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Notes -
Trump deported a few million people in the last year and is ramping up the machinery to deport more. Legal immigration is also down as many of the pathways for fraud and abuse are being shut down. The population of the US overall became less foreign for the first time in 50 years.
Calling it "more of the same" and just "executive orders" I think undersells the achievement. There is nothing you can do that cannot be "undone in a future democratic government". There is no imagined superlaw that Congress could pass but isn't that would deport millions, in a way that a Democrat couldn't just ignore if he so chose. The law as it is is actually fairly robust already in giving the President lots of powers to deport. The laws that Congress could write, but so far have not, are necessary to go further than this, but this is already the most far anyone has achieved in a long time.
I say this because I think Trump is an important rebuttal. The world doesn't only swim left. Trump has been the most effective anti-left politician basically anywhere in the world in a generation. I hope that instead of dismissing him Europe thinks about him seriously and learns what they can, even if Europe has to adopt different postures or tactics as befits their own situation.
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