https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/apr/11/australian-w...
This is definitely going to have effects for other companies in the USA. Eg. TSMC in the USA is currently being bootstrapped by a Taiwanese workforce. A similar raid there would just shut down the whole TSMC in USA project. https://www.tomshardware.com/tech-industry/semiconductors/50...
Outside of manufacturing all around me there is talk of ditching Azure, Google and even AWS in spite of massive lock-in because the feeling that the USA is a trustworthy partner is completely gone. You can't just 'joke about invading Greenland' and expect everybody to move on as if it didn't happen. And I'm pretty sure that this isn't just local sample bias either, NL used to be pretty laid back when it came to silly details such as hosting providers and such.
How long until the .COM registry becomes fair game for the nationalists?
I'm not sure if that'd fully alleviate the risk for EU companies & governments, but I'd imagine it alleviates some of it.
The real question is where the CEO lives and whether their family and kids are susceptible to being kidnapped by the US govt.
This shouldn't be a surprise to anyone given that it is an American company. Being a multinational corporation like Microsoft or Mercedes Benz means you have to navigate rather complex legal situations, follow not just your home country's laws, but also the laws of the countries that you are operating in.
The fundamental risk for the EU is the Cloud Act. Since that facility is still owned by a company that is owned by a US company, the Cloud Act applies.
Microsoft tried a similar thing in Germany and it failed.
I personally would be open to trying to change that, but I keep looking at the EU and they don't want to. Many countries are actively hostile to entrepreneurs and eg can charge taxes/fees/exit fees on unrealized cap gains. etc.
I’m an EU citizen, and think life generally was better in Belgium. But the salaries being so poor means I’m unlikely to move back.
They don't seem to want to :shrug:
Plus, hiring for AWS / Azure / GCP experience is still much higher than for the smaller EU clouds.
If it did, and the US ordered Amazon to shut down the region, would it?
If the region kept on operating, and the US ordered Amazon to stop providing software updates, security updates, new license keys, etc. - how long could the region keep running?
How many times have we heard that? He owns the party, the courts, the legislature, and the guns.
Lots of talk, but how much action?
People are still building things that depend on American cloud, American controlled OSes (especially for mobile), American supplied hardware, American cloud services (especially AI) and the moves away are tiny by contrast.
Directly from the Windows Forum.
https://www.slashgear.com/1888658/microsoft-office-alternati...
Government's in Denmark, Germany, Spain (on the state level )
A couple more links for companies, but I trust the above is enough? The trend is definitely there and picking up speed.
Edit: a couple of days ago there was a post on HN about SAP spending 20b on cloud https://www.theregister.com/2025/09/04/sap_sovereign_cloud/
1. Denmark’s Ministry for Digital Affairs
2. Two Danish cities
3. One German state
4. The Italian Ministry of defence
5. One Spanish region
They also say French education ministry advised schools to move off the free versions of the "free versions" of MS Office 365 and Google Docs. They do not say anything about how many schools followed the advice, or what they moved to (a paid version of the same? another American supplier?).
Not much for a whole continent.
There will be a lot of resistance to any change. There will be a lot of people like this making the same arguments made here: https://www.theregister.com/2025/08/13/debate_for_microsoft_...
Microsoft has successfully had such decisions reversed in the past:
https://www.linux-magazine.com/Online/News/Munich-Plans-to-D...
Things are different now too because they are not the same, sure. I don't know that people who got it quite wrong are the ones to trust when it comes to predictions of trading and economics this time around.
> Just look at the tourism figures for an idea of the current sentiment.
No doubt a lot of people have changed their minds about visiting US due to Trump -
"Overseas arrivals fell 3.4% in June compared to a year ago, bringing the YTD decline to 1.2%."
But I don't think those kinds of swings are much evidence for larger trade and investment and data sovereignty etc issues.
Everybody, EU, UK, China, Japan, India, Australia, well really just about all countries -- have made a lot of noise and care a lot about relying on US tech, having US companies and by extension the US government control their data, etc. This isn't something they've just started to try fixing in 2016 "because Trump", or in 2025 "because this time he means it". It's been much longer than that. With the exception of probably only China, nobody has been able to make a great deal of progress on it.
What does this mean? Like “the nationalists” would start taking away domain names of people they don’t like or something?
Until very recently the USA was the preferred technology partner for many EU ventures and was seen as a trustworthy ally because of mutual history since 1945.
> If you talk to a European as an American they often have a lot more dislike for each other.
A lot more than what? And what exactly did Europe do in recent times that would give American citizens that feeling?
> It hasn’t been a century since they tried to genocide each other
This is a complete nonsense statement.
https://newrepublic.com/article/196154/stephen-miller-erupts...
- what a given visa allows
- whether or not someone is a naturalized citizen
- whether or not someone is a citizen by birth
and all kinds of things that seem like they should be core, table stakes knowledge of the job they are supposedly doing.
I'm sure ICE would be the first to point this out in court -- so it's kind of ironic having to point this out here.
Thank goodness for the ACLU, Amnesty International, Democracy Forward, various state AG offices, and the American Bar Association.
ICE agents and other Federal workers are largely insulated from consequences due to Sovereign Immunity protections. only egregious, malicious violations cause them personal liability. and Trump can dole out pardons if it comes to that.
> Thank goodness for the ACLU, Amnesty International, Democracy Forward, various state AG offices, and the American Bar Association.
it's nice that they're fighting, but the Supreme Court has shown a remarkable tolerance for flagrant lawlessness by the Administration (e.g. DHS v. DVD.) sometimes because the Court is sympathetic to Trump's objectives, sometimes because they fear he'll ignore them and do it anyway, and they'll lose the resulting power struggle (nine sedentary septuagenarians vs. the US Armed Forces.)
Odds are they just wanted that person gone and the real reason can't be spoken out loud.
Of course, what the law is doesn’t really matter anymore.
Do you know what the actual laws/regulations are for this stuff? My understanding is that there are in fact valid and invalid reasons for denying entry to a valid visa holder, but that the valid reasons are in practice broad and subjective enough that a CBP officer could nearly always justify their decision (something like "I wasn't convinced they would abide by the terms of their visa").
There are just two kinds of US visas: non-immigrant and immigrant. You are not allowed to immigrate on a non-immigrant visa. "Dual intent" applies only to the issuing of a visa: by default a non-immigrant visa can only be issued to someone who has proven the lack of an immigration intent (which is assumed by default, so one has to prove the lack of thereof in order to get a visa) but there is an exception for some non-immigrant visas, which can be issued without such a proof. This is all "dual intent" means. Not "it's an immigrant visa if I intend it to be one!". These visas are still non-immigrant and carry all the restrictions of other non-immigrant visas i.e. they don't allow immigration. So while it's fine to have an intention to immigrate with such a visa, it's illegal to actually immigrate. This is not some esoteric knowledge and can be found within 15 minutes of internet search and reading.
I imagine the protagonist of the article said something that showed he has immigrated, at least the article describes him as an immigrant - he lives in the US and has nothing to come to in the home country. Thus the reason for denial of entry.
911 was an inside job! Or maybe the us of a had an oopsie.
Right now they only get rewarded if they deport or collar somebody, so that's all they seem to care about, and letting in good people is seen as more of a nuisance they must do while trying to get notches for their promotion.
Doesn't seem like much of an incentive to identify good productive people if the incentive scheme is defined as "accept a couple of hundred dollars" vs "don't accept a couple of hundred dollars"...
There are already a few sprinkles here and there to reward them for stopping some of the bad people, but nothing if they let in a good person. $200 is better than nothing...
Or that people responsible for processing visas and checking papers have been restricting numbers despite what their bosses and the wider public ask for. If you want more immigrants than the guidelines and quotas permit, the route to it isn't legalising bribery.
I guess another option might be to give the similar kind of promotional awards to metrics of good immigrants being let in as they do to collaring criminals.
>If you want more immigrants than the guidelines and quotas permit, the route to it isn't legalising bribery.
I'm talking about the officer having an incentive to actually follow the "guidelines." His cost to reject someone is basically zero. He gets rewarded nothing for letting you in. I'm not talking about the officer getting paid to let in people without a visa, I'm talking about having an incentive to actually do his job and not just chase reasons to reject people with no cost to a bunch of false positives.
Edit:
(As an aside, the US actually has a loophole that allows US businesses to bribe foreign officials, including for immigration, to get them to do their job that they were already obligated to do. So really they would just be legalizing it for "them + the rest of world" instead just "the rest of world." Pure American exceptionalism to realize grease payments are legitimate and helpful everywhere but magically the US)
Regarding payments to foreign officials, the act draws a distinction between bribery and facilitation or "grease payments", which may be permissible under the FCPA, but may still violate local laws. The primary distinction is that grease payments or facilitation payments are made to an official to expedite his performance of the routine duties he is already bound to perform.
You won't believe how many borders I've crossed without paying bribes, or for that matter how little attention to metrics or the goodness of people crossing was paid at the one border that did garnish their staff's wages with an unofficial dollar fee for everyone...
While we're telling stories, here's two tales from me
1) Robbed at the Mexican border by police. They didn't even bother asking me, just took it. They get no real reward for jailing people so they were very happy for the $180 and then left me the fuck alone.
2) Enter USA. Passport, everything good, everything legit. Insane border patrol degradingly strip searched me, watched me as I performed bowel movements, jailed me, took me halfway across the state in a prisoner van, and then ran up $1k in medical bills while they search my body for drugs that didn't exist. Unceremoniously dumped at the border with no apologies when absolutely nothing unlawful was found. Still debt collectors chasing me for this.
Now, which was fairer? Definitely getting robbed. The Mexican just wanted his reward. The US CBP could only get a reward by getting me arrested.
Now do both societal models suck? Yes they do. But as a guy on the street, I cannot change society, especially if I am an immigrant presenting at the border to a country I've never been to in my life. What I can do is get robbed of $200, and be in a fairer position than getting robbed of $1k of medical bills and a day in jail I'll never get back, or deported while some officer tries to win some dumb metric.
I want the border officer to have more incentive to rob me than to deport me or send me to prison for false charges.
That is the reality I am dealing with. Not a made up la-la land where top-down society is going to be changed by the immigrant presenting at the border. Legalized bribery is relative fairness in this world we live, compared to many of the actual alternatives many people have on the ground where they are staring at someone who gets to play god and the only question they have is how they can maximize their rewards.
There is no world in which police don't rob someone, either via taxes/salary, fees, or bribes. The question then is how to game their robbery to best help the rest of humans, not just hope magically they will be nice.
I've lived in that world for many years.
I mean, why on earth wouldn't he do both if there's any incentive to do the latter, especially if he's dealing with individual immigrants rather than a people smuggling racket that might offer repeat business? You're accusing me of talking about "made up la la land" (i.e. the majority of the civilized world where border guards are paid flat salaries, not deportation bonuses) whilst inventing a society in which legalized theft from immigrants somehow results in border guards defying orders and incentives to scrupulously ensure all the "good" people get in.
Therefore in the USA corruption model you end up with a bunch of false arrests while in the LatAm corruption model you end up with a bunch of fast robberies but not so much the lengthy deportation/arrest of innocents based on the officer thinking that's the bigger reward.
The way I've had this play out time and time again is my shit gets robbed in the third world but I have no problems entering, and the exact opposite issue with the USA.
Of course you could point to say the Swedish model where as far as I can tell they have no incentive to do any job whatsoever. I've entered Stockholm straight on a flight from a sketchy part of Iraq and no one even bothered to look at me or even question where I was coming from or what I might have with me. Their border guards must just lounge in a room drinking tea and draw their salaries or something.
But for countries with obsessive security operations and deportation targets, the incentive to pass the possible criminal onto the next stage of the process involving different sets of border guards doesn't disappear after you've helped yourself to their petty cash. Indeed if they're not outraged, that's a pretty good indication they're hiding something and you're doing great detective work, and if they are, maybe you just find their comments and threats annoying and want to send them to the deportation centre to know what real mistreatment looks like.
Mine is I've both been robbed, and "not" arrested (but jailed) by border patrol. It doesn't play out how you've claimed. The robberies are swift and then they eject you so they can rob the next guy. The jailings eat up their resources for hours. No one that can rob more innocent people is going to waste their time on a long-shot arrest of the innocent when they could be out there robbing 10x more people. The jailers will actively actually complain to you while you're arrested that it's eating up their time.
Now I'm just some guy on the internet, so I don't expect you to believe my actual reality over the ideological theories you have in your head. So all I have to say is if you keep crossing borders I expect some day you'll learn it the way I've learned it. I didn't come to my conclusions through theory but rather seeing just how much fairer robbery is in real life and how it is better at producing positive incentives.
Or even less your first theory about how a bribe based system is necessary for an immigration system to "bring in good productive people" which frankly is a 180 degree pivot from a story about border guards indiscriminately thieving from everyone, as well as obviously falsified by the many countries where border staff neither demand unofficial payment for entry nor routinely assume that anyone who looks a bit funny is an illegal alien or a drugs mule.
1) US model, guards only rewarded for catching criminals or deporting. Lots of false negatives at no cost to guards so they fuck with you a lot for no apparent reason. Canada somewhat similar.
2) LatAm model, bribes/theft to incentivize the to not burn up time with false negatives, but they sonetimes are rewarded enough for true positives to not just let them go.
3) "Swedish" model. Straight salary and then not give a fuck. Seems everyone gets through with not much thought.
LatAm model seems most practical of what I've seen but I haven't spent much time in Europe or Asia, mostly middle east, the Americas, and southeast asia.
LatAm model where they're too busy robbing people to care about actual threats (who are generally particularly happy to pay them off, including offers of recurring payments) seems like obviously the worst of both worlds. Though frankly my own LatAM border highlights were watching Ecuadorian airport staff meticulously searching the multiple suitcases every local family brought with them from Colombia and then not even bothering with a token gesture at my bag, and having no real issues at land borders despite crossing them with a strikingly different-looking temporary passport. Apparently the Bolivian border guard was enthusiastic enough about his job to give US Americans a lecture on why they had to pay to arrange a visa-on-arrival everyone else got for free
ICE folks seem to be sometimes confused about citizen versus non-citizen:
* https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/aug/05/us-citizens-...
* https://globalnews.ca/news/11309378/kenny-laynez-ice-detaine...
Hah, I totally believe it. When I moved to the US on a K-1 fiancé visa, I stood in the non-immigrant line at LAX (moving at its usual glacial pace, well over an hour or more in line), only to be "told" that I was in the wrong line, because I was immigrating to the US (It's not: it's a non-immigrant visa with a defined path to immigration: https://travel.state.gov/content/travel/en/us-visas/immigrat...).
So after realizing I was arguing at a brick wall, I schlepped over to the (thankfully shorter, but still notable) immigrant visa line, waited, waited... with the absolutely predictable result that when I got to the counter I got a withering look and a tone that made it clear the agent felt she was speaking to a slow-minded child. "This is a non-immigrant visa. You need to go to that line." "I know, that line sent me here." "You need to go to that line." Thankfully that time I got a different agent. Nearly missed my connecting flight to Seattle, even though I had planned for a 4.5 hour layover for the visa process.
I have worked abroad many times and work permits were always under heavy scrutiny by my own company, to the degree that we send one unhappy soul home mid week because some regulations were not met and he came back week smiling because he got a pay rise as comparable rated as local was a requirement.
If the visa waiver suddenly no longer allows working business trips to the USA this is huge news. The terms of the waiver explicitly state it's allowed but it seems not in practice.
This is a definite "get out now" to anyone on a ESTA in the USA right now. Attending a conference, trade show or consulting on a build out of battery plant?" Get out now.
Have you read the requirements? Business visas or ESTA waivers have never allowed "work", there is nothing sudden about it. You can attend conferences and trade shows and have meetings. You can not "work" though.
I'm not an immigration lawyer so I don't know exactly what the requirements cover and what they don't. You are not allowed to "engage in active employment", but I have been permitted in paid for by my employer to attend meetings with company colleagues which is apparently okay.
I imagine a Korean engineer or project manager visiting to meet colleagues and inspect the site should be okay on a business visa or waiver. One who was there working on plans or overseeing construction might not be. You would hope the company had carefully checked these things.
No one was sold on throwing international professionals in jail just for showing up to do a job they took in good faith. That's clearly wrong, in a way that rounding up the "bad" people isn't. And so it shows up the horrifying implications of current policy.
Take a drive through the streets of Duluth and you will see more signs in Korean than English.
https://www.ice.gov/news/releases/ice-atlanta-announces-resu...
Being accurate is less important than trying to get the lie out in front of as many eyeballs as possible, so the lie can be repeated in front of people who might not realize this sort of information offhand.
Good faith is a peace treaty, not a suicide pact, or opening your wallet to a conman, who goes back on every deal he makes.
(And this conman takes your tax money, and then instead of providing you the services that he is required to - by law, witholds it for reasons of pure spite and caprise. If he won't hold up his end of what he is required to, why should anyone else lift a finger to extend any courtesies to him?)
450 people arrested. I am skeptical of even that number. 450 working here illegally? Ok… prove it. Names and visa statuses please. The raid happened yesterday, you’re telling me they have conclusive proof 450 people are working illegally less than 24 hours later? Not remotely likely
Much more likely? 450 koreans working here legally but not carrying papers on them because american is supposed to be a free country.
The Immigration and Nationality Act (INA) requires every noncitizen who is 18 years old and over to carry evidence of their immigration “registration documents” at all times.
Noncitizens refer to lawful permanent residents (green card holders) and other nonimmigrants in the U.S., including but not limited to foreign students, exchange visitors, and foreign workers. “Registration documents” effectively refer to valid immigration documents.
Looks like they did have legal visas
Also, detained != deported. If you have been stopped by a police officer for a traffic ticket and couldn't leave at will, you were being detained too.
Hyperbole isn't helpful.
We spent the entire Cold War criticizing “papers, please” culture so at the very least seems like we should recognize this as a major change and do something old-fashioned like passing a law to make it legal. The free countries like France or Spain which have similar requirements have actual legal authorization making the terms clear.
The people detained were suspected of being here illegally and weren't citizens. Being detained is not the same as being deported, and is simply holding until more information is known. The INA was created before the cold war and only applies to non-citizens, which is a milder policy than a lot of developed countries. Plus, while I'm not inclined to believe everything the government says, immediately rejecting government data because it violates your desired world view is childish, especially when there's no reason to doubt it.
The people detained included US Citizens who weren't carrying documentation of their citizenship.
> "...The judicial warrant for the search at the Hyundai plant named just four people. Relying on that warrant, ICE detained nearly 500 people. DHS admitted that included U.S. citizens, permanent residents, and people lawfully here on visas.'"
https://bsky.app/profile/maxkennerly.bsky.social/post/3lydsb...
It's an absurd law for basic reasons: if US citizens are not required to carry proof of citizenship, and non-citizens are, then the law either is totally pointless and unenforceable; or (in this case) trigger-happy police unlawfully detain US citizens on suspicion. It's a Catch-22: a US citizen is not obligated to carry *the papers proving they're not obligated to carry papers*.
https://internationalservices.gwu.edu/sites/g/files/zaxdzs64...
> immediately rejecting government data because it violates your desired world view is childish, especially when there's no reason to doubt it.
You appear to have confused me with someone else. That said, given both the highly politicized climate and the many recent examples of claims being dropped or falling apart in court, I think it’s prudent to only trust things defended in a court of law. It’s certainly plausible that there was a tip about immigration fraud which meant that they had clear cause for stopping people but it also wouldn’t be surprising if people under intense pressure to hit quotas made some bad calls. I’m sure that many of the numbers they report are valid - large chunks of the economy depend on foreign labor - but expect the final numbers will be substantially lower.
In 2025, people go from one to the other without ever getting a chance to legally contest it.
Hell, they go from one to the other when they win the legal contest.
There's no need to play Devil's advocate for this.
People are being ARRESTED wrongly and without due process or consequences for the mistake - not just detained.
Carrying water for the lawless kleptocracy isn’t a good look.
"Trust the experts!"
>Much more likely? 450 koreans working here legally but not carrying papers on them because american is supposed to be a free country.
The facts will inevitably be: hundreds of Korean nationals were illegally working in the US. The correction will be a small blurb somewhere, posted months from now, after the next fake new outrage comes about.
Trust the experts only makes sense if you’re talking about something where experts exist, and are speaking.
ICE et all is a goon squad, and most of their employees have only a high school diploma and a few months experience driving around in white vans disappearing seniors. If i need that done, i know who to trust. If i need the truth? They are not experts in the truth.
But ok, let’s say we believe them. By their own stats, 30% of the people they arrest are let go without charges or deportation. So by their own accounting, 450 arrests will be 315 deportation/incarcerations, and 135 people treated like cattle for having the wrong skin color or an accent. And given the complete lack of due process why on earth should we even believe them about the 315?
I am not an immigration judge or a prophet, so I don't know how every case will turn out, but 450 is a lot. It's enough that even if some are here legally, as would be expected since people are detained for reasonable suspicion not proof, it would still be hundreds of illegal immigrants.
Most of the immigrants are not from South Korea, they're from central/south america. My understanding of the situation so far is that some South Koreans came here to manage the project, some on questionable visas themselves, and they hired hundreds of laborers (illegally). If you want to build a factory in the US you should follow the laws we have, you can't pick and choose which laws to follow.
Some examples: https://www.justice.gov/pardon/clemency-grants-president-don...
And no, not following you - just replying to all the comments that blindly believe a state media outlet from a gov run by kleptocrats.
Reading the article it looks like the problem is he said he "lives" in the US. Technically work visas are for working temporarily in the US, living permanently in the US requires a green card.
Of course they probably wouldn't have deported him for that under Biden, the current administration is just trying to find every excuse to deport to meet quotas.
I'm just saying that I advise all my friends on similar visas to say they're "working" in the US if asked, rather than say "living". Don't give people with power over you any excuse to ruin your life.
It's a $7.6 billion factory that produces exclusively electric vehicles, employs "1,400+" (ultimately 8,500 [b]) and is claimed as the "largest economic project in Georgia history". By way of background—here's the wiki,
[a] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hyundai_Motor_Group_Metaplant_...
And (lots) more background from IEEE Spectrum (someone had recently posted to HN),
[b] https://spectrum.ieee.org/hyundai-metaplant-georgia ("Hyundai’s Metaplant Seeks Hard-Working Robots")
I trust nothing coming out of a federal level government agency under this administration. They have proven time and time again to lie and then double down when wrong.
This has been the pattern of all of the ICE raids anywhere. If you don't look American and don't have a US passport or a valid visa on your person, to the jail you go. They routinely arrest latino US citizens.
More than a little skepticism is required when reading a state-run media feed.
When confronted with this, they then attempted to claim that those citizens actually attacked ICE agents.
When confronted with video evidence to the contrary, they attempted to pursue charges, and have failed in almost all cases.
ICE and ATF claims aren't worth the air they use up to say.
ICE, by their own account, has a pretty solid track record now of arresting people en masse, to pump up numbers, and then sorting out who is actually working illegally much later… after dehumanizing and incarcerating people unjustly.
So, i don’t believe their numbers and i don’t believe that they know who they have arrested.
So someone hired them. What business managers and leaders are being charged with hiring illegal workers? Do we even have a single manager/leader/owner charged?
He did the US white collar sin of stealing from other rich people.
He could have stolen from the poors (read: bottom 99%) and got away with it. He targeted the top 1%, and well, yeah.
And then this year, those Wells Fargo exec penalties were reduced to a mere pittance. https://occ.gov/news-issuances/news-releases/2025/nr-occ-202...
This also coincided with some major donations from Wells Fargo to our current president's inaugural parade. Quite a coincidence. https://www.snopes.com/news/2025/05/02/trump-wells-fargo-ina...
Locally, we had an HSI raid on a business that had 10+ illegal underage workers living in an illegal bunkhouse built in the back of their building.
No criminal charges for the owner or any managers, no fines that have been reported for the numerous amount of code violations in their flophouse, and every day I drive by the building on my way to work and a 100k truck + very expensive boat are parked out front.
It’s an affront to justice to see these crooks getting rich and laughing to the bank!
When reporters asked DHS about that when they were crowing about their "roundup" of 900 or so workers. "That's not part of the scope of this. We don't have any plans to investigate this".
For all the people who crow about legality... overstaying a visa, etc., is typically a misdemeanor. Aiding someone in staying in the country without authorization? Felony. "Tough on crime", my ass.
It's a sign for how thoroughly defeated (or captured) the "opposition" party is in the United States that they are incapable of adopting a coherent position about this exact situation.
How are we letting the 1% get away with this? They give tacit approval to immigrants to break the law in order to work in the United States, creating an unprivileged underclass that they can abuse. Then, when some kind of enforcement happens, the capital class suffers no consequences and the poor workers are inhumanely rounded up and deported.
Criticizing the wealthy is truly the third rail in American politics. Other than vehement support of Israel, supporting the rich at the expense of the downtrodden is the only assailable, bipartisan political "norm" remaining.
And they love this shit btw. It's not just cold opportunistic use of the incentives and systems they find. They love the unjust power it gives them in their personal domains and over the people around them. It's why they so reliably support trump in the end. They want serfs and he wants them to have serfs.
Trump's own donors systematically hire illegals:
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2024/dec/20/uline-mexica...
And no-one is thinking that the only reason reality tv shows don't end in disaster is because it is a tv show, i.e. an artificial and contained/constrained environment.
Not only is there a carefully designed endgame, it's so well hidden in pretexts within pretexts, that journalists, opposition, even political theorists can't for certain declare it, except that it's overthrow.
1. Chaos - it’s good for kleptocracy, and is a denial-of-service attack on our attention
2. The appearance of something being done. Dems represent the status quo, people are sick of the status quo. Something appearing to happen is better than the status quo for a lot of people. Biden deported ~2x more people in 2024 than trump has so far. ICE raids are a performance.
3. Like everything else they do, it’s a shakedown. You want protection from the raids and the chaos? Come kiss the ring of your local maga don.
1) As much as JD Vance and his puppetmaster wishes they were the president, they are not. The tech fascism isn't happening, just regular kind. What you're seeing here with the "deregulation" is just a big fat scoop of plain corruption. Give Herr Führer a nice golden trinket and he deregulates your industry or tariffs your competitors.
2) While they are deregulating heavily, there's absolutely zero sense of "Small Government" going on. You need only look at the oppression of groups like LGBT people. There's no bigger government than controlling which toilets people use or inspecting the genitals of children if they want to participate in sports.
And outside of LGBT rights, just look at the whole situation around Israel. Literal secret police going around arresting people for non-violent protest and simple thoughtcrime.
Privatization and increasing state authority are not mutually exclusive. On the contrary, fascist regimes in the 20th century were very notable for their intense privatization.
Regardless, this is going to cost Hyundai a lot of time and money, which will disincentivize them from hiring illegal workers again.
That's good for legal workers and America.
Assuming they did hire illegal workers, which hasn’t been remotely proven - are you sure that’s the incentive? Or is it more like “don’t do business in the US, it’s chaos” or more likely the intended effect: “make sure you pay off MAGA before you start construction”
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/sep/10/hyundai-fact...
This gov lies. Everything they say should be questioned.
So yeah, doing business in the US sucks. Crooked US companies hire illegal workers to bump their margins, work gets stopped, you get blamed, a bunch of legal workers go to jail for a bit, a bunch of undocumented workers get deported, and nobody in charge of hiring at the US contractors experiences any kind of accountability. Win for USA tho?
> "“I don’t think that a beautiful baby girl needs — that’s 11 years old — needs to have 30 dolls,” Trump said. “I think they can have three dolls or four dolls, because what we were doing with China was just unbelievable. We had a trade deficit of hundreds of billions of dollars with China.”"
https://thehill.com/homenews/5283281-trump-dolls-economic-po...
Terrorized and scooped up day laborers during peak harvest season. Genius move right there.
Emancipated and freed up slaves during peak harvest season. Genius move right there.
You think none of those 450 people are in the country and working illegally?
As for carrying id - yeah i carry my drivers license. A drivers license isn’t proof of citizenship, nor is it a work visa.
Mostly what irks me about this, besides people blindly believing the words of a corrupt kleptocratic government, is that this is just cruelty for show to make people think something’s actually changing. So far they have deported half of people the biden admin deported in a year. It’s been over six months.
If you actually wanted to solve the problem, you’d skip arresting workers and lay down harsh jailtime for ceos who hire workers with visas. But the cruelty and the show is the point. As is building up a loyal army of goons who are practiced at disappearing people
They are not "illegal aliens".
If they've overstayed their visa or their visa doesn't permit them to work, I'm confident they'll be sent back to wherever they came from.
I've traveled and worked in other countries. You have to carry your passport (or a certified copy of it) along with your visa everywhere in case you are stopped by law enforcement - otherwise, out you go.
This is normal stuff, people, and these workers should know that.
You have to carry passport everywhere only in police states like USA or Russia.
I've lived and worked in countries in South America and Africa and if, as a foreigner, you are stopped (which happened randomly on roads and in cities) and don't have your papers, you could be deported. It was recommended by the US State department to carry a certified copy of my passport and visa information.
The Trump administration has been in court several times already for trying to deport people who, not only are not supposed to be deported, but whose deportation would and is be illegal.
Even if they're released, ICE is known to be abusive and inhumane in it's detention practices.
Your response reeks of "they'll be proven to be illegals soon enough, and then all the abuse is fair game". Disgusting.
https://www.reuters.com/investigates/special-report/usa-immi...
It wouldn’t surprise me if they were overly aggressive in what they used visas for. It’s also possible they hired a low quality firm to do their visas (some of the big 5s subcontract to some terrible sub tiers) and they simply did the paperwork wrong.
Similar situation have happened to my coworkers when going on foreign assignment.
If they came to the USA legally it's hard to understand how they didn't have the right to do things like consult on the build-out of the new factory.
If anyone wants to argue the ESTA doesn't allow this (despite the explicit wording that it does) you're basically saying no more international business conferences and no more business trips to USA offices without a very heavy weight multiyear immigration process.
Which is fine if you want to come out and suggest that. It'll kill what's left of Vegas, the airlines, conference centers, etc. It would also harm any international business in the USA but if you really really want to go around saying "ICE are right to detain the South Koreans here" I'm OK with that. I'll make sure that people from my home country understand that the USA is completely closed for business.
As an American, I can't imagine why anyone would risk coming here for a conference unless it was truly make-or-break. A clerical error in your visa could land you in jail indefinitely in Somalia. The risk/reward is way off.
Whistleblowers and local reporting [0] indicate lax safety standards in the construction of the plant, with three dead by May. OSHA has opened at least fifteen investigations into the construction site [1]. The latest story on OSHA investigations is dated today [2], and it mentions that OSHA did not receive reports of several accidents. That might well be because some of the injured were undocumented workers. That recent report mentions Glovis EV Logistics America by name and two unidentified subcontractors as targets of the OSHA investigation.
I would not be at all surprised if OSHA didn't have ICE raid this place to shut it down before more people got hurt.
[0] https://www.wjcl.com/article/hyundai-bryan-county-constructi...
[1] https://www.enr.com/articles/60802-third-fatality-recorded-a...
[2] https://www.gpb.org/news/2024/09/05/osha-investigating-one-h...
https://www.nbcchicago.com/news/local/what-happened-to-foxco... https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38518446 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37392169
But yes, raiding that sure would be another massive hit, further helping destroy America's reputation & isolating us from the world. Which based on all evidence & actions, is what this administration is doing: destroying the US empire's soft power as fast as possible. With Gabbard working basically for the opposition to make sure foreign influence campaigns & meddling to have free reign to run amock as they please, as well.
i think the reason there is no pushback is that things are happening too fast at an unprecedented scale that we can't even envision the consequences, let alone predict them. we are completely unprepared for this and by the time we can figure out how to deal with it, or even stop it, it will be to late.
it is also possible that many believe that this will stop by itself with the next president, and so there is no point in trying to stop things now. in a way i actually agree with that. walking in unity but realizing your error and changing course is a better choice than risking a civil war.
civil war sounds alarmist, and maybe it is, but i fear that without consensus on what is the right course of action, worse without consensus that the current trajectory is bad, i don't see any other outcome. before anything can be done, a consensus on what that should be is simply necessary. and unfortunately, it should be obvious that there is no such consensus now. if there were, we wouldn't even have this controversy.
An incident like the Gracchi brothers' populist power grab, which led to the first significant outbreak of political violence in Rome in centuries, was not immediately transformative but it did sow the seeds of conflict.
I personally think Trump, and especially Jan 6th, is the Gracchi brothers moment of the USA.
All of the powerful psycopaths have seen what one aspiring dictator can get away with. Trump will keep pushing over norms and other pillars of society and the next one will be starting much further along.
On the other side every democracy looses a bit focus over time and laws to keep government clean get softened, IMHO.
But let’s say the next election happens and the opposition will be voted in (if not, god knows where this ends) , then there will be a government with a state apparatus in tatas. They have the burden but also the opportunity to rethink how things are supposed to work and can make changes that most previous governments did not even thought possible.
Maybe, I don’t know. But maybe this slightly painful time is part of a renewal process that in the end will be helpful. And Trump of all people makes it involuntary possible.
The main response was a series of milquetoast foot-dragging prosecutions that accomplished little more than ralling the Republicans around him and giving him even more media attention.
Prevent people voting ?
ensuring the executive can't silence the other two powers and put a violent personal army on the streets of the USA. duh.
the current events provide a wakeup call that has the potential to galvanize change. as i said, what we need is a consensus. hopefully the next government will realize that too, and work towards that. otherwise it is up to us individuals to work on that too.
Similarly, Germany was the de facto enemy of the Ally aligned world in the 40s and only a few short decades later best friends with most.
You can identify countless similar atrocities in US history after which relations stabilized within a few years.
Most in life are short term oriented and it's rare that these things produce lasting effects on perception.
Does anyone care or even remotely think about what Bush did as president 20 years ago? Some politically oriented and historically minded folks yes, 99% no.
They really have to be long lasting and persistent transgressions to produce generational distrust e.g. Japan invading China/Korea many times over the last few hundred years.
However the new gen seems far less concerned about this too.
Given Trump's larger than life character/ego/presence, it's more likely that anything he does will be attributed to him instead of the country as a whole. Which makes his actions perhaps even less impactful than a more neutral presenting president doing the same.
I don't think that's a great example. A few years after the bombs, Douglas MacArthur was ruling Japan. They didn't have much of a choice. Japan was occupied for almost 7 years, had their constitution rewritten to make them essentially reliant on the US for security.
It's undeniable that by and large Japanese sentiment towards the US bounced back quickly, despite a traumatic and expansive war
Western and Japanese companies alike started moving production outside Japan once wages started eating into profit margins. Today, underemployment is common in Japan and the low birth rate is one of several symptoms of the economic stagnation that began in the early '90s. Populist governments won't be far behind.
My understanding is that generally they expected a MUCH more severe set of penalties and occupation after losing - especially given the unconditional surrender, and instead got a stable and functional provisional government for the next 7 years.
---
Basically - Japanese sentiment is not a parallel to this. That time:
1. Japan started hostilities with a surprise attack
2. Lost, complete with unconditional surrender
3. Was then occupied by a government that was more stable, left much of the existing civilian infrastructure in place, and forgave many key figures (not the least of which was the emperor)
4. Then that government helped them roll out "new deal" style social reforms.
That is absolutely, utterly at odds with the current situation. There - the Allied powers were relatively graceful, culturally aware, and interested in a stable, functional government.
Here - We're insulting our friends, from a position where there's no moral high ground to stand on. Personally, I don't think they'll forget so quickly, and I think things will get much worse if the US continues down this path.
Can we rebuild those relationships? Sure, seems likely on a long enough timespan, but it takes a hell of a lot more effort to get it back than it does to throw away.
Then Trump decided his shitty Nobel Prize mattered more and threw 20 years of hard work in the dump.
The consensus in India is that America is perfidious. You claim that countries have goldfish memories, but that doesn’t seem to be the case with Indo-American relations. It was immensely hard to build this relationship and easy to burn it.
But who knows? Maybe you have an insight into how Indian people think.
If the numbers swing 5%, the US may suddenly have a radical change in foreign policy and governorship.
Seen as recently as the 2024 election.
Regardless, I'm discussing the opinion of the populace, not the political leadership.
You can't endear a country's people to you by installing a puppet government
...and then there's a regime change like "your capital city and every industrial center is firebombed to oblivion, kindergarteners are begging on streets, soldiers are coming back from POW camps to find their home burnt to ground and their whole family dead, and the occupying forces are executing high ranking officers of the previous regime for war crimes, just to drive the point home that their ideology will never be tolerated ever again."
If they don't they are idiots. To name a few things: 9/11, the foreign policy disaster and money pit of the Iraq War/GWOT, the easily-avoidable GFC.
Those were both significant events in their own right and fundamental causes of the Trump presidencies.
It is as resilient as the people (in power?) want it to be:
> To suppose that any form of government will secure liberty or happiness without any virtue in the people, is a chimerical idea. If there be sufficient virtue and intelligence in the community, it will be exercised in the selection of these men. So that we do not depend on their virtue, or put confidence in our rulers, but in the people who are to choose them.
* James Madison, Papers 11:163, https://founders.archives.gov/documents/Madison/01-11-02-010...
I, the GP, am Canadian, so have my own system to worry about.[0]
But if you're going to talk about the pros and cons of a country's system, it is useful to a certain extent to look at what the architects were thinking. And in this particular case they did have some insight into the weaknesses of what they thought up.
Another that I heard in a recent podcast[1] was the fact that the existence / creation of political parties was not put in anywhere in the US system (even though they had existed in the UK already), and so you can get into tribalism/clans, which we are now seeing the effects of.
[0] https://sutherlandhousebooks.com/product/the-crisis-of-canad...
Many other latecomer nations didn't enjoy that kind of success - in fact many of them started with their first few presidents being brutal dictators, so they're under no illusion that their own "founding fathers" were infallible angels.
The US is not the first modern democracy; it's just the best at self-aggrandisement.
I think the main 'innovation' was the splitting up of the Crown / Executive.
One failing was not taking political parties into account. It's not like they were unknown at the time:
* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Political_party#18th_century
The political theories/philosophies developed by the founding fathers remain foundational for reasons.
Others trying to be him have not been able to replicate his success electorally. Lowest common denominator celebrity is key to his success.
Theres a good case to be made that he's an aberration and there won't be another demagogue after him to so effectively capture his audience and survive the corruption and incompetence that follows.
He has potential heirs that are smarter and more disciplined than him, but ironically that path doesn't lead you to a life of pop culture/paparazzi/TV celebrity.
Thats not to say we don't deserve to have lost significant trust and respect. But if you take the long view, it's not an extrapolation of this.
Neither is encouraging for the future.
And they weren't playing for the popular vote.
what'd we bounce into? what did we bounce back from? what effects are you talking about specifically.
I work in aerospace and the sentiment was exactly opposite. People cheered both Trump elections and were dead terrified of a blue win ruining contracts and business.
I don't ask because I am overtly political, I ask because I think it's fascinating that both sides seem to think we're a stone's throw from the apocalypse.. which very much seems to be projected onto the voter base on purpose..
The effects of this insular isolationism can only be explained by simplicity that doesn't hold up in reality: things will be more prosperous for us if we keep what we have to ourselves. But in truth growth is growth. To build prosperity, we need more production, which means more people. Perhaps your share gets bigger, but the pot gets smaller.
You are thinking of a tide that lifts all boats.
The people supporting these policies don't want all boats to be lifted - they want prosperity for themselves and subjugation for anyone else.
The power imbalance is the point. Better to reign in hell than serve in heaven.
> it's the fundamental idea that people coming here is bad
Too many people coming here that don't integrate and don't assimilate is bad. A nation cannot thrive with too many conflicting demographics. Multiculturalism working to the degree people want it to these days is a total fantasy. People coming here and extracting value from the economy to send home is also a problem.
> We can't even allow things from other countries to come here.
We don't want to be reliant on other nations. So we incentivize internal production, and disincentivize importing. You can argue that the way that the administration went about it was ineffective at accomplishing that, and that'd be another conversation.
> To build prosperity, we need more production, which means more people.
So incentivize the native population to have more kids. Incentivize technological innovation that doesn't require mass importation of foreigners.
Absolute howler.
It's a (pretty white supremacist-coded) fantasy to say that immigrants don't assimilate. They typically assimilate better than native-born citizens! Meanwhile the most economically dominant states are extremely ethnically diverse, and have been for the past century.
> People coming here and extracting value from the economy to send home is also a problem.
Another example of what would be a knee-slapper if it were a joke, but it is actually white supremacist dog whistle. Immigrants are an absolute boon. For example, per the Congressional Budget Office[1]:
> CBO estimates that the immigration surge will add $1.2 trillion in federal revenues over the 2024–2034 period.
This nativist dreck that has infected the country through algorithmic social media is going to wreck the future of the country, and the sad part is that the declining fortunes it causes will still be wrongfully blamed on immigrants.
Trump got a higher percentage of the Black vote than any Republican since Gerald Ford. He nearly won an outright majority of Latino voters. How did a white supremacist candidate manage to do that? False consciousness? Marc Maron: "Progressives have really got to figure out how to deal with this buzzkill problem. You do realize we annoyed the average American into fascism."
I...wasn't replying to you?
Anyway I wasn't trying to change anyone's mind. I'm just pointing out facts, not trying to make a conversion from what's obviously someone's religion.
Although I know that being politically correct is not in vogue at the moment, I do care and empathize, and try to be accommodating with my language.
What is the preferred way to refer to people who support the transition of the USA into a fascist christian ethnostate?
Our most prosperous times came in the wake of great immigration waves. I think the expectation is that "assimilation" is:
- a one-way street and - immediate
Neither is true, of course. German assimilation from the mid 19th century took several generations. Same with Italian assimilation in the late 19th/early 20th century.
What about the American rich extracting wealth overseas? Vacations, real estate, yachts constructed in foreign countries, investing in companies in other countries, etc.
I think you're asserting more money leaves the US economy because an average person comes to the US (legally or illegally) and sends a portion of their paycheck back home, but I'd bet American born citizens spend/send far more money out of the country...
> Too many people coming here that don't integrate and don't assimilate is bad.
But ... why? This is stated as a matter of fact without any real qualification. Why is different "bad." We have far too many examples in our very own country of different - sometimes dissonant - cultures in the same space and still enjoying success as a society and a nation.
> A nation cannot thrive with too many conflicting demographics.
Again ... why not? NYC is our prime example of this working and the city succeeding despite some very, very different cultures side-by-side. There are also monoculture countries that have fallen far behind us to use as counterexamples.
> People coming here and extracting value from the economy to send home is also a problem.
This is my biggest issue. If you work here, you're producing something for this country. What you do with your money is frankly, your business. In either event, you're also spending money on housing, food, etc. You're both producing in this country and contributing to our economy. If you want to send the rest back to Mexico, why is that my business? Why does that hurt me?
The ability to reject someone before they come in, or force them to go away, is usually never an option you have control over - except for immigration policy in a democratic republic. If we weaken the ability to enforce immigration laws, then we're losing one of the strongest tools for maintaining a cohesive community.
If allowing diversity in your community is so great, then why is the blue city Austin, Texas seeing a simultaneous rise in homelessness and drop in property prices?
If allowing immigrants in without any control is so great, then why would rich metropolises like New York and Chicago react so badly to the busses of immigrants sent to them from Texas during the Biden regime?
If your political party refuses to acknowledge that there are immigrants who believe their first loyalty is Sharia Law, the Chinese Communist Party, or whatever else, then why would law-abiding U.S. citizens take your position seriously?
If your vision of the future presents a better world for non-citizens vs. the citizens who have a right to be here, then why would you expect fascism to loose the next election?
Additionally...
If lecturing the largest bloc of US citizens about why they're inherently privileged and guilty is so great, then why did the political party pushing this loose the presidency in 2016 and 2020?
That is an idea. Although we murdered 9/10 of them and relegated the rest to stinking refugee camps (oh, sorry, "reservations") for eight or nine generations. And even today we have a huge problem with murder/kidnapping/disappearance of young women of those groups, which we're apparently unwilling to address.
Any other bright ideas?
What are the conflicting demographics ?
US is so big and diverse from its founding - it seems to have worked out pretty well
"People coming here" is not inherently good or bad. Some people would be good for the country, and some people would be bad. I'm speaking of individuals here, not groups. The issue is that the electorate at large feels like it has been given a choice between two extremes: "Effectively allow ANYONE to come here and stay as long as they want" and "Don't let ANYONE come here". If you give a people a choice of two extremes, don't be surprised if they choose the extremism you don't like.
Reconceptualize MAGA as voting AGAINST what the Democrats are offering, instead of FOR what Trump is offering, and it might make more sense.
The issue is trust. Why should voters trust that Kamala Harris will implement immigration policies they want? Why should they expect her not to yield to the most extreme elements in her party, which believe that borders are a fiction and should not exist? Look at Barack Obama's "evolution" on gay marriage over the course of his political career. Now take an issue that is far more important than gay marriage - how is she going to stop unlimited unskilled immigration? How is she going to stop fraudulent claims of refugee status? How is the whole immigration problem itself going to be solved, if you posit that every one of the 10 million "unauthorized immigrants", and every one of the refugee claimants, needs multiple appearances in court to resolve their situation?
It seems to me that many US people want their cake and also eat it. Cheap workers are good, but also illegal immigration is bad. You kinda need to pick one.
Every job (as an employee) I've ever had has required me to submit IRS form W-9[0] on my first day of employment (or before). It's a standard part of the on-boarding process. To clarify, the W-9 form is to provide your "Taxpayer Identification number" (TIN) to those who will be handling payroll/tax withholding (that is, your employer).
If you cannot provide a TIN, you are not allowed to begin working. If you don't have a TIN, presumably you don't have the right to work. Or is there something about the UK's processes I'm missing?
People apparently feel that the Dems are pro 'letting everyone in' -- an understanding created not just by what the Dems say and do on the topic (and others) but what their opponents say too.
If they don't want people to think they aren't pro-immigration then the Dems have dropped the ball on their messaging and actions.
For a similar and reasonably concrete example, the 'Harris is for they/them' ads and their impact is a worthy case study.
This is expected behavior, but not to be taken seriously as a moral argument. Preserving liberty and rule of law vs preserving money, so hard to choose...
It’s a little more complicated than what you wrote, but basically: yes.
[edit] Example study construction: pick some issue where there’s been a heavy propaganda push against it from one party, but a law they opposed passed anyway. Ideally, something like a tax increase, that can directly affect voters in a way they might reasonably be expected to understand and know about. Observe that the (say) tax hike affects not more than 2% of the population you’re studying. Survey. Observe that 35% or 40% of people say the new tax law increased their taxes, and very nearly all of them favor the party that opposed the hike and was claiming or implying it would affect more people than it did.
Repeat similar studies over a period of decades, always with familiar outcomes. Draw conclusions.
Separately, you can probe basic understanding of how our government & various policies or laws work. You’ll find half of everyone not knowing how marginal income tax rates work, that almost all the people who think our foreign aid spending is way too high believe it’s 10x, 20x, 30x higher than it actually is, et c. Generally speaking, voters hardly know how anything works, so of course they buy lies about it. That’s not me being shitty, it’s what the evidence overwhelmingly says is true. And this is far from an exhaustive treatment of alarming traits & behaviors of the electorate.
Projected by whom, by what means, and to what end?
Consider that both sides may have legitimate reasons to be concerned with this term that didn't apply to Trump's first term, and that what you see isn't simply some form of mass-manipulation or "projection onto the voter base."
The 2nd term is making fundamental changes to our economy that carry a promise of bearing fruit. Not only are those promises generally contested by economic experts, the short-term results have been unsurprisingly poor.
All most all the replies to your comment have nothing to do with the substance of what you said. The reality is that the us system is predominantly run by bureaucrats which make sweeping changes hard. This is a feature of the system.
This means that whatever party is in charge will have a harder time enacting the crazy.
I never understood the “my side”/“us vs them” from people. There is only one side and we are all on it.
1. If a democrat is elected, they will take all their guns (their campaign rhetoric keeps saying this will happen, but it continues being no part of democratic presidential campaign messaging, and hasn’t happened the times they warned it definitely would—this one’s fake)
2. Election security. But republicans keep getting into positions to investigate this and either not doing it (because they know it’s BS) or doing it and finding only a handful of mostly-accidental cases that don’t favor either party. Also fake.
3. Leftward shift around acceptance of non-standard sexual and social norms. This one’s real. Whether it’s a problem or just… fine and not worth worrying about? That’s another matter.
4. A bunch of totally wacky shit like litter boxes in classrooms. Fake.
5. Healthcare prices. Real! Democrats also worry about this.
6. Socialism. LOL we’re not remotely near it, very nearly nobody elected in the Democratic Party is left of center-right in most of the rest of our peer states, on economic issues and social safety nets and such. Fake issue.
7. Illegal immigrants increasing the crime rate (fake) and taking our jobs or driving down wages (true, with an asterisk that the effects are complicated, but sure, true) and bringing in drugs (you want citizen drug mules, they cross the border easier, or to just use shipping containers or cargo trucks entering the ordinary way with some greased palms as you can do crazy volume that way, this is fake)
8. Crime being out of control. Broadly, fake. (“But police stats could be…” yeah we have victimization surveys too, people study this and already thought of your objection. Again, fake)
9. Colleges being too liberal. Look at all that “fake” stuff above. Yeah gee I wonder why, dude. Real, but wholly self-inflicted.
10. Rampant fraud in social programs, by the people receiving the aid. This is extremely well-studied. Fake.
11. The budget deficit. Except Republicans are even worse for the budget than democrats, over the last 40 years. By, like, quite a bit. Mostly because they think tax cuts magically pay for themselves, plus Bush’s wars. They mocked the shit out of Gore for talking sense on this topic, and elected cut-taxes-and-spend Dubya. So. Real issue but they are extremely confused about who to vote for to improve it.
There are more but you get the idea. Yes, Fox News and Mark Levin and all them have convinced republicans the world is going to end if democrats win elections. But it’s largely based on completely made-up shit.
Left as an exercise for the reader to make a list for Democrats’ side. Nb how much of its worry about Republicans causing harm by trying to address the fake issues above. Probably most of it. And that’s a real thing that happens, to be worried about.
The key missing piece here is the guns will be taken from law abiding citizens while criminals will be undeterred. Add to this a concern over team blue's rhetoric about replacing police with social workers and mental health advocates.
It was a part of a few Democrat presidential campaigns, like Beto O'Rourke.
> 2. Election security. But republicans keep getting into positions to investigate this and either not doing it (because they know it’s BS) or doing it and finding only a handful of mostly-accidental cases that don’t favor either party. Also fake.
Due to a consent decree from the 80s, Republicans weren't allowed to do anything in this area until a judge finally refused to renew it in the late 2010s.
As long as the Federal Reserve and the Bureau of Labour Statistics keep saying the right things, the market will go up. And if they don't say these things, the president will replace them with somebody who will.
So even if this ends up direly for some of them individually, they all personally are confident that won't be them. And as long as it isn't this aligns with their general interests.
South Korea says 'many' of its nationals detained in raid on GA Hyundai facility
"What fault did your ancestors find in me, that they strayed so far from me? They followed worthless idols..."
SK embassy and Hyundai itself have significant liability in admitting or even acknowledging employment of illegals.
In less than 24 hours ATF atlanta is confidant all 450 people arrested were working illegally? Not likely possible, so they just lied.
But if you want to refute that you have to have a specific number. So your options are go slow, take a week to validate the legal status of all 450 people, or lie also.
An appropriate response from the employer is, "We have thorough records on all our employment, we take employment laws very seriously, and we believe to the best of our knowledge that our employees are in proper legal standing in compliance with the laws of the state of Georgia." (update: from the article, they say are committed and cooperating)
Also, Biden-era Dept of Labor accused Hyundai of using child labor throughout its supply chain. UNDER THE AGE OF 14 in an auto factory. But sure, let's presume innocence and assume the feds are the illegal ones on this next turn.
>>“Our investigation found SL Alabama engaged in oppressive child labor by employing young workers under the minimum age of 14, and by employing minors under 16 in a manufacturing occupation,” said Wage and Hour Division District Director Kenneth Stripling in Birmingham, Alabama. “Employers are responsible for knowing who is working in their facilities, ensuring that those individuals are of legal working age, and that their employment complies with all federal, state and local labor laws.”
No I assume it because their track record shows they arrest many people who aren’t breaking any laws. By their own stats they let about 30% of the people they arrest go. Assuming this was an average arrest, that means 450 is actually 315, and the 135 people wrongly arrested won’t receive anything resembling an apology.
I also suspect the stat of innocent people arrested will go up if they are ever forced to process the people they’ve tossed into concentration camps without due process.
The wrongful arrests aren’t a death sentence, it’s an inconvenience of getting caught up in a much larger willful breach of federal law. They’re probably back at work the next day. I’ve personally been detained by police wrongfully. Not a big deal.
I’d be a little more cautious about tossing around accusations of supporting crimes against children if I were you. Disgusting.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hyundai_Alabama_child_labor_...
No Hyundai employees were arrested, the carmaker said. LG Energy Solution, the battery manufacturer, said 47 of its employees were detained.”
- https://www.nytimes.com/2025/09/07/us/politics/hyundai-plant...
South korea has made a deal to bring everybody arrested home. Because without the due process you or I would expect if arrested, their citizens could be locked up for months without legal recourse or end up “deported” to a for-profit prison in a different country (aka trafficked into slavery).
Shocker of the year, lying gov caught lying.