> Instead, the Government says, it should be able to apply the Citizenship Order (whose legality it does not defend) to everyone except the plaintiffs who filed this lawsuit.
If that’s the case, I’m curious if it could be fixed with a class action, so everyone (or everyone born in the US) is a plaintiff? If that’s legally a thing.
It may not be surprising to learn that over the past several decades conservative Congresses (through the so-called Class Action Fairness Act and its ilk) and Supreme Court decisions have all but eliminated class actions.
It could be fixed for the class with a class action. But the courts have also don't their damndest to make that hard too. Requiring a class action means that courts have the additional opportunity to say "nope that's not a valid class" (WalMart v Dukes being a rather famous example).
I read the Wikipedia article [0] and I would point out that a class defined by birth place would pass easily Scalia's test for commonality. So it seems that using a class action suit that includes every person born in US of un-documented parents would work. (But who knows what other tests the Supreme Court would come up now...)
I don't think class action lawsuit is needed here.
It's enough for one case to get to SCOTUS and then we will hear their opinion about how 14th amendment should be interpreted.
It will be an interesting case I think both 4-5 against and 5-4 in favor of changing the interpretation is possible (with 3-6 and 6-3 less likely outcomes).
The problem (which Sotomayor raises in her dissent, pages 94 and 95 of the PDF) is that it may never reach the supreme court:
> There is a serious question, moreover, whether this Court will ever get the chance to rule on the constitutionality of a policy like the Citizenship Order. Contra, ante, at 6 (opinion of KAVANAUGH, J.) (“[T]he losing parties in the courts of appeals will regularly come to this Court in matters involving major new federal statutes and executive actions”). In the ordinary course, parties who prevail in the lower courts generally cannot seek review from this Court, likely leaving it up to the Government’s discretion whether a petition will be filed here. These cases prove the point: Every court to consider the Citizenship Order’s merits has found that it is unconstitutional in preliminary rulings. Because respondents prevailed on the merits and received universal injunctions, they have no reason to file an appeal. The Government has no incentive to file a petition here either, because the outcome of such an appeal would be preordained. The Government recognizes as much, which is why its emergency applications challenged only the scope of the preliminary injunctions
Wait, doesn't this just... End the constitution as a whole? So long as the current executive wants some unconstitutional thing, they get that unconstitutional thing in every state on their side in perpetuity? The constitution is now... per-litigant?
Oh, of course. Because it's federal law, being in a state with an injunction isn't actually a protection. A federal LEO can detain & relocate you, charging you with violating a law in another state where there is no such injunction.
This is a whole-sale shredding of the constitution.
So for example, seeking reproductive rights in one state which is forbidden in another?
Forgive a possibly silly question but in what sense does being "in" Florida mean you are bound by Florida state law when you leave? How long did you need to be in Florida before you became bound by its law? What if you fall pregnant after you left? Can you be in breach without ever having been in Florida, and a LEO can therefore take you there and charge you?
No, not quite. State laws only apply in that state. They are not technically allowed (but sometimes try) to enforce laws on actions outside of that state. So, in this case, you could not be charged with having an abortion outside of Florida, from inside of Florida, based on Florida law.
But let's look at the birthright case that this ruling comes from.
Let's say Nevada state sues the federal government. The ruling is made from their district court that birthright citizenship is clear and this EO is illegal. An injunction is placed against the EO.
The state of Kentucky does not sue.
Previously, the Nevada court injunction would apply nationally. The EO is unconstitutional. EOs are federal, the constitution is federal. So, clearly, it is unconstitutional everywhere and must be stopped.
The federal government can then go through several layers of appeal to prove that this was a mistake and the EO is legal. All the way up to SCOTUS, who makes the final judgement and cannot be appealed.
What SCOTUS just ruled is that the injunction against the federal government only holds the EO from applying to the specific litigant. That can be a whole state, a group of people, or a single individual. Even though the EO is now ruled unconstitutional in the eyes of the federal court de jure, it is de facto still the law of the land by default to all other entities.
And it gets worse. A litigant cannot appeal to the next court, only a defendant that loses. And SCOTUS only has to address cases that are appealed. There is no mandatory reconciliation process. That means, for an infinite amount of time, individual people will have different constitutional interpretations that require a background of every case that has ever involved them.
So, back to our example. If the federal government loses in Nevada and there is no ruling in Kentucky... What the fuck even happens? Someone is or is not a citizen, that's literally the point behind Dread Scott and Obergfell, but they've contradicted those cases and invented a constitutional superposition.
So, in Nevada a naturalized citizen with non-citizen parents is... A citizen? Because of the injunction? And what if they're in Kentucky, but were born in Nevada? Or vice versa?
But, no, this isn't a state law. It's federal. Which means it doesn't matter what state you're in when you do it, it's still illegal. And federal LEO had the authority to try you in a different location than where you were arrested. So - born in Nevada or Kentucky, where you are now, that doesn't matter. Effectively, you have no citizenship. Again, this is quite literally Dread Scott.
This SCOTUS ruling effectively disables the constitution and dissolves the union of states. I'm not being dramatic, this is also the opinion of Sotomayor.
Curiously, this does not actually extend to other cases. So, say, if McDonalds gets in trouble and an injunction placed against them. That still applies universally.
Oftentimes hard to model this from other nations. Here in Australia we have pretty well understood applicability of federal law everywhere, but when the states started enacting changes in abortion law, voluntary assisted dying, decriminalisation of recreational drugs, it all got a bit messy. Especially since we have non-state territories where enacting laws means .. conditional to the federal government with lower barriers than with the states.
Britain its mostly UK Law, with bits of "no, thats English law, this is Scotland" on top. I emigrated so long ago the national appeals structure has changed and I don't entirely understand when it applies and overrides. But immigration is clearly nation-wide.
I think "birthright" citizenship is pretty alien to most legal regimes. Ireland might be the one people think about in the Europe/Britain context. Used to be a lot of pregnant women flying in late stage. But, thats not to call it wrong or decry what the appeals in the US were trying to do. It was amended into the constitution a very long time ago, and until recently what the current WH is trying to do was seen as "fringe law" but now seems core.
The revocation is chilling, yes. Australia has regrettably been behaving of late as if ending your prison sentence is not the end, and deporting dual nationals to their native citizenship after sentence completed. It's just cruelty, and in many cases makes externalities of Australian problems.
Some people with no lived experience of "homeland" have been sent "back there" and in related cases, Australian indigenous have been threatened with never having had citizenship because of association with neighbouring countries. The courts came down pretty heavily on that one thank goodness.
asking in a narrower context than before: what happens when an Nth generation american is forced to prove their ancestors came to the country legally under threat of being stripped of the only citizenship they’ve ever had ? i doubt most people can produce documentation reaching back several generations…
see the following [1]doj enforcement priority on stripping citizenship ; i guess conceivably a citizen could be in a situation of having to prove that some ancestor didn’t lie on their naturalization application
That should be unconstitutional to either try to prosecute you for actions outside your state or to prevent you from leaving to make those actions, but conservatives are trying!
That's a good point.
I was under the impression that the current administration thinks it can win a case about 14th amendment in case both parents are not legally in US with current majority but if they are in fact not appealing it would mean they think they would lose.
Again, the point of being a judge is to not just make assumptions about what you think their argument is going to be. If your opinion is made up before you hear the case, then your opinion is bullshit.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vexatious_litigation There's plenty of times you can see the litigant is just filing bullshit, venue shopping, and hey - maybe even packing the courts with friendly folks who will rubber stamp whatever you really want.
No, there is no other reading here. The 14th amendment is incredibly clear about the exact text and meaning in this scenario. I don't think people need to entertain opinions otherwise from those that either refuse to read the amendment or choose to ignore what it plainly says.
> All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens
So e.g. subjects to the British Crown and the jurisdiction of Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth, are not citizens.
Indeed, if my wife gave birth while we were vacationing China, the I would be furious if China claimed my child was a Chinese citizen and “subject to the jurisdiction of the peoples republic of China.” For all I know the laws of China might say the kid can’t leave. There are lots of countries where the dictator’s subjects are not free to leave. So, yeah, I would absolutely insist my kid is subject to the jurisdiction of the United States even when born in China.
> That is terrible jurisprudence, but at least it’s honest. Sotomayor is overtly stating that she’s made up her mind and will not consider the possibility that maybe the 14th Amendment might mean something other than she already thinks
can you quote that part where she says this or even offers her own opinion? Because the only relevant part
> Every court to consider the Citizenship Order’s merits has found that it is unconstitutional in preliminary rulings
seems like a statement of fact?
(of course, it's also beyond silly to suggest it's bad or even unusual for issued opinions (dissents or otherwise) not to contain, you know, opinions).
> The Government has no incentive to file a petition here either, because the outcome of such an appeal would be preordained. The Government recognizes as much, which is why its emergency applications challenged only the scope of the preliminary injunctions
She’s saying the outcome is already known (ie they would lose) and the government knows they would lose, and the place they would have lost would have been right here (in front of me in the Supreme Court).
Realistically, and this is a serious problem, many critical rights in the US only exist because of the court going against the voters. Like, say, the legalization of interracial marriage.
It can go both ways. For example, in 1890-1930, SCOTUS had a series of decisions that had methodically demolished the then-budging laws pertaining to labor rights and business regulations, enacted with wide popular support, on the basis that they violated "economic liberty" rights that the judges have read into the 14th Amendment use of "liberty". You know, stuff like min wage, 40-hour work week, prohibitions on child labor, mandatory qualification requirements for some professions etc.
There are supposed to be able to declare them Unconstitutional. If it's unconstitutional in district 5, why wouldn't it also be unconstitutional in district 10?
Most law, and most law courts deal with is federal law, not constitutional law. A lot of the most contentious recent court issues could be addressed with federal laws. It's just congress is lazy and doesn't want to go on record.
Yes, but things like rights listed in the constitution have been protected by the supreme court regardless of laws. Things like your Miranda rights don't exist because of any law, they existed because of a supreme court ruling.
>Most law, and most law courts deal with is federal law, not constitutional law. A lot of the most contentious recent court issues could be addressed with federal laws. It's just congress is lazy and doesn't want to go on record.
In the United States, the Constitution is federal law. In fact, it is the supreme law of the land. Full stop.
CASA Inc. in Maryland is in fact refiling its broader lawsuit as a class action case, and has asked for a wider injunction on that basis. So we'll see.
Absolutely, and they discussed this. The “problem” with that is the results of a class action are binding on the class, win or lose. So it’s possible that you’re a member of the # Million person class-action claiming to be exempt from deportation because of X (because you didn’t opt-out) and the class could lose.
The Universal Injunctions were a one-way rule. If the government lost any one case, the injunction would apply against the government in every other instance. However, if the government won, only that one person would be deported and the opposition would be free to try the same argument again with any of the other judges.
Heh. Corollary: By joining the class, one is setting themselves up as a target by feeding targeting data for ICE into the Court system. The government doesn't even have to look for you now, because you self-selected into the class.
Christ almighty. This is why we can't have nice things.
We’re in this mess because people are not interested enough, educated enough, or engaged enough politically to make their position explicit to drive the direction of legislation and executive action.
Citizens of The United States have every tool available to to work together to shape their communities. The reality is the overwhelming majority do not do that, and you can come up with a lot of reasons why, which are structural in many cases, but the fact remains that the majority of people are not involved in the political process at all, have no desire to be an actively reject any opportunity to be.
Assuming that citizens would all of a sudden become involved because it requires a lawsuit, means that there’s the capacity to do so, which does not exist, and all we need is a catalyst.
If the number of possible catalysts that have already happened in the last decade we’re not sufficient then nothing short of a literal terminator Skynet scenario is going to cause people to take action and I’m increasingly doubtful that even that would do it.
Based on my observation from my work position, people are ready to just roll over onto their backs and have robots slice them from the belly up, because it’s easier than actually doing something that would prevent it.
I think this often gets confused. Voting a president in doesn't give them a blank mandate to do whatever they want, such as break the law. And knowingly doing things that might not get approved by courts, but veiling it in a "novel legal theory" disguise is still breaking the law. Just because slow and thorough processes need to take place to adjudicate these actions doesn't mean that these actions aren't worth adjudicating. So while voting is important, keeping the voted-in president accountable is important too.
According to the Supreme Court, that's exactly what it does. The President simply isn't accountable.
I would not have thought that this is what the Constitution says, but the Supreme Court is the final arbiter of what the Constitution says. That's not in the Constitution, either, but they've appropriated that job for two centuries, so we let them get away with it. The "it's not illegal if the President does it" part is new, though they've been leading up to it for decades, so it's not really surprising.
Or, more charitably: the Supreme Court has says that the president has this authority, in this specific area, and your characterization of this as "breaking the law" is not correct.
Edit: actually, even that is overstating it. This is an extremely narrow ruling that is mainly about the powers of federal judges. It's the sort of ruling that the "other side" will trumpet as settled law when they're the ones in power again.
The second amendment is “very clearly” spelled out in the Constitution yet many roadblocks to gun ownership are thrown up in various states and people STILL make tired arguments about how the amendment “should” be interpreted. For example, the old argument that the founding fathers could have never conceived of AR-15s and thus their legality under the second amendment is debatable.
Likewise, in 1868 the writers of the fourteenth amendment probably couldn’t conceive of rapid international travel and the possibility that pregnant women could just show up weeks before their due date and their newborn child should “obviously” be an American citizen.
The amendment was quite obviously targeted at Native Americans and slaves, not any and all pregnant women the world over who manage to reach the US before giving birth. But as you’re noticing, there’s multiple ways people can interpret laws. It’s rarely as cut and dry as “this is obviously against the law!!!”
> Likewise, in 1868 the writers of the fourteenth amendment probably couldn’t conceive of rapid international travel and the possibility that pregnant women could just show up weeks before their due date and their newborn child should “obviously” be an American citizen.
This is a better point than you realize, and in the opposite direction you intend.
Immigration in the 1800s was a… cursory process. Not only would those kids be citizens, but their parents would have had little trouble staying around.
> It imposed a head tax on non-citizens of the United States who came to American ports and restricted certain classes of people from immigrating to America, including criminals, the insane, or "any person unable to take care of him or herself." The act created what is recognized as the first federal immigration bureaucracy and laid the foundation for more regulations on immigration, such as the Immigration Act of 1891.
The quotas you describe didn’t come until the 1920s. Well after the amendment.
> “Give me your tired, your poor, Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free, The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.”
So, I assume that you know that's a poem by someone who was engaged in pro-immigrant propaganda? And the entire reason that Lazarus was engaged in pro-immigrant propaganda was because she was advocating for Jewish refugees from Russia...who weren't exactly welcomed.
Basically, your proposition that it was era of free immigration is historical revisionism. There's a whole island out in front of the Statue of Liberty where the primary purpose was finding reasons to turn immigrants away.
(Castle Garden was established in the 1850s, and the history extends way before the nativist laws you're referring to in sibling comments [1])
Yes, and? I'm not debating the legality of whatever the current administration is doing. I'm just telling you that you have the history wrong, and that there's a deep irony in quoting Lazarus as some kind of "good old days", when she wrote the poem as a form of advocacy for immigrants.
> Nope. Wrong. That's the new facility. Castle Garden started in the 1850s
That's not "a whole island out in front of the Statue of Liberty" (it's in Battery Park, Manhattan), and performed a significantly different role.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Immigration_Act_of_1882 "restricted certain classes of people from immigrating to America, including criminals, the insane, or 'any person unable to take care of him or herself.'… [creating] what is recognized as the first federal immigration bureaucracy and laid the foundation for more regulations on immigration"
The 14th Amendment, having been approved decades before we had that first of immigration laws on the books, was approved in a historical context where "illegal immigration" was essentially not a thing.
> I'm not debating the legality of whatever the current administration is doing.
Perhaps don't jump into a thread about the legal basis of it, then. This particular bit is discussing the claim made at https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44400640, where another user claims the drafters of the Amendment would've opposed "anchor babies".
"Consistent with the views of the clause's author, Senator Jacob M. Howard, the Supreme Court held that because Indian reservations are not under the federal government's jurisdiction, Native Americans born on such land are not entitled to birthright citizenship. The 1887 Dawes Act offered citizenship to Native Americans who accepted private property as part of cultural assimilation, while the 1924 Indian Citizenship Act offered citizenship to all Native Americans born within the nation's territorial limits."
SCOTUS did rule on the anchor babies thing, in 1898.
Indeed, how terrible! Those kids who then grow up in other countries outside the US will eventually be adults who have to pay taxes without sucking up any physical resources of said United States, whatever will we do about this huge drain on our resources? </sarcasm>
Why am I supposed to be mad about people doing this, exactly? Because of hazy "rules are rules" talk?
Well, that's very cynical and maybe you'll be right, but for now the California AG agrees with me. Per a quote in the WSJ [1]:
> California Attorney General Rob Bonta, a co-plaintiff, looked for a silver lining: Red states, which sought universal injunctions to stymie Biden administration policies, would encounter obstacles pursuing that strategy under a future Democratic president, he said.
Call me a crazy, glass-half-full centrist, but I prefer to look at this as a clawing back of extremely broad powers from rather partisan judges. It's been maddening that circuit court judges in a few hyper-partisan districts basically push every decision to the Supreme Court.
> California Attorney General Rob Bonta, a co-plaintiff, looked for a silver lining…
Sure, and Susan Collins thinks Trump "learned his lesson" with his first impeachment. Looking for the silver lining is what we sometimes call "cope". He lost. As a politician, he's obliged to put some spin on it.
> It's been rather maddening that circuit court judges basically push every decision to the Supreme Court.
It is. This sort of thing should've died before ever becoming an EO, and at every level of the judiciary as clearly unconstitutional. That it didn't is a big problem.
Well, if we're predicting the future, here's mine: since they're already basically telegraphing it (and also because it's pretty clear-cut), I predict that they'll overturn the whole thing in a future case, and then the left will be crowing about how mean-ol Mr. Trump was taught a lesson in capital-D Democracy by our powerful system of government.
> There's nothing that binds any Supreme Court to do anything at all.
We agree. So your remark about “nothing in the ruling says. . .” was actually irrelevant to the broader point. From a lacuna in a decision we can conclude nothing.
I think that comment is referring to Trump v. United States, where the court said that a president cannot be held accountable for using a Constitutional authority to break the law. It is very literally "a blank mandate to break the law".
For example, a president is granted authority to command the military and issue pardons. They have absolute immunity for any act performed using these authorities, including illegal acts such as assassinating or deporting a political opponent or accepting bribes in return for pardons. This is not a matter of opinion or a controversial interpretation, these consequences were discussed during the case and in the opinion, and the court accepted them.
This was also discussed in the Constitutional Convention, where the participants decided the impeachment process, and failing that, four-year terms, were a sufficient remedy.
Sure, that was a concern: a sufficiently large faction of Senators might combine to protect a bad President, or destroy a good one unjustly.
> Mr. MADISON, objected to a trial of the President by the Senate, especially as he was to be impeached by the other branch of the Legislature, and for any act which might be called a misdemeanor. The President under these circumstances was made improperly dependent. He would prefer the Supreme Court for the trial of impeachments, or rather a tribunal of which that should form a part.
> Mr. PINKNEY disapproved of making the Senate the Court of impeachments, as rendering the President too dependent on the Legislature. If he opposes a favorite law, the two Houses will combine agst. him, and under the influence of heat and faction throw him out of office.
Ultimately it was decided that "in four years he can be turned out", so it was not worth addressing further. Indeed some argued that the President should not be impeachable at all because of this.
> Mr. KING expressed his apprehensions that an extreme caution in favor of liberty might enervate the Government we were forming. He wished the House to recur to the primitive axiom that the three great departments of Govts. should be separate & independent: that the Executive & Judiciary should be so as well as the Legislative: that the Executive should be so equally with the Judiciary. Would this be the case, if the Executive should be impeachable? It had been said that the Judiciary would be impeachable. But it should have been remembered at the same time that the Judiciary hold their places not for a limited time, but during good behaviour. It is necessary therefore that a forum should be established for trying misbehaviour. Was the Executive to hold his place during good behaviour? The Executive was to hold his place for a limited term like the members of the Legislature: Like them particularly the Senate whose members would continue in appointmt the same term of 6 years he would periodically be tried for his behaviour by his electors, who would continue or discontinue him in trust according to the manner in which he had discharged it. Like them therefore, he ought to be subject to no intermediate trial, by impeachment. He ought not to be impeachable unless he held his office during good behaviour, a tenure which would be most agreeable to him; provided an independent and effectual forum could be devised. But under no circumstances ought he to be impeachable by the Legislature. This would be destructive of his independence and of the principles of the Constitution. He relied on the vigor of the Executive as a great security for the public liberties.
The Supreme Court has pointedly not ruled or said that the president has the authority to redefine birthright citizenship. What they have actually done is to put very stringent requirements on how the president's authority can be challenged in lower courts.
And notably, exactly the same Republican-nominated Supreme Court judges did not do anything to interfere with exactly the same legal process (nationwide injunctions) when they were aimed at a Democratic president. See, e.g. Biden's student loan forgiveness executive order.
"C. The District Court’s Remedy Was Improper" is a section of the petition for cert in The mifeprestone case from the Biden admin[0], where the SC overruled the district court's PI, but declined to address the question of whether it's PI was reasonable.
>According to the Supreme Court, that's exactly what it does. The President simply isn't accountable.
The president absolutely is accountable. The problem is the Congress for their own reasons refuse to hold it to account. The Congress could remove any president in less than 24 hours with simple majority for no reason whatsoever.
I am aware of this ruling, and disagree with it. My comment was making a broader point: There's a mistaken notion that a lawyer can advise you to do something that they think courts might find illegal later, "and that's how we'll find out whether we can do it." That's illegal both, for a lawyer to advise, and for anyone to follow. A president is supposed to collaborate with the other branches to find constitutional solutions to problems, not deliberately attempt to overwhelm them with edge cases. But yeah, the ruling on criminal immunity feels horrific to me.
Also, any time anyone actually brings up any details about Presidential elections you'll quick get many people rushing to explain how the people do not in fact directly elect the President and how this is such an incredibly brilliant idea.
Except voting this person to the presidency has given just over 1000 convicted criminals a pardon, as promised in advance. It’s an unlimited and irreversible power.
The Court has long considered that the president has a duty to follow the law, but also that the Court can’t compel the president to follow the law. That is a political question. Congress alone can stop a president by impeaching and removing them from office. Not only can’t the Court initiate impeachments, impeachment is unreviewable by the Court.
If there’s a servile Congress, it means voters can elect a law breaker as president. They are going to get a president who breaks the law.
And this is what’s happening. People voted for an abuser, a rapist, a felon, a conspiracy theorist who lies about the outcome of elections, lies that VPOTUS can and should overturn them, and even sent a mob to have that VPOTUS assassinated for refusing to comply with that illegal order. Then boasted he’d pardon all those criminals who were in his service. And despite all of this, people voted for him again.
There is some compelling research from Princeton that for 90%+ of the American voting population, there opinions have zero impact on federal policy. It's all lobby driven money.
“The preferences of the average American appear to have only a miniscule, near-zero, statistically non-significant impact upon public policy.”
That’s not quite an accurate description of the Princeton Study. What the study actually shows, if I’m thinking of the correct one, is that for the most part average americans agree with the elite. The results of the study are driven by the fact that when elites and average americans disagree, the politicians tend to side with the elites.
A prime example of this is the immigration system. https://www.nytimes.com/2024/10/29/podcasts/the-daily/electi... (“On the Ballot: An Immigration System Most Americans Never Wanted”). Americans never asked to import tens of millions of people from the third world. When Congress reformed the immigration system in 1965, they promised that wouldn’t happen. But for decades, there’s been a coalition of pro-foreigner liberals and pro-cheap-labor conservatives that have facilitated massive immigration that average americans never asked for.
Trump, ironically, is a reaction to the very thing the Princeton study identified.
> is that for the most part average americans agree with the elite. The results of the study are driven by the fact that when elites and average americans disagree, the politicians tend to side with the elites.
The case when everyone agrees doesn’t tell you anything. It’s only when people disagree that you can find who has actual power and in this case the general public has effectively zero actual meaningful power day to day.
Systematic voter suppression plus gerrymandering etc may win you rigged elections, but ultimately voting isn’t about the system in place it’s avoidance unrest. We’re entering uncharted territory with how strongly people disagree with what the government is doing, which is where the general public actually has a say, namely by destroying the existing power structures rather than voting. It’s not even a question of insurrection, not having kids plus 60’s style dropping out at scale is ruinous.
Either one results in an immediate liquidity crisis/credit crunch and the delegitimizing/insolvency of most institutions. The beginning of the COVID pandemic was, essentially, this.
I would add in "general bank run", but I imagine that they just... wouldn't let that happen. Ironically, an emergency "injunction" against withdrawals.
> The “protests” recently were tepid and nearly all elderly liberals with nothing better to do.
They set records for size and you know it. What do you mean by 'tepid', because they didn't riot? Would you acknowledge them as more valid if they had rioted, or declared angry tones that they had to be put down immediately?
> A big chunk of the country really wants mass deportations, and for the most part, folks in the broader left don’t care much to oppose it
Absolute BS. No matter what they do, you'll cook up some reasons to delegitimitze it. But I guess you have to, the moment you cease being useful to the GOP you'll become a target.
> They set records for size and you know it. What do you mean by 'tepid', because they didn't riot?
According to whom? I'm in the D.C. metro area, and the protests are far less noticeable than the 2017 pink hat protests or the 2020 riots. They organized a bunch of small protests all around the country so more people maybe participated, but the intensity is low even in DC.
> Absolute BS. No matter what they do, you'll cook up some reasons to delegitimitze it. But I guess you have to, the moment you cease being useful to the GOP you'll become a target.
I’m just observing. The anti-Trump resistance I know in real life have retreated literally and metaphorically to a bubble in BlueSky. I was at a conference recently, steeling myself to deal with PMCs complaining about Trump, and nobody said anything. People were in a great mood. The vibe shift is real. And your second point is genuinely conspiratorial and fantastical thinking.
Different goals, they are trying to influence congress which cares a lot more about local protests than the number of people showing up to DC. Going to DC is counterproductive for that kind of thing.
People agree on most things for sensible reasons. There’s no country where people are going to be ok legalizing murder in all situations. Similarly we aren’t going to randomly convert street signs to cuneiform or other language nobody speaks etc.
> You’re overestimating how much people care about any of this stuff. I’m in a blue state and I hear almost nothing about it other than from some overly empathetic people on facebook. The “protests” recently were tepid and nearly all elderly liberals with nothing better to do.
> A big chunk of the country really wants mass deportations, and for the most part, folks in the broader left don’t care much to oppose it
I’m not talking about one specific issue here but how much people in general dislike what’s happening. That includes Democrats, Republicans, and Independents.
I know multiple hard core Republicans since Gerald Ford who now dislike winning elections only slightly less than they dislike loosing them. As one put it ‘Democrats do a better job of fucking balancing the budget, what I am doing?’
> I know multiple hard core Republicans since Gerald Ford who now dislike winning elections only slightly less than they dislike loosing them. As one put it ‘Democrats do a better job of fucking balancing the budget, what I am doing?’
And I know multiple "blue by default" democrats who voted for Trump. My Muslim immigrant mom posted approvingly today about this Supreme Court decision, because she doesn't like that the courts have stymied Trump's agenda.
The GOP hasn’t been fiscally conservative since Coolidge. By the 1980s republicans paid lip service to the concept but couldn’t actually cut spending because they needed the FDR Catholic vote. Now with Trump, he doesn’t even need the lip service. If Gerald Ford Republicans are upset about what's happened to the party, they have only their own immigration policy to blame. The Trump GOP is the politically viable conservative party given our current demographics.
Trump is “still paying lip service to it” DODGE was a shit show but the sentiment still exists within the party it’s politicians ignoring what the base wants.
“The Tea Party movement focuses on a significant reduction in the size and scope of the government.” It resulted in a wave of Republicans getting elected who then completely ignored why they were there effectively killing the movement. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tea_Party_movement
> Now with Trump, he doesn’t even need the lip service.
He was speaking to Tea party events back in 2016, today he’s done with elections.
Trump did DOGE to get Elon on board. He wasn’t even talking about the budget deficit until then. And it wasn’t on his platform: https://www.donaldjtrump.com/platform. In retrospect, the Tea Party’s popularity was probably because it was anti-Obama and his brand of government managerialism, not because of promises to balance the budget.
Any actual fiscal responsibility would be met with massive backlash and will never happen. In the America we live in today, the only way to be a viable political party is to buy votes from relevant groups, like Trump did to win Nevada with No Taxes on Tips.
> He wasn’t even talking about the budget deficit until then
His platform required it.
#6 “LARGE TAX CUTS FOR WORKERS, AND NO TAX ON TIPS!” needs smaller government. So it’s the same old platform with a different emphasis.
Or did you think he was suggesting extreme taxes on companies or wealthy people? Deficit spending runs into #3 “END INFLATION”, and he explicitly stated to “PROTECT SOCIAL SECURITY AND MEDICARE WITH NO CUTS, INCLUDING NO CHANGES TO THE RETIREMENT AGE”
Obviously the option to not even attempt large tax cut exists, but assuming the attempt was made while also trying to lower inflation the math requires less spending or major new taxes on who exactly?
> His platform required it... Or did you think he was suggesting extreme taxes on companies or wealthy people?
No, I figured he was proposing deficit spending, just like every GOP President in my lifetime. Trump's platform is like that of every third world politician that promises voters everything they want without anything they don't, and America is a third world country now.
Ahh you simply misunderstood then. Heavy deficit spending eventually = inflation, ie why it spiked during COVID and why inflation was higher at the end of Trump’s first presidency than the start of his second.
He’s been surprisingly consistent in at least make token efforts to do what he said he was aiming to do.
You’re conflating two different points: what’s true in reality, and what voters thought they were voting for. Trump’s platform is aimed at people who don’t understand that deficit spending leads to inflation. (It didn’t under Reagan or Bush.) Or, alternatively, they thought there was trillions of dollars of fat in the budget that could be cut without affecting services they want.
It’s like how Democrats think you can balance the budget and expand social spending by “taxing the rich a little bit more” (hand gesture). Counting on Americans to be innumerate is winning politics.
Things are kept vague so people can create their own narratives. But in 2024 he continued to used terms like “Drain the Swamp” that directly refer to downsizing government. So your argument is basically he had no intention of carrying though when he’s doing exactly what he said he would. Perhaps you may want to rethink what exactly you are basing that assumption on.
As to Democrats it’s not a hand wavy standpoint. Historically, taxing companies and wealthy represented a much larger fraction of the overall tax burden. ~Half of federal revenue came from companies in the 1950’s today it’s vastly lower. Changing that means lower taxes on yourself and or much lower deficits.
> But in 2024 he continued to used terms like “Drain the Swamp” that directly refer to downsizing government.
In this context, "drain the swamp" refers to downsizing the Democrat-voting civil service. It's chiefly an objection to the fact that, even when a Republican wins, the actual government is controlled by people who hate Republicans and try to undermine the elected administration's policies.
RCP has Trump at 45% approve, 51% disapprove, which is where Obama was for much of his second term. Biden was significantly below that for all but two short periods after 2021. So if people voted for Trump thinking he'd cut Social Security and Medicare and now are disappointed about it, it's not showing up in the polling.
> As to Democrats it’s not a hand wavy standpoint.
You could double the federal tax burden on everyone from Facebook program managers up to Mark Zuckerberg and not come close to closing the deficit, much less making room for universal healthcare and free college. But "we'll have generous government services and the rich people will pay for it" is the same sort of innumerate fantasy as "we'll build a wall and Mexico will pay for it."
Every European country today pays for its welfare state with heavy, broad-based taxes on the top 60%. If you're telling people that you can have a European-style welfare state without European-style middle classes taxes, then you're in RFK Jr. anti-vaxxer levels of denying reality.
> ~Half of federal revenue came from companies in the 1950’s today it’s vastly lower.
It was never more than about 30%, during World War II and immediately thereafter: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_taxation_in_the_Uni.... It was back below 20% by the mid 1960s. But it's 2025, not 1955. The U.S. doesn't have the leverage to tax trans-national corporations the way it did when Europe's economy was obliterated by World War II.
The massive reduction of corporate income tax as a source of tax revenue has happened across the entire developed world.
> The total income of people in the top 1% that year was $3.3 trillion, and they paid $560 billion in income taxes
3.3 trillion * actually paying the current top tax 37% is an additional ~700 billion in revenue or roughly half the nominal deficit. I don’t think making the effective tax rate 37% vs nominally 37% is particularly unpalatable. (We can also quibble about the income definition used but that’s a separate issue.)
So 50% from wealthy + 50% from companies doesn’t seem ludicrous on the surface.
However actually balancing the books nominally means inflation on the 37T national debt is effectively paid off each year. That 700 ish billion @2% in ‘hidden’ revenue meaning just from wealthy tax payers we are breaking even in real terms. Debt then shrinks with growth in the overall economy.
> It was never more than about 30%
Corporate income taxes are only one category. Companies pay tariffs and fees etc. Ultimately all taxes are coming from individuals or organizations which is a meaningful distinction due to foreign stock ownership. When created half of payroll tax came from companies as essentially a tax on workers the other half reduced employe paychecks. Every time they increased the rate the same thing happened where employe paychecks shrank by half the increase.
Excluding 1/2 of payroll from corporate taxation actually makes the reduction in their tax burden much larger. This is really bad for the US population because of foreign owners.
> The massive reduction of corporate income tax as a source of tax revenue has happened across the entire developed world.
Lobbying works. However, companies do still pay quite a bit in taxes and can be forced to pay significantly more. Asian countries for example get about double from corporate income tax vs OECD. It’s a political choice not some impossible goal. https://www.oecd.org/en/data/datasets/global-revenue-statist...
It's so silly to blame the American people though, considering the vastly greater resources required to politically organize millions of people to counter the what a handful of people in the executive branch or a couple dozen people in the legislative branch can do with a flick of the wrist.
I don't understand this argument or the implications of what follows. If this is a government via consent of the people who intentionally elected a criminal who promised to do more criminal things and then did them, who else could possibly be responsible?
There is also the damage done by the Supreme Court ending the Voting Rights Act, had the act been in place in 2024, Kamalah would have won by a landslide. Millions of minority voters were targeted for disenfranchisement in 2024.
> There is also the damage done by the Supreme Court ending the Voting Rights Act
that is true, but
> Kamalah would have won by a landslide
im not so sure. after a great start she sudenly veered off and campaigned by appealing to disaffected republicans (eg. touring with liz cheney, militaristic posturing (in her words 'the most leathal') military etc) and ignoring/downplaying the gaza issue which affected voting trends [0] in the battleground states just enough to loose there... also the prolonged conflict in ukraine didn't help things with many voters either (eg. lie or not he said he'd end the wars immediately)
and aside from some bread-crumbs like paid leave, she was very silent in economic issues that affected many minorities...
Not until the one-two punch of Obama not insisting on his SCOTUS nominee being pushed through, and RBG not retiring in time for him to have a second. You could put it as late as the DNC pushing Clinton as the 2016 presidential nominee and/or pushing for Trump to be the GOP nominee (with the rationale that he'd be easy to defeat).
Huh? Kamala lost because Trump made in-roads in Latino and Arab voting population in Michigan and Wisconsin. Almost half of Latinos voted for Trump [0] and more Arabs voted for Trump than Kamala [1] and [2] and [3]. Quite the opposite of minority voters were disenfranchised - minorities exercised their right to vote the way they wanted.
I vote but have little influence because I won't join a party and live in a state with closed primaries where the real selection process is carried out. If the remaining 30 closed states cared about civic engagement they'd switch to one of the established open primary models.
Force that the individual can employ would be counterproductive. Remove any of the problematic people and the remainder get more support.
Look at how history has played out. When a government is nearly universally despised by it's people it can be overthrown by mass action, basically bloodless and sometimes with a good outcome.
However, so long as the government has a reasonable sized core of support the outcome is always bad. Violent overthrow always brings the most ruthless, not the best for the people.
Note that this does not apply to throwing out a colonial power. There are multiple examples of good outcomes from throwing out colonial powers by force.
Brian Thompson's death didn't seem to have any major consequences along those lines. Targeted assassinations seem to be kosher for avoiding crackdowns. If someone were to shoot Peter Thiel in the head, do we REALLY expect to see a sudden descent into oppressive authoritarianism? Or, as with Thompson, do most people say, "Eh, he had it coming," and keep it moving?
Brian Thompson was uniquely unsympathetic. he wasn't well-known, his wife had separated from him, and nearly everyone has a personal experience of some family member being fucked over by health insurance, with UnitedHealth being especially heinous. the media really struggled to find anyone to say sincerely positive things about him. he really was the best possible target Luigi could have chosen.
I agree he was unsympathetic but there are far far "better targets" (your words) for vigilante murder if public opinion is the bar. Robert Richards IV is one of my go to examples for the complete lack of justice for the hyperwealthy [1] but there are mountains of big pharma, big food, insurance, church leaders, and private military people who are absolute monsters by any reasonable standard.
I think Brian Thompson was a fuckface (and all the others who help enable the evils there in the name of profit) but he was basically doing what America has deemed not only fine but noble - make as much money as possible without fully breaking the law (or, more accurately, being forced to stop by the law - many routinely and intentionally break the law in their pursuit). Half the country loves and celebrates this behavior to the point where politicians _brag_ about how good they are at it.
Again, I don't think people are shedding a tear if Thiel or any of the other nomenklatura bite it. Going further: we just had an assassination of Democratic lawmakers, and it's already almost out of the news cycle. There's a chance that years of violence and elites who don't care have deadened the American soul to the horror of the proverbial guillotine.
blue states ought to defy the Federal government. the closest we've gotten so far this term was California threatening to withold income tax. the less power the states have to determine their own destiny in the country, the less respect they should give the Federal government.
here's a success story: marijuana. WA and CO just.. decided to legalize it. blatantly against Federal law. even if it stays inside the state, by Wickard v Filburne and the supremacy clause it was a (mild) rebellion. we stared the Feds down and they blinked.
The problem is that Dems are just culturally irrelevant. Most people don't care about issues, policy or the economy, they just want to cheer for a team and will justify everything their team does regardless of efficacy or outcome. Trump is the fun underdog team that everyone is talking about, the Dems are the boring party-pooper team we all love to hate. During covid, that boring became a source of needed stability, but after boring stewarded us through the crisis, nobody wanted to be associated with them again.
What people don’t want to admit is that this is exactly what more then half the people wanted. Because of the way the electoral college works as far as the President, gerrymandering with the House and 2 seats per state in the Senate, more people voting who disagree wouldn’t do any good.
You can’t shape your community to overcome the power of the federal government.
You’re really pulling at straws. Despite what Michelle Obama says, this is exactly “who we are” and who we have always been from slavery, to Jim Crow, to the dog whistles of Reagan to Willie Horton, to “Obama is a secret Muslim who wants to bring Sharia law”, to “the Haitians are eating our pets”, to the segregated proms that have happened in the rural south as late as the early 2000s.
I'm not grasping at straws, because I don't have any particular conclusion in mind. It looked to me like you were specifically contrasting the electoral college with the popular vote while explicitly claiming that Donald Trump received more than half of the popular vote. I responded with a correction to your technicality.
If your contribution is to quote an old rap song and make a meta complaint about how people will react to you, then you're right - you don't deserve a positive reaction.
I did two things this year that had nontrivial effects on my state of mind.
1. I quit drinking for the time being. This had a modest but real effect on my mood and general wellbeing. It has pros and cons, but on balance it's a win for where I'm at and what I'm trying to do. I might choose differently in the future.
2. I installed GrapheneOS and built NixOS, from source, with fairly extreme choices about networking. This had a staggering effect on every aspect of how I think and feel: cutting the surveillance capitalism at the network level is like having a mass of rage and angst and blurry confusion taken out of my head. I will never, ever go back to that.
Its time for everyone to cut the cord. Get a Pixel, an 8a open box at best buy can be 200-300, install Lineage or Calyx or Graphene, and reclaim ownership of your brain.
Justice Sotomayor dissents:
> Instead, the Government says, it should be able to apply the Citizenship Order (whose legality it does not defend) to everyone except the plaintiffs who filed this lawsuit.
If that’s the case, I’m curious if it could be fixed with a class action, so everyone (or everyone born in the US) is a plaintiff? If that’s legally a thing.