden wanted to have overall, i.e. a much higher number than Trump but still "controlled" in a sense of having some numeric cap, with preauthorization and other checks. I still oppose that type of thing, but think it's different from what was happening at the (land) border where anyone could say "credible fear" and be let into the country.

Also I'm pretty sure there were several Dems who did criticize it, like Adams, Hochul, Cuellar, and some others.

Adams, Hochul, Cuellar, and some others.

None of these politicians have criticized chnv at all, or at least I'm not able to find any reference to that on google.

Hochul and Adams didn't criticize it directly by name, but they did complain about immigration's burden on NYC, and many of the chnv arrivals were going there.

Were the complaints about the burden on NYC before or after TX and FL began sending the illegals to NY?

Complaining about burdens is just asking for money, which is right in the Democrat wheelhouse. No deviation from party line really needed. If they demanded a tax cut or repeal of gun control because illegals...then we have something.

the Dem response to immigration afterwards sure made it seem like they knew they fucked up and had dropped a grenade at their feet that they never intended.

When did you start seeing this response? I don't remember any biting policy changes up until election season began in earnest. I think there were some local actions in NY and Chicago (and memorably, Martha's Vineyard) to the migrant busing policies, but I will admit I don't follow politics that closely and I might have missed something.

The vibe I remember felt more like "all in on open borders and accepting any and all asylum claims, up until they saw how that polled with prospective voters 24 months later."

It grew in strength over time. Even in early 2021 there were some rumblings with Kamala Harris making her "do not come" speech (satirized by the right as "do not cum"). Then agreeing in principle on a conservative immigration package that I talked about. Biden doing stuff like trying to reimplement "remain in Mexico", and eventually cutting deals with the country to try to staunch the flow of immigrants without having aggressive enforcement at the border. There were always progressive groups chanting for open borders throughout the process, but the more centrist left realized they had an issue fairly early and gradually picked up steam.

satirized by the right as "do not cum"

This wasn’t a satirization — it was just a very silly meme, especially when juxtaposed with Trump saying “I’m gonna cum… woooah.” (And then brought to new levels of hilarious with “oh yeah, he did score!” from Boris Johnson, and “we must cum together” from Bernie Sanders.)

Obviously I don’t have statistics, but I’m guessing this was a meme that a fairly broad (if generally male) segment of the population found funny.

Not every joke about a thing a politician says is a form of political speech.

Sure. I remember the meme and found it funny.

Have we considered that while Joe Biden and his grand vizier Ron Klein didn't want open borders, the increasing radicalism of the democratic party(and I specifically mean the party, not the base) made it near-impossible to implement non-open-borders policies due to staffers and undersecretaries?

In any case, I suspect the de facto equilibrium is 'when there's a democrat in the white house the borders are open, even to serial killers claiming asylum from bigfoot, but the Texas governor shuts it down and the border patrol just lets him, regardless of actual orders'.

Have we considered that while Joe Biden and his grand vizier Ron Klein didn't want open borders, the increasing radicalism of the democratic party(and I specifically mean the party, not the base) made it near-impossible to implement non-open-borders policies due to staffers and undersecretaries?

This is possible, and if you've read Matt Yglesias' works on "The Groups" and how they influenced Biden, it may have been the cause. I'm not sure exactly how much % of the blame they should get, but it's almost certainly higher than 0.

In any case, I suspect the de facto equilibrium is 'when there's a democrat in the white house the borders are open, even to serial killers claiming asylum from bigfoot

Again, strong disagree here. MAGA is overindexing on Biden's 4 years due to recency bias and since it lets them ignore Trump's inaction on an issue that's critical to them. Even Obama's second term had illegal crossing numbers that were about on par with Trump, although Obama probably kept it that way because he knew immigration could be a bombshell if mishandled rather than from him having his hand forced by explicit legislation.

I agree that there is a possible future democrat who will have strong border controls. But this scenario isn’t very likely; Obama still had a reservoir of moderate-ish(or at least willing to take orders) mid level talent and that’s increasingly difficult for democrats, for one thing, but also polarization just drives the parties farther apart- Trump has stronger border enforcement than Bush ever did(or tried to do). Likewise Biden had border chaos that Obama didn’t even gesture at.

Politics is unpredictable. Democrats could run to the center. But they’re currently refusing to moderate on trans issues, which are even more lose-lose for them.

In any case, I suspect the de facto equilibrium is 'when there's a democrat in the white house the borders are open, even to serial killers claiming asylum from bigfoot, but the Texas governor shuts it down and the border patrol just lets him, regardless of actual orders'.

Is that what happened under Biden? Because I don't remember anything close to that happening under Biden. I remember Texas getting sued a lot and ICE agents removing barriers put up by Texans.

Better immigration laws are needed because the US system is fundamentally broken in ways that only Congress can fix. Executive orders can help (or hurt), but they're just bandaids on a bullethole. You can try mangling interpretations of laws created decades ago and hope the courts don't notice, but they have the annoying habit of saying "hey bro, you can't just ignore Congress" and striking things down. In the status quo, the best conservatives can hope for is Obama-era levels of immigration. At worst, they can expect open borders with next to no recourse. Changing the laws on the books could significantly help that.

I say "citation needed here." Even Trump isn't enforcing the laws on the books to their fullest extent. The idea we need more laws to fix the problem doesn't pass the smell test. If anytime a Democrat gets elected they stop enforcing the law, no law is going to fix that. As much as I think it would be brilliant design to make welfare contingent on border enforcement, that's never passing. And certainly nothing like that was in the 2024 law that fizzled out. There was nothing in that bill that could have prevented what Biden did in the first three years of his presidency, which was, essentially, tell ICE agents to do a different job. Because law enforcement and prosecution is the job of the executive. If he wants to dismiss cases against Ethyl Rosenberg because he loves commies, he can. The only recourse is impeachment + removal. And it simply will never happen for the border no matter how flagrant the violations because Democrats are not going to get onboard.

I don't think most Dems support or have a "fiery passion" for open borders, but I have seen plenty of evidence for the policy preferences. Who needs to see more? Loose, executive bound grey immigration policy subject to change is where we are. Open the tap, close it a little, obfuscate what you want to hide, and figure out issues whenever-- or never. If Trump's term passes without any lasting changes I'll probably try to become more apathetic on the issue. I would like to see something done with asylum. Additional brrrrrr: drive forever electoral growth by printing limitless political capital in perpetuity.

The Democrats win back the Whitehouse, signal or even campaign on concessions in whichever areas are electorally expedient, then quietly reverse policies they don't like. They pivot focus to whatever and its business as usual. It can and will happen again.

I would expect the hardline immigration and demographic critics to be loudest in demanding legislative backing. The politicians I can understand, but interested voters and advocates I don't. A political crisis that requires permanent intervention, but never any resolution is exhausting for normies.

Maybe fiery passion is a bit of a hyperbole, but fact is that their policy preference is opener borders. So I can't see any way that the bill which was supported by democrat leadership and most democrats and zero republicans would actually be a big sacrifice of their own policy preferences.

Democrats have never "handed Republicans a major victory" for free when the Republicans didn't even want it.

Given that Trump single-handedly mitigated the vast majority of the border problem in about a month, we now have definitive proof that the entire border issue was a deliberate intentional undertaking by Joe Biden. So we're left with two possibilities:

Agreed. This is an utterly bizarre time to take a "victory lap" for that border bill. From my recollection, even before Trump got involved there were large elements in the Republican party agitating against it, including the prominent hawks like Cruz and Cotton. The fact that it was initially "bipartisan" was simply because there were/are some open borders Republicans still left, and also because the negotiation team thought they had a mandate that said "any deal is better than no deal" which was absurd.

The fact is, our immigration laws are STRICTER than even Trump's enforcement. He is particularly lax on things that could really rustle the ire of the business community. He's abstained from any raids on meat packing plants, construction sites, and similar venues. The idea we need new laws to satisfy border hawks is pretty much a myth. Unfortunately, because of how courts cannot compel the executive to execute the actual law, the only way Republicans could ensure a future Democratic administration actually enforces border laws is with some sort of draconian contingency law that gores a Democratic ox if border crossings exceed a number. It would have to be something like "all snap payments are suspended for 6 months if border crossings exceed XXXX IN ANY MONTH, and cannot resume unless 6 consecutive months of compliance are certified". ANNNND there would have to be a reliable way to do such certification that cant be gamed by Democrats, which seems unlikely.

What makes you think republicans(other than Trump) actually want a no illegal immigration ever situation akin to Australia or Japan? They want to signal to their base, not eat a welfare bill, and have the ability to tell them to go home when they’re no longer useful.

It's not really about getting to 0 illegal immigration as that's not plausible, it's about having better control over the levers of who gets in, and preventing crazy Biden-era spikes. There's definitely a lot of cynicism when it comes to R politicians on immigration, with how the base wants strict controls but plutocrats want cheap labor, so politicians dance like they're making a change and then do nothing to keep the donations rolling in. MAGA was supposed to be the end of that, but unfortunately it seems like they're too broadly incompetent to actually do much of anything other than temporary fixes.

On filibusters and the Senate..............

The US senate is an odd institution.

The house does the legislation. The executive executes. The courts maintain constitutional sanctity. The states already elect governors to represent them. What is the role of the Senator ? It made made some sense until the 1913 (17th amendment), when Senators were effectively subordinate (selected) to Governors. That way, state elections served as a useful way to remove both unpopular governors and senators.

An elected senate is just odd.

  • The Senate isn't representative. (Californians have the same representation as Wyoming)
  • The Senate can't do anything but block. (Net negative institution)
  • The Senate can filibuster, the House can't. (1 man anti-democratic weapon)

Most democratic nations don't have anywhere near as powerful of a Senate (or equivalent institution). The Indian Rajya-Sabha & House of Lords can only delay a bill by a short amount. A balancing counter-weight also makes sense in a parliamentary system where the executive (Prime-Minister) is selected by the house (making the house too powerful) unlike the US where the President is separately elected.

This means, in India, a person only thinks about 2 elections. Once for their state (governor, who selects senators) and once for the nation (house, which selects the executive). A British person only thinks about the Commons.

In comparison, An American must think of 4 elections. The governor, senators, house reps and the President. That's exhausting. Only takes 1 lapse, 1 midterm rando, to block legislation for the next 6 years. Doesn't the US already have enough checks-and-balances ? The house churns every 2 years. The last time someone held onto Senate+House in a midterm was in 1978.

I am just learning about the 17th amendment & the history of filibuster. so bear with me. Some wikipedia exerpts:

Those in favor of popular elections for senators believed two primary problems were caused by the original provisions: legislative corruption and electoral deadlocks

Appears that it made things worse than better. In an era where they were capable of pushing constitutional amendments, it's hilarious to think that they were complaining about deadlocks. Yeah buddy, try getting anything done in 2025.

Rule XXII of the Standing Rules of the United States Senate allows the Senate to vote to limit debate by invoking cloture on the pending question. In most cases this requires a majority of three-fifths of the senators duly chosen and sworn (60 votes if there is no more than one vacancy),[3]: 15–17  so a minority of senators can block a measure, even if it has the support of a simple majority.

Interestingly, the most important change on senate filibusters was also made in the same decade (1917). Clearly they knew filibusters were a bad idea. House filibusters were eliminated in 1842 ! Not sure why they left it half-complete in 1917.

The Senate was always meant to be a powerful counterpart to the House. It was supposed to be the "cooling saucer" that could take up long-term projects like court appointments and treaties, while more immediate concerns like the budget were left to the more representative House. It was also part of the big compromise between big states and small states as to how representation should be handled, and helped allay Southern fears that the North would come for slavery (at least for a time).

There really was quite blatant corruption before the 17th amendment, not just "corruption" in the modern sense where the government doesn't do everything an uninformed populist citizen wants, and so the populist hallucinates that "the system is broken!!!" I do fully agree that the modern Senate is too much of a vetocracy though.

Americans don't care that much about state elections of governors any more. And while that still leaves the Presidential AND House AND Senate elections, they all happen together every 2-4 years so it's not that crazy or hard to keep track of.

helped allay Southern fears that the North would come for slavery (at least for a time)

In 1789? Abolitionism didn't really get going until the 19th century was well on.

Not true, actually. Jefferson's "Notes on the State of Virginia" include a plan for gradual emancipation through colonization, and he was a proponent of the portions of the Northwest Ordinance barring slavery from newly-acquired US territories. Virginia was contemplating a plebiscite on emancipation in the early 1830s. If anything, support for slavery got stronger as the 19th century wore on, via what should really be a quite familiar process of reciprocal polarization between south and north. The William Lloyd Garrison radical abolitionists and Calhounian "positive good" types fed on each other to the exclusion of what had been the predominant view that slavery would eventually shrivel and die on the vine after the banning of the slave trade in 1807 (which was done at the first instant the Constitution allowed it, btw).

The purpose of senates and similar elder chambers in most bicameral systems is to:

  • slow down the passing of legislation to prevent popular mistakes
  • give a seniority track to successful politicians
  • provide a reserve of statesmen with enough legitimacy to:
    • perform inquiries and investigations
    • organize oversight of important and complex matters in a less partisan manner
  • generally defend and represent the interest of the long term and the establishment

With this in mind and the general American distaste for titles and nobility, the oddities of the American Senate are unsurprising.

Yes Senates are anti-democratic. This is no accident. They are designed by republics to specifically thwart the passions of democracy.

That's why I specifically compared it to other bicameral systems.

slow down the passing of legislation

Can't slow down a stationary object. The Senate can only limit the power of the house, a house that already moves at snails place. The Executive and Courts wield their power independently.

give a seniority track to successful politicians

Works better when people were dying at age 50. When the average age of the Senate is higher than the life-expectancy 100 years ago, you know something went wrong.

reserve of statesmen

All elections become popularity contests. Why make the senate elected, if the goal is to bring in experienced statesmen.

The American system was created for a different America. A white-protestant nation run by proven men who rose up the ranks through merit (college, military achievement). 75% of the Senate had a college degree in 1945, when less than 5% of the nation had gone to college. The need for fund-raising and media-access meant that running for office was exclusively limited to the elites. This meant a high degree of consensus on what America should be. Therefore, they worried about the excesses of democracy.

In 2025, America is a diverse nation with public-office having exceptionally low barriers to entry. Consensus is nonexistent and core values of various groups are at odds with each other. In such a place, the system should encourage compromise. This means giving power back to the house.

If an downstream institution can unilaterally torpedo a bill (Senate filibuster), then the house would never go through the painful process of reaching compromise. The congress can override the president, but not the senate.

Can't slow down a stationary object.

American statute is not stagnant. It certainly doesn't line up with what I'd like but plenty gets done.

Works better when people were dying at age 50. When the average age of the Senate is higher than the life-expectancy 100 years ago, you know something went wrong.

Wealthy people that cleared the early years never had particularly low life expectancies. The average age in the American Senate at the moment is indeed shameful but it's not a product of medical advances.

Can't slow down a stationary object. The Senate can only limit the power of the house, a house that already moves at snails place.

I'm not quite sure what killed the ability of Congress to do its job. There are many suspects. Including the filibuster. But I can assure you that if it ever did regain some measure of power, it would still be necessary to have breaks on the car. The history of functional parliaments is full of nice sounding stupid bills that almost became law but for some high chamber pointing at the practical problems with them.

Maybe getting rid of the fillibuster would help, but the American Republic is chockful of vetoes precisely because it's designed to make exercising power difficult. I'm not sure that would be enough to be worth the trouble.

All elections become popularity contests. Why make the senate elected, if the goal is to bring in experienced statesmen.

Because one is bigoted against nobility, presumably.

There are alternatives, I like the idea of a random sampling of taxpayers personally, provided the right caveats.

In 2025, America is a diverse nation with public-office having exceptionally low barriers to entry. Consensus is nonexistent and core values of various groups are at odds with each other. In such a place, the system should encourage compromise. This means giving power back to the house.

Take it from someone who's having it imposed on them by circumstance: parliamentary regimes are a terrible idea when your country is experiencing factionalism.

I think that devolution/decentralization/"states rights"/localism is a better and more fitting solution to this problem actually.

In the UK we sort of did that (city Mayors, Scottish/Welsh/NI governments) but the result always seems to be hard left nonentities who have very little history of practical achievement (even less than our top-level MPs). I’m not sure if that’s a structural problem or simply what the regions prefer, but implementing localism in a way that doesn’t end up with virtue-signalling parasites constantly invoking ethnic grievances for more money seems like a serious problem.

I know it didn't go very well in the UK, but I think it would be a better fit for the US where there's already some good local institutions per state that actually hold some power and responsibilities (with their own budgets and such).

I guess I still don't actually understand what your working model is here. Setting aside whether the new legislation would have been good or not for the moment, it seems clear and obvious that there are plenty of statutory reasons for removal or denial of entry that weren't being used. With that fact well established (at least to me), I immediately become very skeptical of anyone that tells me we need new legislation to accomplish something that they're not even trying to do with what's already on the books. So skeptical, in fact, that I tend to think there's an ulterior motive - perhaps there's some poison pill in the law I missed, perhaps they want the optics of saying they did something, perhaps they're shooting for a compromise lock-in that I don't want. From a game theoretic perspective, I would love an off-ramp from this equilibrium, but it's very hard for me to believe that the Defectbot that just did 243 consecutive tats has responded by agreeing to cooperate after only one tit.

I guess our disagreement is about whether the current laws provide statutory reasons for removal or denial of entry?

I agree that Biden had the power to have Obama-level illegal immigration, i.e. about on par with Trump's numbers. I also agree that his refusal to enforce the laws on the books is what caused the spike in immigration. Then he did start enforcing them once it became clear that immigration was a huge liability, hence why immigration numbers started plummeting before Trump took office. I strongly disagree with the notion that the bill was somehow a "trap". It was created by a Republican immigration hawk, the text was out there for all to read, and Trump couldn't come up with many actual issues with the bill so he just cooked up lies to try to sink it. Legislation can have unintended side effects, but it's not like its a haunted house with secret compartments filled with woke lawyers and a million illegal Hondurans. Policies are also not etched in stone and can be amended if they turn out bad.

But you can put all that aside since that's in the past now. MAGA won the 50-50 and now has (or had) the opportunity to create almost whatever immigration bill they wanted. And what did they do with that chance? The answer seems to be "sweet nothing".

I guess I still don't actually understand what your working model is here.

I don't think I speak for OP here, but I think the best working model I've found for the behavior of both parties on immigration issues is something more personal and emotional than rational:

Democrats have a vague idea that there should be some limits on immigration, but mostly don't want to make any migrants feel bad. They will reject any course of action that might make migrants feel bad. This is based in a primordial sense of empathy: Talking to an immigrant you know they are a fellow human being trying their best and you don't want to hurt them gratuitously.

Republicans have a vague idea that there should be fewer migrants, but mostly don't want to make any illegal immigrants feel good, and preferably want to make migrants feel bad. This is based in a primordial sense of justice: migrants broke the law and must be punished not rewarded.

I think this model will prove to be significantly more predictive of actual policy than pretty much any other model that I see people working with. When people ask, "if they were really for/against immigration, why wouldn't they do X?", the answer will frequently line up with whether it will be too mean or insufficiently mean rather than whether it appears to accomplish the stated policy preferences.

Can we call it too mean/too naive for a bit of equilibrium?

I think too nice/too mean provides better equilibrium.

Actually that would provide negative equilibrium, and it is the default I expect people would go to so I'm stepping in quick, because the equilibrium I'm looking for is in emotional valence. Too nice/too mean would solidify the manichean premise that one side are being 'good' while the other are being 'bad' and I think we see enough of that already. Some republicans might revel in the cruelty, but that's just the lizardman constant, some number of people are always doing that no matter the side. Republicans need a way to defuse that angle, and I think naive is a strong response - to the point without being too insulting.

Nah, Naive is too sophisticated for the concept I'm trying to get across, which is more emotional in nature.

Most Anti Immigration Republicans ultimately aren't choosing policies based on a deep consideration of what will lead to desired policy outcomes. They are emotionally repulsed from policies that reward lawbreaking because it is naturally unjust to reward lawbreakers. Seeing rulebreakers rewarded is as unjust as seeing the good punished, and is naturally emotionally revolting to humans. It is emotional, not rational or policy based. Parallel to how Democrats are emotionally repulsed by images of children separated from parents (one wonders, for example, how they felt about parents who attended Jan 6th being 'separated' from their children).

One can see this in the policy positions taken: a great many of Trump's anti-immigration measures seem aimed not at actually removing immigrants, but instead primarily at preventing immigrants from participating in open society, running the risk of creating an illegal underclass.

At the more sophisticated level of policy outcomes, the natural antonym to Naive here would probably be Misanthropic. So Too Naive/Too Misanthropic: Republicans feel that Democratic policies are too naive, assuming good natured immigrants who just want to work; Democrats feel that Republican policies are too misanthropic, assuming that all immigrants are criminals and welfare queens. But that ultimately isn't what drives the revulsion that each side feels, emotionally, for the policies of the other side.

So skeptical, in fact, that I tend to think there's an ulterior motive

It’s the same “legalize another 20 million illegal immigrants and then we’ll stop illegal immigration, we promise :^)” song and dance that Democrats have been doing since the era of Ronald Reagan. The first part always happens and then second never seems to materialize. That in turn incentivizes millions more illegal immigrants because they figure that if they can hang on long enough they will eventually get citizenship.

And even the most-ironclad, loophole free law you can write is useless if the administration isn’t going to enforce it.

And even the most-ironclad, loophole free law you can write is useless if the administration isn’t going to enforce it.

Strong disagree here. You're overindexing on what happened in the last few years and assuming different legislation would be functionally identical because that's just how the system works. In reality, a lot of what Biden did was available due to how current laws are written, e.g. not having hard "shall" clauses that gives wide bearing to executive fiat.

US v. Texas had been decided before your post last year on this topic..

Yep, lack of standing of Republican plaintiffs is another thing that legislation could explicitly address.

It's another thing that Joe Bidens poison bill did not address.

Did the bill you highlight as The Best Option In Decades involve anything that would have done so? Or did it demand every case get sent to the DC Circuit, which has both a long history of limiting immigration enforcement and unusually strict standing analysis and limits on what judges could be appointed that favor progressives?

But after even that, would it matter if they did? From the opinion I linked above:

But once it is posited that a plaintiff has personally suffered a “de facto” injury, i.e., an injury in fact, it is hard to see why the presence or absence of a statute authorizing suit has a bearing on the question whether the court has Article III jurisdiction as opposed to the question whether the plaintiff has a cause of action. In the end, however, none of this may matter because the majority suggests that such a statute might be unconstitutional. Ante, at 10, and n. 4.

Oh, well, that's just Alito's summary, surely he must be exaggerating th-

For an arrest mandate to be enforceable in federal court, we would need at least a “stronger indication” from Congress that judicial review of enforcement discretion is appropriate—for example, specific authorization for particular plaintiffs to sue and for federal courts to order more arrests or prosecutions by the Executive. Castle Rock, 545 U. S., at 761. We do not take a position on whether such a statute would suffice for Article III purposes; our only point is that no such statute is present in this case.4

4 As the Solicitor General noted, those kinds of statutes, by infringing on the Executive’s enforcement discretion, could also raise Article II issues. See Tr. of Oral Arg. 24–25

This already was a "shall" law. Indeed, the oral argument (and that Solicitor General question on constitutionality!) was driven by the extent that "shall" had already been sprinkled throughout the relatively recent additions to immigration laws, driven by long periods of neglect by Democratic administrations!

What possible reason could or should anyone expect new versions to behave any differently, or actually apply longer than needed for additional epicycles to develop? How green would someone need be to think it'd just be This One Statutory Construction Gimmick that would make it matter here?

The Lankford immigration bill didn't change venue as far as I understood it, so you'd sue in the district where you're harmed, the appeal to your regional circuit. There was nothing special about DC in the bill.

You're right that the bill didn't change anything explicitly about standing, but I never argued that the bill should be the last word on the issue, simply that it was far better than the status quo for fixing a lot of other things. Now that MAGA won the 50-50 it's functionally irrelevant since Republicans could make whatever type of bill they want, within reason.

In terms of US v Texas, standing demands injury, causation and redressability. The case held Texas had injury & causation but no judicially cognizable interest absent special statutory authorization. In other words, it wasn't a case of just ignoring "shall" requirements, it's that the laws were poorly written (or weren't written with these types of plaintiffs in mind in the first place). By contrast, in Nielsen v. Preap (2019) and Johnson v. Guzman-Chavez (2021), the Supreme Court enforced the INA’s “shall detain” for criminal-alien detention. Those were “shall” duties plus clear statutory schemes that provided judicial review. Long-term neglect by prior administrations underscores why Congress must match “shall” with funding and remedies. When that has been done, “shall” has repeatedly proven enforceable.

The Lankford immigration bill didn't change venue as far as I understood it, so you'd sue in the district where you're harmed, the appeal to your regional circuit. There was nothing special about DC in the bill.

From your own link of the full text of the bill, the one that's in your write-up from the last time you tried this:

JUDICIAL REVIEW —Notwithstanding any other provision of this Act, judicial review of any decision or action in this section shall be governed only by the United States District Court for the District of Columbia, which shall have sole and original jurisdiction to hear challenges, whether constitutional or otherwise, to the validity of this section or any written policy directive, written policy guideline, written procedure, or the implementation there-of, issued by or under the authority of the Secretary to implement this section.

This actually shows up three times, once in SEC. 235B. PROVISIONAL NONCUSTODIAL REMOVAL PROCEEDINGS., and a second time in SEC. 240D. PROTECTION MERITS REMOVAL PROCEEDINGS, and a third time in ‘SEC. 244B. BORDER EMERGENCY AUTHORITY. It's the only times 'original jurisdiction' shows up in the entire bill!

Someone told you this, a year ago. In the thread you're linking to, now!

You're right that the bill didn't change anything explicitly about standing, but I never argued that the bill should be the last word on the issue, simply that it was far better than the status quo for fixing a lot of other things.

You never argued that, either; you just asserted it, and then shrugged when people repeatedly pointed that there was no reason to suspect any such improvement, and many reasons to suspect that it would make things worse. Your post last year was nearly eleven months after US v. Texas's opinion had dropped, and yet here today you still repeatedly pointed to "shall" terminology that US v. Texas held does not and likely can not ever be legally binding.

In terms of US v Texas, standing demands injury, causation and redressability. The case held Texas had injury & causation but no judicially cognizable interest absent special statutory authorization.

Yes, yes, I can read. I can also read the multitude of examples in the dissents and concurrence for Texas highlighting both how capricious the application of this novel standard was, and the opinion's unwillingness to commit to any statutory language being able, either as a matter of constitutionality or practice, of having done so in the immigration context.

By contrast, in Nielsen v. Preap (2019) and Johnson v. Guzman-Chavez (2021), the Supreme Court enforced the INA’s “shall detain” for criminal-alien detention. Those were “shall” duties plus clear statutory schemes that provided judicial review

Oh, boy, I'm sure these are accurate and complete summaries of the cases at hand. Let me get a big drink of water and --

Section 1226(c)(1) directs the Secretary to arrest any such criminal alien “when the alien is released” from jail, and §1226(c)(2) forbids the Secretary to release any “alien described in paragraph (1)” pending a determination on removal (with one exception not relevant here).

Respondents, two classes of aliens detained under §1226(c)(2), allege that because they were not immediately detained by immigration officials after their release from criminal custody, they are not aliens “described in paragraph (1),” even though all of them fall into at least one of the four categories covered by §§1226(c)(1)(A)–(D). Because the Government must rely on §1226(a) for their detention, respondents argue, they are entitled to bond hearings to determine if they should be released pending a decision on their status.

That is, Nielsen revolved around the question of whether a statute commanding that the government "shall take" custody of this class of criminal aliens only applied if those criminal aliens were detained immediately after release from jail. It had nothing to do with a requirement for the government to take custody of those criminal aliens and not doing so.

Respondents are aliens who were removed from the United States and later reentered without authorization. When DHS reinstated their prior removal orders, each respondent sought withholding-only relief to prevent DHS from executing those orders based on fear of re- turning to their home country as designated in the removal orders. While respondents’ withholding-only proceedings were pending, DHS detained respondents, and respondents sought release on bond, which was initially denied. The Government opposed their release, maintaining that because respondents were detained under §1231, not §1226, they were not entitled to bond hearings.

That is, Guzman-Chavez revolved around whether the government was allowed to do something that statute mandated that it "shall" do, not whether the government must actually do so.

Long-term neglect by prior administrations underscores why Congress must match “shall” with funding and remedies. When that has been done, “shall” has repeatedly proven enforceable.

So, now you've proven zero out of three attempts to show "shall" as enforceable in any approach at an immigration detainment or deportation context, despite the very laws in question being driven by long periods of administrative neglect of the law. Do you care to try a fourth time? Do you think it's a coincidence that you keep conveniently making this class of mistake? Do you think anyone reading you could possibly miss it?

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It almost certainly could be done, though. It would just require Trump to spend a little political capital to move it along. Waffley centrist Senators liked to hide behind the filibuster as e.g. Manchin did during Biden's term, but there's 53 R senators which gives a buffer of 3 defections and they'd still be able to remove it. There have been plenty of news stories recently about how R's in Congress basically can't disagree with Trump on anything, so there's plenty of reason to think the filibuster could be overcome here.

The filibuster already was partially defeated, first on lower court nominations, then for SCOTUS appointments. I guess you could claim those were different and didn't really matter compared to the filibuster on everything else, but that would just be a handwavy just-so story.

Also, why does nobody talk about building the wall anymore? The one thing that the recent kerfuffles over deportations have shown is that it’s inherently a nightmare to kick people out of the country. You have procedural hurdles which can theoretically be removed, but there’s also significant reliance interests which can’t be removed. A wall wouldn’t have this problem.

The Wall was always partially/mostly symbolic since it's not like it would stop people committed to getting through it, and it wouldn't do anything to touch people overstaying visas which was a big part of the problem. Sure it would help, and it wouldn't cost that much so it was always worthwhile, it just wasn't something worth fighting tooth and nail for relative to other parts of enforcement.

I wholeheartedly agree though that it's a heck of a lot easier to stop people from getting in beforehand than trying to deport them afterwards, for logistical and political backlash concerns. An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure.

There was a bipartisan group of Senators who tried to broker a deal: build the wall in exchange for writing DACA into law. Trump (or perhaps just Steven Miller, who was Trump’s negotiator) wanted to make some changes to legal immigration. He got changes to family reunification and the diversity lottery included in the proposed bill. He then insisted on reducing immigration quotas, Democrats refused, and negotiations ended in a deadlock. DACA remained in place and Trump didn’t get any of the changes he wanted to immigration law.

I don’t think Trump would have had to fight “tooth and nail” to get the wall built after he had just won an election where “Build the Wall” was one of his primary campaign promises. All he had to do was to sign off on a deal that was a clear win for him. Yes, he would have had to sign DACA into law, but he was never all that committed to deporting child arrivals anyway. His primary criticism of DACA was that it should have been done by Congress, and under the deal he rejected, it would have been.

Interesting, thanks for sharing. I was only vaguely aware of the Gang of Six stuff, but I looked it up and... yeah, it's bad. Typical Trump sabotaging actual reforms and failing to make deals.

To be clear, there's already 700 miles of fence along the border. It was built long before Trump came along.

To the extent that a physical barrier is effective at preventing illegal immigration, they've already built one.

That wouldn't put an end to the problem. NGOs literally fly them into the country.

Looking forward to someone trying to analyze in the future how much of the dropoff was due to Trump intimidation versus USAID cutting the NGO racket.

So a magazine that is pro immigration broadly (in a chamber of commerce way) interviewed a few people who also benefit from the immigration and this is supposed to tell us about the conditions on the ground in Springfield?

The WSJ isn't just a newspaper in the same way that Lord of the Rings is not just a book.

Sure — it is an establishment chamber of commerce newspaper

Especially a topic where at this point the vast majority of people know the consequences of saying anything particularly taboo can be life-altering on a random vox pop.

Last week there was a conversation on here about a potential peace deal in Ukraine. I claimed that the peace deal seemed fake since if you knew the background on peace efforts, you'd know that both Putin and Zelenskyy were playing a goofy game trying to pin the other one as the one who "doesn't want peace" in the eyes of Trump to try to direct Trump's ire in the other direction.

We now have pretty good confirmation that no peace deal will be forthcoming in the near term. JD Vance has said that the war won't end anytime soon. This backs up further reporting following the mineral deal that Trump's team was looking for ways to compel Russia to come to the table, and didn't really find any options that they liked.

The bull case for a Trump-brokered peace deal was the idea that the US could use its power to demand that both sides come to the table, and if either side tried to walk away then the US could force them back. This worked halfway, as the US has a lot of leverage over Ukraine for things like intelligence gathering, air defense, and to some extent other military deliveries. Much of MAGA hates Zelenskyy personally, and Trump was more than willing to exercise that leverage when Zelenskyy snubbed him at the WH meeting. The problem was that the other half of the puzzle was missing. Some claimed that the US could threaten Russia by promising to "drown Ukraine in weapons" if Russia didn't come to terms. However, Trump has been unable or unwilling to do this, so we had the situation where Trump could compel one side quite effectively, but when the other side did something Trump didn't like all he could do was tweet "Vladimir, STOP".

Peace is good as a general rule, and it would have been good if Trump could have gotten a peace deal along the lines of "ceasefire at current lines of control, Ukrainian defense guaranteed by Europe" so it was worth a shot. But alas, it seems like the war will continue.

Trump could just commit not to fund Ukraine and it would have to surrender, but then he would "own" that outcome and be blamed for whatever fake or false flag (or real, the political calculus is the same) atrocities would follow. Trump will enable the current horror to continue just as long as he can blame anyone else for it (currently he's blaming Biden).

At this point I just feel horrified for the Ukrainians. They're stuck in a war they can't win, led by a "president" with no elections, and a universal draft that just keeps getting lower and lower in age. Their men are not allowed to leave the country since they're all property of the state. People talk about how this war is a pyrric victory for Russia, but I think the early success was also a pyrric victory for Ukraine, since it tricked them into thinking that if they just stay committed enough they'd be able to win. Now Zelensky and the generals feel like they can't possibly give up any land for peace, so they'll fight to the bitter end.

Ukraine fell for the Vietnam, Afghanistan, Libya, Syria trick of divide and conquer. Just like in Syria were groups of extremists started a war that drove ethnic tensions and collapsed the country Ukraine has become far more ethnically divided and forced into a more militant position.

It is painfully obvious that Ukraine will end up like every other neocon project. For some reason liberals think that Poland is the expected outcome of becoming an American puppet. The west bank, Afghanistan and Iraq are much more typical examples. The Ukrainians must first realize who the real enemy is and stop falling for divide and conquer tactics.

I guess the Soviets should have just let the Germans roll over them, then, as soon as they started surrendering by the hundreds of thousands. 20 million dead could have easily been avoided if they had just seen the writing on the wall and given up.

I don't think that would have resulted in fewer dead....

Should the South Vietnamese fought harder against the North Vietnamese? Should we have supported them longer and harder? How much longer and harder? Should we have maintained troop commitments?

Yes, this whole war is clearly just a ukronazi scheme to keep Zelensky in power. They don't even have elections! (let's conveniently ignore the fact that wartime elections are illegal according to Ukranian law)

They really should just follow the will of the Ukranian people and give up instead of following the deeply unbased metrosexual libtard agenda of (draws card) remaining sovereign and not ethnically cleansed.

Why is that for people like you and @Rov_Scam, every single war is WW2? There isn't a single other war in history that we could take lessons from?

I would argue that WW2 was actually highly unusual. Very few wars have a fully militarized society bent on large-scale invasion and genocide. A more normal outcome is to fight for a short while, then give up a small slice of land while glaring at each other until their desendants forget about it after a few hundred years.

I'd argue that the better analogy here is the breakup of the Soviet Union. Russia had been fighting the cold for for decades, mostly "just" through mass conscription and spending, but occasionally going hot also. At the start it was sort of even, but by the end they were obviously, massively outmatched by NATO. Meanwhile their economy was in freefall. Gorbachev saw the writing on the wall and thankfully ended it, mostly peacefully. But hardliners like Putin and wanted to keep fighting forever to hold onto every last scrap of territory no matter the cost. So ironically you're thinking more like Putin.

There's also the small problem that if Ukraine somehow did win this and took back the Donbass and Crimea... those areas are mostly filled with ethnic Russians who only speak Russian and are more loyal to Russia. So Ukraine would likely have to do some ethnic cleansing to actually take control of those regions.

Because for them, it might as well be. The war you're describing about giving up a small slice of land isn't the war Ukraine is fighting. Since the beginning, Putin has been consistent in his rhetoric denying Ukraine's existence as a separate people, attempted to take the capital at the beginning of the war, and is demanding terms that would not only cede larger amounts of territory than this "small slice" but also effectively end rump Ukraine's existence as anything other than a Russian satellite. I'm not sure how this is anything close to the breakup of the USSR, or what you're even getting at, really. What foreign power launched a full scale invasion of the Soviet Union with the goal of integrating territory into its own country?

So Ukraine would likely have to do some ethnic cleansing to actually take control of those regions.

Why? Those regions were part of Ukraine for over 20 years without any ethnic cleansing.

Why do people like you keep acting as though there is a Russian offer of a ceasefire along the current line of control on the table that Ukraine is rejecting out of nationalist spite? The only terms offered so far that I am aware of have included demands that Ukraine cede vast swathes of territory never occupied by Russia, including the city of Zaporizhia, as well as Treaty of Versailles-style demilitarization and Finlandization. Maybe you still think that Zelensky should have accepted those terms because an unjust peace is better than a just war, but surely there is a difference between rejecting those specific proposals and the generalized unwillingness to cede territory under any circumstances that his detractors attribute to him?

remaining sovereign and not ethnically cleansed.

The question is at what point this is recognizably not an option. Wales might have a thing or two to say about it.

At the risk of self-reference...

19 April: "In Which Dean Points to New and Upcoming News as Reason to Expect the Ukraine War to Continue For Some Time"

Points made at the time, with a supporting premise from each section-

Point one, it's not necessarily as time sensitive as it is being presented, as opposed to being part of a possible multi-week push for a truce.

This creates a risk that even if all parties wanted to end the war, they could miss the opportunity if some (Russia) attempt to draw out negotiations in the name of trying to get more.

We're at 2 weeks after that post. We'll see what else, if anything, progresses, but VP Vance and Secretary of State Rubio are both signalling an expectation of a longer war, without threatening to cut off Ukraine aid.

Point two is option two- the (unlikely) prospect that Russia reigns in its demands to accept a cease-fire deal is likely sooner than later.

But the more unlikely it is, the more likely any window-of-opportunity with the Trump administration is to close. And re-opening a window can be much, much harder the second time than the first.

Russia did not accept a Trump proposed cease-fire. Russia announced its own micro/unilateral cease-fires, such as the easter cease fire, but maintained many of its maximalist demands throughout the rest of the month, including

  • Ukraine must commit to not joining NATO
  • Ukraine must confirm neutral and non-bloc status
  • Ukraine must address “neo-Nazi regime in Kyiv” formed after the “coup in February 2014,” particularly regarding policies affecting Russian language, media, and culture
  • International recognition of Russian control over Crimea, Sevastopol, Donetsk, Luhansk, Kherson, and Zaporizhzhia oblasts
  • Legally binding agreements with enforcement mechanisms
  • “Demilitarization and denazification” of Ukraine
  • Lifting of sanctions against Russia
  • Return of frozen Russian assets

Demands 2, 3, 6, and 8 in particular are the sort of lower-cost demands that Russia would likely drop in a non-grasping proposal.

Point three is what Trump 'passing' on the peace process means for Ukraine if it does occur.

My position is that a collapse of US-Russia negotiations means sustained, not diminished, US aid for Ukraine.

1 May: Newsweek: Donald Trump Opens Ukraine Military Sales Tap After Minerals Deal

The Trump administration has told Congress that it intends to give the go-ahead for roughly $50 million of defense-related products to be exported to Ukraine through American industry sales direct to Kyiv, according to a new report.

Note that this sale is after the signing, but before the ratification of the mineral deal by the Ukrainian legislature. 50 million is not 'a lot' in the context of the war as a whole, but military sales as opposed to military aid is a notable distinction.

Point four- parallel negotiations as a means of leverage on each other.

As noted above, if the Ukraine-US mineral deal goes through, that undercuts the US leverage against the Russia position. And if the leverage against Russia fails, then the war goes on.

1 May: AP: Ukraine and the US have finally signed a minerals deal. What does it include?

The agreement — which the Ukrainian parliament must ratify — would establish a reconstruction fund for Ukraine that Ukrainian officials hope will be a vehicle to ensure future American military assistance.

This structure of military sales / assistance rather than aid matters because-

Point five - the importance of having tried and failed, over having never tried at all, and covering the costs with a skeptical-but-not-hostile electoral base.

I'm not here to argue which you should believe is right. My point is that both of these readings suggest that the potential news of the coming weeks- the Ukraine mineral deal and Russia peace deal- may shift the Republican coalition towards a greater 'right amount or more' coalition balance for further Ukraine aid.

We'll see when future polling comes out, but I suspect that any increase in disapprovals for Trump over the next month will be far more about trade policy than Ukraine arms sale policies.

Point six - how the deals (and Trump walkway from a ceasefire) may shape Trump's base into a more pro-Ukraine-aid direction.

This is where the Ukraine mineral deal can start prying apart the 'too-much' coalition, because expected future gains can offset costs. And the more Democratic / international media criticizes the deal as 'extortionate,' the more credible it can be to an otherwise unfamiliar base that, hey, aiding Ukraine is not just [cost].

The NYT is not calling it extortionate- leaving that to the 'early' versions. The anti-Trump right National Review does call it sordid but logical. The WSJ is approving. Newsmax reported a Russian position that the deal forces Ukraine to pay for weapons with minerals.

Final Point - The Trump Effect: If Trump Supports Aid It Can't Be Wrong

This means that once (if) Trump takes a position that negotiations are no longer something he's going to pay political capital for, but that mineral deal/etc. make continued Ukrainian aid acceptable, then the political influence of the [any aid is too much] factions is going to wither. They will still exist, but they will not have the platform or the following if they try to critique Trump-support for Ukraine like Trump signal-boosted their condemnations of Biden-support for Ukraine.

We'll see what it turns to, but initial media responses don't suggest any sort of 'Trump's base is about to revolt over selling weapons to Ukraine.'

There is likely to be a Republican base... maybe not revolt, but internal struggle, over next year's Fiscal Budget. Trump avoided a dispute over the recent budget for the rest of the fiscal year by promising steeper cuts in the coming budget fight.

Which led to...

Summary / Conclusion - What Does This Mean?

In the next few weeks we may seeing the start of a political transition to a more stable US/Republican support for Ukraine aid for the next year(s).

This won't be immediately apparent, but will be observable over the months to follow, particularly by the fall when the 2026 US budget negotiations culminate. How Ukraine aid factors into that will indicate a lot about the new state of the Republican party and Ukrainian aid politics.

And coincidentally, the FY 2026 budget proposal was presented... today.

Which supports the 'Trump is serious about walking away from the Ukraine Peace Talks,' because the Washington budget war for the next year, including a $163 billion in proposed cuts, is just getting started. And this includes the formal cuts to programs he's already ordered dismantled, including some actions frozen by courts, which would get around judicial freezes if passed by Congress.

The problem is Russia feels like it can simply win outright, at this point. Therefore, to achieve a peace that reflects the current EV of the war, Ukraine has to accept a deal that is worse than the current status quo. They will never do this, so the most likely outcome is a complete victory for Russia.

Russia has been thinking this for 3 years now. It wasn't true in 2023 and it wasn't true in 2024.

Assuming 1v1 in a vacuum, Russia is the most likely winner in a war of attrition due to bigger population size and more natural resources. Since international support is declining for Ukraine, the situation is heading more to the "1v1".

Winning a war of attrition isn't usually a good thing.

Beats losing a war of attrition, usually. Certainly did in WWI. Russia seems willing to take the hit. This seems crazy to me, but as far as I can tell Putin really wants a Ukraine that's part of Russia and/or under Russia's thumb, and is willing for his countrymen to pay the price to get it.

Some claimed that the US could threaten Russia by promising to "drown Ukraine in weapons" if Russia didn't come to terms.

What weapons? Who were 'some' ? Even though US has some thousands of armored vehicles in storage, it's known all the critical weapons -air defense, artillery are in short supply. Any sort of useful weapon system (good air defense, cruise missiles) that might make big trouble for Russians is in very short supply. At this point, only some sort of wunderwaffe like AI-powered FPVs AND China not cutting off supplies of parts there in a brutal manner could save Ukrainians. US Stinger production is at a level of 60 a month!

Raytheon told FlightGlobal it was ramping up to achieve production capacity of 60 Stingers monthly. A separate $700 million contract from NATO headquarters in 2024 added 940 missiles to be split among Germany, Italy and the Netherlands

That peace was not going to happen has been clear since the year started. Russians are confident they can keep this going and Ukraine will give in, so why'd they accept a peace that'd not solve the issues they have

American missile production is insufficient, very insufficient..

In 2022, Ukraine was able to maintain a highly effective defence against the aggressor’s air and missile arsenals, mainly due to post-Soviet long-range S-300 systems. However Ukraine has lost as many as 80 fire units and has used the majority of its estimated 5,000 interceptors. Apart from an S-300 battery delivered by Slovakia, so far transfers of these systems from Bulgaria, Cyprus, and Greece have not been finalised.

Ukraine used thousands of S-300 missiles and now has basically none. US is, with great fanfare planning to increase its production of Patriot missiles to 650 per year.

In December 2023 it was stated that production of Patriot interceptors was 550 a year and would be increased to 650 a year in 2024.[55]

Really, it's hard to put in words how depressed one should be here. E.g. Poland is expected to have <1000 Patriot missiles in its air defense. How long would the Poles last against Russia, which is making ~600 Iskander missiles a year according to Ukrainian information. Since Iskander is a maneuvering and fast missile, interception is by no means assured with a single interceptor either as it'd be against simple ballistic missiles or planes.

Typical NATO air defense would be utterly exhausted within a few weeks by a determined foe spamming improved cheap drones like the Geran, especially ones with better avionics that could fly themselves low and thus would be hard to intercept from the ground.

At this point, only some sort of wunderwaffe like AI-powered FPVs

Is this such a far-fetched wunderwaffe to be holding out for at this point? Between the ChatGPT-plays-geoguessr posts, the circumstance that Ukraine already gets the vast majority of its kills with superior FPV tech (currently still using human operators), and them having access to much more infrastructure that would enable the technology's deployment once it is created (unsanctioned supply chains, Starlink), the bet that these will happen in the next 2 years and will be a significant game-changer seems at least as good to me as the "Russia will run out of missiles any moment now" cope of the early months of the war.

that Ukraine already gets the vast majority of its kills with superior FPV tech

According to the people operating it, their tech is not superior to the Russian one. This is from fall of '24

That has since changed. Now, enemy drones outnumber Ukrainian ones six to one. But superior tactics and innovation still keep Ukraine competitive. Ukraine tends to be first in developing and adopting new technologies, driven by a policy of diversification. Russia’s advantage in mass production means it can adapt and scale up much faster. The pace of change is frenetic, with feedback loops meaning that some software is updated every few hours. By the time Russian drones reach the front lines, Ukraine has sometimes already developed counter-measures, Colonel Sukharevsky claims. “Quantitatively Russia is ahead, but qualitatively we are keeping them at parity.”

Now look how wikipedia puts it

Comparing Russian and Ukrainian drone warfare, he said that the enemy has more drones, as they are better at mass production, but that Ukraine is first with innovations.

I understand why people want to believe in the narrative of Ukrainian tech superiority and why Wikipedia selectively quotes the same article to make it look like Ukrainians are out-innovating Russians, but it's mostly unwarranted. They're basically the same people with a slightly different culture. The difference between Russians and Ukrainians is that Russians have more resources and people, possibly mitigated by a less flexible MoD.

Making such a tech 'safe' would require putting some sort of transponders on every piece of Ukrainian equipment and making such network secure and hard to exploit - the codes would have to change frequently etc. This is hard, logistically, there are spies in the Ukrainian army etc.

Without that, your only bet would be having AI modules on drones that would only activate once the drone is indisputably in enemy territory. How do you make that in a foolproof manner? Inertial navigation of some sort? You could use terrain / map matching but that's a whole another layer of of AI complexity you'd need to make reliable.

But what then if someone fires off the drone in the opposite direction to the front ? Both sides routinely used basically civilian vehicles for transport and transport is one of the primary targets. Any misactivation would result in grief.

In addition, FPV cameras are fairly cheap and low resolution, they AFAIK always rely on recon from another drone. An autonomous drone would require better sensors.

There's a fair amount of complications. I'd not rule this out before war ends, but I think it's more likely to happen after the war. Maybe Ukrainians will get last-40m targetting or something like that, which could really help radio-shadow near the ground.

What weapons? Who were 'some' ? Even though US has some thousands of armored vehicles in storage, it's known all the critical weapons -air defense, artillery are in short supply. Any sort of useful weapon system (good air defense, cruise missiles) that might make big trouble for Russians is in very short supply. At this point, only some sort of wunderwaffe like AI-powered FPVs AND China not cutting off supplies of parts there in a brutal manner could save Ukrainians.

I think I disagree with the idea that thousands of armoured vehicles are useless and I suspect that Ukraine would agree with me, I can think of at least a few good uses for a large quantity of Bradleys and Abrams, hell even the M113 could be put to use. The Russians seem to be pretty close to burning through their soviet inheritance of armoured vehicles, hence the increasing presence of things like Mad Maxified Ladas and golf cart riding stormtruppen, so armoured vehicles that are donated from now on should produce a greater impact on the battlefield as the Russians become increasingly resource constrained.

Russians are confident they can keep this going and Ukraine will give in, so why'd they accept a peace that'd not solve the issues they have.

It probably is worth mentioning here that Putin was confident that the "special military operation" would have been over in days and that he also has a tendency towards "missing the bus" when it comes to strategic decisions, procrastinating and making decisions weeks and months after they would have had the most effect. Putin is quite lucky that the western world lives in abject terror of actually winning a war for change (Defeating your enemies? Sounds awfully escalatory that) and that we are instead treated to this tragic comedy of errors.

I mean weapons do not fire themselves. You can arm Ukraine all you want — they are still toast more or less. And Ukraine is rapidly running out of people. If you’re resorting to abducting senior citizens off the street to fuel your army, you are in no position to defend much. And this is the calculation that NATO missed — Ukraine didn’t have the population to sustain this effort, and so any weapons given were useless because eventually you’d have no one left capable of firing them.

Ukraine lost about a half million in casualties in three years of combat, in a country with a population of about 38 million. In World War I, Germany lost about 6.3 million out of 65 million total before calling it quits, and even then it was controversial. At a consistent rate of attrition, it would take Ukraine another 20 years to hit those kind of numbers. While you can argue about the population pyramid being more favorable to Germany, this is balanced by the fact that the relatively slow rate of attrition gives Ukraine a much bigger pool to draw from, including people not yet born. After all, Germany started another war 20 years after than one ended and managed to double their casualty numbers. Those of us who have never lived through a serious war don't understand how huge casualty numbers can get before they become unsustainable.

It’s not just the men literally killed, it’s also people fleeing the country. And a lot of people have fled already.

True, but most of the Ukrainian refugees left at the beginning of the war. It's not like war casualties where there's a continual drip drip for years. In 2023 and 2024, Ukraine had one of the highest rates of in-migration of any country, almost all of whom were returning refugees.

The Russians seem to be pretty close to burning through their soviet inheritance of armoured vehicles, hence the increasing presence of things like Mad Maxified Ladas and golf cart riding stormtruppen,

That's the impression people doing PR for Ukraine want others to think. But in the absence of enemy heavy weapons fire, light vehicles make sense to use. That the various storage areas are emptying out is likely not just down to attrition, but because Russia is creating vast new units in reserve.. Newly produced equipment is rarely even seen near the front line now.

Russia is tailoring its rearmament plans to meet the needs of the new troops to be stationed along its NATO border. Those units will get much of the new equipment. Most of what is being sent to the front line in Ukraine is old and refurbished Soviet-era arms. “Very rarely are newly built vehicles observed or destroyed lately,” said Dara Massicot, senior fellow in the Russia and Eurasia Program at the Carnegie Endowment, who wrote a report on Russia’s military reconstitution.

Another great quote:

“The Russian military is reconstituting and growing at a faster rate than most analysts had anticipated,” Gen. Christopher Cavoli, commander of U.S. forces in Europe, told a Senate committee this month. “In fact, the Russian army, which has borne the brunt of combat, is today larger than it was at the beginning of the war.”

"We were all wrong and actually, Russian army isn't getting destroyed in Ukraine."

All in all, if NATO continues with business as usual- being ineffectual, stuck in the past due to lack of bloody experience, and Russians settle the conflict and absorb all the lessons of the war, something which used to be only possible in BAP's alcoholic imaginings such as 'Russia swooping through Poland' might stop being very fanciful.

Putin is quite lucky that the western world lives in abject terror of actually winning a war for change

How could the West 'win a war' when a typical NATO army has only enough ammunition for couple of weeks of operations?

The West has an economy based on valuations of Boomer owning expensive real estate and selling each other services. It has consistently fallen short on delivering weapons to Ukrainians, it can't make weapons in large numbers. Most real industry is declining or gone. These days you can read how they're struggling to source cellulose for artillery charges. The West is simply not a serious geopolitical force, it has zero sane ideas, it's a collection of dysfunctional countries that hate their own citizens, whose main interests is keeping the old-age pension scam going for a few more years and where and power is held by people who just want to die comfortably without having to make a real decision.

According to someone who was a serving intelligence officer, NATO is more of an organisation that provides sinecures than a real defence organisation.

Also just prosaic stuff like small arms, bullets, vehicle replacement parts, tires and gasoline. A big part of the reason for the complete collapse of the German Army in 1945 was that you had entire surviving units going combat ineffective because they couldn’t operate their vehicles and had no guns or bullets to shoot them with.

These are problems which could, in principle, be solved by spending US taxpayer money.

Naturally, you can't get a factory ready for production in a month, but possibly in less than a year.

This presumption is based on the fact that it is common knowledge that in modern warfare, whoever can field more weapon systems will have an advantage. So a state (e.g. the US) which is working under a strong presumption of not having to switch to wartime economy might never the less invest to shorten the critical path to start mass-producing weapon systems in earnest.

Arguably, developing new weapon systems is part of this. For peacetime capabilities, developing a new weapon system and then building a few of them is likely worse than just using that budget for building the previous generation of weapons. But when you enter a big war and your defense budget increases by a factor of 20, R&D will be obviously a critical path, and not having done it beforehand will greatly diminish your capabilities.

Likewise for production. Keeping enough machines around so that half your working population can manufacture munitions is not effective when in all likelihood, these machines will just gather dust. But hopefully, there is someone whose job it is to worry about how quickly one can scale up production quickly. Perhaps this means keeping a lot of machines which build machines which build missiles around, or subsidizing certain key dual-use industries to keep them on-shore.

Of course, the US would face certain hurdles when trying to spend more money on manufacturing without being themselves in a shooting war, all the rules about having bidding processes, NIMBY/environmental lawsuits et cetera might still delay things. But compared to civilian manufacturing (i.e. the US on a whim deciding to invest 10% of the GDP into manufacturing hard disks onshore), I would still expect that military manufacturing -- especially of single-use items like missiles -- could be scaled up very quickly.

Naturally, you can't get a factory ready for production in a month, but possibly in less than a year.

Modern weapons are complex. Building a factory to make something simple today might happen under a year, but for high-tech production of stuff with proprietary components that can't be bought from several vendors it just gets vastly more complicated. This simply isn't the 1940s when the most complex weapons may have had some electronics. Something like radar seeker heads is extremely specialised tech. Solid rocket fuel either, zero civilian use. Missiles are absolutely unused in civilian world, so are probably missile parts like those specialised servos etc. Expanding production in wartime requires having the entire specialised supply chain ready and waiting, so you existing workforce can train new people. This rarely or never happens.

but hopefully, there is someone whose job it is to worry about how quickly one can scale up production quickly.

No. Not happening. We aren't in WW2 era where you could convert an auto plant to an airplane plant with relative ease. Scaling production quickly is now really hard. You need whole mothballed plants with crews keeping the production going at low volume to maintain the ability. This is something only governments with money to spare such as Russia or China can manage. It'd never fly in any pensioner-heavy democracy, nor in the US.

If you look into this more closely, 'streamlining' and lowering cost was popular. US ended up with having problems of this type:

https://theweek.com/us-military/1023025/us-production-of-bullets-shells-and-missiles-sidelined-by-explosion-at-1

There's no reason to worry. US is going to abandon Europe and nothing really bad could result there, worst case Turkey or Russia conquers some unimportant part. The war with China in the Pacific is almost certainly lost on a numerical basis alone, so there won't be a big war. Maybe something silly like US Navy letting Taiwan hang but blockading Malacca strait etc. US itself is pretty safe.

Some claimed that the US could threaten Russia by promising to "drown Ukraine in weapons" if Russia didn't come to terms.

Is that claim true, though? Like obviously the USA could give Ukraine nuclear warheads but come on with that. What ‘within the realm of might actually happen’ thing could the US do that a) threatens Russia and b) hadn’t already happened? Even the most paranoid theories about the deep state supporting Ukraine over America don’t think Ukraine is getting f-35’s or anything.

To some extent, maybe? The US hasn't sent Ukraine everything in its reserves since the US repeatedly said that it wasn't willing to compromise its own readiness in the case that a conflict emerged elsewhere in the world. The US could use those reserves, although obviously that would come with (potentially catastrophic) drawbacks. The US could also maybe go to a wartime economy and really start cranking out weapons for Ukraine, but there's just no political willingness to go down that road.

In any case this was never a point I myself made, it was something I just heard when interacting with some MAGA folks who were opposed to Biden's slow-burn approach, and instead wanted a "escalate to de-escalate" policy from Trump.

There are two theories here. One is that the US has imposed restrictive rules of engagement on Ukraine's use of US-provided weapons (and possibly more broadly as an unofficial condition of continued support) and could unrestrict them - the theory here is that Russian logistics are sufficiently shaky enough that enough missile strikes on supply lines could collapse the army in Ukraine. Personally I don't find this theory plausible - officially the Blinken rules were cancelled by Biden during the lame duck period, and Ukraine's attacks on Russian territory seem to be capability-limited.

The other is that Russia know they have no path to victory with continued US support for Ukraine and Putin's plan is basically to wait out Trump's limited patience with Zelensky. In this scenario Russia will come to the negotiating table once it is sufficiently clear that Trump is not in fact about to come out as the Putin ally that TDS-sufferers think he is. I can't evaluate the plausibility of this theory because of the fog of war.

Personally I don't find this theory plausible - officially the Blinken rules were cancelled by Biden during the lame duck period, and Ukraine's attacks on Russian territory seem to be capability-limited.

My read is that Ukraine has politically-limited a significant part of its drone campaign since Trump came in due to the cease-fire process. The Ukraine drone strikes on Russian refineries earlier this year sharply curtailed after the Zelensky-Trump-Vance summit blow-up and subsequent Ukrainian alignment to the US for ceasefire talks. The capabilities almost certainly exist, but the peace process- or rather the US demands to support the peace process- were prioritized.

We don't / probably won't know what the new restrictions are, but I wouldn't be surprised if the post-talks status quo shifts to 'the US will not help, but will not prohibit, Ukraine using Ukrainian arms deeper into Russia.' That just needs to come after the US formally ends the cease fire process.

The three major restrictions America is placing on Ukrainian rules of engagement are:

(1) Attempting to kill Putin or very high level Russian government officials using American weaponry. This is the type of thing that could provoke in-kind retaliation against US government officials or other drastic retaliation measures. It is rumored that the US government was informed by the FSB of an attempted assassination of Putin just a few days before it was to be carried out and had to scramble to tell Ukraine to stop it. This was actually reported on in mainstream news media six months or a year ago.

(2) Actions designed to threaten or disable Russia’s strategic nuclear capabilities. Again, this actually happened, the Ukrainians used a NATO supplied missile to destroy a Russian ICBM early warning radar installation, a strike that has no inherent strategic value to Ukraine.

(3) Actions that would hurt Russia and are strategically valuable to Ukraine but would collaterally cause the collapse of the European or global economy. This is why the strikes on oil infrastructure got throttled back, Europe is still using a lot of Russian oil and gas and they can’t just go cold turkey on it.

I agree that giving nukes to Ukraine is not on the table, and while you can never be sure with Trump, I don't think he would go for that particular brand of craziness.

I think that the main thing the US could do is to just send more of the same. Quantity has a quality of its own, after all, and conventional missiles are likely materiel-constrained, not personnel-constrained. If my math is correct, the US is currently spending 3/1000th of its GDP (175G$/27T$ in about two years -- though I don't know how much of the 175G$ figure is Hollywood accounting). If they decided to triple that figure, that still would not crash their economy, but might create a headache for the Russians.

OTOH, this might not be enough to force Russia to negotiate in earnest, wars are not always won by the side with the larger budget, after all.

And I also don't see Trump doing this. Given his animosity towards Zelenskyy and his friendliness with Putin, I think the most he will do is keep the military aid to Ukraine at the Biden level.

I suspect part of the issue here is that Trump actually has a pretty good carrot for Putin to end the war – sanctions, and frozen assets. But the problem is that it's hard to make that offer expire – even if Trump threatens to take it off the table, if Russia keeps winning, at some point Ukraine will be in such a bad place that they will beg him (or whoever is president at the time) to put it back on again. So Russia does have an incentive to make peace, but it's really at their leisure, once they get everything they want out of the war.

A proposal sponsored by Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) to impose new sanctions on Russia and 500 percent tariffs on countries that buy Russian oil, gas and aluminum has received broad bipartisan support in the Senate, possibly even a veto-proof majority.

This would probably completely bork US relations with India, right? Doesn't India buy oil from Russia? Probably won't happen, right?

Ukrainian defense guaranteed by Europe

It seems like this was also a missing part of the puzzle: Europe is unwilling or unable to put boots on the ground in any significant number.

I keep being told that Europe is going to actually get real, for real this time, they're going to militarize, it's going to be gnarly, the US will regret ever awakening the European dragon, they're going to pivot to China...and then I see stuff like this.

It's really a shame, since I actually think (even under pivot-to-Asia conditions) the US can make a very good deal with Europe/NATO that is mutually beneficial while still drawing down the US commitment to Europe.

I would tell Europe that the US is trimming its army and pulling out most of its units (I'd leave tripline forces there so that if Russia shoots at Estonia or something it's uncomfortably likely to kill Americans; their job in a real war would be to coordinate joint efforts). But the goal of pulling those forces will be to reinvest that funding into the US Navy and into mass munitions stockpiles. Ultimately the deal with European NATO, I think, should be as follows:

  • The US provides strategic bombers with a deep stockpile of weapons
  • The US provides the blue-water navy, aiming to keep the sea lanes clear in the event of a Russian invasion of NATO
  • The US provides tactical aviation and force enablers like cargo aircraft and refueling aircraft, although not necessarily forward-based in Europe
  • The US continues to cut Europe into R&D, selling munitions, aircraft like the F-35, &ct. to keep Europe's teeth sharp and short.
  • The US will continue to cooperate on cybersecurity and intelligence
  • The US provides the nuclear-stockpile-of-last-resort that is a counterweight to the massive Russian nuclear arsenal (to increase strategic uncertainly from Russia's POV, France and the UK should be encouraged to continue to maintain their own nuclear stockpiles)

The main thing the United States is not aiming to provide in this scenario is ground forces or day-one aviation. In the event of a war with Russia, the United States is still prepared to come save Europe's butt, but this will be by air and by sea.

European NATO is responsible for:

  • The Army. Tanks, air defense, infantry, tube and rocket arty, the whole shebang.
  • Reciprocating their R&D advances with the US (I know this is already a thing!)
  • Green/brown water navy (this means conventional submarines, minelayers/sweepers, missile boats and pocket forces of surface combatants)
  • "Day one" tactical aviation assets in sufficient numbers to fight – we can plan for these to be supplemented by a surge of aircraft from the United States as a war drags on, but Europe should have its own air force in sufficient numbers to be able to fight after a Russian "day zero" cruise missile attack.
  • Building infrastructure like airfields and munitions depots

This arrangement provides Europe with a lot of confidence in its ability to deter Russia on its own, even if the United States derps off in a fit of isolationist rage (we're building a Russian-equivalent ground force here) while also providing the United States with assurance that Europe isn't going to develop as a rival superpower (the US navy will remain without peer). It saves Europe billions in developing and maintaining a massive nuclear arsenal while also saving the US billions in maintaining a peacetime army that is expected to fight the Russians at the drop of a hat. And it funnels US production into capabilities that are flexible – forget about the 600 ship navy (well, no, don't, let's do that too) but have you considered the 6 million missile military? A robust navy and in particular tens of thousands of cruise missiles can be aimed just as easily at China as they can at Russia. Thus, instead of endangering global peace by being not-quite-strong-enough to fight Russia or China (while still trying to maintain security commitments – or ambiguities – that contain both) the US is able to continue to provide its traditional role of ruling the waves and backstopping local allies.

And, ultimately, I think it's reasonable. In many ways, this sort of split already exists, or at least did during the Cold War, where nations like West Germany focused on their army and coastal fleets while the US focused on its air force and navy, so doubling down on it should be easy and natural (it's not like asking Europe to develop ICBMs and field them in 5 years, or something). European NATO is getting the good end of the financial bargain, too, since fielding troops and tanks is cheap compared to aircraft carriers and intercontinental bombers. The European Union's economy is only slightly behind the US, in purchasing power parity. Since the end of the Cold War, we've "flipped" some of Warsaw Pact's most feared enemies, like Poland and East Germany, into allies. So, ultimately, it should be very doable, on paper, right?

Unfortunately my confidence in the ability of Europe to achieve even this limited goal is falling by the day. The US maintains about 100,000 troops overseas in Europe. If Europe can't deploy a quarter of that number to Ukraine as peacekeepers, how much help are they actually going to be if they actually have to defend Estonia or Latvia?

Sorry for the digression! This turned into a bit of a monster of a comment. I have my dissatisfactions with the United States and the way it has handled itself. But at least it's pretty clearly still a live player.

The US maintains about 100,000 troops overseas in Europe. If Europe can't deploy a quarter of that number to Ukraine as peacekeepers, how much help are they actually going to be if they actually have to defend Estonia or Latvia?

The Europeans as a collective have huge forces, they just don't want to use them. They have 2 million active troops and huge potential mobilization. It's taken Russia ages to chew through the population of Ukraine, barring all else the EU could just throw meat at them over a huge front until they win. I guess it's unlikely they'd have the will to do this but that brings us back to will, not capability.

It makes no strategic sense to send peacekeepers to Ukraine. Why take risks for no reward? What are the benefits of moving into Ukraine? Hans and Roger and Jean don't see it as their war, they're just not that enthusiastic about supporting the enterprise, risking their lives.

There's a media cinematic universe where Putler must be stopped and we must show Resolve and Defend the Rules Based Order and in that world it makes sense to send troops to Ukraine. Otherwise Putler will keep on invading the Baltics or Finland or wherever else. But why would he do this? How do the cost-benefit ratios weigh up for Russia?

From the European perspective (albeit not the Polish or Baltic perspective), the most valuable thing in Ukraine is gas transit routes to Russia. Not pretend rare earths reserves or gas resources that are a fraction of Russia's. These can't be defended by frustrating Russia, quite the opposite.

EU policy is trapped between reality and the MCU, so they need to fight for freedom but not so much that they'll actually win. I think it's all a giant façade. This is the best explanation for the humiliating 'yes we will, no we won't' approach by Keir Starmer and Macron, they're in a dreamy state between the MCU and reality.

I'm aware of a research report by some neocon think tank that said 'if we lose Ukraine then the EU will have to station all these troops in Romania and the Russian air defence zone will advance forwards and that will leave us weak in the Baltics. I don't understand this line of argument, if you have more of everything save nukes then you ought to win, regardless of whether the front line becomes marginally shorter or longer.

If the much richer, more advanced, populous EU can't beat a corrupt Russian oligarchy without the US despite the enemy having a fraction of the resources then there's no point in defending it, there's no point strategizing to advance its position. Clearly the entire political system is grossly inadequate, EU corruption and demoralization must be far greater than Russian... Or they can win and there's no need to worry.

I think that almost nobody in Western Europe, in their heart of hearts, really believes that Europe will fall to Putin if he manages to turn Ukraine into Belarus 2.0.

If his special military operation had gone differently, Europe would not have mounted a counter-attack to free Ukraine. The preferred phrasing is "Europe is willing to defend Ukraine to the last Ukrainian soldier".

From a point of view of maintaining the rule based international order, it makes sense to punish defectors like Putin as long as it is costing us little (compared to WW3) to do so. (Yes, we did let him get away with Chechnya, but that is his backyard, while Ukraine is his front yard. The IRBO states very clearly that the only country which is supposed to get away with intervening where-ever they like is the US.)

From the point of depleting the stockpiles of weapons and recruits of a potential adversary, supporting Ukraine is likewise great. Perhaps Putin is genuinely uninterested in extending his sphere of influence over Eastern Europe and just wants to control what he considers Russia, just like it would have been possible that Hitler only wanted control of the territories with a German majority in Austria and the Sudetenland, but either is hard to know beforehand without being able to read both his mind and the mind of his successors.

If Putin instead had tried his regime change op in Poland, the European reaction would have been on quite a different level, because Poland is NATO. My guess is that at least 80% of the NATO countries would be willing to send troops to their death in Poland, and the ones who do not will functionally quit NATO. Article 5 is a promise, and if you defect from that promise, then NATO is dead and Putin is free to attack European countries one by one. (Of course, given what we saw in Ukraine, it seems unlikely that he would win the war for Poland against European forces even without US support, but that just makes it that much easier to commit to fight.)

With regard to guaranteeing what remains of Ukraine, the question for me is if it would make sense to allow whatever will be left of Ukraine into NATO. There are quite a few pros and cons to that. On the one hand, Ukraine is the one country which has serious combat experience fighting Russia, and they are indeed positioned well to strike for Moscow, so a NATO Ukraine would force Russia to deploy a lot of defensive troops in that area if she ever becomes serious about starting the next world war. On the other hand, Russia seems to have a bee in her bonnet about getting Ukraine heim ins Reich, and if there is a 10% chance that Ukraine in NATO will lead to global thermonuclear war, then that is not worth it in expected QALYs or from a European geostrategic point of view.

The IRBO states very clearly that the only country which is supposed to get away with intervening where-ever they like is the US.

It also states in smaller letters that if you're a sufficiently big and important country, 'human rights' are an optional part of dealing with secession crises(which is what Chechnya was).

I guess it's unlikely they'd have the will to do this but that brings us back to will, not capability.

While I take your point, I kinda disagree. A lack of will is a lack of capability. It also seems like there are real questions about the actual capability of Europe sans American support right now:

Europe lacks heavy transport aircraft, military cargo ships and the specialized vehicles required to move tanks and armored units.

The article as a whole is about NATO sans the US, not an EU peacekeeping force in Ukraine, and I do think that Europe could manage to get together such a force if it had the will. But I do think it's worth noting that there are actual capability gaps that only the United States can fill right now. If Europe and the United States can figure out an equitable division of responsibilities, it's not necessarily a problem, but if Europe needs to send tanks to Ukraine and it can't transport tanks, that's a problem even if Europe has the will.

It makes no strategic sense to send peacekeepers to Ukraine.

I think the point of sending peacekeepers to Ukraine is to raise the stakes for a second Russian invasion by making it likely you'll spread the conflict elsewhere. Whether or not that makes strategic sense depends a lot, I think, on if Europeans think that Putin will come for them, next, if it can "finish off" Ukraine, but also on their economic prospects within Ukraine, and on the cost-benefit analysis of whether ending the war sooner is worth the increased risk of sending peacekeepers (assuming here that a European willingness to commit troops will help end the war sooner, which perhaps it won't.)

Not pretend rare earths reserves

These are real, right? But it looks like the US of A got there first, so it might be sort of pointless for Europe now? Not exactly sure how the trade deal shakes out. Certainly Europe could benefit from a diversified control of rare earths.

I think it's all a giant façade. This is the best explanation for the humiliating 'yes we will, no we won't' approach by Keir Starmer and Macron, they're in a dreamy state between the MCU and reality.

This definitely seems plausible to me. But I also wonder if EU politicians really believe they need to do something but then realize that what would be necessary to actually accomplish such an effort is unpalatable, so they bounce back and forth between wanting to do something and failing to do it. Modern democratic politics does in theory, I think, have a sort of trap wherein cutting programs is political suicide, raising taxes is political suicide, and so it can be very hard to actually do something about threats that are real but not immediate. Not sure if that's what is happening here.

if you have more of everything save nukes then you ought to win, regardless of whether the front line becomes marginally shorter or longer.

European NATO doesn't have more of everything except nukes. They have an edge in tactical aircraft, I think. They might have an edge in tanks and IFVs right now, particularly with Russian losses, but the Russian industry can probably surpass them in 3 - 5 years of postwar production [my source for this is vibes, I am open to correction on this!] I've seen claims they have an edge in artillery, but I question if this is including older systems that aren't nearly as relevant in modern warfare. Either way, Russia has a huge edge in shell production. Russia has vastly more surface-to-air-missile systems. I am pretty sure Russia also has (or again, will quickly have once they stop shooting them) an edge in cruise missiles, and as far as I know no European nation (except, I think, Turkey) has produced a tactical ballistic missile, which the Russians use regularly. Europe has no strategic bombers (Russia has more than 100, a combination of Tu-92s, Tu-22Ms, and Tu-160s, the last of which has reentered production). Russia has an edge in nuclear submarines (Europe has ten nuclear attack submarines, Russia eleven plus four Oscar cruise missile submarines plus an extra ten that Wikipedia says are not in frontline service but either placed in reserve or undergoing a refit. Ballistic missile submarines are unlikely to be frontline combatants but of course Russia has an edge there too, with nine active and three being refitted or overhauled, versus eight in the Anglo-French nuclear deterrent). The Europeans will have more conventional submarines (although they are much less capable in terms of range than nuclear submarines, so it's worth asking if e.g. Grecian submarines will be able to meaningfully participate) and I think a larger surface fleet, although the Russian fleet might actually be better equipped as an anti-surface force as a general rule (I think at the end of the day Europe still has the edge as long as the single French carrier isn't in drydock, but Russian anti-ship missiles are no joke). The Russians will also, I am quite confident, have a massive advantage in mine warfare both on land (with potentially literally millions of mines in their inventory, although who knows how many were used in Ukraine) and at sea.

I'm not really a fearmonger about Russian intent. I don't particularly think Putin wants to invade Germany or something. But I do think it's important to understand why Europe is uncomfortable about having Russia on its borders (particularly now that they have done their darndest to kill Russians by the hundreds.)

If the much richer, more advanced, populous EU can't beat a corrupt Russian oligarchy without the US despite the enemy having a fraction of the resources then there's no point in defending it

Yeah, I mean that's the big question isn't it? Europe seems quite mad at the United States for having the audacity to consider a pullback and pivot to Asia, even though the EU is the world's largest economy and even by purchasing-power-parity has, I believe, a tremendous edge over Russia. So why can't they handle this ~on their own?

European NATO doesn't have more of everything except nukes.

They definitely don’t have more of those. Europe without America has about 500 nuclear warheads. Russia has 4500. Even keeping back a lot to point at the US they could easily double the EU’s.

Yeah, I was responding to Ranger's phrasing, which was saying that Europe had conventional superiority. But the phrasing might have come out wrong...

I also suspect, functionally, that if there's any big USA/EU split, England will go with the US. So if we count the US out, in some scenarios France is the only European nuclear power.

These are good points and make sense but I keep getting the sense that there are people trying to force down this framing on us, that the EU really needs Atlantic unity. Like you say, the EU is mad about the US heading off for Asia.

Jannik Hartmann, a fellow at the German Council on Foreign Relations, confirmed that a U.S. pullback — from Germany's Ramstein Air Base, for instance — would leave Europe without basic loading gear like ramps and flatbed wagons. Europe also has few forward stockpiles of military hardware, whereas the U.S. has pre-positioned supplies across Germany, Poland and the Netherlands, Kruijver said.

Really, the EU can't rustle up some flatbed trucks and ramps? How hard is it to get some trucks (insert joke about Wehrmacht mechanization here)? Or trains suitable for tanks and heavy vehicles, shouldn't they have them? They can't expect the US to bring trains with them over the Atlantic surely. I don't know for sure but I suspect the German Council on Foreign Relations may be manipulating the facts somewhat. US pre-positioned supplies would obviously be useful but how much is really needed? Satellites and enablers are another matter but the EU does have their own satellite constellation in Galileo.

How do 160 million beat 3-4x their number in an offensive war? I just don't see them prevailing even with their shell advantages, battle-hardened troops, SAM batteries, ECM... Even if they have a qualitative advantage in all domains Europe is just bigger in population and industry. Size predominates in industrial, attritional warfare. Superweapons like HIMARS, PATRIOTs, Challengers, T-14s, T-90Ms or Su-57s aren't what's swaying this war, it's quantity of men, quantity of shells and quantity of drones.

And even then, Russian advantages in shells, missiles and manpower haven't yet cracked Ukraine, they're slowly burning through the population in attritional fighting. Against Europe it would be much slower either way.

A united Europe can defend itself or at least induce enough doubt that Russia wouldn't attack. Against a divided Europe (presumably the whole world's gone to hell in this scenario), nuclear blackmail could achieve effortless Russian victory. Just wipe Warsaw off the map after the initial demonstration if they still haven't surrendered unconditionally.

These are real, right?

Ukraine's rare earths exist but they're not valuable in any significant sense.

https://www.spglobal.com/market-intelligence/en/news-insights/articles/2025/2/ukraine-rare-earths-potential-relies-on-soviet-assessments-may-not-be-viable-87318842

Exploration efforts were abandoned after a 13-year assessment process, and no attempts have been made to develop the Novopoltavske deposit since the breakup of the Soviet Union in 1991, according to experts.

"To my knowledge, there are no economically viable rare earth deposits in Ukraine," said Tony Mariano, an independent geologist consultant with expertise in rare earths exploration. "I have evaluated clay deposits in Ukraine thought to have potential for rare earths but found them not to be viable. This doesn't mean there aren't any, only that further exploration and evaluation needs to be done."

I don't know for sure but I suspect the German Council on Foreign Relations may be manipulating the facts somewhat.

Really funny if true, because I suspect the normal American response to this will be "get your act together" rather than being more inclined to help.

How do 160 million beat 3-4x their number in an offensive war?

First off I would remind you that this sort of feat of arms is historically pretty normal. Small European detachments operating alone conquered entire kingdoms. The United States and its allied conquered Iraq in less than a month with about 600,000 men against an army of 1.3 million in a country of nearly 25 million.

I realize it's very popular at this point, of course, to say "well Arabs can't fight in modern wars" – but can Europeans?

With all that being said, though, I tend to agree with you that Russia just meat-grindering through Europe is very unlikely.

Let's take what I think is a more realistic scenario (inasmuch as it does not presume Russia is acting like an omnicidal entity):

  1. Russia, perhaps out of paranoia over NATO preparations to put more troops in the Baltic states, decides to seize them. It decides to launch a three-pronged assault from Kaliningrad, Belarus and Russia proper, cutting through Lithuania and Latvia to secure a land bridge to Kaliningrad and isolating Estonia. Because none of these nations have military capabilities to speak of (about 8,000 active personnel in Estonia, about 20,000 in Latvia and Lithuania each, and currently no tanks, no fighter aircraft or attack helicopters, although there is a NATO air policing mission there, very limited air defenses, etc. etc.) the Russians, after a preparatory barrage, are able to cross the border without meaningful resistance and cut logistical lines flowing from Poland to Narva. Rather than attack large towns, the Russians simply put blocking detachments with ATGMs and tanks outside of them. The Latvians do not have a navy to sink, so the Russians steam their least valuable destroyer into the Gulf of Riga and park it there to interdict commerce.

  2. Russia then begins to lay literally three million land mines between Belarus and the Baltic sea. Russian troops surround Estonia but do not invade. The governments of the Baltic states are given 72 hours to agree to neutralization. Although all three countries have large reserve forces they can call up in theory, Russian cruise missiles have hit all telecoms and VDV detachments have seized the power plants via heliborne assault – the power is out nationwide. Spontaneous disorganized resistance with small arms might be effective against an occupying force, but the Russians are less occupying and more raiding. Commerce is stopped, and any troop concentrations are dispatched via Iskander or Su-34, but the Russians aren't trying to go door-to-door. In order to fight them, the Latvian military and reservists who survived the blitzkrieg are going to have to attack Russian positions that they are fast preparing. Just as the Russians were able to slice off and fortify parts of Ukraine, they also expect to be able to, at a minimum, cut out and hold a land belt between Belarus and Kaliningrad by direct force while using a stranglehold on energy and communications to force the now-isolated Baltic states to the table. And, unlike Ukraine, the Baltics have no strategic depth. Russian helicopters and attack aircraft can operate throughout the region, and artillery from Kaliningrad and Belarus can cover the entire Polish-Lithuanian border.

Now in this circumstance NATO's entire point is to uphold the sovereignty of its member states. But it can't win this fight by waiting for the Russians to run out of men to push through the meat grinder. Instead they have to have enough forces in Poland to contain Kaliningrad and push Russian troops out of the Baltic states quickly before they are able to build fortifications (or, alternatively, have the ability to clear three million land mines) systematically while under fire and hoping that the population of the Baltics doesn't freeze to death in the intervening period.

Obviously for the sake of the scenario I granted the Russians the ability to pull this off, which is probably debatable. (I think they could easily beat the Baltics, the problem would be being sneaky enough about preparing to beat the Baltics that the US or someone didn't move an armored division there while you were preparing.) But you see my point about the need for a military force that can do more than just attrit the Russians over a long period of time. Just like the Ukrainians, if they wanted to preserve their full sovereignty, needed to be able to protect or reclaim Crimea, NATO as a whole needs to be able to protect or assemble a force that can reclaim the Baltics. Ukraine failed unambiguously. I don't think Russia cares that much about the Baltics, but if you're NATO, you have to have some means of assuring the sovereignty of your member states.

Ukraine's rare earths exist but they're not valuable in any significant sense.

Hmm, I hope we're able to scrounge some up regardless. I'm given to understand the problem with rare earths is more in refining them, rather than finding them?

I suspect part of the issue here is that Trump actually has a pretty good carrot for Putin to end the war – sanctions, and frozen assets.

Weren't the vast majority of the frozen assets held by the Europeans, who didn't seem to be keen on playing along with any Trump-brokered deal?

I don't recall, good point! But if they were never going to use them as a carrot, I don't understand why they are still "frozen" – the "give the frozen assets to Ukraine" idea has been floating around for a bit but as far as I know hasn't even partially materialized. Presumably they are still on the table for a reason – although perhaps that's less strategy and more bureaucratic/legal hang ups somewhere.

I don't recall, good point! But if they were never going to use them as a carrot, I don't understand why they are still "frozen" – the "give the frozen assets to Ukraine" idea has been floating around for a bit but as far as I know hasn't even partially materialized

It's illegal, there's articles about this. Russia would sue and win and get the assets back. The current idea is to give profits from those assets to Ukraine but AFAIK that idea hasn't gone anywhere either (and it is also legally dubious).

Weren't the vast majority of the frozen assets held by the Europeans, who didn't seem to be keen on playing along with any Trump-brokered deal?

I can't see a world in which Trump and Zelensky and Putin all agree but the Europeans queer the deal.


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