82 pointsby treadump5 hours ago13 comments
  • the__alchemist4 hours ago
    As a veteran, I have optimism these active duty military troops will recognize their duty. "I will support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic". ICE is the best example of a domestic enemy I have seen.
    • aebtebeten4 hours ago
      I'm suspecting they'd stay neutral, but even that would be better than ICE alone: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46666605
    • Animats4 hours ago
      Law of war training for new troops was eliminated back in April.[1] The core concept that members of the US military have a duty to resist illegal orders is no longer taught to troops.

      Recall Trump's comments after several US members of Congress made a video along the lines of "you must refuse illegal orders." Trump called this "seditious behavior, punishable by DEATH!"[2]

      [1] https://www.veterannews.org/veteran-news/army-eliminates-sev...

      [2] https://www.npr.org/2025/11/20/nx-s1-5615190/trump-democrats...

      • 73kl4453dz2 hours ago
        That's not good, but their command structure will still have learned the LOAC, right?
        • Animats2 hours ago
          The parts of the command structure, Inspectors General and attorneys in the Judge Advocate General's office, that are supposed to enforce that have been gutted.[1] Secretary Hegseth said that the removals were necessary because he didn't want them to pose any "roadblocks to orders that are given by a commander in chief."

          [1] https://www.military.com/daily-news/2025/02/24/people-are-ve...

    • CrulesAll4 hours ago
      [flagged]
      • cursuve4 hours ago
        Can two things not be true at once? There are indeed "illegal immigrants", AND the current methods of enforcement are some straight up gestapo-BS in which themselves also illegal and warrant non-compliance. Why is this an either-or?

        The America I grew up in is fervently against kings, as a defining principle, and put the lawmaking powers purposefully in the hands of not the president, but in the representatives of the people. Unless you straight-up buy Nixon's view that "[...] when the president does it… that means that it is not illegal.", and maybe you do, this view doesn't pass any kind of scrutiny what-so-ever...

      • thisislife24 hours ago
        This and and the previous comment really highlights the true political divide between the Americans. I wonder if it is a flaw of such 2-party system (both that lean to the right-, and thus are inflexible to other political views) where others can't find space for less-extreme political views and ideas, and thus exacerbating the situation as people are forced to bracket themselves to only these two parties?
        • cursuve4 hours ago
          I certainly feel the two party system has really hampered us and largely contributed to where we are today. I never feel actually represented, yet nearly every candidate has to align themselves officially with one party or the other and tow that party line. Sure there is individual variance between representatives, but it's still mostly within a set of boundaries the party is more or less okay with. It sucks, and is often why the "just go vote" ethos feels about as inept as any other action or non-action I can take...
        • CrulesAll4 hours ago
          Both parties had this view even up to a decade ago. It was actually right-wing libertarian fanatics that advocated mass unchecked immigration with a view to cheap labor. The Koch brothers(now singular) and the vast amount of billionaires wanted a complete amnesty. Ronald Reagan did give a complete amnesty to Californians. Even Bernie Sanders warned about this years ago.
          • thisislife22 hours ago
            Immigration in the US has always been about addressing talent / labour shortage. Today though, whether it be in blue collar or white collar jobs, it is about wage suppression (and both the Democrats and Republicans are guilty of that). H1Bs and L1 visa (in IT) are great examples of this - one of my friend nearly doubled his salary after he became a US citizen, and says he now clocks out at sharp 5 / 6 PM whereas his other H1B colleagues feel forced to continue to slog on beyond that. (Interestingly, he is now looking to work for some European or Japanese companies, in the US, as he wants more than the 10-15 days annual leave American firms consider "generous", and also as some of these foreign international firms provide pension too).
      • secretsatan4 hours ago
        They can’t vote you absolute idiot
        • CrulesAll4 hours ago
          [flagged]
          • secretsatan4 hours ago
            I’m even confused about your use of relative? Relative to what?
          • secretsatan4 hours ago
            Even the trump administration can’t find evidence
            • CrulesAll4 hours ago
              [flagged]
              • secretsatan3 hours ago
                They’re not expecting to raise real Americans wages, they’re just going to lower their expectations
              • secretsatan3 hours ago
                You could provide a link

                No, it’s not me, i’m looking at the us descending into a third world country, but i have been an immigrant most of my life

              • secretsatan3 hours ago
                I will remind you that all those billionaires are sitting behind trump at his inauguration.

                Immigrants are a scapegoat

          • CrulesAll3 hours ago
            Relative to the kind of imbecile that uses the adjective absolute outside of math.
            • secretsatan3 hours ago
              I don’t think there’s any polite way to talk to people who spout bs without any evidence, you consume propaganda without question and expect others to refute you.
      • the__alchemist4 hours ago
        I encourage you to read the oath I'm referring to: It's notable compared to other historic officer oaths in that it deliberately does not mention the President. The word constitution is the key distinction.
        • CrulesAll3 hours ago
          I encourage you to understand the courtier's reply. I also encourage you to read Alinsky if you have not already memorized it. Telling troops to ignore the lawful orders of the CiC is called a coup.
          • 3 hours ago
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          • AnimalMuppet3 hours ago
            But are the orders lawful? That is the exact question. They are not lawful just because the president issues them.
  • secretsatan5 hours ago
    Infowars has been warning for decades this would happen, clearly just projection, where are all the militias vowing they would oppose this?
    • SkipperCat4 hours ago
      They all joined ICE.
    • colechristensen4 hours ago
      The militias are cosplaying cowards, the actual people of Minnesota are ramping up and succeeding in resisting ICE. There is a nonzero chance there will be a standoff between the national guard and the army in Minneapolis.

      Trump is trying to incite an insurrection so he politically gets a free hand to do whatever he wants. If Congress and the courts are too slow or too cowardly to get anything done, he might get what he wants.

      • 2OEH8eoCRo04 hours ago
        What militias? I always thought the state nat guard were the modern militias not the fat old man LARPers you hear talking in gun stores.
        • rolph4 hours ago
          civilians vs persons enlisted as government forces.

          https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Militia

          • 2OEH8eoCRo02 hours ago
            US from your link

            > The Militia Act of 1903 divided what had been the militia into what it termed the "organized" militia, created from portions of the former state guards to become state National Guard units

            • rolph2 hours ago
              yes, the present national guard is very much a government entity, and held to the same training standards as federal armed forces. they regularily hold joint training.

              the people at large however are not prevented from forming a militia or a posse, or volunteering to be deputized by a local police force.

              the common element is that they are responding to a domestic threat originated from government activities.

              the original conception of american government insists that the government exist at the consent of the governed, in service of the governed, and this consent is revoked when that government fails to colour inside the lines when interpreting the constitution of the USA

    • stefan_4 hours ago
      They only show up when another kid shot their parents in the face.
  • jaybrendansmith4 hours ago
    This is setting things up for a real conflict. Protesters, National Guard called by Walz, Troops coming in. I am absolutely certain the 1500 soldiers going in are hand-selected MAGA morons. Checkmate ... martial law declared!
    • sheikhnbake3 hours ago
      I'd be surprised if Walz has the spine to deploy the Guard in response.
      • QuantumGoodan hour ago
        Guard already deployed by Walz. How used, what will change, what will actually happen is up in the air.
  • edhelas4 hours ago
    French here, what was the the 2nd Amendment already?

    > A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.

    A yes, "necessary to the security of a free State", so, what about it?

    • quantummagic4 hours ago
      Many Americans don't value the 2nd amendment very much. Public opinion in Minnesota in particular, is largely in favour of strict gun laws. Many anti-gun advocates claim that developing a militia against the government is futile and even counterproductive.
      • CompanionCubee3 hours ago
        > Public opinion in Minnesota in particular, is largely in favour of strict gun laws. Many anti-gun advocates claim that developing a militia against the government is futile and even counterproductive.

        So a "have your cake and eat it too" situation.

    • rolph4 hours ago
      regulation of a militia. the apocrypha is that "the people" have uninfringed rights to arms, as a counter to a militia that is conveying tyranny.

      i have read, in various places, that the last straw initiating foment of open revolution was when the kings militia began "taking liberties" with the wives and daughters of the colonists. piecemeal resistance, consolidated to a social movement, and the "shot heard around the world" was loosed.

    • colechristensen4 hours ago
      We're not yet at the level yet.

      Just the possibility of an armed population resisting still gives them pause. But we're not at the level of the theoretical threat becoming realized.

      If the people too eagerly exercise it they'll be used as justification for further oppression. Resistance is political. Unfortunately most of our politicians are spineless cowards on both sides.

      But it is not at all a mystery about how things got to be the way they were in the 1930s. I've heard people I know advocate for atrocities.

    • jshier4 hours ago
      After the Civil War, nearly all states gave up on maintaining their own independent militia and they became the National Guard (a few states maintain poorly provisioned state guards). Ostensibly the Guard is run by the states but can be federalized at any time. Previous presidents only used that to deploy the Guard overseas, with a few exceptions (notably Eisenhower, to enforce the early civil rights legislation and court decisions). Unfortunately those powers were never reformed, so Trump has already deployed them domestically (though there have been court decisions against that), but it effectively means states can't use the Guard to protect against federal aggression (it would simply be immediately federalized). Any attempt to actually deploy state troops against federal law enforcement, even when they're aren't justly enforcing laws, would be met with the Insurrection Act, allowing the deployment of active duty troops against the states, not just the Guard. Trump has been eagerly awaiting that moment, as it would allow him to completely cut the state off from the rest of the country, including Congress (you're in rebellion, you have no representation), and lock their elections in legal limbo.

      Nowadays, the 2A is used simply to guarantee gun access to individuals, a movement underway since the early civil rights movement in the late '50s and largely confirmed with the Heller decision in '08. Unfortunately, that movement didn't bring any right to actually resist government overreach, which is why we haven't seen citizen militias form to violently resist ICE's own violence. They'd simply be killed and imprisoned and used to justify an increase in violence.

      Personally, these events have really exposed the moral bankruptcy of the modern 2A movement. They want guns, and the attendant increase in shootings that accompany that, but have brought no real ability to resist government violence along with it. So we have the negative without the purported positive.

      Obviously the next Congress and President will need to reform how the Guard works and how it can be deployed, otherwise we'll see this again.

  • windowpains3 hours ago
    The cold weather there may be a great way to prepare for the assault on Greenland. (Mostly joking :)
    • 73kl4453dz2 hours ago
      Anchorage is closer to Nuuk than to Minneapolis by air... Just saying.
  • atomicnumber34 hours ago
    Why did Minneapolis end up getting more ire than Chicago? I thought it was Chicago that Trump wouldn't shut up about this whole time
    • tptacek2 hours ago
      Because of the fraud scandal and the concentration of cases among the Somali community there (that those people are generally citizens and not immigrants or refugees is besides the point to the administration). The MN fraud story is a huge big deal in conservative media.
      • blactuaryan hour ago
        And the ringleader of the fraud was a white woman who is awaiting sentencing, but they ignore that part
      • Ferret7446an hour ago
        Is fraud legal for citizens? (Since you brought it up as a point)
        • tptacekan hour ago
          No, but the premise of the ICE/CBP flood to MN is that the fraud is being conducted by deportable people. Note that ICE/CBP has no statutory authority to enforce fraud laws.
    • greggoB4 hours ago
      Might have to do with the size of the city - I've heard through the grapevine that even Minneapolis is too big and they're thinking of shifting to some city in Maine or New Hampshire.

      "Too big" supposedly meaning orchestrating something that allows them to have the optics without the potential for fallout. This is really speculation though.

    • jshier4 hours ago
      They found a weakness to justify an increase in violence to their base: the day care corruption. Despite the fact that most of that was found and prosecuted years ago, right-wing influencers were successfully able to bring it back to the forefront, and the administration jumped on it to justify an increased ICE presence, naturally leading to the violence we see. They didn't get the same thing in Chicago, where ICE avoided most of the areas likely to see violence in the first place. And they didn't leave Chicago, they just aren't publicizing it like they were.
    • __MatrixMan__4 hours ago
      I'm not especially in the know about such things. Is there a Chicago politician that crossed Trump such that revenge against Chicago would be in the cards? I assume this is about Walz running against him. It would be California (due to Harris) but they're probably in a better position to fight back than Michigan is.
  • throw202512204 hours ago
    Fortunately they have the second amendment to protect themselves from an oppressive government.
  • vkou4 hours ago
    As the saying goes, the tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of the weak and the marginalized.
  • hulitu3 hours ago
    > Around 1,500 soldiers on standby for deployment to Minneapolis

    If you don't come to democracy, democracy comes to you.

  • noncoml4 hours ago
    This presidency reminds me a lot this speech from Knives Out: Onion Ring:

    “ If you want to shake things up, you start with something small. You break a norm or an idea or a convention, some little business model, but you go with things that people are kind of tired of anyway. Everybody gets excited because you're busting up something that everyone wanted broken in the first place. That's the infraction point. That's the place where you have to look within yourself, and ask: Am I the kind of person who will keep going? Will you break more things? Break bigger things? Be willing to break the thing that nobody wants you to break? Because at that point, people are not going to be on your side. They're going to call you crazy. They're gonna say you're a bully. They're gonna tell you to stop. Even your partner will say you need to stop. Because as it turns out, nobody wants you to break the system itself. But that is what true disruption is, and that is what unites all of us. We all got to that line, and crossed it.‘

    It’s like the following this recipe to break the system

    • andrewinardeer4 hours ago
      It's Knives Out: Glass Onion, but I'll take Onion Ring because it's Monday morning and I need a laugh before signing on.
      • 4 hours ago
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  • SubiculumCode4 hours ago
    It's amazing and sad to watch Republicans so quickly forget what 'Republic' means as they trash State Sovereignty and lick the Federal Boot...MAGA means RINO.
    • goatlover4 hours ago
      I guess "Don't Tread on Me" and states rights are just for red states. It's shameful watching all the hypocrisy.
      • 4 hours ago
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      • colechristensen4 hours ago
        So many people are like this. Their ideals only apply when they benefit people they like.
        • cheema334 hours ago
          You may not have meant to excuse the sad state we are in by presenting the "both sides are bad" argument. But it does have a strong whiff of it.

          Both sides are bad. No doubt about it. It has always been that way. But, one side takes being bad to a whole new level.

          Our choice has always been between bad and less bad. The voters decided to pull the lever for "massively bad" during the last presidential election because they could not tell the difference.

          • themaninthedark4 hours ago
            In agreement with sibling colechristensen but wanted to add.

            >The voters decided to pull the lever for "massively bad" during the last presidential election because they could not tell the difference.

            That is being intellectually dishonest, we had already had 4 years of Trump and similarly had 4 years of Kahmala with Biden.

            Saying they were ignorant or didn't understand is to ignore the electorate and their issues.

            • SubiculumCode3 hours ago
              The problem is pervasive propaganda and information bubbles...i.e., systemic.
            • AnimalMuppet3 hours ago
              We get to give one bit of feedback to "the system" every four years. After four years of Trump, the feedback was "we don't want that". After four years of Biden, the feedback was "not that, either".

              My impression of the US electorate is that they don't want illegal immigration, at least not in the volume and with the openness it was happening. They don't want immigrant trains rolling through Mexico. But they don't want the brutality and violence of the current crackdown, either.

              They don't want trans people on womens' sports teams, and they don't want the US taking over Greenland.

              And so on.

              So after four years, the majority of voters were choosing "not Biden, and not the Biden things we don't like" rather than "yes Trump".

              The place where it was "yes Trump" was the Republican primary. If you want to fix US politics, get involved with a political party - either one - and have some influence on who comes out of the primary process.

          • colechristensen4 hours ago
            The politics of fear stoked by two sets of extremists egging eachother on is the core reason we're in this mess, the failure to reject both simultaneously and the desire to rule with feelings instead of facts caused it all.

            I'm not a "whatabout" guy, I'm actively opposed to both extremes. The far left is just as capable of ruling with violence as the far right, they just haven't got the opportunity in this country yet.

            The politics of emotion and absolutism is the cause, which flavor of extremism you pick isn't the core issue.

            • vkou3 hours ago
              > The politics of fear stoked by two sets of extremists egging eachother on is the core reason we're in this mess,

              How could you possibly think that the establishment dems that have formed government are 'a set of extremists'?

            • timeon4 hours ago
              > The far left is just as capable of ruling with violence as the far right, they just haven't got the opportunity in this country yet.

              So why are you pointing at far-left then? In US there are only two parties. Center-right and far-right.

              • quantummagican hour ago
                Wrong. Neither the center-right nor far-right support unrestrained illegal immigration. And yet that is exactly what has been happening. The far-left controls a lot more than you want to admit.
                • ryandrakea minute ago
                  The "far left" statistically doesn't even exist in the USA. Less than 1% of the population and less than 0.01% of elected politicians. Effectively zero. No major national or state politicians call for seizing the means of production, a centrally planned economy, widespread price controls, Great Leaps Forward, and so on.
      • mschuster914 hours ago
        Every accusation is a confession, rules for me not for thee, it's been like that for many years. Hell, 'member Clinton and the blowjob? The problem wasn't the blowjob, the problem was that Clinton let himself get caught and exposed.

        Or, specifically to the situation at hand, there's yet another famous quote applicable: Conservatism consists of exactly one proposition, to wit: There must be in-groups whom the law protects but does not bind, alongside out-groups whom the law binds but does not protect.

        It's completely obvious what ICE and the ordinary citizens of all blue regions are, respectively.

      • themaninthedark4 hours ago
        Any time the red states brought up "States Rights", the response from the other side was "States rights to what? Oh...you mean slavery."

        So what States Rights are we supporting now?

        Both sides are very good at developing and using tactics against the other then acting surprised Pikachu when it is turned back on them.

        Look at journalists and "Learn to Code"

        https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19358725

  • dingi4 hours ago
    [flagged]
    • atmavatar4 hours ago
      > From an outsider’s viewpoint, current approach of letting almost anyone in does not seem to work that well.

      By what metric do you make this determination?

      From a crime perspective, legal immigrants commit fewer crimes than native-born citizens, and illegal immigrants commit fewer crimes still.

      From an economic perspective, immigrants of all stripes tend to work harder than native-born citizens so they can establish themselves here. They contribute to society, pay their taxes, and in the case of illegal immigrants, aren't even afforded its protections and services.

      The only metric by which I could see an argument that immigration has backfired is in political unrest, but that's mostly due to the fact that the right-wing media has been stoking panic over immigration for decades - anything to distract from how easily we're being fleeced by the wealthy and powerful.

    • goatlover4 hours ago
      The US is a huge country with a massive economy and large borders. There are many jobs for migrants to do. It's why at times Trump has appeared to backtrack on hardline deportation stance, saying undocumented farm and hotel workers are hard working and needed. Likely because businesses called him worried they would lose too many workers.
  • nxm4 hours ago
    [flagged]
    • timeon4 hours ago
      How is Obama relevant here? Were there mass kidnappings on the streets?
    • lawn4 hours ago
      Trump is on the cusp of inciting a civil war and it's Biden's fault!

      As Nazis blamed Jews for everything, Magas blame Biden.

      • seanmcdirmid4 hours ago
        They blame immigrants (something the Nazis also did) and liberals (Nazis were very anti-left and killed lots of communists, homosexuals, etc…in addition to Jews).