The one science not rejected by the current US administration is Ballistics. The problem is that China can probably do it better than America. (I do realize that Nature does not have a specialty topic journal on ballistics and weapons.)
True, not much data yet, but a cery real day to day factor for conference organizers. We have had two Canadians skip a US conference last month due to the dramatical worse general climate. Zoom instead. This is NOT just about immigration and passport control. It is the new ugly American zeitgeist that changes enthusiasm.
We will probably be skipping the US for two international conferences I have helped organize. Vancouver, Toronto, Montreal, Quebec, Halifax are all great alternatives for larger meetings from 2027 ti 20??.
The 2nd, and supposed to be final, term of the current US President is scheduled to end on Jan 20th, 2029.
I am hopeful that my fellow Americans will elect a responsible, intelligent, virtuous leader in 2028 to be sworn into office on that day.
I know I'm asking a LOT. However that's one of, if not the most, important jobs in the world. We all deserve to have someone at least that qualified there.
The trust is already gone. He was voted in twice and there was enough support for the party as a whole that none of the other branches of government can contain him.
Plus he said that he intended to make the changes such as his supporters would never need to vote again. Things have already been dismantled in such ways that it will be impossible to build them back as they were.
Not to doom and gloom you out of hoping for the best but the Rubicon is rapidly fading into the distance.
I must have completely missed those speeches. Looked it up,
At a "Believers' Summit" event hosted by the conservative group Turning Point Action in West Palm Beach, Florida, on July 26, 2024, Donald Trump told an audience of Christian voters:
"You gotta get out and vote. In four years, you don't have to vote again, we'll have it fixed so good you're not going to have to vote."
He also said: "Christians get out and vote. Just this time. You won't have to do it anymore. Four more years. You know what? It'll be fixed. It'll be fine. You won't have to vote anymore my beautiful Christians."
As a European, I’d like to add that the impulse response on the collective memory will be multi-generational.
I just wish the “democrat” wing of the uni-party had the self-awareness to realize why that happened.
Reality simply is that the only thing that got Trump elected twice is the abuse against the American people that has been ignored by the ruling class across both parties, which is back to its old ways of destroying the indigenous to plunder wealth and import brown people to work for them to support their decadent lifestyles.
Have you been following along? They're deporting the brown people and to hell with the economy.
I'm not sure what abuses you're talking about but this is a country where black people were being lynched within living memory. There's long been a fascist undercurrent in the United States and it's finally bubbling to the top. There is still widespread support for what is happening after everything we've seen and there are even supposedly educated and well-off people in this very thread defending it.
Blaming it on the left is a total cop out at this point.
It is not just Trump. It is whole conservative project that is behind him. He truly represents the republican party and works towards its goals.
This is it. It's not uncommon to see people on this very forum defending many of his policies, so the hope that the population has simply been duped and everything will right itself in a few years is a hard one to hold. One begins to question so much of America and see how much we had actually been turning a blind eye to since the end of the war.
I kid you not but some of the Silicon Valley elites believe themselves to be philosopher kings and wish to lord over the rest of us in some bizarre techno-monarchy system.
You might enjoy the book "Technofeudalism: What Killed Capitalism" (interview: In Conversation With Yanis Varoufakis - on YouTube).
Weren't they planning to make their own techno-monarchic sovereign state? I remember reading up about one venture that actually received funding from your usual VC suspects.
Even the folks in Wall Street weren't this dystopian, come on.
Yes, it has to get much much worse before it can get better. Another half-competent democratic presidency now would only result in an even worse republican one next.
That this still gets downvoted shows that people have still not learned a single thing. You're spot on, it's tragic that so very few people understand this.
> It's not uncommon to see people on this very forum defending many of his policies
From what I've seen on the wider internet, the support for Trump is mostly a personality cult. The policies are getting support because they are his policies. They are on the Good Side, and the woke leftists are on the Bad Side. If Trump changes his views, most of his voter base will change with him.
The big question is: what's going to happen when Trump isn't in power anymore? Will he be able to motivate his voter base into a JD Vance presidency? Don Jr.? He's not getting any younger either - what if he dies?
With Trump off the stage the Republican party will almost certainly fall into a state of crisis. The traditional conservatives have been decimated, and the fringe extremists won't be able to rally the moderates. The entire Republican electorate will be up for grabs, and it won't be pretty.
> From what I've seen on the wider internet, the support for Trump is mostly a personality cult.
I agree with you but the point I'm trying to get across is that a disturbing amount of seemingly right minded people actually support him now on a policy level. Maybe they always did and feel comfortable to say it out loud now? I don't know.
But the deportations, skipping due process, defending science, excluding foreign students, dismantling aid programs, cutting ties with Europe and Canada, stripping trans people out their rights etc. It's all stuff I've seen people here genuinely argue for.
It is not just that. He works on support of the whole ecosystem - from heritage foundation through tech leaders to fox news. The ecosystem will keep existing and will find a new preacher. The same people who use their talking points now will keep voting for the same set of policies. Just about only exception are tariffs in their current implementation - those are genuinely the Trump thing. But everything else is Trump executing long known conservative goals that are accepted by conservative voters.
> With Trump off the stage the Republican party will almost certainly fall into a state of crisis. The traditional conservatives have been decimated, and the fringe extremists won't be able to rally the moderates. The entire Republican electorate will be up for grabs, and it won't be pretty.
Trump represents traditional conservatives. With exception of tariffs, he is doing exactly what they wanted for years. Likewise, republican moderates never disagreed or opposed Trump policies, they just wanted someone more presentable for it.
There's a big difference between claiming to want something, and actually wanting it. The primary goals of most politicians are staying in power and self-enrichment, which in practice means doing whatever corporate America wants and handing out tax cuts (Republican) or subsidies (Democrats) to the rich. All the other stuff they claim to care about? That's literally only done to get more votes, most of them really could not care less about it.
Outlawing abortion, mass deportation of immigrants, killing foreign imports? Great to claim on election rallies to motivate your voter base, but it was never meant to be achieved. It's far more efficient to milk a "the Democrats want to murder babies" tag line for a few decades than to actually ban abortion and have to deal with the fallout when their voters see women they know dying because they can't get the healthcare they need. Claiming to do something about immigration is more efficient than actually doing it and losing all support from the companies relying on immigrant labor. Claiming to be tough on China is far better than losing votes due to tariffs making all prices skyrocket.
Traditionally the Republicans wanted to get in power, do nothing, and blame the Democrats for their failures. Trump screwed this up by actually doing the stuff he claimed he was going to do, and it's either going to end in an electoral bloodbath for the Republicans or a fascist theocratic dictatorship.
Many elected leaders on both sides have made significant campaign promises without trying to keep them. Even Obama once talked about not renewing the Patriot Act… Yet it keeps getting renewed… (One could simply do nothing and let it expire!)
In a darkly humorous sense, Trump embodies one civic ideal better than others before…
I generally agree with your analysis but it ignores the switch that happens to every failing democracy: when populism ceases to be a tool and becomes the actual goal.
It's difficult to imagine how those tariffs benefit the oligarchs behind Trump and the GOP. They also seem very much ready to actually ban abortion federally this time, and carry out massive deportations. No matter how destructive to the country and their image these policies could be.
And here's pure speculation on my part: when you listen to interviews of the current administration it's like they don't even try to make what they do look good, or defend themselves. They are acting with the same shamelessness you would see in Russia, meaning they probably don't fear the next election day that much.
As for the democrats, they're basically controlled opposition at this point. The geriatric establishment only cares about retaining enough donor money, and will absolutely not put up a fight against the republicans.
It doesn't really matter though. If there's going to be a potential flipflop between nuttery and normality every four years, you can only really book things in the future for a couple of years after the start of a "normal" phase. And even that is assuming there aren't held-over issues that need to be legislated away by the new guy.
At that point, why even bother with the hassle and uncertainty?
This is part of why France lost status for large events and organisations in the early-mid 20th Century until now. Quite large political swings at regular intervals and fairly ready-to-protest population = not ideal for basing stability. And it doesn't matter that France was far more stable than most countries, it was simply much less stable than America, the UK and regrettably, Germany. Frances solution seems to be not to really compete for international industry or science, but to focus on French culture and language to fit their tourism strategy.
Even if the next president is sane, it will take a long time to change the culture. Once border control agents get more power (or the feeling that they can use their power more arbitrarily), they will want to keep it. Also, the legal framework is not going to go back in time, either.
It would take time to re-establish trust.
Several languages have idioms like these: "Trust arrives on foot, and leaves on a galloping horse"
Gain respect by drops, lose it by the buckets.
The genie is out of the bottle, the die is cast, etc. We’re not going back to what was before.
I’d only put 60/40 odds on the 2028 election not being temporarily suspended due to a state of emergency.
60/40 feels very pessimistic to me (meaning I think the election is more than 60% likely to occur on Nov 7, 2028 and the results heeded more or less as usual).
If you think 60/40 is the right odds, you have some opportunities available - to make fake dollars, at least: https://manifold.markets/AndrewG/will-donald-trump-attempt-t...
I bet you could find more than a few people here to take the other side of 60/40 odds in a $100 bet.
This approach seems overly mechanistic to me. You can have an election, and yet the results of said election can be completely predetermined like they have been in russia for the past 20 years or so. The US toyed with gerrymandering and disenfranchisement even before it officially embraced the current flavour of fascism. So the soil is fertile enough to take the next logic step towards a full dictatorship.
We already had a coup attempt in 2020.
Do you think the current VP has the integrity of VP Pence?
*2021
I would say you are both correct. The coup began in 2020 with the widespread lies about the election and smaller attempts at using violence to affect the outcome. E.g. where armed men appeared outside voting booths. Or when the Biden-Harris bus was forcefully stopped in Texas: https://www.ap.org/news-highlights/elections/2024/a-trump-tr...
Then the clear culmination happened on Jan 6, 2021, that is certainly correct as well.
It isn't going to be easy to transfer the cult of personality from Stalin to Beria. :-) If they consolidated the police state by then they could transfer that, not so much the cult of personality.
You dont have a cult. You have an ecosystem that created an alternative reality.
Its structural, not individual.
This idea that its a strange aberration of faith - Trump isn't the problem, hes just evidence that the efforts to counter watergate are working.
Its the Bannons, Stones and Murdochs of the world that create the media world for someone like Trump to exist.
The cult — maybe. But if you are bringing a comparison with the Soviet system — the autocracy itself remained for 40 more years, only to be promptly reinstated through Putin.
In a different comment so people can vote on this idea independently: I am not a Trump supporter, but I have many Trump-supporting people I interact with on a level that I don’t think they’re lying to me.
Without fail, every one of them has a _visceral_ negative reaction to a hypothetical Trump 2028 term. It’s stunning. This is not a “I wouldn’t vote for a felon/rapist/whatever” type of red line that falls apart when you question it - they are universally against it. I sincerely think screwing with the election terms or dates to prolong Trump’s term is likely to cause immediate and shocking support evaporation. Enough to embolden Congress to do stuff, and he won’t have enough control over any armed agency to do anything to Congress.
I think that a Trump who is trying to avoid prosecution for $crimes is much more likely to throw his weight behind a GOP candidate in early 2028. Vance or whoever. That’s his best chance to stay out of jail (for prosecutions political or legitimate, doesn’t matter). After a few solid months of propping up another GOP candidate, Trump’s base will be even less rabid about him specifically. He’s going to be old news in late 2028.
If Trump doesn’t support another candidate in 2028, then I’d start to worry. I just don’t see it happening - the game theory very obviously says he must support a not-him candidate by early 2028, and doing that will make it even harder to pull off shenanigans.
If your hope is 2028, then you are effectively abdicating responsibility for your future to chance, at best.
When 2028 rolls around, the 4 years of straight up corruption, illegality, and power concentration will mean you wont have the tools to enforce your rules.
You are at your strongest, least tired, least weakened now. Today.
There is no tomorrow.
Americans have never lived most of their lives in a banana republic, so its understandable that they act as if there is a continuation of things.
There isn't.
It's hard to believe that trump will run in 2028 at the age of 82. assuming he's alive then (not implying assassination but just rather natural causes)
> Without fail, every one of them has a _visceral_ negative reaction to a hypothetical Trump 2028 term. It’s stunning. This is not a “I wouldn’t vote for a felon/rapist/whatever” type of red line that falls apart when you question it - they are universally against it.
What were their thoughts and reactions after Jan 6? Clearly it was not a red line for them, but just curious if you discussed it with them right after.
Trump is in terrible physical health, and his cognitive decline will only accelerate. The odds of him making it to 2028 aren't good.
The Republicans have until the mid-terms to either fix the next election or install a no-compromise terror state.
Terrorising the population with ICE, suspending due process, and removing habeas corpus all suggest the plan is the latter. As is the absence of realistic reporting and criticism from a (mostly) captured MSM.
Sooner or later confrontations with ICE will turn violent, and then it gets very dark indeed.
Its nto a captured MSM, its a broken information market. The MSM on the center and left work normally. On the right, theres straight up market capture and collusion with the party.
This is why you can't get a working conversation in america, because the exchange of ideas and information is broken.
Unfortunately this future seems unavoidable.
> Without fail, every one of them has a _visceral_ negative reaction to a hypothetical Trump 2028 term. It’s stunning.
Yeah because it didn't happen (yet). Standard Trump supporter maneuver. If you went back to 2019 and asked them if they'd support someone trying to overthrow the result of a presidential election, you'd get the same visceral negative reaction.
Once it happens, they find reasons why it's okay.
A lot of Trump supporters, when questioned in a general context, are very against a LOT of the things Trump has done or is doing.
Then Trump does them, and when questioned about that, they shrug it off.
let's not forget he also doesn't do a lot of things he says that are highly problematic, like invading greenland.
thats not excusing trump supporters but also you can maybe understand why there is a predilection to just hope it goes away (because often it does)
He treats ideas like cattle, not pets. Throws out a lot of seeds and sees if they take root. It creates a lot of havoc because his detractor's analysts have to write a researched article about every seed. Meanwhile he's always got seeds growing.
...yet
pretty sure trump has forgotten all about greenalnd and i would bet money it doesn't come up for the balance of his term. the man has the memory of a goldfish
Trump doesn't need a memory. He's being told what to do by Miller, Vought, and the other Heritage/2025 crazies.
They were very, very angry about the Greeland/EU mineral deal, which is why Trump immediately slapped a huge tariff on EU imports.
But Trump only cares about Trump. As long as he's getting attention, being on TV, scamming people, and cheating at golf, he's perfectly happy. He has no long term goals beyond that.
As soon as the mothership beams down the right marching orders, their brains will turn off and they'll fall in line.
It's happened with every other thing he's done.
They don't support it until he does it, and then when he does it, they'll be ready to die on that hill.
He isn't the candidate people who actually hold on to any principles voted for, because he very explicitly has none, and he expects his supporters to not have any either. The only thing that matters is winning.
This is an old pattern going back a good decade at least in conservative circles.
Everybody ingests at least some of their worldview and opinions from external voices. That's a reality of humans trying to navigate a complicated messy world. But it was really shocking seeing family members hold reasonable view "A", until the local talk radio station sprays out "A bad, B good", and then bam, instant complete retroactive reversal like they never thought "A".
> Without fail, every one of them has a _visceral_ negative reaction to a hypothetical Trump 2028 term.
I don’t want to argue against your lived experience, but somebody is buying all those hats and yard signs.
Yeah - I think there’s a very small core of people who genuinely think Trump will win a third term, and a slightly larger core of people who want him to. Then a much larger set of people who are engaging in some very unwise trolling.
I just think it’s telling that all the rabid Trump supporters I know aren’t there. Zero of them want to see him on the ballot a fourth time or otherwise pull shenanigans.
Your account is reassuring to me, yes.
Surely if shenanigans around changing eligibility to vote and maybe a bit of tampering with vote machines (won't be detected if there's no-one around with the authority to validate voting), then it won't matter if Trump has many supporters or not.
I would expect him and his handlers to look to other authoritarian regimes to see how to safely have democratic votes without any chance of losing power.
> Without fail, every one of them has a _visceral_ negative reaction to a hypothetical Trump 2028 term
This will change in the lead up to 2028. This is a pattern we've observed over and over again with Trump supporters, they draw a line, and once it's crossed they adjust to the new standard without fail. Trump now enjoys more popular support than ever before.
> That’s his best chance to stay out of jail
Absolutely zero chance he goes to jail. Not just because he's a former president and a billionaire, but also because it's a political impossibility. Even assuming Trump can't make a third term happen, and that the Democrats aren't indefinitely disaffected, holding Trump accountable is something that Democrats have proven themselves consistently unable to accomplish, nor do they want to, because it's a losing political agenda.
> He’s going to be old news in late 2028.
That's what they said in 2022.
> a hypothetical Trump 2028 term
Would it be a new term if elections are suspended, or would it just be his second term continued?
I think that's genuinely interesting anecdata (even if Trumpists have changed their mind before), but ultimately the executive decides whether they're going to follow the constitution, not the people that originally voted for them and Congress has been utterly spineless when it comes to other things that play badly with the base like trashing the economy.
And on the original topic, whether Trump ultimately decides to enjoy being kingmaker for the next presumptive nominee (someone's got to be pitching him an Apprentice style TV show...) in order to enjoy a happy retirement is moot when the presumptive nominee for Republican candidacy is going to be someone with similar policy and behaviour extremes. In fact, in some respects the prospects for things like collaborative scientific research if someone who espouses Trumpism but isn't Trump are probably even worse due to them being less incompetent and less straightforward to flatter/bribe into declaring that actually $organization or $country isn't terrible wokes or dangerous criminals after all and they in fact have a very strong relationship. Vance seems to believe some of his schtick. Sure, the successor probably won't be favourites to win a free and fair election in which they're saddled with Trump's mistakes and lack his charisma or cult, but if you're doing medium term planning you can't count on that faction being out of power forever
> Without fail, every one of them has a _visceral_ negative reaction to a hypothetical Trump 2028 term.
They said the same thing on Jan 6, 2021. Trump supporters had a very negative visceral reaction to that day.
But on Jan 7, 2021 the propaganda machine started up again and minds began changing one by one. Today, the very people who were running for their lives on Jan 6 are in support of officially teaching in schools that the 2020 election was stolen by Democrats -- the very lie that cause the violence of the day, that caused so many to say "I do not support this". Four years later they voted for it again.
So when I hear tales of a Trump voter who is against something Trump has done, I just remember that they voted for him again after he caused an insurrection against the United States in an attempt to illegally overthrow a free and fair election.
If a voter can find their way to excusing that, they will find their way to excusing a third term. Here's how: "Yeah it's not ideal, but what am I supposed to do? Vote for a Democrat? They would be worse. We are choosing the lesser of two evils." Works every time.
Run the 9/11 playbook again and those morons will fall in line immediately.
I remember their visceral negative reaction when anybody brought Project 2025 in discussions. Now, of course, Project 2025 is used as the actual blueprint and nearly fully implemented, and they are seemingly OK with it.
So no, these people are not to be trusted, there can be no negotiations, and no further reconciliation until they change their minds. Being "conservative" and "right-wing" is one thing. Being pro-Trump after February 2025 (and arguably January 2021) is nearly a crime.
Model risk — events of such magnitude may affect the probability of existence of Manifold, betting markets in general, and even the US dollar (in USSR-Russia transition, roubles were made worthless three times in a row).
Unless you are an actuarial expert with decades of experience in hedging geopolitical risks, you cannot meaningfully trade such events.
It's looking like a rather large assumption that Democrats manage to rebuild trust with the public. You would think 2024 would be enough of a crisis for Democrats to get their shit in order. And yet here we are with the same fucking dinosaur generation running the party.
This is a red herring. There is no winning for any party that isnt the Republican party, because there is no actual mechanism for non right wing voices to be heard on the right wing information ecosystem.
The issues is that Dems must bring their A game, to compete against a clown squad that can and will fabricate issues that havent happened, and force the dems to debate on it.
This is also a thought experiment, not a real issue, because Americans do not have that long a time horizon.
The strongest, most unified, and capable you will be is now. By the time elections come around, you will be hounded, disorganized, isolated and unable to coordinate.
Democrats don't have an A game. They're too busy deplatforming themselves and running away from the right.
Too late. The 2028 Olympic Games will be held in Los Angeles. It will be a historical one, since those two legendary of the 80s.
I wonder how many foreign athletes will be barred from entry to that?
don't get your hopes up - I fully plan on moving to Canada and sending my children to college there even if we elect a "better" president in the future
the fact that roughly half of of the electorate is fine with how things are as well as virtually all of the republicans in the senate and the house are too "scared" to do anything (complete BS as this is the very definition of their job) is really an embarrassment of civilization and humanity - apes are more evolved than we are
Regardless of people’s politics, Americans have not done that for at least 100 years now. What would make you think that would change now that basically all of the western world has followed our lead, largely because the American corporate authoritarian ruling class has imposed it on the rest of the western world over the last century?
Sorry neighbours, but it's not about Trump. Trump is one man. The Republican party is effectively captured by that one mans 77,302,580 supporters.
Changing leaders isn't enough to fix it. You all broke it, and until you re-establish norms for democracy, reinforce the checks and balances, and start holding criminals who hold office accountable, it's not going to get better.
I wish you luck, you will need it :/
What I (as a non-US citizen living outside the US) never understood about the US political system is
1. Apparently none sees the (to me obvious) downsides of a two-party system where there is only black and white with cold-war logic of being either with us of against us, no grey zones and willingness for compromise.
and
2. monetary interests are so close to the political system by construction: candidates need to raise a lot of money during their campaigns which they get from companies, private persons and which is tied to their person. How can you not assume that all those people who get into office (senator, president, even judges as I learned recently) with money they got from someone is not in a conflict of interest right from the start? To me it seems there cannot be any independence.
Your second point explains the first. There is a one-party corporate-captured system with two wings. One pushes the country rightwards, the other pretends to oppose it, but never makes structural changes that would push the country back towards higher taxes on the rich and higher public spending, even when it has the means and the opportunity.
Behind this is the biggest propaganda and PR machine in history, with mass media, social media, lobbyists, think tanks and policy institutes, client journalists, astroturfing operations, and individual politicians all generating compliant prepackaged talking points that either support the corporate line or distract opposition with noise.
The downsides are obvious to any of us Americans with two brain cells to rub together (a minority).
The problem is those who benefit from it are also those who would have to do away with it. So they won't.
IMO the US needs proportional representation, not a 2 party system. But I'm Dutch, so I'm biased as we have exactly that.
Hard agree. The first-past-the-post single representative election system that is the foundation of the two party system in the US is breaking the country. It encourages politics where the current winner has no reason nor expectation of compromising on anything; now is their time and they are justified in breaking everything the previous winners did. It encourages politicians to act like babies, not grownups.
> I am hopeful that my fellow Americans will elect a responsible, intelligent, virtuous leader in 2028 to be sworn into office on that day.
The US elected Biden after Trump's disastrous first term, and immediately followed up with Trump's totalitarian self-destructive second term.
When the other option is a woman (a non white one at that), what choice do people have?
Way to absolve the absolute joke that is the Democratic Party of any blame...
They're already printing out "Trump 2028" MAGA hats, don't get your hopes up too much. Now that they've permeated every level of power with their cronies, making them relinquish power will be much harder. Prepare for the worst.
If such a candidate presents himself then s/he would win. You have pretty much nailed the reason why Trump won. Everyone saw him as the second least competent presidential candidate. Bad leadership is a real problem and it has created a vacuum which Trump has roared in to exploit.
But there's a more fundamental problem, where neither party has offered suitable presidential candidates in the last 3 elections. Your system needs a bit of a reset. The Democrats have to return to their roots, and the Republicans have to get over the Cult of Trump. But i'm hopeful in time these two problems will resolve themselves in time and not mutually reinforce each other. Trumps Republican Party has a hard expiration date, and the Democrats will eventually have to listen to their voters if they want to win elections.
> neither party has offered suitable presidential candidates in the last 3 elections
Were we witnessing the same elections? Because I saw one side of the ballot as suitable 3/3 times, and the other side… not event close. Were they perfect, no, but the difference in quality has been baffling 3/3 times.
The actual reality is that many people have a belief system that is wildly different than their fellow countrymen. And whew, what a set of beliefs to act upon and force upon the world.
Saying they weren't perfect is still elevating Harris considerably above what many people saw her as in my opinion. The people who want police reform or support the defund police movement aren't enthusiastic about electing a hard-ass prosecutor. People who have no investment portfolios don't care about the stock market doing alright. People who care about social services don't like someone who is supported by and courting rightwing personalities. And progressives don't want "nothing would fundamentally change" after watching little substantial changes or reforms over the last 2+ decades while many people are barely hanging on by their fingertips.
Someone making $100K+ in a prosperous urban area might not see those things as too big of a problem. But someone making the median US wage or less while home prices continue to rise and police departments extort locals and basic education standards fall while secondary education prices rise have a big problem both for themselves and their children. I am not surprised people weren't enthusiastic voters, because many saw it as lose-lose. When people are offered either a slow death or a fast death, many will refuse to choose at all.
You cannot get people to vote on the "least bad" option, I thought this much at least has been made clear in the last decade. The enthusiasm will be so low that you cannot get enough turnout to beat the hard-line fans of the other side.
Please present good candidates with a progressive program and an inspirational personal charisma and people will vote for them over the fascist. Does anyone have a sliver of a doubt that an Obama would beat Trump with a leg tied behind his back?
This is not true, anymore, and we have the data to show it. The structrural issues with the information and news market in America (and most western democracies) has created a systemic issue, which has changed what makes a "good" or "efficient" candidate.
One team has to put out someone like Obama, and the other team can put up someone like Trump who can promise the moon is made of green cheese, and be lauded as a truth teller.
Working on facts, having them verified, building policy is not a competitive advantage, versus being able to pick a narrative and create facts that your voters want to hear.
Even without Trump the people who voted for him are still there, still have the same opinions, still want the same things, and can still vote for them. All it takes is for a candidate to credibly offer those things, and if that candidate is competent and disciplined..
Both parties had suitable candidates. People need to stop blaming everyone except people who push conservative agenda Trump win on.
We can blame them too, but Trump would absolutely never have been a suitable candidate, regardless of who was in his ear. The man is allergic to truth (see Sharpiegate for a particularly poignant example)
He could serve a third term and probably will attempt to do so, the two term limit could be wiped out with the stroke of a pen and Trump has a record for doing a lot of unprecedented things.
Why are so many so focused on Trump? If the current VP becomes the new P, will it be any better? What about the people behind it all, the ones financing and organizing the whole thing for which Trump is only the public figurehead whose function is to distract and get all the attention?
I mean, the current VP seems to be a complete non-entity, and vanishingly unlikely to be elected.
There is something to be said for, to date, nobody on the right wing in the US managing to even partially recapture Trump's particularly inexplicable brand of charisma. Everybody who has tried has just flamed out (e.g. DeSantis cratering like Wile E. Coyote just looked down).
I pin my hopes on that failure continuing.
I think it might take more than a stroke of a pen -- it seems like the easiest legal way would be to bribe the House to elect Trump as Speaker, bribe a pair of Republicans to run and win in 2028 and then in 2029 have each of them resign, promoting Trump back in to office.
The bribing might be costly but people are more than willing to buy Trump's merch.
Just get SCOTUS to rule that the 22nd Amendment only applies to consecutive terms because argle bargle reasons that supersede the language of the amendment.
Some Canadian companies have just straight up banned business travel to the US.
Some X companies did Y
so what?
Why are you substituting words with random alphabet characters? Are you able to read the original post? Are you unable to grasp how it adds context and data point to the discussion?
I think the anecdata in this case is worthless without at least naming one concrete example of 'some companies'.
My wifes company banned travel to the US. It is a few thousand people in British Columbia. She was planning to go to the Microsoft Build conference in Seattle and was told she could not go.
The name is irrelevant.
> Something did something
This is a news website you know? It would be pretty uninteresting if nothing ever happened.
It will take time for these effect to manifest. Conferences are organized quite far in advance, so most conferences this year and part of next year would likely not be able to change locations anyway.
But because they are planned in advance they might be even more careful then. They won't just take the status today into account, but also their fears of how much worse it could get.
As an American, it's starting to feel (almost) unfair to treat us as a single group when praising or damning.
More than ever, it feels like America comprises two very different peoples.
Ottawa has plenty of event spaces, poor direct airport routes though. I wouldn’t count out Calgary and Edmonton either.
Montreal and Vancouver are nice.
I'm a Canadian who moved to the SF bay area after graduating. A lot of my smartest friends who came with me at the same time are actively taking steps to move back due to the political environment.
I was travelling to the US a few times during previous administration and each time somebody from the team was taken into little dark room for questioning, I was not travelling to the US much before so I was of opinion the way how US border treats travellers was weird to say the least, at least compared to other countries I was travelling to. Sometimes it was worse depending on particular border agent. Interestingly I travelled recently during new administration and did not notice much of a change.
It’s fascinating that people still see these things as new or unique to our current administration. This has been an issue for decades that were often ignored or minimized because it only affected smaller more marginalized groups of people. For example conferences involving HIV/AIDS had to contend with these issues for decades due to the blanket ban on HIV+ individuals from entering the country, even for a scientific conference. Often the conferences would continue leading to schisms in the communities and competing conferences that would ultimately disagree on fundamental principles in science and policy.
It seems new and unique, given that conferences (and scientists) are leaving?
You know how if you pile lots of flammable things in the corner of your garage and it's fine for years, and then a toddler strolls through with a book of matches, then suddenly you get a new and unique fire?
The conferences and scientists leaving are the results of decades of policy undermining education and human rights, coupled with the rise of the alt-right, normalization of racism and misogyny, with a soupçon of neo-nazism that allowed a populist regime to rise to power. All of that was the pile of flammable things. The extrajudicial deportations, conferences and scientists leaving, and tourism crashing are the first tendrils of smoke rising in the corner. It's not too late for America to fix it.
The system in the US is capable of running on nothing but hope because of the availability of lending and investment. "Unfortunately" that means the average person won't receive an impossible to ignore signal that something is going bad until bankers and investors lose hope. By that point, something would have had to have happened that can't be fixed in the short term by a reversal or a sudden period of sobriety.
For a concrete example, the stock market is going up and down every time the tariff threats change tone, but the layoffs that the tariffs will make inevitable won't be done until companies run out of financiers who can be convinced the setbacks are only temporary.
> leading to schisms in the communities and competing conferences that would ultimately disagree on fundamental principles in science and policy.
Ignoring the original topic and the rest of the comment, this part sounds like actually a useful thing?
If the different groups don't converge, that suggests that at least one of the consensuses is being driven by something other than verifiable facts (groupthink? conflicts of interest? politics?). Which I'd think is a useful thing to bring to the surface like that.
It’s a question of degree
Has anyone done the legwork to demonstrate the degree? The linked article is lists around 6 conferences. Which is not a huge number, in the grand scheme of things, given how anti-Trump the US academy seems to be. More than 5, less than 10 and I assume conferences move around fairly regularly.
It is annoyingly typical that they managed to interview a "historian who studies international conferences" yet fail to contextualise how large 6 conferences is in the scheme of things. Thanks to the Magic of the Internet [0] I can see that hundreds of thousands of conferences have taken place since their first appearance in the late eighteenth century which isn't that informative (averages to >333/year over 3 centuries I suppose).
[0] https://www.bbk.ac.uk/our-staff/profile/8008585/jessica-rein... & https://eprints.bbk.ac.uk/id/eprint/52195/1/BJH2300063_R.pdf
It's far too early to say. You can't move a conference to a different country on a short notice. You can only hold it with whatever audience you can get, postpone it, or cancel it. For larger events, it's already too late to move events scheduled for 2026, and possibly even for 2027. Maybe there will be some data in a couple of years, but until then, anecdotes and informed guesses are the best you can have.
It's harder of a choice the closer the event date is, but sometime it's just the most responsible thing to do. You won't see many people coming to your event if it's now in a war zone for an extreme example.
Conferences are organized months if not years in advance.
The fact that 6 of them found this a big enough issue to move their conferences out of the U.S. is a huge deal.
The real impact will be felt 2-3 years from now.
Indeed, in my own field we are talking deadlines for hosting bids at least a year in advance and an announcement about ten months before the conference is held. Organising a conference with possibly thousands of attendees is a massive undertaking and you can see the link below as to what one of these calls to host looks like.
An article from Nature, which is targetted at scientists, is the sign you are looking for. The fact that you are getting on HN, is indicating that you get to know of this before other people.
I can say that this is definitely an issue in converastions for me.
Full throated and enthusiastic ethno-fascism is new.
Africaaners are enthusiastically welcomed and coming in droves, everyone else, quite the opposite.
Should tell you everything you need to know.
this is on a much larger scale and supported by ~40% of the USA who think Trump can do no wrong, and agree with his racism and unconstitutional imprisonment of brown people who are here to just visit or get an education. Basically now if you're not white, you are a suspect if you are coming/going internationally. I'm pretty sure some heroic person will eventually whistleblow a tape recording/email/memo that cites this as the new operating norm for the current regime.
In 2015 a PhD scholar attending a security conference was sent back citing national security concerns. This was absurd as she was an Indian, studying in Montreal and has no past involvement in any untoward thing.
In 2017, a friend doing his PhD in artifical intelligence in Germany was made to undergo a thorough interview at the border to determine if he is a threat on account of his work. Again, this was absurd to say the least.
In this March, my SO (French) chose to not attend a tier 1 conference in AI where she was going to present her work. She, having the brains for both of us, was prescient enough to cancel her trip in Feb-March, a bit before the current border policies came into full force and europeans were detained.
I have never gone, nor will I ever go to the United States. Not for scientific purposes or leisure. For over a decade I have been voicing concerns about hosting conferences in a country which is inaccessible or hostile to a vast section of the scientific community. I am glad to see this shift.
Attending US conferences was always more a hassle than most other places.
The 'interrogation' before even boarding the flight was just ridiculous. And the process repeated after landing. Jeez.
I have friends and colleagues based in South America, when conferences are held in the USA, they never can attend, or want to. When they're held in Europe, they just appear with little hassle, it's quit perplexing to me how hard the USA makes it for them.
It's been this way forever, according to them, they're never going to even bother now.
This is bound to happen for a lot of other events besides scientific conferences. I know of a guy that wouldn't go to a retrogaming convention for fears of being detained at the border.
Its not just like you get refused entry and get sent on a return flight, there is risk of incarceration, rummaging through your digital life etc. It could be very disruptive and negative.
There is also the risk of being sent to completely unrelated continents based on eugenic preconceptions.
This, I was "randomly selected" way too often to risk it nowadays.
This!
The risk of being turned away at the border always existed.
Yes it’s drastically increased now, but that’s a quantitative change which will have a quantitative effect.
What we are seeing now is a qualitative change in traveling behavior and that’s reflecting the qualitative change in the severity of punishment that may occur if there is a problem while trying to enter.
There's a risk of life imprisonment in a concentration camp in a third country.
Yes, I run tech conferences and international attendance is dropping rapidly this year (we're shifting to aggressive local marketing, but it's still sad.)
Won’t be attending local conferences anymore.
My colleagues outside the US say that a big part of why they are bailing on the US is the public response.
They see France protest over their own internal retirement politics. They don’t see the US public protest over global destabilization through our politics.
It isn’t just Trump. The American people are completely failing to read the room.
So I am done supporting my fellow Americans as much as possible too. Enjoy your conference randos, but fuck me food and shelter and healthcare seem a bit more essential.
One thing you need to keep in mind is that in the US things are stacked against people who would want to protest or engage in any kind of activism.
Take a day off work to go to a rally or peaceful protest? “At will” employment means you can be fired the next day, no reason given. You got fired? Virtually all workers in the US get their health insurance through their employer, so now you and your family just lost access to medical care. It’s a really rough job market in many sectors, so it could take a few months to get a job. But since you got fired without cause, you can at least try to claim some unemployment benefits. In California, that maxes out at something like $450 a week.
Meanwhile in France if they want to fire you they have to give like 3 months notice (or pay you out for that time). Healthcare is socialized so no worries there. And if you still can’t find a job in a few months IIRC there’s fairly reasonable social benefits available.
> One thing you need to keep in mind is that in the US things are stacked against people who would want to protest or engage in any kind of activism.
This is the kind of exceptionalism that got you into this mess. You don't think things are stacked against the populations in countries like Turkey and Serbia?
Yes of course France is very different in terms of the freedom of the population, but why is that? Because they demanded it!
This is not things being stacked against you.
Activism IS expensive, its what people default to when other options have failed.
So much for „land of the free, home of the brave“
That’s why other countries have social security. It provides freedom and courage.
What you need to keep in mind is once enough frogs are boiling things get worse fast.
No logical breakdown from an armchair is going stop parents with hungry kids.
This is the failing to read the room part I mentioned. Our biology is composed of biology not philosophy. It is self selecting. It’s biological imperative is select self.
Ok good you got some sort of Excel sheet breakdown. That’s just words.
This is what I’m talking about; American public is so dissociated due to economics that straight up ignores externalities. 8 billion people are the externality and it’s going to be hard for 300 million to ignore them and live in their narcissistic bubble much longer. Third world countries have rebuilt and don’t see the specialness in Murica or the point in sewing their shirts if they’re going to be so low affect.
Americans have to change not because of some philosophical position but because of physical reality not really caring about the excuses of 300 million; only half of which is cogent, and half of that actually intelligent. It’s not looking good, Bob.
I went to a protest. I was anxious about being photographed and added to some biometric database to be used for who knows what purposes. My wife and I had a serious discussion about whether to go, the possible risks, the possibility of violence, but I ultimately convinced her to go as our civic responsibility. I left our phones at home as a precaution so as to avoid being geolocated to the site.
What I found upon arriving was an unserious mob of hippies laughing and taking selfies to post on social media. I'd made signs supporting the rule of law. The signs of the other participants were an unfocused smattering of various political goals from "tax the rich" to banning Teslas. They included what I thought was an excessive about of profanity and crude insults. I think these are unserious people and what they're doing is performative and utterly pointless.
I do not see any viable action for individual citizens to take. Everyone out there clamoring for people to do something is just pushing their own political agenda. We had an election, one side won, that's how things go, ok. What's happened since however is a clear violation of the US Constitution in more ways than one can count, but it seems there is basically no one aware of or concerned about this. I feel like I'm at a football game where one side just took out a gun and shot the referee and while he lies on the floor bleeding to death both sides are still arguing over whether there was a foul or not.
There are various activist movements, groups, interests, communities.
You have to find your people. It can take a while. Change takes time, big social movements were decades into the making in the fringe before they reached the mainstream consciousness.
I don't know what it will take to make the fascist regime fear for their safety, and their supporters fear for their existence in society for having elected an autocrat intent on eliminating the existence of vulnerable groups. And I don't see a path to restoring social freedoms in red states with Christian nationalist radical majorities passing laws declaring Jesus as king and banning websites with LGBTQ content from minors.
are you ready to die for the principles of your country? if not, then there is no point. things are bad, but they have been way worse in the past (remember, we had legislators getting caned on the floor of congress, citizens locked up en masse without trial, everyone's bank accounts confiscated and held for weeks, biological experiments run on minorities, and underage citizens assassinated by drones). in the face of the injustices that the administration is going to commit, you should have ready for yourself the answer to two questions:
1. given a sober, nonpartisan review of past history, how far is too far for this administration?
2. what are you willing to do to stop it, how much are you willing to sacrifice.
i suspect that nothing the administration has done to date really clears the first bar. be prepared for the day it will, save your energy till then.
The person you're replying to has a vastly over inflated view of the risk of holding a sign, and when it felt too cringe they quit to slag off the other protestors. I would not expect much.
post is more for other readers, not the gp.
> I do not see any viable action for individual citizens to take.
Get involved with your preferred local political party. Push for policy preferences that won't drive turnout for the opposing party and won't give that party a chance to nominate a clown and then still win.
Seems like politics produced the mess that the U.S. is now in, so I doubt that politics will be the solution. What's required is for the general population to realise that they do still have the actual power and remind their "leaders" of that fact.
I Admire your courage for sharing.
The only thing you can do is convince people, I think. Most folks are trying to stay in their bubble.
Honestly it sounds like you just want to give yourself an excuse to stop engaging. This reads like "I ate a salad once and I didn't like it, so I'm done with vegetables entirely, it's hopeless". Then the rest is you complaining that other people are unserious?
Going to protests is usually not much fun. There are all kinds of people there that you might not feel much in common with. People will make signs that focus on things you don't care about. This is normal! Protests can also easily burn a person out, so people try to have fun if they can because it's important to sustain pressure. The fact that someone dresses up, has a joke on their sign, meets a friend and smiles, or takes a selfie is not an indictment of the person or their protest.
Resist the urge to wallow in contempt for those people, particularly when you haven't done anything that has been effective.
> What I found upon arriving was an unserious mob of hippies laughing and taking selfies to post on social media. I'd made signs supporting the rule of law. The signs of the other participants were an unfocused smattering of various political goals from "tax the rich" to banning Teslas. They included what I thought was an excessive about of profanity and crude insults. I think these are unserious people and what they're doing is performative and utterly pointless.
You don't think this is completely by design? Social media is probably the most powerful cultural force that every existed, by an order of magnitude. Just flood instagram with quirky posts about protesting with your favourite Marvel superhero franchise quips, and The Algorithm will take care of injecting it into the brains of five hundred million people before lunchtime.
To me it sounds like you overestimated the danger.
It’s hard to protest. There’s no single movement, it’s just a bunch of different people. Stuff needs to get a lot worse.
It's important to understand that this has always been the case at any point in history where widespread protests affected change. And that people have won demands in situations with much worse oppression.
The reality is that it's not that hard. It requires learning new things and getting out of your comfort zone, lowering your expectations a bit and not expecting to do one thing and be done. This is how protest movements have always been.
Find something that aligns with one of your values and show up. Learn about more actions, join a chat group or calendar, and find what you can go to. Do not expect there to be one massive action that everyone shows up to first time. Do not burn yourself out.
Humans are social. Just showing up on the street reminds people that things aren't OK and there is something to protest about. Over time this builds people's consciousness and more people practice taking collective action.
All of this. I'm pretty strongly introverted, but I've been pushing myself outside of my usual patterns to show up to protests over the last few months. Most weekends I have at least one to go to. It does help to be around other people who are as concerned as I am.
I don’t mean protest.
I mean consume less media. Stuff.
Take burden off workers in the sweatshops and learn to sew a shirt. How many new shirts does a person need a year? 2-3? That’s like what, a cold December?
Be a human not a battery in a Matrix pod propping up ad companies and Hollywood.
We live in a Newspeak bubble; it’s freedom to stare at screen.
Local culture in the US is hyper-normalized around money making metrics.
Boomers did all the drugs and lived. They convinced GenX and Millennials to Netflix chill, order grubhub and watch AI content
It’s so bizarre
Edit: this is what gets attention not blocking roads https://finance.yahoo.com/news/target-badly-misses-on-earnin...
> Take burden off workers in the sweatshops and learn to sew a shirt.
Presumably they're working there because it's the least-bad option? If so, removing it so they have to go with the next-least-bad option might not be much of a help.
Yeah the usual uncreative answer “copy paste the Newspeak”
This answer is a euphemism for “don’t rock my boat.” Because if they ain’t sewing your shirts, you are. Your freedom from such is due to blowing Vietnam (and elsewhere) to a crater, fostering existing conditions. Not exactly informed consent.
The rest of the world doesn’t buy this analysis. They lived being oppressed by US military. They see Americans as the Taliban, not a great white hope Americans have been propagandized to see themselves as.
Ah yes, smashing capitalism by restoring the bourgeois ethic of thrift /s.
Ah yes, a sanctimonious tech bro reducing everything to a Twitter size sound bite.
We know; you’re scared of change because you have seen your lived experience and know you cannot grow a potato.
But you’re just a meat suit and your personal story and literacy aren’t anyone else’s concern. And that’s under the political norm. You prefer no guarantee of healthcare. The risk someone else will obsolete your research. Oo so titillating.
Fine, have it your way. Let us continue under American norms where I can give zero fucks your meat suit exists.
Fortunately for me I have generational wealth thanks to the building and auto booms in the US, and EE degrees, hands on building useful machines and technology. SWEs exist so long as open compute platforms exist and there’s no guarantee governments around the world will forever allow that.
Should you find yourself shut out of employment opportunities, thoughts n prayers.
Americans are doing stuff. I call my reps and their vms are full. I go to their offices and there are lots of other people there. There's been protests at state capitals, Bernie & AOC have been giving speeches and zoom meetings about organizing and canvasing. Lawyers are suing and judges are trying to use the system despite the supreme court gone mad. It's tough to get a big group photo, but people are doing stuff. I'm as angry and jaded as anybody, but I dislike this defeated "nobody is doing enough so fuck it" thing I keep seeing. It's laying the groundwork a self fulfilling prophecy.
> Americans are doing stuff.
Certainly some people must be doing something but it's notable that your response is the exception in a sea of people sharing the reasons why they've decided to do nothing.
>They don’t see the US public protest over global destabilization through our politics.
Then they're not looking.
Yes your brief firm comment surely establishes truth.
They see weekend warriors focused on their paychecks.
They don’t see coast to coast collective pushback for long term stability. Sure, America is big and pockets of tribal thought.
And so it’s unreliable. A hodge podge of asocial cults flip flopping around the rules every 2-4 years because of its distributed, async social nature, does not make a reliable ally.
Still not reading the room.
I am really curious how the US is expecting to host the Olympics and the World Cup in the next few years.
Change their rules, enough to mostly work for 99.9% of would-be attendees, for the duration of the event.
And who knows how much personal travel? Me and my partner are just setting off on an indefinite working trip around the world. Starting in SE Asia to try to save a bit of cash, but we have no longer-term plans yet.
We've long dreamed about spending 3 months in the USA. Driving across Montana. Living in NYC. Just being there, absorbing it all. (We've both been a bunch of times and love it.)
We're both white Australians. Middle-aged. Low risk. But there's no way I'm travelling to the USA now. Why would I bother? If I need some North America I'll go see Canada. Or we'll just visit Europe.
I am going to the Defcon CTF Finals at the Defcon conference this year. Coming from Europe, I know of multiple people who will participate remotely because of the political climate. I would have to lie if I said that I didn't think about skipping the USA either. In the cybersecurity space especially things have always been difficult.
Isn't there a history of security researchers and open source programmers being detained or threatened when visiting the US? So the same thing is being done to the US's domestic researchers as well now?
This, Harvard, WHO, NIH, and NSF changes create that sucking sound you hear, a brain drain, and people deciding not to go to the US or to leave. Such myopic stupidity in the White House weakening America's power and reputation.
It's on purpose, at least according to some observers (Slobodian, Stiglitz). The clique behind Trump and Project 2025 want small (special) economic zones with as little interference as possible. Basically laying the ground work for exploitation, 19th century style. That requires dismantling the federal state. They don't care about the other consequences, because they don't have to bear them.
They’re fairly explicit about the idea that the last 100-200 years need to be undone. By that they don’t mean the technical progress. They mean human equality. The idea that there might be a connection between those two things is lost on them.
Sounds like feudalism
When he started talking about a golden age I knew he was going to drive it straight into the ground.
The New Amish: a society based on the ideals, behaviours, and technologies gleaned from severely rose-tinted memories of the 1950s.
Plus cryptocurrency.
Golden showers.
Golden age for broligarchs
For a career, the USA is as attractive as it ever was. For tourism and conferences perhaps a bit less so.
I mean.. it's still the USA.. bad government or not
I wish more computer security conferences go to Canada (Montreal if possible) which is cheaper (for me). We do have Recon but that's it.
I ve heard about these problems for many years. In particular, many indian phd students were reluctant to travel to European conferences for fear that there might be complications when returning back to America. The unreliable current administration must have turbocharged these fears
CIO of $20B/year ARR company: “I was going to send my kid to the US for college. Now? Never in a million years. I’m not even going to go to the US!”
Well done everyone. Well done.
For those without a choice, no threat of punishment/deportation will deter them.
For those with a choice? Arguably the people a country would want to visit/do business with/etc?
The choice is clear: the US is hostile and to be avoided.
Perfectly reasonable. Nobody wants to get arrested by border agents on an ego trip.
This article seems like political flamebait.
Most scientists are rational people. If they obey US immigration rules, they SHOULD never have a problem. There have recently been a few horrifying stories where this wasn't the case, but those are the exception and not the rule.
> There have recently been a few horrifying stories where this wasn't the case, but those are the exception and not the rule.
You made a political statement here that might not be flamebait but is just as careless of reality as flamebait: not only because it ignores the number of people affected in each story (in the worst case, 50 people who literally followed the legal immigration process and still got "deported" to prisons in a different country than the one they came from [1]), but because your idea of "a few" is not mutually exclusive to someone else's idea of "too many". Your "SHOULD never have a problem" is a motte to the `most likely won't have a problem` bailey.
[1] https://www.cato.org/blog/50-venezuelans-imprisoned-el-salva...
> A rational person would totally be fine with a non-zero chance of being sent to an El Salvadorean torture camp for the rest of their lives with no due process even when directly ordered by the Supreme Court of the United States... the chance of it happening to you is probably pretty low (though of course we actually don't have a good way to know since people are being whisked away without even chances to contact their lawyers)!
It's crazy how common the meme of "aloofness signals intelligence" has become among the folks at the top of the bell curve.
Folks who believe themselves to be at the top of the bell curve.
Ah sorry, maybe unclear. I meant "top" on the y-axis. The most average-est of thinkers!
The thing is, while the chances of any one individual having trouble are relatively low (unless they're trans, in which case they may simply not have the papers that the US is now demanding), the chances of them having this sort of trouble (arbitrary detention etc) in a normal country is far, far lower.
Also, these things are organised in advance, often years in advance. Honestly, who knows what it'll look like a couple years down the line.
I can tell you my European colleagues have reservations about attending collaboration meetings in the US
How much can you assure them there will be minimal due process if there is a problem?
I think they'd want to be assured that there would be maximal due process.
I think the point was that, if there is a problem, you don't currently have a guarantee of even a minimal due process, as a foreigner at the US border.
What you should be asking is; what would happen if I illegally immigrated to some country other than the US, where they have no guarantee of due process?
Since when is visiting a conference illegally immigrating?
Typically folks who attend conferences fly over, stay the week, maybe even stay for another week as a vacation, then head back.
If anything, this is in the territory of acquiring a temporary visa.
You've said absolutely nothing that I disagree with.
Scientists who follow the immigration rules aren't illegally immigrating either.
I got the reaction I was expecting. I did flag the article, but I guess it hasn't yet accumulated enough flag votes.
I’m confused by what point you’re trying to make because it isn’t relevant to the article.
It is possible to address illegal immigration in a manner that doesn’t deter those visiting who will very likely return. Unfortunately whether it is the result of agency-wide policy changes or a few rogue officers, there’s certainly some new anxiety up for those wanting to travel here.
What exactly is deterring visitors, other than their dislike for the immigration enforcement policy of the new US administration? From what I've been seeing, legal immigration and tourism are being strongly encouraged.
The fact that at least 50 or so legal immigrants have been deported to an El Salvadorean torture camp, likely for the rest of their lives?
https://www.cato.org/blog/50-venezuelans-imprisoned-el-salva...
The fact that legal immigrants have been detained, prevented from attending the birth of their children or from holding their newborn, because they engaged in 1st Amendment protected speech?
https://www.aclu.org/press-releases/ice-refuses-to-allow-mah...
Or that when people's visas are unilaterally cancelled for no reason and then they show up at the border for entry, they may be held in solitary confinement for 9 days and given several mutually-exclusive (and all factually incorrect) rationale's for the cancellation while being prevented from contacting their family or lawyers?
https://www.the-berliner.com/politics/berlin-jessica-brosche...
> So basically, when we passed the Border Control they separated us and asked me to come with them to a room where they were going to ask me a couple of questions. After that they said my visa has been cancelled and I can’t get in the US this time. I got to another room where I had an interview and they took my fingerprints and photos of my face. And then they brought me “downstairs” until I [could] get my flight back to Germany. “Downstairs” was the cell where I was in solitary confinement for nine days. It took me some days to understand that it wasn’t that easy to get my ticket back, as there was no cooperation in helping me or letting me call someone who could get the ticket for me. You don’t have access to your phone or the internet in that cell.
I am very curious: have you just not heard of these instances? Or you have and you think they are not serious deterrents to legitimate travel to the US?
Mahmoud Khalil has a green card (meaning he is a permanent resident) and has been in ICE detention since March 8th. How can you pretend this is about violating immigration law?
The simplest explanation is that they perceive “violating immigration law” and “saying something publicly that the current administration disapproves of” as being the same thing and are completely comfortable with that.
So you honestly think a scientist who is also an open supporter of freedom and self-determination for Palestine has nothing to worry about?
Or are you just being disingenuous because you have a lot riding on belief that nothing bad can or will happen to anyone you care about?
>Most scientists are rational people.
I suspect not.
> If they obey US immigration rules, they SHOULD never have a problem.
Sure, they SHOULD never have a problem. But, increasingly under Trump, they MIGHT have a problem despite this, especially if they are not white and/or come from a country that Trump is currently feuding with, and/or have publicly spoken out against Trump, Netanyahu, or their allies. One shouldn't base any serious decision on how things SHOULD be.
Did anyone read the article?
They have one example of a meeting moved. The other one is going to Canada, but most attendees are Canadian students (hmmm), the other one is cancelled because of funding cuts (that's not a fear of coming to the US),
As a scientist, a lot of these conferences are nothing but rackets. Organizers can make a lot of money from them if they can get enough attendees. I've been approached by multiple conference organizers and when you start to look it's clearly a joke (same with many journals).
I'd also wonder how many of these conferences were teetering to start with (look how many happened ever 3 years, a good sign they can't get critical mass).
> One of those is the International Society for Research on Aggression (ISRA), which announced last month that it would relocate its 2026 meeting from New Jersey to St. Catharines, Canada, after a survey of its members suggested that many international researchers would not attend a US meeting.
> Organizers of the International Conference on Comparative Cognition have made a similar call. Its 33rd annual conference next year will take place outside the United States for the first time in the society’s history, in Montreal, Canada.
> The Northwest Cognition & Memory (NOWCAM) meeting relocated its meeting earlier this month from Western Washington University in Bellingham to Victoria, Canada.
(above is the one that's mostly Canadian students)
> The International Association of Cognitive Behavioral Therapy has cancelled its conference, originally planned for August 2025 in Nashville, Tennessee, because cuts to federal funding meant it was “no longer financially viable”.
> The 2026 Cities on Volcanoes conference in Bend, Oregon, has been postponed to 2030 or 2032.
(I award the above the "most unexpected conference")
>The International X-ray Absorption Society cancelled its upcoming 19th conference in Chicago, Illinois, which was scheduled for July this year.
It feels like a few more examples than you mention, but still not enough to be more than anecdotal.
Just saw this today: “US citizen detained by immigration officials who dismissed his Real ID as fake”
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/may/24/us-citizen-d...
Yes agreed. So much ridiculous hyperbole in this thread that says way more about the political affiliation of the commenter, than it does about any real or imagined threat.
https://www.nytimes.com/2025/05/15/science/petrova-scientist...
For her it's life and death, but perhaps you'd prefer to classify it as ridiculous hyperbole as well.
The fact that HN got to see this article, is a sign that HN is getting to know things before the regular joe.
This is a Nature article, and this is something that has happened in the past 4 months. I know this is the converation I have heard around other academics.
Ergo, you're a Trump supporter, or worse. There is a real threat for people traveling to the US. And there is a growing threat to academics as well. I know two academics who are considering returning to Europe, after only just having acquired US citizenship. The ship is sinking, and calling it fake news (ridiculous hyperbole) isn't going to stop it.
Can't read the whole thing because paywall.
I thought nature was about publishing research. This reads like a political opinion piece but is published as "news"?
The author has other similar articles like these about the "US brain drain":
https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-025-01540-y
https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-025-01489-y
What would help me get an accurate picture is how many conferences are typically held per month in the US and how has that number changed but instead we get fluff like:
"Some meetings have been put on hold" - which meetings?
"Several academic and scientific conferences in the United States have been postponed, cancelled or moved elsewhere" - Which conferences, what % of the total? more specifics?
"Organizers of these meetings say that tougher rules around visas and border control — alongside other policies introduced by US President Donald Trump’s administration — are discouraging international scholars from attending events on US soil. In response, they are moving the conferences to countries such as Canada, in a bid to boost attendance." - Which organizers?
EDIT: I found this resource which would be interesting to examine for trends: https://conferenceindex.org/conferences/science
EDIT2: there are some specific anecdotal examples towards the bottom of the paywalled article. This is still not meeting what I would consider accurate non-opinionated reporting.
> I thought nature was about publishing research. This reads like a political opinion piece but is published as "news"?
Nature does both: scientific news and scientific literature.
> Which conferences, what % of the total? more specifics?
This is probably the paywall getting you, because many specific conferences are listed.
What about specific percentages?
No specific percentages
> At the moment, there are no data available on how widespread the issue is
(Not surprising, remember it’s only May!)
Also, at the end of the article they mention some other conferences that seem unconcerned
Would you mind explaining where in the article the author gives an opinion, as opposed to stating uncontested facts that would be newsworthy to scientists?
Or would you mind sharing a snippet that expressed any political belief of the authors?
I could not find either
As for your specific questions, they are answered even in the paywalled version. Just keep reading past the first sentence
Years ago, I would have found this deeply dismaying. Today, I still see it as a negative development, but far less so, because my regard for the sciences has declined with the growing ideological capture of many disciplines. It’s become typical for political narratives to take center stage at scientific conferences. For example:
e.g. https://healthjournalism.internews.org/article/decolonizing-...
There seems to be more fear mongering than reality here. Why would a scientist coming to the US for a conference be picked up and sent to El Salvador (or some such)? Do they really believe these things are happening to everyone? Are they spending too much time on Reddit instead of doing research?
This makes no sense to me whatsoever.
I think a more common legit fear is paying for flights, accommodation, conference etc then getting turned back (maybe after a short detention) because of some social media post in your past or your name was on some misidentified "woke" science.
The story of this one French guy being turned back at the border (out of millions of travellers) is what people see:
- https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/mar/19/trump-musk-f...
There were a few other stories that made the news like a British citizen that was prevented entry to Canada and then arrested trying to return to the US (who wanted to work illegally in Canada but admittedly treated very badly by the Americans).
- https://www.cbp.gov/newsroom/national-media-release/cbp-rele...
"Claims that CBP is searching more electronic media due to the administration change are false. CBP’s search numbers are consistent with increases since 2021, and less than 0.01% of travelers have their devices searched. These searches are conducted to detect digital contraband, terrorism-related content, and information relevant to visitor admissibility, all of which play a critical role in national security."
- https://www.trade.gov/feature-article/march-2025-air-passeng...
"Non-U.S. citizen air passenger arrivals to the United States from foreign countries totaled:
4.541 million in March 2025, down 9.7 percent compared to March 2024.
This represents 87.3 percent of pre-pandemic March 2019 volume."
In Canada there we also have a lot of people with strong feelings/emotional response to Trump's 51st state nonsense and tariffs. There is a real feeling of betrayal. There are practically zero issues with Canadians traveling to the US.
https://www150.statcan.gc.ca/n1/daily-quotidien/250522/dq250...
"In March, Canadian residents returned from 2.7 million trips to the United States, representing a 24.0% decrease from March 2024 and accounting for 63.9% of all trips taken by Canadian residents in March 2025.
Meanwhile, US residents took 1.2 million trips to Canada in March, down 6.6% from March 2024 and representing 81.3% of all non-resident trips to Canada in March 2025. "
Basically the worries are real, fueled to a large extent by these sorts of articles, and in my opinion politically motivated (and I don't like Trump either) but the likelihood of running into problems is small and unclear if larger than it ever was.
> Claims that CBP is searching more electronic media due to the administration change are false. CBP’s search numbers are consistent with increases since 2021, and less than 0.01% of travelers have their devices searched. These searches are conducted to detect digital contraband, terrorism-related content, and information relevant to visitor admissibility, all of which play a critical role in national security.
I'm sure the CBP would never dare to lie about such things in a way that potentially puts their egomaniacal boss in a more favorable light than he deserves.
In these sorts of situations you need to consider what is the more likely reality based on whatever limited data you have.
A few things to consider:
- Organizations take a while to change. Is it more likely that the CBP is operating more or less as it has been or that it had some dramatic changes?
- Searching phones takes time and effort. To scale up this in a significant way while still supporting similar amount of traffic would require more people? extended waiting times?
- Do you know people who travel to the US? Have they had their electronic devices searched? Have we seen a surge of stories about electronic devices being searched? The numbers they claim are less than ~450 a month (0.01% * 4.5M). Do we have evidence to suggest the scale is significantly different?
- The CBP could simply have said nothing. What would be their reason for explicitly addressing this question? If it's a lie wouldn't they be concerned e.g. with needing to deal with this down the line? Do you think Trump reads these reports and rewards some person in the CBP for this? Feels very unlikely.
- CBP is a huge org. 65k people or so. If there was some major change or lie then presumably it'd leak somehow?
> but the likelihood of running into problems is small and unclear if larger than it ever was.
very true based on my own observation. Source: I and many acquaintances I've know have crossed the border multiple times. It's completely the media.
>>Non-U.S. citizen air passenger arrivals to the United States from foreign countries totaled: 4.541 million in March 2025
And these educated scientists are afraid.
I don’t think such articles are responsible for the drop. As a Canadian, i wouldn’t visit the US even if i though i was perfectly safe there. I simply don’t wish to contribute even a single dollar towards our enemy.
> i wouldn’t visit the US even if i though i was perfectly safe
That's certainly your right and I get where you are coming from but
> our enemy.
Calling the US your "enemy" is a pretty strong stance, especially considering how deeply tied our countries are economically and culturally.
Don't want to visit? That's fine, but let's not pretend for a second that every American supports all the things you oppose. Only a plurality, not a majority, of Americans even voted for Trump and more than 75% of us still consider you an ally.
But you might want to lay off the media and tone down the rhetoric and drama a bit. Shit like that is why things are the way they are now.
I had to scroll to far too find sanity in this thread.
I suspect the opposition party is literally just fear-bombing social media with what ifs and AI slop to further divide folks.
But if some conferences or even colleges full of people susceptible to that kind of misinformation begin to fail, I'm all for it.
It is incredible seeing people like you defend the administration when there's new executive orders signed every day that push your country further into the stone age. We're witnessing North Korea-level brainwashing at a never before seen scale and it's all out in the open for the entire world to see.
https://www.cntraveler.com/story/which-countries-have-issued...
Yes the rest of the world is wrong and Trump has the truth.
Its not fear mongering to acknowledge that this administration is anti-science, or at least less pro-science than previous administrations. Hundreds of grants are frozen due to the Harvard shenanigans - its not just Harvard, as many grants flow through there on their way to other universities.
Are the chances of getting deported high? No of course not, but America is certainly not rolling out the red carpet for international scientists right now.
Yes, nothing to do with the absurd costs of arranging such events in the US, let's not beat on a different drum rather than try to bring down total costs.
It's already half way around the world for most and it's absurd to the rest of the world to pay $200 for a meal which can be beaten by most of the developed world...
But no, clearly tsa border control or political wind of the week...