> "They are trying to control a narrative from the very start, and they don't seem to care when they're proven wrong," said David Lapan, who was the DHS press secretary in 2017, during Trump's first administration.
That's the key bit. They don't need to be proven right. They don't even need their story to be consistent.
> “Never believe that anti-Semites are completely unaware of the absurdity of their replies. They know that their remarks are frivolous, open to challenge. But they are amusing themselves, for it is their adversary who is obliged to use words responsibly, since he believes in words. The anti-Semites have the right to play. They even like to play with discourse for, by giving ridiculous reasons, they discredit the seriousness of their interlocutors. They delight in acting in bad faith, since they seek not to persuade by sound argument but to intimidate and disconcert. If you press them too closely, they will abruptly fall silent, loftily indicating by some phrase that the time for argument is past.” > ― Jean-Paul Sartre
Trump's border czar Tom Homan:
"I'm coming to Boston and I'm bringing hell with me." --Homan in February
"Do I expect violence to escalate? Absolutely." -- Tom Homan in March
"I actually thought about getting up and throwing that man a beating right there in the middle of the room" -- Homan in July, referring to a D congressman
But American citizens exercising their constitutional rights? THEY need to tone down the rhetoric.
The worrying thing is that we now know about the lies where there's clear evidence, but we don't know the extent of the illegal torture/brutality where we don't have evidence (e.g. inside the concentration camps used to hold "immigrants").
Reminder that the government has recruited heavily from the Bureau of Prisons for these roles. This type of treatment could become ingrained into the Federal system/our society.
Nonviolent crowd control does not seem to be a core competence of these federal forces.
They should augment deployed enforcement with those who have such expertise.
> Nonviolent crowd control does not seem to be a core competence of these federal forces.
Why is crowd control even needed?
ICE existed for many, many years before now, and them doing their job never caused crowds previously (under both R and D administrations), so what (rhetorically) changed?
Oh this is easy: a gigantic funding increase is being used to massively expand workforce with minimal training, then that workforce is being deployed with an ambiguous mission and apparent arrest quotas, while also being told they’re immune from any criminal liability for their actions (they’re not), including internal memos telling them they’re allowed to enter private homes without judicial warrants (they’re not), and a SCOTUS decision that is being represented to mean that racial profiling is legal now (it's not)
Deploying literal hordes of poorly trained, well-armed men onto American streets with explicit guidance that runs directly contrary to the US Constitution's plain text can, will, and SHOULD attract crowds in opposition.
Hope that helps!
It's completely intentional choice by the Miller/Noem wing of the admin to create media drama and "own the libs", overriding the Homan wing which was pushing for easy wins rounding up known criminal offenders in custody / in red states / etc.
There's a big difference between seeing an immigration raid where you know whoever gets picked up is going to have access to a lawyer, be subject to proper due process, and at worst be sent back to their home country. We knew - or at least believed - that if they detained someone who was a citizen, that person would be released.
Now, when we see ICE grabbing someone, we know that person probably won't have access to legal representation even if they are here legally, even if they're a citizen. We know they might be sent to a concentration camp in a foreign country they aren't from, and we know they might even get murdered in the street. It's a very different dynamic.
Because ICE has gone way beyond arresting illegals. In Boston, for example, they stopped a naturalization ceremony literally minutes before people were to become citizens. Do you support that?
https://www.wcvb.com/article/21-citizenship-oaths-canceled-f...
Bigotry, mostly. It's usually bigotry.
Before now, ICE was primarily paperwork police. Border patrol and occasional visits to round up undocumented immigrants at factories still existed, but the vast majority of their job was related to like customs and visa forms. It's like hiring 10x the postal workers and giving them guns and "qualified immunity" -- you're going to get some new problems.
I think it changed when I saw they were sending people to (apparently rape/torture) prisons in El Salvador with no due process.
Well they didn’t wear masks and grab people off the street and shoved them into unmarked vans under previous administrations.
Didn't ICE and predecessor organizations do workplace raids? Maybe that's not as big of a crowd, but it's still a crowd. I think they would tend to do workplace raids in concert with the FBI.
Exactly. There should be no crowd control, because they shouldn't be interacting with the American public except as fellow citizens. If someone commits a crime against them, they can turn the details over to the local police for enforcement of assault, etc.
At this point after how they've been operating, they shouldn't even be allowed to carry weapons. No guns, no grenades, no pepper spray, no masks to escape accountability. These are supposed to be public servants, they should be accountable to the public. If someone they're trying to apprehend reacts violently then they can escalate the situation to the local police or maybe the FBI after the federal agencies have done the work of regaining the public trust.
They were co-opted to function as Trump's death squads to kill dissidents
Who? They are complaining that sanctuary cities' local police are not cooperating. Who else are you suggesting has the necessary expertise?
MN police are delivering criminals with no citizenship status to ICE / DHS though.
They have not been supporting ICE on warrentless invasions, fishing expeditions, assaulting local citizens.
Surely, you're not saying that the feds are saying things that are counter to what's actually happening on the ground, are you? /s
At this point, you just have to assume the truth is exactly the opposite of what the feds are saying. How do you know a fed is lying...their mouth is moving.
Perhaps if they cannot carry out their goals without hurting people, the answer is "take a step back" and not "hurt people."
This is beyond naive at this point. The objective is to hurt people. Republican voters have repeatedly explicitly asked for it. There's a reason they flocked to Trump. Cruelty is the point. It's astounding the number of people still so credulous wrt what is happening in this country. You have "Christian" preachers talking about empathy being a sin for fucks sake. Like how can people maintain this sort of ignorance into 2026?
And I don't mean this towards you necessarily. I get some people are still entertaining folks who will never participate in a conversation in good faith because it might influence ignorant observers who stumble across the conversation. But does that ever actually play out? How much time is wasted on people of obvious bad faith? How much time has been wasted on the Shapiros, the Kirks, the Tuckers of the world? The random HN commenter who drops obvious bullshit before disappearing to never be heard from again? You cannot out earnest people flooding the zone with bullshit.
Well, if local police is not cooperating then it's as designed by the constitution (states have the authority to police), to not give federal government powers to make the country a police state. Feature, not a bug. Federals should discuss and persuade the state and their police.
Nobody said the police are not policing. They have their own jobs and not there to do the bidding of the federal government. You're saying this like the local authorities are meant to drop what they are doing at the drop of dime because the feds have a request. These are not dangerous criminals that require a timely response before causing more harm. These are people trying to live their lives and it will not harm the rest of the citizens by doing immigration enforcement at a slower pace.
Did you not notice chasil and deepsun were different accounts?
What does that have to do with my response to the comment I replied?
Your reply to deepsun made no sense as reply to deepsun. You said You're saying this like the local authorities are meant to drop what they are doing at the drop of dime because the feds have a request. But deepsun said the opposite almost.
Minnesota had to waste taxpayer dollars and setup a website to disprove this BS.
https://mn.gov/doc/about/news/combatting-dhs-misinformation/
It's a feature, not a bug
That's the what the state police is for... the one that Minnesota refused to deploy to help ICE when the Good and Pretti situations happened.
The state police are not for enforcing federal law unless the state wants them to. That's a pretty big part of what makes them STATE police, actually.
Why do we expect the state police to help murderers? My only question is why they're not out there protecting the people from the murderers.
There are 600 police in the area, and 3000 ICE agents. In what practical way can the local police support that and continue policing?
In addition, they are cooperating where they can: https://mn.gov/doc/about/news/combatting-dhs-misinformation/
The state police are not "for" non-violent enforcement.
I mean yeah, they're not "for" it but you can see how deploying the PD would be helpful as they're more inclined to be non-violent and also I'd reckon they have far more experience than ICE considering the mass requirements which results in many many ICE officers being pretty much just militarized citizens with lacking experience put into stressful situations.
Why are they more inclined to be non-violent?
Maybe the federal government shouldn't be sending "pretty much just militarized citizens with lacking experience" into "stressful situations."
Kooky idea, I know.
Maybe the state government should send the state police to arrest the murderers.
Kooky idea, I know.
It’s hilarious seeing the kind of narratives the right is coming up with to avoid admitting the obvious truth which is on video from multiple angles. I’m now seeing people say things like “you can’t carry a gun at protests” (even though there are numerous photos of people openly carrying guns at right wing protests), or “here’s a different video showing Pretty was an agitator” (as if that excuses the execution), or “wait for bodycam footage” (even though there is a video of them removing his gun and later putting him on his knees).
I will say though that I am also a bit scared. When government officials push a blatantly false narrative, that they know is a lie, and their supporting voters completely accept that version of reality over what they can see with their eyes, it suggests that those same voters would be okay with ANYTHING the administration does.
Yes, this. After watching all the video angles, to have seemingly intelligent people come to some crazy conclusion means they are hopelessly mindfucked. It's really hard to understand how these groupthink spells work, but clearly they do. I think my perspective is so focused on facts that my mind is having trouble bending to the fact that MANY people do not critically think from first principles, about nearly everything. It's troubling to me, making me feel somewhat alienated to at least 40% of the human race.
"Those who can make you believe absurdities can make you commit atrocities."
I don't think they were made to believe. They always wanted to commit atrocities, and they latch onto any excuse to do them.
"Who you gonna believe, me or your lying eyes?"
It's been this way for a while, though. It's just that the stakes of the things they are willing to tell folks to "2+2=5" about seem to have dropped substantially. It used to be about the goodness of US foreign interventions and, say, "imperial capitalism" in general, and they made plenty of fun propaganda to support it: "Red Dawn" or "First Blood"- quality and fun propaganda.
When they started kidnapping folks from our communities who've been peacefully chilling and being community members for decades, it got a lot less abstract, I think.
If it helps, understand that it becomes ever easier to get folks to disbelieve the government when they can see it; it's far harder to get the average brunch-enjoyer to care when they are doing a central american coup... much easier to care when they are shooting yt wmn in the streets.
Famously, there are plenty of stories in the west about eastern-bloc countries and propaganda, where everyone knows that that the papers don't tell the truth but the truth circulates regardless.
So maybe don't worry about the false narratives- worry about the recouperative powers of capital to pull all those radicalized liberals back into the fold instead of using a mass line of organization to force structural changes.
i can’t wait until the gestapo, and the powers that be, revoke my citizenship and send me to a ice detention center so i can make license plates
One of the pleasant things, though, is that if that kind of thing is on the table you probably have some kind of moral imperative to start doing something about it.
Previously I felt like a hyperbolic nerd, and now I have a whole lot of new friends all working on the same stuff. Wheee. Go team. I hate it.
>But the one great shocking occasion, when tens or hundreds or thousands will join with you, never comes
I appreciate that bit of prose.
Fortunately it feels very much the other direction, lately- more folks seeing the dangers, more willingness to take the long bet. Fewer folks at brunch.
That's a bet some of have been taking for a while, though it's oftent felt dumb, and we haven't needed a great shocking occasion to do it.
fish rots from the head. Violence, lies and grift. The very head is convicted grifter who is openly using his position for personal enrichment. Right next - Noem - trigger happy dog shooter, and why suddenly so many DHS ads with her ? :
https://www.propublica.org/article/kristi-noem-dhs-ad-campai...
"Firm Tied to Kristi Noem Secretly Got Money From $220 Million DHS Ad Contracts The company is run by the husband of Noem’s chief DHS spokesperson and has personal and business ties to Noem and her aides. DHS invoked the “emergency” at the border to skirt competitive bidding rules for the taxpayer-funded campaign."
and that cherry on top:
"DHS, White House shared white nationalist song in ICE recruitment posts"
https://www.splcenter.org/resources/hatewatch/white-national...
This was not a particularly good condition fish to begin with....
Naw. The rot has been here since the country was founded. It has never been adequately treated. We had our best opportunity after the civil war, but decided to throw away the antibiotics and just live with it. It took a long time, but now seems terminal.
Fascism has come to the United States.
It's been here for a long time, it finally has encouragement to show its face.
> officials rushed to defend immigration officers without waiting for key facts to emerge – in what former immigration officials called a clear break with past practice for federal agencies
Without obscuring how bad is it, I don't believe there was ever a time when officials _didn't_ rush to defend federal officers without waiting for key facts to emerge. The us government has constantly loved to say that no one working for them has done anything wrong.
Calling American citizens domestic terrorists 30 mins after they were shot dead by agents of the President's shiny new initiative is a bit of an escalation on the generic government face-saving responses. The rhetoric is escalating and dangerous.
Is it? I really don't think so. You don't remember the whole "superpredator" thing? Every time a black dude is shot, they'll start talking about how he must have been some kinda criminal. People of color have been suffering this shit forever. Sure, the Internet makes things faster, but the policies are the same.
in that case, it seems like as good of a time to stop as ever
It's seemed like a good time for quite a while...
The best time to stop is 250 years ago. The next best time to stop is now.
You’re right about that. But the actual escalation is that the line of “whiteness” is shifting. Anyone not MAGA now is in the “not white” category as far as this administration is concerned. That means white liberals are now getting the “superpredator” treatment, building a permission structure to do state violence to them.
Never like this.
The way Noem et al. immediately started with the violent domestic terrorist rhetoric / we've done nothing wrong was absolutely unheralded, and the government was never like this. When there's a shooting you say that the situation on the ground is dynamic, evidence is being amassed, the subjects are on leave pending the investigation, etc.
This was completely unlike the historic norm, and clearly it was the marching orders. They were obviously instructed to ape Trump's habit of utter confidence in the face of devastating reality.
And I mean, it just reflects how Trump operates. Reality is secondary to what you claim it is, and if you lie, and everyone knows you lied, just repeat the lie again and again and it breaks many people's brains until some subset of the population will just go "Wow, no one is so shameless or vile they'd lie like this, so he must be telling the truth!". Similarly, immediately pretend that these situations and slam dunk, quick-close cases with over the top rhetoric (terrorism! ICE agent hospitalized in mortal danger, etc) no further consideration needed, is perfectly coherent with the way Trump has managed to con so, so many.
I think to an extent Trump is a fall guy, even when it comes to Venezuela he was dragged through the mud where his predecessors have constantly undermined the sovereignty of other nations and attacked them under the guise of protecting the US from terrorism when it was about oil and mineral ritches [1], the same with the deportation centers which while they were getting some criticism it was nowhere near the level of slander that there is towards the current admin doing the same thing.
Our cities are being occuppied by paramilitary forces who are assaulting residents, routinely telling brazen lies about high-profile incidents, and racially profiling without pretense. This is not normal.
> “I think to an extent Trump is a fall guy…”
That’s a strange conclusion to make, because the definition of a “fall guy” is someone who takes the blame, while others, who are more culpable, go free. Whereas most critics would say he’s the “kingpin”, and supporters say he’s “the decider”.
You don’t need a very long awareness of political history to find examples of what government was like before to realize the US is in extraordinary times in terms of loyalty to his leadership and presidency. You don’t need to look long before you find repeat examples—from the Congress, the Supreme Court, and his appointees—of individuals making excuses or previously inconceivable accommodations for the president’s conduct, choices, and decisions to then conclude the president is, as they say, “calling the shots”. That is not the characteristic of a “fall guy”, but a “kingpin”.
Personally, I feel we’re lucky that our “dictator-in-chief” is in the pattern of a real estate developer and not, say, a paranoid military general.
If Trump got "dragged through the mud" on Venezuela, he did it to himself. What we know about that operation indicates it's clearly a Trump op.
But overall, I also disagree. The press has been very easy on Trump, from going easy on the grab then by the pussy tape, to never saying that he lies, to not making an issue out of his mental decline.