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Culture War Roundup for the week of February 2, 2026

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Demonstrating that a minority of Democrats can do what a majority of Republicans (plus the President) can't do -- shut down a department of the US government. The Republicans, of course, were utter fools when they allowed DHS funding to be separated, because they lost all their leverage.

Most of these demands are entirely unreasonable under the circumstances.

  • Require verification that a person is not a U.S. citizen before holding them in immigration detention.

Uhh, if someone ICE suspects is an illegal alien doesn't have ID, how is ICE to verify they aren't a US citizen without ever detaining them? Just "trust me, bro"?

  • Require them to verbalize their ID number and last name if asked.

What, like in the middle of a contested arrest? To every protestor who asks? (and if you think they won't DDOS enforcement that way, you haven't been paying attention)

  • Prohibit funds from being used to conduct enforcement near sensitive locations, including medical facilities, schools, child-care facilities, churches, polling places, courts, etc.

Learning from the anti-gun people, are they?

  • Prohibit DHS officers from conducting stops, questioning and searches based on an individual’s presence at certain locations, their job, their spoken language and accent or their race and ethnicity.

Apparently the only way they're allowed to determine someone is illegal is being told by a higher power.

  • Preserve the ability of State and local jurisdictions to investigate and prosecute potential crimes and use of excessive force incidents.

Given the bad faith from Tim Walz, entirely ridiculous.

  • Require use of body-worn cameras when interacting with the public and mandate requirements for the storage and access of footage. Prohibit tracking, creating or maintaining databases of individuals participating in First Amendment activities.

The second might be reasonable if applied to everything. As a special pleading to protect leftist protestors, it's unreasonable.

  • No Paramilitary Police. Regulate and standardize the type of uniforms and equipment DHS officers carry during enforcement operations to bring them in line with civil enforcement.

Police ARE paramilitary, and making them more uniform wouldn't make them less paramilitary. I'm fairly sure other civil enforcement is at least as varied as ICE, so this is BS anyway.

Several of the things they're objecting (e.g. stopping people who they suspect are aliens) to are authorized by statute, so this is exactly a minority getting to change the law.

Okay I'll bite. Here's my issues with some of your points.

Uhh, if someone ICE suspects is an illegal alien doesn't have ID, how is ICE to verify they aren't a US citizen without ever detaining them? Just "trust me, bro"?

ICE isn't in the business of detaining every person they encounter without identification. This rule presumably wouldn't apply to people detained for e.g. obstructing law enforcement - just to people detained as part of immigration enforcement. In which case ICE should have some idea who they are before detaining them.

What, like in the middle of a contested arrest? To every protestor who asks? (and if you think they won't DDOS enforcement that way, you haven't been paying attention)

Why isn't this a problem for every other type of law enforcement? You're trying to conjure up an absurd situation that in practice would not be an issue. You simply have to have reasonable guidelines for when ICE agents are required to give their badge number and when they aren't.

Apparently the only way they're allowed to determine someone is illegal is being told by a higher power.

Or by, I dunno, investigation? Properly legislated, this is simply preventing profiling, which is discrimination and should be illegal.

The second might be reasonable if applied to everything. As a special pleading to protect leftist protestors, it's unreasonable.

Great, Republicans should make it apply to everything.

These demands are only unreasonable if you assume the least charitable implementation, rather than treating them as what they are - the first round of negotiations.

this is simply preventing profiling, which is discrimination and should be illegal.

I have no idea what this is meant to mean. Is it unreasonable to assume that a Hispanic person who doesn't speak English very well is vastly more likely to be an illegal immigrant than a white person with a pronounced American accent?

Who cares about 'vastly more likely'? We don't arrest people for being 'likely' to commit a crime. This is basic stuff, I can't believe I have to explain it.

Who cares about 'vastly more likely'?

People who care about actually stopping the thing in question. It's a huge point of data that we're supposed to ignore, what, just because it gives you warm and fuzzy anti-racist feelings and you don't care about immigration enforcement anyway?

and you don't care about immigration enforcement anyway?

Not the person you're replying to, but as far as I'm concerned, that is neither here nor there. I care very much about the enforcement of anti-rape laws, for example, or indeed laws against cold-blooded murder; but even if some reliable statistics should show that in a Bayesian sense, the culprit is more likely to be black than white, I would still take the principled stand that the police should not be allowed to let that statistic enter into the identification of suspects.

Why not? Because it's wrong. Because it's wicked and counter to the fundamental dignity of Mankind. Because it perpetuates harmful stereotypes far out of proportion with the actual statistical fact, which if unchecked may be used to excuse vast-scale mistreatment of POCs as it was in the past. Because it is an insult to the memory of all black victims of slavery and segregation. A hundred reasons. I could talk about utilitarian concerns and the greater good, or I could talk about the moral necessity of making racist heuristics taboo for the sake of human dignity and civilization - I think these are ultimately two ways of looking at the same thing from different paradigms.

At the end of the day, yes, we're "supposed to ignore" this "huge point of data" for the same kind of reason that the government isn't supposed to install telescreens in every home. Whether it would work is not the point. It's wrong.

Racism works. It’s efficient.

How was it efficient for 2 decades 70 year old ladies had to take their shoes off at airports when we could have just racial profiled every Muslim male for additional screening? Then everyone could leave for the airport 30 minutes later because airport security did not exists for them. And here’s the thing about racial profiling it’s better for Muslim men too. Since they are about 1% of US airport passengers they would have a security guard screen that thoroughly for 10 minutes which still saves them 20 minutes of their day.

Suicidal empathy like you described worked as an argument 5 years ago. Today people just want a society that functions well.

Racial profiling is good because it improves net happiness in society.

I don't understand how this is supposed to be a reply to what I typed. What I wrote: "Whether it would work is not the point. It's wrong." You: "But it works! It's efficient!"

Why not? Because it's wrong. Because it's wicked and counter to the fundamental dignity of Mankind.

The counterargument is that you are not really reckoning with the real-world costs of the politics you are advocating. You position is that you are content with a larger number of innocent people raped and murdered because you find it morally distasteful to make assumptions about individuals, even when they are warranted. It's a fairly extreme position, so you can't expect to win the argument by declaring the other side is "wrong" as though that is fully explicatory.