As a non-American not that convincing. Historical democratic tradition might be far less relevant after the great schism (lack of any connection to history) caused by the increasing digitization of the populace.
This sentence about the Pretti murder by government agents fills people from less violent countries with the chills: “Even among Republicans in the poll, only 41 percent thought the killing was justified”. Talk about “normalization”.
As an American, I think this is a fair critique- that's still an amazingly high number in absolute terms. Part of me thinks there's a substantial number of people who answered without having actually seen footage and just resorted to tribalism as usual because i don't know how you can watch it as a human being and justify it in any way.
Otoh that really reinforces your original point about people not being connected to history and i would add not being connected with actual reality if one's echo chamber is really that strong.
I'm probably more optimistic than you (i live here so i kinda have to be for my own sanity lol) but i think it's still a really dangerous moment for us.
The midterms are the real test imo- if they go off mostly as normal despite a probable GOP shellacking incoming i'll feel much less anxious about the near-term future. If not, i'd argue all bets are off for US democracy
As a non-American perhaps you aren't considering how dangerous it generally is to attack police forces while armed with a loaded gun. The first time this character Pretti fought at them and his gun was obvious --- but they didn't kill him or indeed arrest him. They should have arrested him: did they not see the gun?
I think Pretti was either trying to commit suicide by cop or else he did indeed intend to shoot the ICE agents. He WAS carrying two extra magazines the second time, after all! Not generally considered a good sign when a man goes into a crowd with a gun in this country: multiple people usually end up dead. Pretti just launched himself at the officers twice, fists flying --- it's hard for me to put an innocent construction on any of that behavior.
Those are some swell “alternative facts.” We all saw the public execution with our own eyes. Your propaganda efforts are no use to the non cult members.
Would you have been fine with a man in another city fighting with police with a pistol and two extra magazines in his pocket? Looks to me like he meant to kill a bunch of them. That's our usual interpretation of this sort of behavior, and that's usually right. No innocent man keeps throwing himself at armed officers while he is carrying a loaded gun.
Imagine an alternative scenario. Its 2030 and there is another pandemic. President AOC orders the troops into Alabama to make sure that the citizens are vaccinated. Some of the protesters are armed, and one of them gets shot.
Would you still blame the protester for having a gun?
I like your scenario. Yeah, that protestor would be an idiot, same as Pretti was. If that's the right word: a person who is either committing suicide by cop or planning to shoot as many as he can isn't innocent enough to be called an idiot, and I think Pretti must have been doing one of those things: nothing else makes sense to me. And ineffective! One man with a gun? No point in military or civic terms.
Pretty much what I'd expect of Prez. AOC or any far-leftist, however, gross authoritarianism. A case like that demands organized rebellion, not Pretti-like craziness.
And organized rebellion is in fact what we are all sort of worrying about with Minneapolis: Gerard Baker called it a low-level civil war, which surprised me.
You add an excellent point: The connection to reality has also been completely fractured by our near immersion in over 50 years of digital technologies.
The real test - unspoken by Americans but talked about plenty elsewhere- is what happens with the death or debilitation of Trump
I think people who have a deep doomer perspective aren’t well versed in US History. They think the norm in politics in the US is post Cold War partisan cooperation. In reality without a common enemy, the US has mostly existed in a kind of low grade destabilizing partisan warfare. The institutions move around, become more or less powerful, but the political reality is more like 2025 than 1990.
We were a nation that was founded by four seperate waves of immigrants fleeing persecution, and at least two of those waves persecuted each other.
Of course we've never trusted each other.
The fact that the last vestiges of Cromwell's supporters and his puritan followers ended up here (after originally setting up said colonies as a base of operations to persecute the fleeing royalists and democratic types) is the forgotten piece of the American experience.
Always keen to ask you - do you support illegal immigration? Just "yes or no".
No rational person could answer other than "no".
Yet the entirety of the American left, inclusive of everyone that votes for a Democrat, if answering honestly, would have to say "yes".
This failure has nothing to do with a breakdown of "democracy". It is a breakdown of law enforcement.
I am all for removing all hypocrisy. Let those that employ illegals face liability. Let America accept the economic consequences of losing this illegal labor force. Or better yet have those that want to employ them do it with some actual documented and enforce legal process.
ICE is enforcing the immigration laws. Others including everyone on the left in American is resisting that.
Explain how that is rational or sustainable without the entire country coming apart?
I don’t think ICEs tactics can rationally be explained in terms of effective immigration enforcement.
It’s more of an “own the libs” situation, especially in Minnesota, where Trump seems more interested in political points against a Dem state than fair enforcement. His base wants the optics of cruelty in blue cities because of grievance politics against elites.
There are better, fairer ways to pursue immigration enforcement.
Obama did signification immigration enforcement. Even Biden did in the end, after he'd botched the job for three years. Moderate Democrats want immigration enforcement, it just depends on how much and how it's done. OTOH, a surprising number of Democrats really would be interested in open borders. It's a bit of a shock for many of us.
First, recall it was CBP, not ICE, that shot Pretti. People keep saying ICE even when ICE wasn't involved. Second, the tactics can be interpreted as saying to illegal immigrants: "Don't think you can go to these 'sanctuary cities' and hide there. US laws have jurisdiction there as well, and we will find you and deport you, even there. It would be better if you leave on your own. Also, please tell your friends and relatives back in your native country about your struggles here, so they won't be tempted to enter the US illegally as well."
Given that US law says they should be deported, what would you say are the better, fairer ways to have them deported?
Well, says you ("refusing"). Evidence? And recall that those courts are tremendously backed up. I think we'd both agree we should be hiring a lot more judges for those cases. Most people aren't here legally and their asylum claims are denied (64% at the end of the Biden administration, for example). That's all it would take to make it more fair?
If you are a legal resident, with constitutional rights, the fact there is a backlog of cases and not enough judges is not great comfort as you sit in detention, unable to see your lawyer.
You can choose to ignore the many cases in the news about legal residents getting swept up, but that’s on you.
That’s partially why this is a dumb immigration enforcement strategy. It looks much more like intimidation.
You're assuming they're legal. The ones who are later found to be legal should be compensated for their time - generously. I do agree that would be fair. But a lot of those cases turn out to be adjudicated as not legal after all. The deportation rates for people who are detained is very high. You might claim that shows the unfairness of it. However, the other explanation is that they only detain the people most likely to be deported. They release the people with the strongest cases on bond.
It is intimidation: it's making examples of illegals, dramatic examples. Even if they have to bring the kid in the animal-ear hat back north, it's quite a dramatic example and will stop a whole lot of this illegal immigration.
I think concentrating on getting cooperation with these awful "sanctuary cities" is a change I'd like to see, to get hold of illegals right in the courtrooms and prisons and off they go to where they belong, which is sure not here. The administration has a lot of leverage here: just tell everyone the crimes these people have done and let their mayor squirm till he figures it out.
I’m glad we’re learning through polling and the example of Minnesota that most Americans don’t support the terrorism based immigration policy that you do
You simply aren’t honesty engaging with what the “left” (read anyone less right wing than MAGA) actually believes about immigration. The fact that your worldview seems oriented around the strawman of democrats and ALL of their voters “supporting illegal immigration” frankly IS a break down in democracy, particularly our ability to work together in good faith and craft policy
My answer to your initial question is no, and yet I’m far to your left. How is this possible?
A functional democracy must be able to enforce its laws but that’s not fundamental to what makes it a democracy. A democracy makes and can change laws based on public consensus.
This is what the left actually proposes, that we step back and reassess the laws we’re writing so they can be enforced effectively in the face of a specific problem (a large undocumented population that’s been here for decades due to previous permissive policies) while also being humane and protecting the rights of individuals and communities.
The Trump administration has chosen instead to ignore the need for consensus or debate or even new legislation, and is instead pursuing an enforcement policy which actively harms communities across the country while treating those who object as enemies of the state. This has invited resistance; you should expect nothing less from Americans
He's enforcing the existing laws. If Congress wants to change those laws, that's their job, they should get to it. The problem with your argument is that there hasn't been interest in changing the laws. One side wants to, the other side doesn't. Until recently, the polling was also not really in favor of changing those laws. It's still not clear there's interest in changing those laws.
It's a bit lamentable that we can't come to some agreement on changing the immigration laws, but in the past 30 years, we haven't. But it's utterly inappropriate to blame the President for that. Under our system of government, Congress changes the laws. He was elected with the understanding he would carry out mass deportations. His job isn't to consider your interest in stepping back or reconsidering. His job is to carry out the existing immigration laws. You should not be resisting. You should be lobbying Congress to change the laws. You can certainly protest and write editorials. But resisting carrying out the country's laws is sedition.
Nobody here can make a case how/why this is an actually good way of doing immigration enforcement. If you cared about that issue, you’d realize this doesn’t work.
The vast number of people even on the far left don't "support illegal immigration" per se, they think that many people who illegally immigrated are nonetheless today a pretty essential part of America and should be given legal pathways to residency or citizenship, especially "dreamers" i.e. people who were brought to the US illegally as children and have never known life anywhere else.
And as Nate sort of alludes to in his article, most people who are anti-ICE don't even believe that much. Many just don't think deportations are a practical way to enforce illegal immigration, and that the real solution is better enforcement at the employer level. (If they can't get jobs in the US, more immigrants will go home themselves.) And an increasing number of people who believe mass deportations are the answer are nonetheless becoming anti-ICE because of the chaos caused by their current tactics and the killing of American citizens who, whether you agree with them or not, posed no imminent threat to law enforcement before being killed by them. Ultimately a law enforcement agency that is infringing on people's rights to live without a paramiltary organization stomping through their neighborhood and causing chaos tends to be a greater concern than whether said organization is completing the job they might nonetheless want done.
Funny because corporations have been escaping it for basically ever.
Deportations are easily escapable. We determine who is and is not here legally. All it would take is an act of congress.
What you are presenting as inevitable is simply a smokescreen for a badly described (possibly intentionally) policy position you don’t want to say out loud.
It would take more than an Act of Congress! It would take "Papers, please," The dreaded national identity documentation, which presumably would be a chipped plastic card now instead of papers. Which everyone would carry and that would settle the issue of whether anyone was really a citizen or not. It would have to be better than the documents that are forged so often now, such as social security cards.
And next would come pressure against corporations hiring illegals. We need robots first, I'm afraid. We can't easily replace illegals in "hospitality" industries or agriculture.
My main point is that most people who are currently against ICE agree with that. Plenty of people got deported before ICE and current ICE tactics. The group of Americans who want open borders or completely unenforced immigration law is very small.
Nate cites data in the article you're commenting on that clearly shows that's not the case. A majority of the country agrees with the overall goals of the administration but not the implementation.
You do realize that polls are mostly wrong, don't you? If people haven't learned that after all the many wrong polls about Trump at least, it's probably hopeless. I don't think any of that data is correct, it's just Dems angry that they are losing. And, as ever, Republicans not bothering to fill out questionaires like that. I certainly wouldn't.
Actually yeah I kinda am fine with illegal immigration, it's a good problem to have. Not the best case scenario but it's help kept our demography healthy and our economy booming.
Probably at an impasse here because sounds like you believe that illegal immigrants are a significant drain on welfare spending, which I think is false. Social security, Medicare and defense are vastly more expensive than whatever paltry sums some illegal aliens might be receiving. Besides, they skew younger than the average American so have more productive working years ahead of them, and have more children who grow up to enter the workforce. Mass immigration, legal and otherwise, is the reason we have a fertility rate above replacement levels at all. Otherwise we'd be headed for demographic disaster, with too many elderly recipients taking from too few workers.
I generally agree with your assessment but if you don’t mind me correcting you on one point:
The fertility rate in the US is already below 2.1 and rapidly falling, also among Latinos. Of course it would be even lower if it wasn’t for the ‘illegal immigrants’. Also immigration adds new workforce to the labour market, no matter the fertility rate of the specific population.
No worries, mate. I actually kind of over obsessed on demographics and read several books about it. Fertility rates a plummeting all over the world. Therefore being able to acquire migration will be a key economic factor. I am from Germany where we kept our level steadily at 82ish million only because of migration. It is astounding how right wing governments, especially in Eastern Europe, are oblivious to the fact that their countries are losing workforce at a record speed.
It is true that illegal immigration - overall - is probably better for the economy. Just as - on average - we're all richer since 2008. With the vast majority of the benefits, in both cases, accruing to the 1%. But the people harmed by illegal immigration are the poorest and most vulnerable US citizens. "Promote the general welfare" wasn't supposed to apply to the entire world, and was supposed to apply to our poorest citizens.
Sure, but the qualifications in your comment do suggest something a little more nuanced than full throated support for all illegal immigration regardless of circumstance. Presumably if US immigration law had been permissive enough for those people to enter legally that would have been the best case scenario you're hinting at.
Or how about, do you support IRS enforcement of the tax code or not?
Both most immigration offenses, like IRS offenses, are civil, not criminal.
And I would argue that tax avoidance is more harmful than immigration infractions because I can’t think of any upside for the country to tax avoidance (as opposed to some the arguably positive benefits provided by undocumented immigrants-doing unglamorous but important jobs no one else will do, paying payroll taxes but not benefiting from the taxes, etc).
I would also argue that the phrase “you can’t have a country” if many are not fully paying their legally obligated amount of taxes pertains just as much or more so to tax enforcement than immigration enforcement .
And yet Republican voters and administrations support decreasing tax enforcement.
So I think there is just a fundamental difference between which law enforcement is important to each party.
Finally, I will note that those who have less concerns about immigration enforcement are, in essence, trying to help others by their actions; those who support lax tax enforcement are, in fact, interested in helping themselves.
Your comment reads as extremely partisan to me, but I'm curious. Here's a thought experiment I had.
Let's say a genie offered you the following tradeoff. From now on, nobody will ever be deported from the United States. But also, from now on nobody can ever enter the United States illegally or overstay their visa ever again. This isn't a trickster genie, we're not changing our immigration laws to define all immigration as legal, we're not fundamentally changing American society, etc. The deal is exactly what it seems like. We're also not concerned with the mechanics of how that happens, the genie can magically make it happen without causing other issues or degrading our democracy.
Would you take that offer?
Edit - in case it wasn't clear, the point of the thought experiment is that anyone who is currently in the US illegally gets to stay, but we don't get any new illegal immigrants.
I don't think you were asking me, but I'd say absolutely not. We accept legitimate asylum claims and absolutely should. People who are here without legitimate asylum claims and not fitting into one of the other legally sanctioned reasons should be deported.
It's not the entirety of the left. There are some of us who remember that illegal immigrants take jobs and lower incomes of low-income citizens, while increasing housing costs. It's more that the "left" has become the party of well-educated elites, who don't seem to care who's mowing their lawn, as long as the work gets done for cheap.
As someone from the left who bought their house with African-American neighbors, it's painful to me that my neighbor lost his lawn care business because the other contractors were hiring illegal immigrants and paying them slave wages. Other people weirdly prioritize illegal immigrants over their own low-income neighbors, but maybe they just make sure they don't live with lower income people of color so they don't call them neighbors.
We have federal minimum wage legislation. The deportations are part of the enforcement. As it is, the jobs aren't there because they're taken by the immigrants with no one able to enforce the minimum wage law.
A lot of the problem with not enough housing is because the illegals take it. The marginal Americans are forced onto the streets. This push to get illegals stopped from streaming in and pushed back out will loosen up the housing supply.
The claim was that the undocumented immigrants in this country are a major contributor to the cost and strain on the supply of housing in this country, to such an extent that they are directly responsible for American homelessness. This isn’t true in either case. Illegal immigrants are more likely to rent, more likely to live communally and are low income almost by definition. They are also heavily involved in construction which actually lowers the cost of producing new units. I know that sort of thing is a specific concern of yours, and that argument resonates with me more, but as a self described person of the left you should know there are far greater contributors to the cost of living that are totally native to this country
I do agree with you on most of that. However, the poster said it's "a lot of the problem" and surely it's a significant contributor, but you called it a baseless fantasy. If 5% of the housing in many urban areas is taken by illegal immigrants, that is a significant part of the housing problem. Not as much as rich people buying up multiple properties, or investment companies keeping properties empty, but maybe on par with properties held as short-term rentals. I don't think you're right to call it a baseless fantasy that it's in the top ten reasons for people being pushed out. Not top 5.
Your premise is wrong. It isn’t close to true that everyone who votes Democratic supports illegal immigration. I have no issue at all with Trump closing the border. It is also true that a great many Republicans support illegal immigration to the extent that it is convenient for the businesses they run or the household help that they hire,
The biggest divide really has less to do with left and right as coherent ideologies anyway. Anti Trump people are open to a wide range of conservative priorities such as tight border enforcement, deportation in principle and even reassessment of asylum policy. The real difference is non MAGA people see the existing illegal population as a distinct problem that needs to be solved flexibly and pragmatically. The far right has a brittle hard nosed approach of uncritically enforcing laws which weren’t designed for problems at this scale, even if that means building a police state apparatus, explicitly pursuing a policy of intimidation an terror, and ignoring when this conflicts with individual and states rights
The resilience against authoritarian drift is not only social (public opinion and mass mobilization) but deeply institutional. Across U.S. history, presidents with strong mandates and ambitious agendas - Franklin D. Roosevelt, Harry Truman, and Richard Nixon - were all constrained when they attempted to stretch or bypass constitutional limits. Roosevelt failed in his attempt to “pack” the Supreme Court despite overwhelming popularity; Truman’s executive order to seize steel factories during the Korean War was struck down by the Court; and Nixon was forced from office when Congress and the judiciary asserted their authority during Watergate. All of these cases suggest that even highly powerful presidents cannot easily turn the “three-legged stool” of American governance into a throne. So yes, good to be cautious, but I wouldn’t be too worried.
I find this account hopelessly muddled, as if "democracy" means "things I like."
The end zones are not democracy and dictatorship, they are democracy and republican institutions. Dictatorship is calling off the game and announcing the result by fiat. The Constitution is written to make touchdowns and safeties almost impossible, and to force three-yards-and-a-cloud-of-dust offence with games decided by field goals.
The conflict in Minnesota is not between democracy and authoritarianism. It is a clash of republican institutions--rule of law versus civil rights, the Supremacy clause versus the 10th amendment--and democratic institutions--laws passed by Congress versus the will of local elected officials and public demonstrators.
The description of January 6th is muddled as well. It was not a demonstration for authoritarianism by a couple of thousand protestors. The demonstration in the ellipse with 53,000 people (that's what Congress estimated in the end, although figures vary widely) for democracy--stop the steal--versus republican institutions--courts and the electoral bureaucracy. It was followed by a riot involving a couple of thousand people that supported neither democracy nor republican institutions. It was anarchic if anything, the opposite of dictatorship.
V-DEM combines "free and fair elections with multiple parties and parliaments" with "courts and civil liberties such as freedom of association and speech." But these are the opposite end zones. Courts and civil liberties protect minorities against the majority, elections and legislators enforce the will of the majority. Reasonable people like both, but if you call them both "democracy" you overlook the tension between them, the need for checks and balances.
Rule by the people is good, not because the people are wise and benevolent, but because anything else requires the government to rule the people rather than to work for the people; and also because rule by anything other than the people nearly always becomes corrupt or incompetent or both. The people are pretty corrupt and incompetent too, but that's diluted by the diversity among the public.
We like republican institutions that temper the will of the people, requiring sustained super-majorities to infringe on human rights or upset the established order. We count on the inevitable fracturing of majorities to protect from mob rule. The Constitution was written by people who feared tyranny from below as well as people who feared tyranny from above, which is why it works.
There are solid majorities in the US happy to see that the undocumented population is finally falling, and appalled at the cruelty and violence that caused the fall--I'm not sure if the intersection of those large majorities is a large minority or a small majority. This seems likely to lead to moderate pullbacks on the most egregious tactics without changing the clear signals that are causing fewer undocumented people to arrive and more to leave. I suspect this will make most voters happy. I hope it will lead to a sensible reform of immigration laws to get rid of the unnecessary cruelty and perverse effects, while leaving laws there is a consensus to enforce, but I am pessimistic on that score.
Nice post. I'd like to see immigration enforcement in cities that want it (Memphis and New Orleans first) to reduce the crime rate from the illegals and perhaps scared-off local criminals. The comparison of crime rates with the "sanctuary cities" might well put pressure on the leftwing mayors to give up the offenders safely in the courts and prisons, which is what we want first. After most of the criminals are gone out of the country, we can restart the raids we always had before.
ICE claims to be targeting people guilty of non-immigration as well as immigration crimes, but as you would expect, pressure to make more arrests leads to sweeping up the easiest people to find and deal with rather than the most dangerous people.
In my experience, few people want ICE in their area. Undocumented workers keep housing prices up and contribute to local economies. Many individuals employ them for childcare, cleaning, home repairs and yard work; or patronize the businesses that hire them. They're often neighbors and friends. On top of that, ICE is disruptive even if it doesn't touch off protests.
People who support more enforcement of immigration laws often seem to be thinking of faraway places in which anonymous people--many violent criminals--are swept up with no negative effects on the local economy or social fabric.
It is indeed a complex issue. We surely don't want to turn into Mexico or Colombia or Haiti, all horror stories. But that was what we were headed for with millions and millions flooding in from more criminalized cultures. The Somalis are the worst example of all and should in my opinion be sent back over there every man jack of them, and that one woman at least, Omar Tlaib.
But on the other hand, there is no one but Latinos to carry in heavy new appliances or re-roof the house. Or to serve us Mexican food, which I love, and which now has FIVE restaurants on a county road which didn't have any 15 years ago. And a pretty nervous bunch they were, the last time I went to my favorite, a couple weeks ago. Well,, the whole problem needs work. I suppose the first thing is to get the inflow stopped, and that is happening.
All of this fine parsing of definitions and metrics would be funny if it wasn't so obtuse.
Trump did not willingly give up power when he lost in 2020. There is no reason to think he will willingly give up power in 2028.
The DOJ has a history, under both parties, of protecting voting rights. That entire division has been fired. The DOJ can now be expected to be firmly on the side of attacking voting rights.
Modern fascism does not cancel elections, it manages them. Consider Russia's "elections", for example. What can we expect in 2026 and 2028? A very "managed" set of elections. What does the DOJ want all the voting data for? So it knows which precincts need to be shut down or attacked by ICE in '26 and '28.
And if voter suppression doesn't work, we can expect men with guns to come and collect voting boxes and equipment so Trump's DOJ can "ensure the integrity" of the vote, and it's not at all clear who's going to stop them.
We are not used to men with guns deciding who will count the votes in the US. Of course we're also not used to Federal agents murdering civilians at protests, either. But that's what we've got.
The danger to US democracy in 2028 is not couched in fine parsings of what the word "fascist" means, or metrics measuring democratic impulses or traditions. The danger to US democracy in 2028 is that we have an authoritarian leader who has shown he's not afraid to use violence, and who's in charge of all the people with the guns, and we have no tradition whatsoever of the guys with the guns not obeying orders.
It doesn't matter who votes. It matters who counts the votes. We're not used to any of this in the US, but I fear in 2028 we're going to find out that when you have an authoritarian leader and when all the guys with guns do what they're told, you get "elections" that are very managed indeed, and votes that are not counted in the usual places, and election results that in the end are pretty predictable, much as Russia's elections have been very predictable.
Wild take that democrats are the pro democratic party. Democrats are pro autocratic in thier own way. Biden's inability to govern and his administration's cover up of it (i.e. the people running the government weren't who the American public voted for) and Mark Zuckerberg's testimony in congress where he admitted that they were censoring political free speech from pressure from the Biden administration are just a few of the glaring examples of autocratic behavior from democrats. I think this is one example of Nate's bias blinding him to the autocratic behavior of democrats. Fortunately both sides (Republican and Democrat) have successfully resisted the autocratic urges from the other side so far. I just pray that continues.
Why don't you get back to us when he does something unconstitutional? So far, he's done things that are within our laws and the Constitution. Even the birthright citizenship executive order hasn't actually taken effect. It has raised the issue back at the Supreme Court, which is fine, because birthright citizenship is based on a Supreme Court interpretation of a clause in the 14th amendment, and that clause is open to other interpretations. It's absolutely normal for the Supreme Court to reconsider interpretations of the Constitution. If we don't like that, we can always just amend the Constitution.
All the arguments over immigration are ignoring the fact that he's just enforcing existing immigration law. People should think of it more as an opportunity - if enough people see what he's doing and change their mind about immigration, we might actually get the change in those laws we've all been arguing about for the past three decades. But don't hold your breath.
That's a very generous interpretation, considering the high percentage of "pick-ups" that result in releases and the number of "arrests" that are reversed in court. Whatever he is "enforcing" is not fully in existence in legal actuality.
If Trump had taken the time to actually design and implement the plan Susie Wiles scripted for him for the '24 campaign trail, he would be well north of the 35-40% approval rating. But, instead of crafting a low-visibility targeted pick-up of undocumented that also have a felony conviction.....which strategy produced very high deportations for Obama, he is trying to shortcut the timeline and go for "numbers" and resultant political advertising. The fact that his "net" numbers are so far below his "gross" numbers proves he is not effectively enforcing, and he is getting his political tail handed to him............which is why I choose to believe the autocracy experiment starts to get disassembled starting in November
Law enforcement often results in acquittal. That doesn't mean it was unconstitutional, just that it was wrong. You're glossing over that he said he would start with the criminals, but that he intended to do a massive deportation campaign. He said that dozens of times. The voters voted for him knowing he was planning to do that. They probably didn't think through the fact that immigrants would make it as hard as possible - which is understandable - they don't want to be deported. But it's the law.
And surely, Democrats will win the house in November. There's little chance they won't. But what do you think will change when they do?
Well, we have the concept of innocent until proven guilty. For the President, the Constitution says "guilty" requires impeachment in the House and confirmation by the Senate. Not proven. And you then need to consider that he was re-elected. On the "people like you", well, I voted third party, so you need to work on that one too.
Under our constitution, you don't get to decide what's constitutional and what isn't. He was impeached, and it wasn't confirmed. By definition in our constitution, if he wasn't impeached, he wasn't guilty. I didn't write the constitution, but that's the way it works. I suggest you take your complaints up with the Founding Fathers. I'm sure they'll be happy to change it for you.
Let me concede part of this point to you. I was talking about immigration. I didn't say "with regard to immigration"- my bad. The Qatari jet should have been returned. But it's really a problem with the Constitution. There should be a way for - say - the House with a bare majority, the Senate with a bare majority and the Supreme Court with a majority to reverse some Presidential action - call it a majority of government sanction. Then, if the President ignores that, it specifically raises the failure to comply to be a misdemeanor. I'd apply that the other way as well. If the President, House, and Supreme Court agree on something the Senate did, that also gets reversed (looking at Sen Mitch McConnell refusing to consider Merrick Garland).
What the President is doing is finding little loopholes and widening them enough to drive a truck - or a 747 - through. But the loopholes are there. Does the Qatari jet violate the emoluments clause? It's a great question. Will he be impeached for it? If not, what difference does it make what I think? But if it makes you feel better, yes, I do think that should be a violation.
Look, if I say you are some kind of criminal, I might have that as an opinion (I don't, but bear with me), but that doesn't make it the case. We have courts for that, and laws about that, and I could be held for libel for it too if it's wrong. So you personally think he violated the constitution. Prove it. Unfortunately, proving it, under our laws, means impeachment. They tried to impeach the President for those in his first administration, and it was not proven. You should let that go. Presumably when we win the House this year, first order of business will be to start impeachment proceedings all over again, which will again fail in the Senate. If, under our Constitution, someone isn't found to be guilty of something, we take that as they didn't do it. You call that bad faith - I'd say I didn't write the Constitution.
I agree with much of this, but Trump has arguably gotten more popular over time. After COVID and January 6th, he got nominated again with little opposition, and then proceeded to win the popular vote with 77m votes, more than in the previous two elections. He's picked up many younger voters (who'll obviously be around for more elections then their elders). And something like 80% of Republicans don't believe we've been having free and fair elections (per exit polls) recently. The only hope is that perhaps there can't be a successor to the cult of personality, but it's unclear at this point.
Agreed, and as a Democrat, I think the GOP will continue to grow in popularity until Democrats actually solve problems instead of being constantly outraged. The fact is that Biden did not enforce immigration laws or secure our border, Americans thought it was a problem (among other problems), so now here we are. Trump is clearly DOING SOMETHING, Democrats under Biden did not do anything. In fact, Trump is doing a great many other things with dramatic flourish, including several things on the DNC's own agenda (criminalizing revenge porn, passing paid parental leave for federal workers, decriminalizing THC). Even though I think Americans should be outraged about how ICE is handling deportations, we're all a bit exhausted from the Chicken Little energy/pessimism on the Left.
Thank you very much. Finally someone not buying into the "Trump is wildly unpopular!" KoolAid. I continue to think that idea is way off base. He keeps winning because we support him, and we're in the majority by definition because he wins. Personally, I consider that Democracy. All this carry-on about the end of Democracy in America is just Dems mad about losing, IMO. We on the right get to participate in Democracy just as much as you all do, however much you wish we wouldn't.
Trump is not the 2013 Broncos, his offence often sucks and he trips over himself, he’s most certainly the ‘85 Bears. Trump’s biggest skill is creating turnovers, he goads the left into taking a broadly popular position and then extending it in a way that alienates the average American. That’s why he’s been so good at fracturing the anti-authoritarian right from the left. The right would be very happy if the left would just run the ball, pick up the first down and regroup, but they keep lining up for a run and then calling an audible to instead throw the ball downfield to a receiver in triple coverage. (I.e. if the democrats ran a true moderate or a national unity ticket, they’d likely cash in on a ton of support from conservatives who dislike Trump. But even when they do name a moderate, à la Biden, that candidate ends up taking a series of unpopular, very progressive positions, to shore up support to their left, which frequently leads to a turnover)
Trump sucks and definitely fomented a riot at the Capitol a few years ago. He's thus completely untrustworthy as President (of course he'd long before established that).
But the lockdowns in various places in 2020 and 2021 were an @ssload more autocratic than anything he's done and probably even considered.
There's a reason the American people rejected lectures on democracy versus autocracy from the party who had done the same damn thing 3 or so years prior.
There will be elections in 2026 and 2028, and Dems will hopefully win. I urge them to reject autocratic behavior in all forms, including suspending all sorts of freedoms for a health emergency that never existed for people under 60 (and didn't exist for a bunch over 60).
Nate says that Dem marches are bigger than MAGA ones -- "even in the Trump era, pro-democracy mass movements have been much larger in scope than pro-authoritarian ones. The No Kings protests and the Women’s March each turned out millions of people."
This is true; but he continues, fairly, that Trump mobilized plenty of voters when it counted, and I'd say also, there are those well-populated rallies. Both Biden and Kamala (and Hillary, too) had embarrassingly small audiences, while Trump always had huge rallies of hundreds and thousands of enthusiastic fans. People even costumed, like at sports events.
I guess I'd say the marches are just disgruntled Dems mad that they are losing. There are often big women's marches, after all; I was in one myself long ago. Trump supporters simply don't have to protest, because we are WINNING. Winners don't need to get out in that -10 degree cold. This needs to stop before a lot of leftwing people get frostbite.
America got through the 1960's and 1970's with democracy in tact. The assassinations of JFK, MLK, RFK plus many other political killings, urban riots, a war in Vietnam, Watergate, The Church Hearings. We'll survive "The Evil Orange One".
Earlier there was the Great Depression with the Hooverville, a huge camp of homeless right outside Washington, D.C. A lot of people thought a revolution would develop from that, but it didn't.
This is a small comment, but I think it's worth noting that the video you describe with Greg Bovino is almost certainly not from Minneapolis (and even if it were, it wouldn't be a recent video). First, the video is shot in a location where the trees all have leaves on them, which is not the case for Minneapolis this time of year. Second, at the end of the video there's a palm tree in the background, which suggests that it's more likely he was speaking to a CBP team in Los Angeles over the summer.
It's also worth noting that Bovino isn't a part of ICE—he's part of CBP (and the people he was speaking to are CBP agents). I recognize that ICE is a stand-in for "the various agencies participating in immigration enforcement," but as I understand it, it's actually CBP that has a bigger problem than ICE does. (The officers who shot Alex Pretti were CBP officers, not ICE officers.
The guardrails are holding, and the TACO pattern is clear: Trump meets reality, and reality is winning more often than losing. The Warsh appointment, Homan stepping in to replace the cashiered Bovino, SCOTUS tea leaves on the tariff case, the SEC stepping up on crypto - these are all evidence of institutional constraints on the would-be authoritarian. We’re a resilient society and we’ll get through this.
Interesting.
As a non-American not that convincing. Historical democratic tradition might be far less relevant after the great schism (lack of any connection to history) caused by the increasing digitization of the populace.
This sentence about the Pretti murder by government agents fills people from less violent countries with the chills: “Even among Republicans in the poll, only 41 percent thought the killing was justified”. Talk about “normalization”.
As an American, I think this is a fair critique- that's still an amazingly high number in absolute terms. Part of me thinks there's a substantial number of people who answered without having actually seen footage and just resorted to tribalism as usual because i don't know how you can watch it as a human being and justify it in any way.
Otoh that really reinforces your original point about people not being connected to history and i would add not being connected with actual reality if one's echo chamber is really that strong.
I'm probably more optimistic than you (i live here so i kinda have to be for my own sanity lol) but i think it's still a really dangerous moment for us.
The midterms are the real test imo- if they go off mostly as normal despite a probable GOP shellacking incoming i'll feel much less anxious about the near-term future. If not, i'd argue all bets are off for US democracy
As a non-American perhaps you aren't considering how dangerous it generally is to attack police forces while armed with a loaded gun. The first time this character Pretti fought at them and his gun was obvious --- but they didn't kill him or indeed arrest him. They should have arrested him: did they not see the gun?
I think Pretti was either trying to commit suicide by cop or else he did indeed intend to shoot the ICE agents. He WAS carrying two extra magazines the second time, after all! Not generally considered a good sign when a man goes into a crowd with a gun in this country: multiple people usually end up dead. Pretti just launched himself at the officers twice, fists flying --- it's hard for me to put an innocent construction on any of that behavior.
Those are some swell “alternative facts.” We all saw the public execution with our own eyes. Your propaganda efforts are no use to the non cult members.
Would you have been fine with a man in another city fighting with police with a pistol and two extra magazines in his pocket? Looks to me like he meant to kill a bunch of them. That's our usual interpretation of this sort of behavior, and that's usually right. No innocent man keeps throwing himself at armed officers while he is carrying a loaded gun.
Imagine an alternative scenario. Its 2030 and there is another pandemic. President AOC orders the troops into Alabama to make sure that the citizens are vaccinated. Some of the protesters are armed, and one of them gets shot.
Would you still blame the protester for having a gun?
I like your scenario. Yeah, that protestor would be an idiot, same as Pretti was. If that's the right word: a person who is either committing suicide by cop or planning to shoot as many as he can isn't innocent enough to be called an idiot, and I think Pretti must have been doing one of those things: nothing else makes sense to me. And ineffective! One man with a gun? No point in military or civic terms.
Pretty much what I'd expect of Prez. AOC or any far-leftist, however, gross authoritarianism. A case like that demands organized rebellion, not Pretti-like craziness.
And organized rebellion is in fact what we are all sort of worrying about with Minneapolis: Gerard Baker called it a low-level civil war, which surprised me.
You add an excellent point: The connection to reality has also been completely fractured by our near immersion in over 50 years of digital technologies.
The real test - unspoken by Americans but talked about plenty elsewhere- is what happens with the death or debilitation of Trump
Well, what would you think might happen?
I think people who have a deep doomer perspective aren’t well versed in US History. They think the norm in politics in the US is post Cold War partisan cooperation. In reality without a common enemy, the US has mostly existed in a kind of low grade destabilizing partisan warfare. The institutions move around, become more or less powerful, but the political reality is more like 2025 than 1990.
We were a nation that was founded by four seperate waves of immigrants fleeing persecution, and at least two of those waves persecuted each other.
Of course we've never trusted each other.
The fact that the last vestiges of Cromwell's supporters and his puritan followers ended up here (after originally setting up said colonies as a base of operations to persecute the fleeing royalists and democratic types) is the forgotten piece of the American experience.
Always keen to ask you - do you support illegal immigration? Just "yes or no".
No rational person could answer other than "no".
Yet the entirety of the American left, inclusive of everyone that votes for a Democrat, if answering honestly, would have to say "yes".
This failure has nothing to do with a breakdown of "democracy". It is a breakdown of law enforcement.
I am all for removing all hypocrisy. Let those that employ illegals face liability. Let America accept the economic consequences of losing this illegal labor force. Or better yet have those that want to employ them do it with some actual documented and enforce legal process.
ICE is enforcing the immigration laws. Others including everyone on the left in American is resisting that.
Explain how that is rational or sustainable without the entire country coming apart?
I don’t think ICEs tactics can rationally be explained in terms of effective immigration enforcement.
It’s more of an “own the libs” situation, especially in Minnesota, where Trump seems more interested in political points against a Dem state than fair enforcement. His base wants the optics of cruelty in blue cities because of grievance politics against elites.
There are better, fairer ways to pursue immigration enforcement.
No Democrat wants immigration enforcement. None existed under Biden
Look at the great moderate, "Spannberger", all in within a week to convert Virginia to a sancturay state
So it is not a matter of tactics. It is a matter of will.
Obama did signification immigration enforcement. Even Biden did in the end, after he'd botched the job for three years. Moderate Democrats want immigration enforcement, it just depends on how much and how it's done. OTOH, a surprising number of Democrats really would be interested in open borders. It's a bit of a shock for many of us.
First, recall it was CBP, not ICE, that shot Pretti. People keep saying ICE even when ICE wasn't involved. Second, the tactics can be interpreted as saying to illegal immigrants: "Don't think you can go to these 'sanctuary cities' and hide there. US laws have jurisdiction there as well, and we will find you and deport you, even there. It would be better if you leave on your own. Also, please tell your friends and relatives back in your native country about your struggles here, so they won't be tempted to enter the US illegally as well."
Given that US law says they should be deported, what would you say are the better, fairer ways to have them deported?
We’re detaining people and refusing them their day in court to prove whether or not they’re here legally, which frequently many are.
Well, says you ("refusing"). Evidence? And recall that those courts are tremendously backed up. I think we'd both agree we should be hiring a lot more judges for those cases. Most people aren't here legally and their asylum claims are denied (64% at the end of the Biden administration, for example). That's all it would take to make it more fair?
If you are a legal resident, with constitutional rights, the fact there is a backlog of cases and not enough judges is not great comfort as you sit in detention, unable to see your lawyer.
You can choose to ignore the many cases in the news about legal residents getting swept up, but that’s on you.
That’s partially why this is a dumb immigration enforcement strategy. It looks much more like intimidation.
You're assuming they're legal. The ones who are later found to be legal should be compensated for their time - generously. I do agree that would be fair. But a lot of those cases turn out to be adjudicated as not legal after all. The deportation rates for people who are detained is very high. You might claim that shows the unfairness of it. However, the other explanation is that they only detain the people most likely to be deported. They release the people with the strongest cases on bond.
It is intimidation: it's making examples of illegals, dramatic examples. Even if they have to bring the kid in the animal-ear hat back north, it's quite a dramatic example and will stop a whole lot of this illegal immigration.
I think concentrating on getting cooperation with these awful "sanctuary cities" is a change I'd like to see, to get hold of illegals right in the courtrooms and prisons and off they go to where they belong, which is sure not here. The administration has a lot of leverage here: just tell everyone the crimes these people have done and let their mayor squirm till he figures it out.
I’m glad we’re learning through polling and the example of Minnesota that most Americans don’t support the terrorism based immigration policy that you do
You simply aren’t honesty engaging with what the “left” (read anyone less right wing than MAGA) actually believes about immigration. The fact that your worldview seems oriented around the strawman of democrats and ALL of their voters “supporting illegal immigration” frankly IS a break down in democracy, particularly our ability to work together in good faith and craft policy
with respect, enforcing immigration laws are fundamental to any functional democracy, underscore functional.
My answer to your initial question is no, and yet I’m far to your left. How is this possible?
A functional democracy must be able to enforce its laws but that’s not fundamental to what makes it a democracy. A democracy makes and can change laws based on public consensus.
This is what the left actually proposes, that we step back and reassess the laws we’re writing so they can be enforced effectively in the face of a specific problem (a large undocumented population that’s been here for decades due to previous permissive policies) while also being humane and protecting the rights of individuals and communities.
The Trump administration has chosen instead to ignore the need for consensus or debate or even new legislation, and is instead pursuing an enforcement policy which actively harms communities across the country while treating those who object as enemies of the state. This has invited resistance; you should expect nothing less from Americans
He's enforcing the existing laws. If Congress wants to change those laws, that's their job, they should get to it. The problem with your argument is that there hasn't been interest in changing the laws. One side wants to, the other side doesn't. Until recently, the polling was also not really in favor of changing those laws. It's still not clear there's interest in changing those laws.
It's a bit lamentable that we can't come to some agreement on changing the immigration laws, but in the past 30 years, we haven't. But it's utterly inappropriate to blame the President for that. Under our system of government, Congress changes the laws. He was elected with the understanding he would carry out mass deportations. His job isn't to consider your interest in stepping back or reconsidering. His job is to carry out the existing immigration laws. You should not be resisting. You should be lobbying Congress to change the laws. You can certainly protest and write editorials. But resisting carrying out the country's laws is sedition.
Nobody here can make a case how/why this is an actually good way of doing immigration enforcement. If you cared about that issue, you’d realize this doesn’t work.
Yes and every democrat wants that.
The vast number of people even on the far left don't "support illegal immigration" per se, they think that many people who illegally immigrated are nonetheless today a pretty essential part of America and should be given legal pathways to residency or citizenship, especially "dreamers" i.e. people who were brought to the US illegally as children and have never known life anywhere else.
And as Nate sort of alludes to in his article, most people who are anti-ICE don't even believe that much. Many just don't think deportations are a practical way to enforce illegal immigration, and that the real solution is better enforcement at the employer level. (If they can't get jobs in the US, more immigrants will go home themselves.) And an increasing number of people who believe mass deportations are the answer are nonetheless becoming anti-ICE because of the chaos caused by their current tactics and the killing of American citizens who, whether you agree with them or not, posed no imminent threat to law enforcement before being killed by them. Ultimately a law enforcement agency that is infringing on people's rights to live without a paramiltary organization stomping through their neighborhood and causing chaos tends to be a greater concern than whether said organization is completing the job they might nonetheless want done.
Illegal immigration is just untenable for a rational society.
Deportation is inescapable.
So is putting liability on those that employ illegals.
Funny because corporations have been escaping it for basically ever.
Deportations are easily escapable. We determine who is and is not here legally. All it would take is an act of congress.
What you are presenting as inevitable is simply a smokescreen for a badly described (possibly intentionally) policy position you don’t want to say out loud.
It would take more than an Act of Congress! It would take "Papers, please," The dreaded national identity documentation, which presumably would be a chipped plastic card now instead of papers. Which everyone would carry and that would settle the issue of whether anyone was really a citizen or not. It would have to be better than the documents that are forged so often now, such as social security cards.
And next would come pressure against corporations hiring illegals. We need robots first, I'm afraid. We can't easily replace illegals in "hospitality" industries or agriculture.
My main point is that most people who are currently against ICE agree with that. Plenty of people got deported before ICE and current ICE tactics. The group of Americans who want open borders or completely unenforced immigration law is very small.
This is not a debate about tactics. It is an massive chasm between those that want open borders and those want to ensure that immigration is legal.
Very simple
One leads to chaos, the other simply applies the rule of law.
Nate cites data in the article you're commenting on that clearly shows that's not the case. A majority of the country agrees with the overall goals of the administration but not the implementation.
You do realize that polls are mostly wrong, don't you? If people haven't learned that after all the many wrong polls about Trump at least, it's probably hopeless. I don't think any of that data is correct, it's just Dems angry that they are losing. And, as ever, Republicans not bothering to fill out questionaires like that. I certainly wouldn't.
Actually yeah I kinda am fine with illegal immigration, it's a good problem to have. Not the best case scenario but it's help kept our demography healthy and our economy booming.
The logical extension of that view is economic destruction.
No country has infinite capacity for welfare.
Probably at an impasse here because sounds like you believe that illegal immigrants are a significant drain on welfare spending, which I think is false. Social security, Medicare and defense are vastly more expensive than whatever paltry sums some illegal aliens might be receiving. Besides, they skew younger than the average American so have more productive working years ahead of them, and have more children who grow up to enter the workforce. Mass immigration, legal and otherwise, is the reason we have a fertility rate above replacement levels at all. Otherwise we'd be headed for demographic disaster, with too many elderly recipients taking from too few workers.
I generally agree with your assessment but if you don’t mind me correcting you on one point:
The fertility rate in the US is already below 2.1 and rapidly falling, also among Latinos. Of course it would be even lower if it wasn’t for the ‘illegal immigrants’. Also immigration adds new workforce to the labour market, no matter the fertility rate of the specific population.
huh yeah you're right, got my numbers wrong. thought it was above 2.1 pre-pandemic at least. thanks for the correction.
No worries, mate. I actually kind of over obsessed on demographics and read several books about it. Fertility rates a plummeting all over the world. Therefore being able to acquire migration will be a key economic factor. I am from Germany where we kept our level steadily at 82ish million only because of migration. It is astounding how right wing governments, especially in Eastern Europe, are oblivious to the fact that their countries are losing workforce at a record speed.
https://news.rice.edu/news/2020/economic-benefits-illegal-immigration-outweigh-costs-baker-institute-study-shows
https://www.usccr.gov/files/pubs/docs/IllegImmig_10-14-10_430pm.pdf
It is true that illegal immigration - overall - is probably better for the economy. Just as - on average - we're all richer since 2008. With the vast majority of the benefits, in both cases, accruing to the 1%. But the people harmed by illegal immigration are the poorest and most vulnerable US citizens. "Promote the general welfare" wasn't supposed to apply to the entire world, and was supposed to apply to our poorest citizens.
Sure, but the qualifications in your comment do suggest something a little more nuanced than full throated support for all illegal immigration regardless of circumstance. Presumably if US immigration law had been permissive enough for those people to enter legally that would have been the best case scenario you're hinting at.
Or how about, do you support IRS enforcement of the tax code or not?
Both most immigration offenses, like IRS offenses, are civil, not criminal.
And I would argue that tax avoidance is more harmful than immigration infractions because I can’t think of any upside for the country to tax avoidance (as opposed to some the arguably positive benefits provided by undocumented immigrants-doing unglamorous but important jobs no one else will do, paying payroll taxes but not benefiting from the taxes, etc).
I would also argue that the phrase “you can’t have a country” if many are not fully paying their legally obligated amount of taxes pertains just as much or more so to tax enforcement than immigration enforcement .
And yet Republican voters and administrations support decreasing tax enforcement.
So I think there is just a fundamental difference between which law enforcement is important to each party.
Finally, I will note that those who have less concerns about immigration enforcement are, in essence, trying to help others by their actions; those who support lax tax enforcement are, in fact, interested in helping themselves.
Your comment reads as extremely partisan to me, but I'm curious. Here's a thought experiment I had.
Let's say a genie offered you the following tradeoff. From now on, nobody will ever be deported from the United States. But also, from now on nobody can ever enter the United States illegally or overstay their visa ever again. This isn't a trickster genie, we're not changing our immigration laws to define all immigration as legal, we're not fundamentally changing American society, etc. The deal is exactly what it seems like. We're also not concerned with the mechanics of how that happens, the genie can magically make it happen without causing other issues or degrading our democracy.
Would you take that offer?
Edit - in case it wasn't clear, the point of the thought experiment is that anyone who is currently in the US illegally gets to stay, but we don't get any new illegal immigrants.
Nonsense, Reagan tried exactly that long ago, and WOW did it ever not work! Look where we are now.
Eeehm. Yeah, this might be because Reagan did not have genie like powers…
I don't think you were asking me, but I'd say absolutely not. We accept legitimate asylum claims and absolutely should. People who are here without legitimate asylum claims and not fitting into one of the other legally sanctioned reasons should be deported.
It's not the entirety of the left. There are some of us who remember that illegal immigrants take jobs and lower incomes of low-income citizens, while increasing housing costs. It's more that the "left" has become the party of well-educated elites, who don't seem to care who's mowing their lawn, as long as the work gets done for cheap.
As someone from the left who bought their house with African-American neighbors, it's painful to me that my neighbor lost his lawn care business because the other contractors were hiring illegal immigrants and paying them slave wages. Other people weirdly prioritize illegal immigrants over their own low-income neighbors, but maybe they just make sure they don't live with lower income people of color so they don't call them neighbors.
Well how about creating legislation about increasing minimum wages and enforcing those?
We have federal minimum wage legislation. The deportations are part of the enforcement. As it is, the jobs aren't there because they're taken by the immigrants with no one able to enforce the minimum wage law.
A lot of the problem with not enough housing is because the illegals take it. The marginal Americans are forced onto the streets. This push to get illegals stopped from streaming in and pushed back out will loosen up the housing supply.
Sure, Jan
Who is Jan?
This is a baseless fantasy
15 to 20 million people don't actually take any housing then? You explain where those millions of people are living then.
The claim was that the undocumented immigrants in this country are a major contributor to the cost and strain on the supply of housing in this country, to such an extent that they are directly responsible for American homelessness. This isn’t true in either case. Illegal immigrants are more likely to rent, more likely to live communally and are low income almost by definition. They are also heavily involved in construction which actually lowers the cost of producing new units. I know that sort of thing is a specific concern of yours, and that argument resonates with me more, but as a self described person of the left you should know there are far greater contributors to the cost of living that are totally native to this country
I do agree with you on most of that. However, the poster said it's "a lot of the problem" and surely it's a significant contributor, but you called it a baseless fantasy. If 5% of the housing in many urban areas is taken by illegal immigrants, that is a significant part of the housing problem. Not as much as rich people buying up multiple properties, or investment companies keeping properties empty, but maybe on par with properties held as short-term rentals. I don't think you're right to call it a baseless fantasy that it's in the top ten reasons for people being pushed out. Not top 5.
Your premise is wrong. It isn’t close to true that everyone who votes Democratic supports illegal immigration. I have no issue at all with Trump closing the border. It is also true that a great many Republicans support illegal immigration to the extent that it is convenient for the businesses they run or the household help that they hire,
The biggest divide really has less to do with left and right as coherent ideologies anyway. Anti Trump people are open to a wide range of conservative priorities such as tight border enforcement, deportation in principle and even reassessment of asylum policy. The real difference is non MAGA people see the existing illegal population as a distinct problem that needs to be solved flexibly and pragmatically. The far right has a brittle hard nosed approach of uncritically enforcing laws which weren’t designed for problems at this scale, even if that means building a police state apparatus, explicitly pursuing a policy of intimidation an terror, and ignoring when this conflicts with individual and states rights
The resilience against authoritarian drift is not only social (public opinion and mass mobilization) but deeply institutional. Across U.S. history, presidents with strong mandates and ambitious agendas - Franklin D. Roosevelt, Harry Truman, and Richard Nixon - were all constrained when they attempted to stretch or bypass constitutional limits. Roosevelt failed in his attempt to “pack” the Supreme Court despite overwhelming popularity; Truman’s executive order to seize steel factories during the Korean War was struck down by the Court; and Nixon was forced from office when Congress and the judiciary asserted their authority during Watergate. All of these cases suggest that even highly powerful presidents cannot easily turn the “three-legged stool” of American governance into a throne. So yes, good to be cautious, but I wouldn’t be too worried.
I find this account hopelessly muddled, as if "democracy" means "things I like."
The end zones are not democracy and dictatorship, they are democracy and republican institutions. Dictatorship is calling off the game and announcing the result by fiat. The Constitution is written to make touchdowns and safeties almost impossible, and to force three-yards-and-a-cloud-of-dust offence with games decided by field goals.
The conflict in Minnesota is not between democracy and authoritarianism. It is a clash of republican institutions--rule of law versus civil rights, the Supremacy clause versus the 10th amendment--and democratic institutions--laws passed by Congress versus the will of local elected officials and public demonstrators.
The description of January 6th is muddled as well. It was not a demonstration for authoritarianism by a couple of thousand protestors. The demonstration in the ellipse with 53,000 people (that's what Congress estimated in the end, although figures vary widely) for democracy--stop the steal--versus republican institutions--courts and the electoral bureaucracy. It was followed by a riot involving a couple of thousand people that supported neither democracy nor republican institutions. It was anarchic if anything, the opposite of dictatorship.
V-DEM combines "free and fair elections with multiple parties and parliaments" with "courts and civil liberties such as freedom of association and speech." But these are the opposite end zones. Courts and civil liberties protect minorities against the majority, elections and legislators enforce the will of the majority. Reasonable people like both, but if you call them both "democracy" you overlook the tension between them, the need for checks and balances.
Rule by the people is good, not because the people are wise and benevolent, but because anything else requires the government to rule the people rather than to work for the people; and also because rule by anything other than the people nearly always becomes corrupt or incompetent or both. The people are pretty corrupt and incompetent too, but that's diluted by the diversity among the public.
We like republican institutions that temper the will of the people, requiring sustained super-majorities to infringe on human rights or upset the established order. We count on the inevitable fracturing of majorities to protect from mob rule. The Constitution was written by people who feared tyranny from below as well as people who feared tyranny from above, which is why it works.
There are solid majorities in the US happy to see that the undocumented population is finally falling, and appalled at the cruelty and violence that caused the fall--I'm not sure if the intersection of those large majorities is a large minority or a small majority. This seems likely to lead to moderate pullbacks on the most egregious tactics without changing the clear signals that are causing fewer undocumented people to arrive and more to leave. I suspect this will make most voters happy. I hope it will lead to a sensible reform of immigration laws to get rid of the unnecessary cruelty and perverse effects, while leaving laws there is a consensus to enforce, but I am pessimistic on that score.
Nice post. I'd like to see immigration enforcement in cities that want it (Memphis and New Orleans first) to reduce the crime rate from the illegals and perhaps scared-off local criminals. The comparison of crime rates with the "sanctuary cities" might well put pressure on the leftwing mayors to give up the offenders safely in the courts and prisons, which is what we want first. After most of the criminals are gone out of the country, we can restart the raids we always had before.
Thank you for the kind words.
ICE claims to be targeting people guilty of non-immigration as well as immigration crimes, but as you would expect, pressure to make more arrests leads to sweeping up the easiest people to find and deal with rather than the most dangerous people.
In my experience, few people want ICE in their area. Undocumented workers keep housing prices up and contribute to local economies. Many individuals employ them for childcare, cleaning, home repairs and yard work; or patronize the businesses that hire them. They're often neighbors and friends. On top of that, ICE is disruptive even if it doesn't touch off protests.
People who support more enforcement of immigration laws often seem to be thinking of faraway places in which anonymous people--many violent criminals--are swept up with no negative effects on the local economy or social fabric.
It is indeed a complex issue. We surely don't want to turn into Mexico or Colombia or Haiti, all horror stories. But that was what we were headed for with millions and millions flooding in from more criminalized cultures. The Somalis are the worst example of all and should in my opinion be sent back over there every man jack of them, and that one woman at least, Omar Tlaib.
But on the other hand, there is no one but Latinos to carry in heavy new appliances or re-roof the house. Or to serve us Mexican food, which I love, and which now has FIVE restaurants on a county road which didn't have any 15 years ago. And a pretty nervous bunch they were, the last time I went to my favorite, a couple weeks ago. Well,, the whole problem needs work. I suppose the first thing is to get the inflow stopped, and that is happening.
All of this fine parsing of definitions and metrics would be funny if it wasn't so obtuse.
Trump did not willingly give up power when he lost in 2020. There is no reason to think he will willingly give up power in 2028.
The DOJ has a history, under both parties, of protecting voting rights. That entire division has been fired. The DOJ can now be expected to be firmly on the side of attacking voting rights.
Modern fascism does not cancel elections, it manages them. Consider Russia's "elections", for example. What can we expect in 2026 and 2028? A very "managed" set of elections. What does the DOJ want all the voting data for? So it knows which precincts need to be shut down or attacked by ICE in '26 and '28.
And if voter suppression doesn't work, we can expect men with guns to come and collect voting boxes and equipment so Trump's DOJ can "ensure the integrity" of the vote, and it's not at all clear who's going to stop them.
We are not used to men with guns deciding who will count the votes in the US. Of course we're also not used to Federal agents murdering civilians at protests, either. But that's what we've got.
The danger to US democracy in 2028 is not couched in fine parsings of what the word "fascist" means, or metrics measuring democratic impulses or traditions. The danger to US democracy in 2028 is that we have an authoritarian leader who has shown he's not afraid to use violence, and who's in charge of all the people with the guns, and we have no tradition whatsoever of the guys with the guns not obeying orders.
It doesn't matter who votes. It matters who counts the votes. We're not used to any of this in the US, but I fear in 2028 we're going to find out that when you have an authoritarian leader and when all the guys with guns do what they're told, you get "elections" that are very managed indeed, and votes that are not counted in the usual places, and election results that in the end are pretty predictable, much as Russia's elections have been very predictable.
Wild take that democrats are the pro democratic party. Democrats are pro autocratic in thier own way. Biden's inability to govern and his administration's cover up of it (i.e. the people running the government weren't who the American public voted for) and Mark Zuckerberg's testimony in congress where he admitted that they were censoring political free speech from pressure from the Biden administration are just a few of the glaring examples of autocratic behavior from democrats. I think this is one example of Nate's bias blinding him to the autocratic behavior of democrats. Fortunately both sides (Republican and Democrat) have successfully resisted the autocratic urges from the other side so far. I just pray that continues.
Why don't you get back to us when he does something unconstitutional? So far, he's done things that are within our laws and the Constitution. Even the birthright citizenship executive order hasn't actually taken effect. It has raised the issue back at the Supreme Court, which is fine, because birthright citizenship is based on a Supreme Court interpretation of a clause in the 14th amendment, and that clause is open to other interpretations. It's absolutely normal for the Supreme Court to reconsider interpretations of the Constitution. If we don't like that, we can always just amend the Constitution.
All the arguments over immigration are ignoring the fact that he's just enforcing existing immigration law. People should think of it more as an opportunity - if enough people see what he's doing and change their mind about immigration, we might actually get the change in those laws we've all been arguing about for the past three decades. But don't hold your breath.
"he's just enforcing existing immigration law."
That's a very generous interpretation, considering the high percentage of "pick-ups" that result in releases and the number of "arrests" that are reversed in court. Whatever he is "enforcing" is not fully in existence in legal actuality.
If Trump had taken the time to actually design and implement the plan Susie Wiles scripted for him for the '24 campaign trail, he would be well north of the 35-40% approval rating. But, instead of crafting a low-visibility targeted pick-up of undocumented that also have a felony conviction.....which strategy produced very high deportations for Obama, he is trying to shortcut the timeline and go for "numbers" and resultant political advertising. The fact that his "net" numbers are so far below his "gross" numbers proves he is not effectively enforcing, and he is getting his political tail handed to him............which is why I choose to believe the autocracy experiment starts to get disassembled starting in November
Law enforcement often results in acquittal. That doesn't mean it was unconstitutional, just that it was wrong. You're glossing over that he said he would start with the criminals, but that he intended to do a massive deportation campaign. He said that dozens of times. The voters voted for him knowing he was planning to do that. They probably didn't think through the fact that immigrants would make it as hard as possible - which is understandable - they don't want to be deported. But it's the law.
And surely, Democrats will win the house in November. There's little chance they won't. But what do you think will change when they do?
Well, we have the concept of innocent until proven guilty. For the President, the Constitution says "guilty" requires impeachment in the House and confirmation by the Senate. Not proven. And you then need to consider that he was re-elected. On the "people like you", well, I voted third party, so you need to work on that one too.
Come back to us, KCAA --- we need you. [:-)
Under our constitution, you don't get to decide what's constitutional and what isn't. He was impeached, and it wasn't confirmed. By definition in our constitution, if he wasn't impeached, he wasn't guilty. I didn't write the constitution, but that's the way it works. I suggest you take your complaints up with the Founding Fathers. I'm sure they'll be happy to change it for you.
Let me concede part of this point to you. I was talking about immigration. I didn't say "with regard to immigration"- my bad. The Qatari jet should have been returned. But it's really a problem with the Constitution. There should be a way for - say - the House with a bare majority, the Senate with a bare majority and the Supreme Court with a majority to reverse some Presidential action - call it a majority of government sanction. Then, if the President ignores that, it specifically raises the failure to comply to be a misdemeanor. I'd apply that the other way as well. If the President, House, and Supreme Court agree on something the Senate did, that also gets reversed (looking at Sen Mitch McConnell refusing to consider Merrick Garland).
What the President is doing is finding little loopholes and widening them enough to drive a truck - or a 747 - through. But the loopholes are there. Does the Qatari jet violate the emoluments clause? It's a great question. Will he be impeached for it? If not, what difference does it make what I think? But if it makes you feel better, yes, I do think that should be a violation.
Look, if I say you are some kind of criminal, I might have that as an opinion (I don't, but bear with me), but that doesn't make it the case. We have courts for that, and laws about that, and I could be held for libel for it too if it's wrong. So you personally think he violated the constitution. Prove it. Unfortunately, proving it, under our laws, means impeachment. They tried to impeach the President for those in his first administration, and it was not proven. You should let that go. Presumably when we win the House this year, first order of business will be to start impeachment proceedings all over again, which will again fail in the Senate. If, under our Constitution, someone isn't found to be guilty of something, we take that as they didn't do it. You call that bad faith - I'd say I didn't write the Constitution.
I agree with much of this, but Trump has arguably gotten more popular over time. After COVID and January 6th, he got nominated again with little opposition, and then proceeded to win the popular vote with 77m votes, more than in the previous two elections. He's picked up many younger voters (who'll obviously be around for more elections then their elders). And something like 80% of Republicans don't believe we've been having free and fair elections (per exit polls) recently. The only hope is that perhaps there can't be a successor to the cult of personality, but it's unclear at this point.
Agreed, and as a Democrat, I think the GOP will continue to grow in popularity until Democrats actually solve problems instead of being constantly outraged. The fact is that Biden did not enforce immigration laws or secure our border, Americans thought it was a problem (among other problems), so now here we are. Trump is clearly DOING SOMETHING, Democrats under Biden did not do anything. In fact, Trump is doing a great many other things with dramatic flourish, including several things on the DNC's own agenda (criminalizing revenge porn, passing paid parental leave for federal workers, decriminalizing THC). Even though I think Americans should be outraged about how ICE is handling deportations, we're all a bit exhausted from the Chicken Little energy/pessimism on the Left.
Thank you very much. Finally someone not buying into the "Trump is wildly unpopular!" KoolAid. I continue to think that idea is way off base. He keeps winning because we support him, and we're in the majority by definition because he wins. Personally, I consider that Democracy. All this carry-on about the end of Democracy in America is just Dems mad about losing, IMO. We on the right get to participate in Democracy just as much as you all do, however much you wish we wouldn't.
Trump is not the 2013 Broncos, his offence often sucks and he trips over himself, he’s most certainly the ‘85 Bears. Trump’s biggest skill is creating turnovers, he goads the left into taking a broadly popular position and then extending it in a way that alienates the average American. That’s why he’s been so good at fracturing the anti-authoritarian right from the left. The right would be very happy if the left would just run the ball, pick up the first down and regroup, but they keep lining up for a run and then calling an audible to instead throw the ball downfield to a receiver in triple coverage. (I.e. if the democrats ran a true moderate or a national unity ticket, they’d likely cash in on a ton of support from conservatives who dislike Trump. But even when they do name a moderate, à la Biden, that candidate ends up taking a series of unpopular, very progressive positions, to shore up support to their left, which frequently leads to a turnover)
Trump sucks and definitely fomented a riot at the Capitol a few years ago. He's thus completely untrustworthy as President (of course he'd long before established that).
But the lockdowns in various places in 2020 and 2021 were an @ssload more autocratic than anything he's done and probably even considered.
There's a reason the American people rejected lectures on democracy versus autocracy from the party who had done the same damn thing 3 or so years prior.
There will be elections in 2026 and 2028, and Dems will hopefully win. I urge them to reject autocratic behavior in all forms, including suspending all sorts of freedoms for a health emergency that never existed for people under 60 (and didn't exist for a bunch over 60).
It would be great if the Democrats had a competent quarterback
Nate says that Dem marches are bigger than MAGA ones -- "even in the Trump era, pro-democracy mass movements have been much larger in scope than pro-authoritarian ones. The No Kings protests and the Women’s March each turned out millions of people."
This is true; but he continues, fairly, that Trump mobilized plenty of voters when it counted, and I'd say also, there are those well-populated rallies. Both Biden and Kamala (and Hillary, too) had embarrassingly small audiences, while Trump always had huge rallies of hundreds and thousands of enthusiastic fans. People even costumed, like at sports events.
I guess I'd say the marches are just disgruntled Dems mad that they are losing. There are often big women's marches, after all; I was in one myself long ago. Trump supporters simply don't have to protest, because we are WINNING. Winners don't need to get out in that -10 degree cold. This needs to stop before a lot of leftwing people get frostbite.
America got through the 1960's and 1970's with democracy in tact. The assassinations of JFK, MLK, RFK plus many other political killings, urban riots, a war in Vietnam, Watergate, The Church Hearings. We'll survive "The Evil Orange One".
Earlier there was the Great Depression with the Hooverville, a huge camp of homeless right outside Washington, D.C. A lot of people thought a revolution would develop from that, but it didn't.
This is a small comment, but I think it's worth noting that the video you describe with Greg Bovino is almost certainly not from Minneapolis (and even if it were, it wouldn't be a recent video). First, the video is shot in a location where the trees all have leaves on them, which is not the case for Minneapolis this time of year. Second, at the end of the video there's a palm tree in the background, which suggests that it's more likely he was speaking to a CBP team in Los Angeles over the summer.
It's also worth noting that Bovino isn't a part of ICE—he's part of CBP (and the people he was speaking to are CBP agents). I recognize that ICE is a stand-in for "the various agencies participating in immigration enforcement," but as I understand it, it's actually CBP that has a bigger problem than ICE does. (The officers who shot Alex Pretti were CBP officers, not ICE officers.
The guardrails are holding, and the TACO pattern is clear: Trump meets reality, and reality is winning more often than losing. The Warsh appointment, Homan stepping in to replace the cashiered Bovino, SCOTUS tea leaves on the tariff case, the SEC stepping up on crypto - these are all evidence of institutional constraints on the would-be authoritarian. We’re a resilient society and we’ll get through this.