Trump’s America

[Brisketexan 106430]

The guy was asking if he should be worried if his wife might have her citizenship revoked. Some of you seriously believe that's a worry? Seems hyperbolic.
I realize who/what we are dealing with in the incoming administration, but there is soooo much more lower hanging fruit than trying to peel back well established parts of the constitution - especially to apply retroactively. And if we get to that point, there are larger worries. 
To boot, the guy is married to this woman - pretty easy to gain residency and citizenship via marriage anyway. There are plenty of things to worry about right now, but I don't think that poster needs to seriously worry about his citizen wife being abruptly deported, personally. 

The last round of Trump - when they weren’t NEARLY as powerful - they tried to launch an effort to deport lifetime US citizens like my dad (that is, people born in US border hospitals in the 30s and before, when record keeping wasn’t A+). What gives you the idea they won’t be more emboldened this time?

[mdmost 43809]

I doubt they're going to start going through a list but I bet the new administration will bake in looking at someone's citizenship and birth status whenever there's an option to like you go to a hospital for emergency care or you apply for something that is screened by the government like a passport.

Edited Wednesday at 07:50 PM by mdmost

[BillyBadAss 197]

1 minute ago, Brisketexan said:

The last round of Trump - when they weren’t NEARLY as powerful - they tried to launch an effort to deport lifetime US citizens like my dad (that is, people born in US border hospitals in the 30s and before, when record keeping wasn’t A+). What gives you the idea they won’t be more emboldened this time?

The reason I don't think it's a concern is because there are logistical barriers to deporting people. Personnel to round people up, processing facilities, transportation to the "home" country, agreements with the home country to allow the plane to land and how many people they will process a month, etc. etc. 

They can fully max out all of that capacity with much lower hanging fruit for years before they'd be out of illegals who are "easy" to deport (have no protections or recourse). Trying to do the same with citizens will take much more effort and require complicity across the states, congress, supreme court, federal agencies, etc. 

It just doesn't seem likely to me. 

 

[Longhorn_Fan68 34070]

also, wouldn't that mean that like all of Trump's kids *could* be deported using the same rules?

[bluto 4969]

10 minutes ago, BillyBadAss said:

The reason I don't think it's a concern is because there are logistical barriers to deporting people. Personnel to round people up, processing facilities, transportation to the "home" country, agreements with the home country to allow the plane to land and how many people they will process a month, etc. etc. 

They can fully max out all of that capacity with much lower hanging fruit for years before they'd be out of illegals who are "easy" to deport (have no protections or recourse). Trying to do the same with citizens will take much more effort and require complicity across the states, congress, supreme court, federal agencies, etc. 

It just doesn't seem likely to me. 

 

All the shit on the front half here in the US isn’t a barrier, it’s an opportunity to enrich all those service providers with outsourced govt contracts 

[BillyBadAss 197]

This American Life did a segment on the logistics of it all - they spoke with a senior guy at ICE and he walked through a lot of it. 

TLDR; - they can deport massive amounts of people if most restrictions are essentially removed, but still there are limits. 

Worth a listen: https://www.thisamericanlife.org/846/this-is-the-cake-we-baked

(the part I'm talking about starts 7 minutes in, and is 17 minutes long)

Edited Wednesday at 08:16 PM by BillyBadAss

[tx 3 putt 78379]

storm those churches !

 

[Captainant 28319]

47 minutes ago, BillyBadAss said:

The reason I don't think it's a concern is because there are logistical barriers to deporting people. Personnel to round people up, processing facilities, transportation to the "home" country, agreements with the home country to allow the plane to land and how many people they will process a month, etc. etc. 

They can fully max out all of that capacity with much lower hanging fruit for years before they'd be out of illegals who are "easy" to deport (have no protections or recourse). Trying to do the same with citizens will take much more effort and require complicity across the states, congress, supreme court, federal agencies, etc. 

It just doesn't seem likely to me. 

 

 

29 minutes ago, BillyBadAss said:

This American Life did a segment on the logistics of it all - they spoke with a senior guy at ICE and he walked through a lot of it. 

TLDR; - they can deport massive amounts of people if most restrictions are essentially removed, but still there are limits. 

Worth a listen: https://www.thisamericanlife.org/846/this-is-the-cake-we-baked

(the part I'm talking about starts 7 minutes in, and is 17 minutes long)

I mean, are you aware of the 1400 acre ranch in west Texas they're converting into an immigrant concentration site for deportation?

https://www.texastribune.org/2024/11/19/texas-border-starr-county-ranch-trump-deportation/

Buddy it's gonna get fucking UGLY. Just hope there's no rail lines put in.

[BillyBadAss 197]

It will be interesting to see how America reacts if they do succeed at massive deportations. It's one thing to think about it in the abstract and far away. It's another to see people in your own community affected.  What happens when local restaurants or services start to be visibly affected? Food prices increase or there are shortages of things like chicken. Construction halts, you can't find a lawn service, the office trash stops being emptied, etc. 

[mdmost 43809]

Oh I forgot to add upthread that there will be real danger from citizens informing on those who they suspect are not here legally or who might've been born here to undocumented parents. That's why I would advise anyone in that situation, of immigrant origin (read non-white, non-African American) to keep a valid passport on hand to get you quickly out of that situation before it escalates.

[Longhorn_Fan68 34070]

4 minutes ago, BillyBadAss said:

It will be interesting to see how America reacts if they do succeed at massive deportations. It's one thing to think about it in the abstract and far away. It's another to see people in your own community affected.  What happens when local restaurants or services start to be visibly affected? Food prices increase or there are shortages of things like chicken. Construction halts, you can't find a lawn service, the office trash stops being emptied, etc. 

the white folk pining for industry will surely pick up the slack. 

Edited Wednesday at 08:49 PM by Longhorn_Fan68

[hookem2010 2696]

I don't think my wife is going to be deported. But I'm not sure what the fuck is going to happen, and it's absurd that it's even a question. Also, I'm sure there are foreign adoptees whose citizenship status is less clear. Just an angle of this thing that I haven't seen or heard discussed anywhere.

[Foosters 18182]

10 minutes ago, BillyBadAss said:

What happens when local restaurants or services start to be visibly affected? Food prices increase or there are shortages of things like chicken. Construction halts, you can't find a lawn service, the office trash stops being emptied, etc. 

the leopards eating faces thread is going to have some amazing content

[locodos 5572]

12 minutes ago, BillyBadAss said:

It will be interesting to see how America reacts if they do succeed at massive deportations. It's one thing to think about it in the abstract and far away. It's another to see people in your own community affected.  What happens when local restaurants or services start to be visibly affected? Food prices increase or there are shortages of things like chicken. Construction halts, you can't find a lawn service, the office trash stops being emptied, etc. 

No one wants to work anymore!

[Gap03 3374]

1 hour ago, BillyBadAss said:

It will be interesting to see how America reacts if they do succeed at massive deportations. It's one thing to think about it in the abstract and far away. It's another to see people in your own community affected.  What happens when local restaurants or services start to be visibly affected? Food prices increase or there are shortages of things like chicken. Construction halts, you can't find a lawn service, the office trash stops being emptied, etc. 

I'm assuming it will go something like "Damn you, Biden / Obama!!!!!!"

[wood 11741]

On 12/11/2024 at 4:10 PM, Gap03 said:

I'm assuming it will go something like "Damn you, Biden / Obama!!!!!!"

Of course it will. They think Trump isn't part of the problem, even though his policies made the problem far worse. He was the one who deprioritized deportation of criminals and significantly reduced the numbers of deportations overall. Obama prioritized deportation of criminals and made far more criminal deportations and far more overall removals per year for 8 years than Trump ever did. Then Trump killed the Bipartisan Border Bill and heaped all the blame on Biden ... and fml, it worked, because people are fucking morons.

Edited Saturday at 08:43 AM by wood

[Dnaguy 12551]

2 hours ago, BillyBadAss said:

It will be interesting to see how America reacts if they do succeed at massive deportations. It's one thing to think about it in the abstract and far away. It's another to see people in your own community affected.  What happens when local restaurants or services start to be visibly affected? Food prices increase or there are shortages of things like chicken. Construction halts, you can't find a lawn service, the office trash stops being emptied, etc. 

 

53 minutes ago, Gap03 said:

I'm assuming it will go something like "Damn you, Biden / Obama!!!!!!"

No… it’ll be more like this:

If Biden and the democrats hadn’t let all the illegals come across in the first place, then things wouldn’t have gotten so damn expensive when we deported them all out.

 

[Aqua Buddha 14764]

The same people who were anti vax now want the government to pay for Ozympic.  Amazing:

[Okie State 3886]

I've already seen people claiming gas prices are down over 50 cents a gallon due to Trump. It's absolutely mind numbing how stupid people are.

Edited Thursday at 01:10 AM by Okie State

[SubliminalHorn 6991]

6 hours ago, BillyBadAss said:

The guy was asking if he should be worried if his wife might have her citizenship revoked. Some of you seriously believe that's a worry? Seems hyperbolic.

I realize who/what we are dealing with in the incoming administration, but there is soooo much more lower hanging fruit than trying to peel back well established parts of the constitution - especially to apply retroactively. And if we get to that point, there are larger worries. 

To boot, the guy is married to this woman - pretty easy to gain residency and citizenship via marriage anyway. There are plenty of things to worry about right now, but I don't think that poster needs to seriously worry about his citizen wife being abruptly deported, personally. 

You know they’re planning on limiting the ability for spouses to sponsor each other right? At this point, we have to assume anything and everything is on the table for this administration when it comes to immigration and overall grifting 

[SubliminalHorn 6991]

1 hour ago, Aqua Buddha said:

The same people who were anti vax now want the government to pay for Ozympic.  Amazing:

Then that fucking weasel should donate $100 billion to pay for it for Americans that want it 

[Hermanator 7558]

8 hours ago, Walser said:

Would it be accurate to describe our incoming govt the love child of oligarchy and kakistocracy? Did Russia actually win the Cold War?

No, but Osama Bin Laden accomplished his goal. I'm guessing not the exact way he envisioned, but as soon as 9/11 happened the US turbocharged it's pending decline. The fire was already set but he found a way to pour a ton of gasoline on it

[CTC2 2852]

5 hours ago, BillyBadAss said:

It will be interesting to see how America reacts if they do succeed at massive deportations. It's one thing to think about it in the abstract and far away. It's another to see people in your own community affected.  What happens when local restaurants or services start to be visibly affected? Food prices increase or there are shortages of things like chicken. Construction halts, you can't find a lawn service, the office trash stops being emptied, etc. 

The whole thing is premised on the lie that these people are stealing jobs from red blooded Americans.  

[linux 1753]

16 minutes ago, Hermanator said:

No, but Osama Bin Laden accomplished his goal. I'm guessing not the exact way he envisioned, but as soon as 9/11 happened the US turbocharged it's pending decline. The fire was already set but he found a way to pour a ton of gasoline on it

Yup that was the beginning of the end, that was when you learned the absolute dumbest people were in charge.

[SubliminalHorn 6991]

16 minutes ago, linux said:

Yup that was the beginning of the end, that was when you learned the absolute dumbest people were in charge.

Oh we’re able to get another lesson some time in the next 4 years

[Dnaguy 12551]

3 hours ago, Aqua Buddha said:

The same people who were anti vax now want the government to pay for Ozympic.  Amazing:

Trumps first 100 day policy #137:

No fat chicks.

[UpperWestside 6262]

7 hours ago, Dnaguy said:

Trumps first 100 day policy #137:

No fat chicks.

@Vic Mackey to the white courtesy phone.

[DDD Dad 14563]

13 hours ago, Aqua Buddha said:

The same people who were anti vax now want the government to pay for Ozympic.  Amazing:

 

[G650 14417]

People trying to exempt themselves from reality are going to be what kills humanity, nothing else.

[tx 3 putt 78379]

 

[nbmishoid 981]

On 12/11/2024 at 12:44 PM, BillyBadAss said:

It will be interesting to see how America reacts if they do succeed at massive deportations. It's one thing to think about it in the abstract and far away. It's another to see people in your own community affected.  What happens when local restaurants or services start to be visibly affected? Food prices increase or there are shortages of things like chicken. Construction halts, you can't find a lawn service, the office trash stops being emptied, etc. 

What happens if they more or less get away with it?  Then the deportations will be endless.

[deech 2379]

44 minutes ago, nbmishoid said:

What happens if they more or less get away with it?  Then the deportations will be endless.

Who is going to stop them? 

 

The Legislative Branch?  

The Supreme Court? 

The military? 

Law Enforcement at either the federal or state level?

 

[wood 11741]

 

[Francisco 2.0 32503]

What could possibly go wrong.

 

[MissingInAction 25465]

Great Depression 2: turnip boogaloo.

[Francisco 2.0 32503]

https://www.rollingstone.com/politics/politics-features/trump-war-press-media-leaks-1235202909/

 

Quote

In the highly tumultuous closing days of Donald Trump’s first term in office, BuzzFeed News received an angry letter from his outgoing administration. The subpoena, issued on December 1, 2020, was delivered as Trump was preoccupied with efforts to overturn the democratic order and nullify the results of the presidential election he had just lost to Joe Biden.

As BuzzFeed reported at the time, “Immigration and Customs Enforcement investigators issued a subpoena this week demanding BuzzFeed News identify its sources — an extraordinary attempt by the government to interfere with a news outlet acting under the protections of the First Amendment, and a move that the agency’s former chief lambasted as ‘embarrassing.’” 

 

Quote

The aggressive letter from the Trump-era ICE read: “Failure to comply with this summons will render you liable to proceedings in a U.S. District Court to enforce compliance with this summons as well as other sanctions.” It added, “You are requested not to disclose the existence of this summons for an indefinite period of time. Any such disclosure will impede this investigation and thereby interfere with the enforcement of federal law.”

To many media and political observers — including officials who served in the Trump administration who were aware of the document at the time — the subpoena wasn’t worth the price of the paper on which it was printed. It was a temper tantrum, not a real legal threat. For starters, Trump and his officials would be out of a job in less than two months. There wasn’t much will, much less the time, within the federal government to make good on this threat to an investigative reporter, his sources, and his publication. There wasn’t even a chilling effect, per se, because their guy had failed at winning reelection.

That was then.

 

Quote

Now, after vanquishing Vice President Kamala Harris in the 2024 election, Trump and his team have four more years to try to intimidate and target leakers, whistleblowers, and foes in the media — especially if situations involve what they claim is highly sensitive information or classified intel. They intend to use the opportunity.

In reporting this story, Rolling Stone spoke with attorneys close to the president-elect, incoming Trump administration officials, and other Republicans who’ve talked to Trump about staunching embarrassing press leaks during a second administration. Two of the sources with knowledge of the matter specifically cited the Dec. 1 subpoena as a model, and something that Trump allies and lieutenants are expecting to issue more of during the second term — this time, with the benefit of years, not days.

 

 

 

Spoiler

It’s merely one facet of sprawling plans to clamp down on whistleblowers and bully Trump’s enemies in the press, after Trump’s inauguration once again in late January. Expect more communications seizures, more whistleblower prosecutions, and more personal lawsuits or legal threats from Trump against news outlets. 

“Oh, it’ll be brutal,” says one conservative lawyer who’s discussed certain plans and ideas with Trump and his inner circle. “Gloves off [because] we’ve learned our lessons from the first time and one lesson is you have got to be even more aggressive.”

One reason much of the Trumpworld elite wants the gloves torn off is because they are, with good reason, expecting a torrent of leaks to the media after Trump’s inauguration in Washington, D.C., next month. With Trump’s intention to nominate several controversial or scandal-plagued figures to the most senior levels of American government — including Pete Hegseth to lead the Pentagon, Robert F. Kennedy Jr. to helm the Department of Health and Human Services, Tulsi Gabbard as director of national intelligence, and Kash Patel as FBI director — Trump and his inner sanctum are predicting officials in various departments and agencies will leak early and often, several of the sources say. 

This is, of course, a matter that Trump cares about deeply. During his first term in the Oval Office, intra-office paranoia and frenzied leak hunts — both officially by federal investigators and informally by zealous Trump aides — were a hallmark of the administration. But Trumpland isn’t only worried about stamping out leaks, of classified information and other details, from members of what the president-elect and his cronies deride as the “Deep State.” Often, the backstabbing is coming from inside the house.

According to two sources familiar with the matter, Trump has personally grown furious about some of the leaks that have occurred from the current presidential transition process, and has in some instances fumingly demanded to know who in his midst could have possibly whispered certain information to the press.

When Trump steps back into office, a top priority will be undoing much of the Biden agenda — and that includes some of the administration’s efforts to limit the extent to which the government can terrorize whistleblowers and leakers.

During Biden’s first year in office, his attorney general, Merrick Garland, announced that the Department of Justice would bar federal prosecutors — with some exceptions — from seizing journalists’ phone records and other private communications during the course of leak investigations.

According to several of the knowledgeable sources, some of whom have discussed the topic with Trump in the past year, the president-elect and multiple attorneys in his orbit aim to promptly nix that Biden-era DOJ policy. In the words of one Trump adviser, it’s “going in the trash can,” with some Trump officials intent on tearing it up right near the start of Term 2.

Among committed Trumpists close to the president-elect, there has also been discussion of potentially creating new offices in the FBI or DOJ to focus exclusively on hunting for leaks and plugging the deluge of media leaks. In the summer of 2017, Trumps’ first attorney general, Jeff Sessions, mentioned that the FBI had formed a new unit to deal with leaks, including of classified info. Sessions also announced that the Trump administration had tripled the number of criminal leak investigations in the time since President Barack Obama left office.

“In cases where there have been leaks that are criminal in nature, U.S. law enforcement and the incoming attorney general should follow the evidence wherever it leads, regardless of what the prior administraiton’s attorney general thinks, or what the internal memorandum was,” says Steven Groves, who worked as a lawyer in Trump’s first White House.

Both the Obama and Trump administration attracted significant uproar from press-freedom groups for their secret DOJ seizures of records from reporters and others. Whatever record Obama and his Justice Department set, Trump and his senior officials were determined to shatter it. Gurgling beneath the first Trump administration’s rhetorical and propaganda war on his nemeses in political media, there was a ton of real action. For instance, the first Trump administration referred a record number of leaks to the feds for criminal investigations. 

“Obama’s Justice Department indicted eight journalistic sources under the Espionage Act, more than all U.S. presidents before him combined,” The Intercept reported back in 2019. “Donald Trump is now surpassing Obama’s eight-year record in just over two years in office.”

That amped-up war on government whistleblowers was powered in partby the same Espionage Act under which Trump was criminally investigated and charged in Special Counsel Jack Smith’s now-defunct case. The war is set to come roaring back and then some after Trump is sworn in. So far, the twice-impeached former (and future) president, who also became a convicted felon during his 2024 campaign, has named ultra-loyalist Pam Bondi as his choice to lead the Justice Department. Early this month, Trump announced that another hyper-MAGA-devotee, Kash Patel, was his new pick to serve as FBI director. 

Patel has made no secret of his desire to use the levers of federal power to pursue those he views as anti-Trump subversives in the press and government. A year ago, Trump’s choice to take over the FBI told fellow Trump ally Steve Bannon that if Trump won, they’d seriously “go out and find the conspirators — not just in government, but in the media,” repeating the anti-democratic lie about “people in the media who lied about American citizens, who helped Joe Biden rig presidential elections.”

Patel added: “We’re going to come after you. Whether it’s criminally or civilly, we’ll figure that out. But yeah, we’re putting you all on notice, and Steve, this is why they hate us. This is why we’re tyrannical. This is why we’re dictators.”

Indeed.

The sources close to Trump add that non-government actors will be integral to their plans for combatting who they deem overly meddlesome reporters. Multiple sources say that as sitting president, Trump still intends to have his small armada of personal lawyers who aren’t working in the administration handle his (often frivolous) lawsuits — or, more often than not, enraged legal threats that don’t result in suits — against media outlets that cross him during a new term. 

In the final days of the 2024 campaign, Trump sued CBS for the ludicrous amount of $10 billion — based on the even more ludicrous idea that the way 60 Minutes edited a Kamala Harris interview was somehow actionable. 

“The anticipated leaking is a matter of utmost investigative and litigation priority for [us],” says Mike Howell, a former Trump Homeland Security Department official who nowadays works as the executive director at the Heritage Foundation’s Oversight Project. “We have several outstanding lawsuits about leaked information over the last several years that the Trump administration will inherit. A lot of these lawsuits have to do with the FBI, including things that were directly harmful to President Trump … Therefore, on Day 1 of the second Trump administration, it’ll inherit a bunch of FOIA litigation it’ll have to answer for … It will already have a duty to figure out how this information left the Biden administration, via leak.”

Howell continues that during the second Trump presidency, “whenever we see a leak of particular interest out in the press, you can anticipate that we are going to deploy our investigative team and litigation team to figure out how that information left the government. We will use our vast source network and other tools at our disposal to try to identify the source of the leak, to supplement whatever investigation is ongoing.”

In campaigning on a platform of retribution, bloodlust, and authoritarian impulse, Trump made no secret of his longstanding desire to punish his enemies in the media. In recent years, Trump has even made the idea of journalists getting raped in prison — and thus tortured into naming their confidential sources’ identities — into an audience-pleasing laugh line atsome of his rallies.

As he prepares to take office once again, the president-elect is not hiding his interest in going after journalists. 

Last month, the president-elect personally pressured Republican senators to sink the PRESS Act, bipartisan reporter-shield legislation. Trump posted to social media that conservatives “MUST KILL THIS BILL.” But it wasn’t just a social-media post. Trump was invested enough in this matter that he spoke privately and on the phone with certain GOP lawmakers about making sure President Biden never signs this bill, a source with knowledge of the situation and another person briefed on it tell Rolling Stone.

This week, Senate Republicans dutifully blocked it.

On Thursday, as he accepted Time magazine’s “Person of the Year” award, Trump said that “the media’s tamed down a little bit; they’re liking us much better now, I think,” adding, with a smile: “If they don’t, we’ll have to just take them on again and we don’t want to do that.”

 

[Dnaguy 12551]

1 hour ago, Francisco 2.0 said:

https://www.rollingstone.com/politics/politics-features/trump-war-press-media-leaks-1235202909/

 

 

 

 

  Hide contents

It’s merely one facet of sprawling plans to clamp down on whistleblowers and bully Trump’s enemies in the press, after Trump’s inauguration once again in late January. Expect more communications seizures, more whistleblower prosecutions, and more personal lawsuits or legal threats from Trump against news outlets. 

“Oh, it’ll be brutal,” says one conservative lawyer who’s discussed certain plans and ideas with Trump and his inner circle. “Gloves off [because] we’ve learned our lessons from the first time and one lesson is you have got to be even more aggressive.”

One reason much of the Trumpworld elite wants the gloves torn off is because they are, with good reason, expecting a torrent of leaks to the media after Trump’s inauguration in Washington, D.C., next month. With Trump’s intention to nominate several controversial or scandal-plagued figures to the most senior levels of American government — including Pete Hegseth to lead the Pentagon, Robert F. Kennedy Jr. to helm the Department of Health and Human Services, Tulsi Gabbard as director of national intelligence, and Kash Patel as FBI director — Trump and his inner sanctum are predicting officials in various departments and agencies will leak early and often, several of the sources say. 

This is, of course, a matter that Trump cares about deeply. During his first term in the Oval Office, intra-office paranoia and frenzied leak hunts — both officially by federal investigators and informally by zealous Trump aides — were a hallmark of the administration. But Trumpland isn’t only worried about stamping out leaks, of classified information and other details, from members of what the president-elect and his cronies deride as the “Deep State.” Often, the backstabbing is coming from inside the house.

According to two sources familiar with the matter, Trump has personally grown furious about some of the leaks that have occurred from the current presidential transition process, and has in some instances fumingly demanded to know who in his midst could have possibly whispered certain information to the press.

When Trump steps back into office, a top priority will be undoing much of the Biden agenda — and that includes some of the administration’s efforts to limit the extent to which the government can terrorize whistleblowers and leakers.

During Biden’s first year in office, his attorney general, Merrick Garland, announced that the Department of Justice would bar federal prosecutors — with some exceptions — from seizing journalists’ phone records and other private communications during the course of leak investigations.

According to several of the knowledgeable sources, some of whom have discussed the topic with Trump in the past year, the president-elect and multiple attorneys in his orbit aim to promptly nix that Biden-era DOJ policy. In the words of one Trump adviser, it’s “going in the trash can,” with some Trump officials intent on tearing it up right near the start of Term 2.

Among committed Trumpists close to the president-elect, there has also been discussion of potentially creating new offices in the FBI or DOJ to focus exclusively on hunting for leaks and plugging the deluge of media leaks. In the summer of 2017, Trumps’ first attorney general, Jeff Sessions, mentioned that the FBI had formed a new unit to deal with leaks, including of classified info. Sessions also announced that the Trump administration had tripled the number of criminal leak investigations in the time since President Barack Obama left office.

“In cases where there have been leaks that are criminal in nature, U.S. law enforcement and the incoming attorney general should follow the evidence wherever it leads, regardless of what the prior administraiton’s attorney general thinks, or what the internal memorandum was,” says Steven Groves, who worked as a lawyer in Trump’s first White House.

Both the Obama and Trump administration attracted significant uproar from press-freedom groups for their secret DOJ seizures of records from reporters and others. Whatever record Obama and his Justice Department set, Trump and his senior officials were determined to shatter it. Gurgling beneath the first Trump administration’s rhetorical and propaganda war on his nemeses in political media, there was a ton of real action. For instance, the first Trump administration referred a record number of leaks to the feds for criminal investigations. 

“Obama’s Justice Department indicted eight journalistic sources under the Espionage Act, more than all U.S. presidents before him combined,” The Intercept reported back in 2019. “Donald Trump is now surpassing Obama’s eight-year record in just over two years in office.”

That amped-up war on government whistleblowers was powered in partby the same Espionage Act under which Trump was criminally investigated and charged in Special Counsel Jack Smith’s now-defunct case. The war is set to come roaring back and then some after Trump is sworn in. So far, the twice-impeached former (and future) president, who also became a convicted felon during his 2024 campaign, has named ultra-loyalist Pam Bondi as his choice to lead the Justice Department. Early this month, Trump announced that another hyper-MAGA-devotee, Kash Patel, was his new pick to serve as FBI director. 

Patel has made no secret of his desire to use the levers of federal power to pursue those he views as anti-Trump subversives in the press and government. A year ago, Trump’s choice to take over the FBI told fellow Trump ally Steve Bannon that if Trump won, they’d seriously “go out and find the conspirators — not just in government, but in the media,” repeating the anti-democratic lie about “people in the media who lied about American citizens, who helped Joe Biden rig presidential elections.”

Patel added: “We’re going to come after you. Whether it’s criminally or civilly, we’ll figure that out. But yeah, we’re putting you all on notice, and Steve, this is why they hate us. This is why we’re tyrannical. This is why we’re dictators.”

Indeed.

The sources close to Trump add that non-government actors will be integral to their plans for combatting who they deem overly meddlesome reporters. Multiple sources say that as sitting president, Trump still intends to have his small armada of personal lawyers who aren’t working in the administration handle his (often frivolous) lawsuits — or, more often than not, enraged legal threats that don’t result in suits — against media outlets that cross him during a new term. 

In the final days of the 2024 campaign, Trump sued CBS for the ludicrous amount of $10 billion — based on the even more ludicrous idea that the way 60 Minutes edited a Kamala Harris interview was somehow actionable. 

“The anticipated leaking is a matter of utmost investigative and litigation priority for [us],” says Mike Howell, a former Trump Homeland Security Department official who nowadays works as the executive director at the Heritage Foundation’s Oversight Project. “We have several outstanding lawsuits about leaked information over the last several years that the Trump administration will inherit. A lot of these lawsuits have to do with the FBI, including things that were directly harmful to President Trump … Therefore, on Day 1 of the second Trump administration, it’ll inherit a bunch of FOIA litigation it’ll have to answer for … It will already have a duty to figure out how this information left the Biden administration, via leak.”

Howell continues that during the second Trump presidency, “whenever we see a leak of particular interest out in the press, you can anticipate that we are going to deploy our investigative team and litigation team to figure out how that information left the government. We will use our vast source network and other tools at our disposal to try to identify the source of the leak, to supplement whatever investigation is ongoing.”

In campaigning on a platform of retribution, bloodlust, and authoritarian impulse, Trump made no secret of his longstanding desire to punish his enemies in the media. In recent years, Trump has even made the idea of journalists getting raped in prison — and thus tortured into naming their confidential sources’ identities — into an audience-pleasing laugh line atsome of his rallies.

As he prepares to take office once again, the president-elect is not hiding his interest in going after journalists. 

Last month, the president-elect personally pressured Republican senators to sink the PRESS Act, bipartisan reporter-shield legislation. Trump posted to social media that conservatives “MUST KILL THIS BILL.” But it wasn’t just a social-media post. Trump was invested enough in this matter that he spoke privately and on the phone with certain GOP lawmakers about making sure President Biden never signs this bill, a source with knowledge of the situation and another person briefed on it tell Rolling Stone.

This week, Senate Republicans dutifully blocked it.

On Thursday, as he accepted Time magazine’s “Person of the Year” award, Trump said that “the media’s tamed down a little bit; they’re liking us much better now, I think,” adding, with a smile: “If they don’t, we’ll have to just take them on again and we don’t want to do that.”

 

Have fun journalists.

 

Remember all that ‘both sides’ shit you did that normalized this asshat so you could get clicks / eyeballs / ratings?

Welp. Now you about to get it…. From both sides. 

 

Spoiler

 

Edited Friday at 03:06 AM by Dnaguy

[Bullneck 19432]

On 12/11/2024 at 2:55 PM, BillyBadAss said:

The reason I don't think it's a concern is because there are logistical barriers to deporting people. Personnel to round people up, processing facilities, transportation to the "home" country, agreements with the home country to allow the plane to land and how many people they will process a month, etc. etc. 

They can fully max out all of that capacity with much lower hanging fruit for years before they'd be out of illegals who are "easy" to deport (have no protections or recourse). Trying to do the same with citizens will take much more effort and require complicity across the states, congress, supreme court, federal agencies, etc. 

It just doesn't seem likely to me. 

Thanks for your input and insights. 

You know, the Nazis ran death camps while fighting a war on two fronts.  That takes some dedication!  Or mis-aligned priorities.  Or something.  It just doesn't seem likely to me.

[Bullneck 19432]

On 12/10/2024 at 12:56 PM, hookem2010 said:

Question: My wife was born in the US to a non-citizen, although I believe she was here legally. She was adopted right after birth. How much should we be personally worried about this birthright citizenship bullshit?

Goebbels and crew . . . excuse me, I meant Miller and crew will cast a wide net.  They'll put anyone they can on a plane and then see if they can get back in.

[tx 3 putt 78379]

the dumbest fucking people …

 

[Underdog 29061]

If no money how was she to pay for any of the apples? 

[Dnaguy 12551]

7 hours ago, tx 3 putt said:

the dumbest fucking people …

 

In know that pain all too well.

Growing up without a lot of money, there were many a tIme I was forced to take that long walk back to the apple refrigerator at the grocery store to return 1/3 of my apples.

I just wish that grocery stores would not try to hide their prices until you got to the check out line. 
They should place clear $ per fruit or $/ lb of fruit directly on each individual fruit fridge. 
When will we learn, people? 
When will we stop the indignity that is grocery shopping?!

[Brandywine 1326]

We are so screwed!

[DDD Dad 14563]

35 minutes ago, Dnaguy said:

In know that pain all too well.

Growing up without a lot of money, there were many a tIme I was forced to take that long walk back to the apple refrigerator at the grocery store to return 1/3 of my apples.

I just wish that grocery stores would not try to hide their prices until you got to the check out line. 
They should place clear $ per fruit or $/ lb of fruit directly on each individual fruit fridge. 
When will we learn, people? 
When will we stop the indignity that is grocery shopping?!

What grocery store keeps apples in a refrigerator?

 

 

Edited Friday at 02:06 PM by DDD Dad

[bolverk 30175]

They're gonna fucking kill us all.

https://www.nytimes.com/2024/12/13/health/aaron-siri-rfk-jr-vaccines.html

Quote

 

The lawyer helping Robert F. Kennedy Jr. pick federal health officials for the incoming Trump administration has petitioned the government to revoke its approval of the polio vaccine, which for decades has protected millions of people from a virus that can cause paralysis or death.

That campaign is just one front in the war that the lawyer, Aaron Siri, is waging against vaccines of all kinds.

Mr. Siri has also filed a petition seeking to pause the distribution of 13 other vaccines; challenged, and in some cases quashed, Covid vaccine mandates around the country; sued federal agencies for the disclosure of records related to vaccine approvals; and subjected prominent vaccine scientists to grueling videotaped depositions.

Much of Mr. Siri’s work — including the polio petition filed in 2022 — has been on behalf of the Informed Consent Action Network, a nonprofit whose founder is a close ally of Mr. Kennedy. Mr. Siri also represented Mr. Kennedy during his presidential campaign.

Mr. Kennedy, President-elect Donald J. Trump’s choice for health secretary, has said that he does not want to take away access to any vaccines. But as he prepares for his confirmation hearing and plans a fresh health agenda, his continuing close partnership with Mr. Siri suggests that vaccine policy will be under sharp scrutiny. It is a chilling prospect to many public health leaders, especially those who recall the deadly toll of some vaccine-mediated diseases.

At the Trump transition headquarters in Florida, Mr. Siri has joined Mr. Kennedy in questioning and choosing candidates for top health positions, according to someone who observed the interactions but insisted on anonymity to disclose private conversations. They have asked candidates about their views of vaccines, the person said.

Mr. Kennedy has privately expressed interest in having Mr. Siri serve in the Health and Human Services Department’s top legal job, general counsel. However, Mr. Siri has suggested he may have more influence outside the administration. At his law firm, Siri & Glimstad, he oversees about 40 professionals working on vaccine cases and policy.

“Somebody on the outside needs to be petitioning them,” he said on a podcast in late November.

Either way, it’s clear that his voice will be heard at the highest levels.

“I love Aaron Siri,” Mr. Kennedy said in a clip played on a recent episode of a podcast hosted by Del Bigtree, who is Mr. Kennedy’s former campaign communications director and the founder of the Informed Consent Action Network, which describes itself as a “medical freedom” nonprofit. “There’s nobody who’s been a greater asset to the medical freedom movement than him.”

Like Mr. Kennedy, Mr. Siri insists he does not want to take vaccines away from anyone who wants them. “You want to get the vaccine — it’s America, a free country.” he told Arizona legislators last year after laying out his concerns about the vaccines for polio and other illnesses.

He did not mention the petitions he has lodged on behalf of ICAN with the Food and Drug Administration, asking regulators to withdraw or suspend approval of vaccines not only for polio, but also for hepatitis B.

Mr. Siri is also representing ICAN in petitioning the F.D.A. to “pause distribution” of 13 other vaccines, including combination products that cover tetanus, diphtheria, polio and hepatitis A, until their makers disclose details about aluminum, an ingredient researchers have associated with a small increase in asthma cases

Mr. Siri declined to be interviewed, but said all of his petitions were filed on behalf of clients. Katie Miller, a spokeswoman for Mr. Kennedy, said Mr. Siri has been advising Mr. Kennedy but has not discussed his petitions with any of the health nominees. She added, “Mr. Kennedy has long said that he wants transparency in vaccines and to give people choice.”

If the Senate confirms Mr. Kennedy as health secretary, he will oversee the F.D.A. In that capacity, he could take the rare step of intervening in the F.D.A.’s review of the petitions.

Vaccines undergo extensive testing before they are approved, and are monitored for safety after they come on the market. The process of taking an established drug off the market can be lengthy. The F.D.A. would need to outline a new safety concern in writing and give the vaccine’s maker a chance to respond. The F.D.A. would then hold a hearing and render a decision. If the company did not agree with the outcome, it could sue.

Mr. Trump and Mr. Kennedy have spoken about vaccines, the president-elect told Time magazine in an interview published Thursday. Mr. Trump pledged to do “very serious testing” and to get rid of some vaccines “if I think it’s dangerous, if I think they are not beneficial.”

During an appearance last weekend on NBC’s “Meet the Press,” Mr. Trump said he was open to a review of vaccines and autism. But he singled out the polio vaccine as a potential exception.

“The polio vaccine is the greatest thing,” Mr. Trump said. “If someone told me get rid of the polio vaccine, they’re going to have to work really hard to convince me.”

Public health experts describe the polio petition as troubling. In 2022, an unvaccinated man in New York became paralyzed after contracting polio, and experts say the virus is still circulating worldwide.

“It’s an airplane ride away,” warned Dr. Kathryn Edwards, a Vanderbilt University vaccine scientist who was subjected to one of Mr. Siri’s lengthy depositions.

Some vaccine scientists credit Mr. Siri for drilling into the details of vaccine research that he cites to make his arguments. In some cases, he aligns with vaccine scientists, including a team that in 2004 called for an independent body to review vaccine safety outside agencies that fund or approve them.

Dr. Daniel Salmon, director of the Institute for Vaccine Safety at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, said Mr. Siri raises “points that are worthy of exploration,” such as his concern about the safety of aluminum in vaccines.

“There are issues that he raises, such as this one, that really deserve to be studied carefully,” Dr. Salmon said. “But it’s got to be done carefully — it’s hard to do.”

Yet Mr. Siri’s ascent is concerning to some doctors, who note that it comes at a time of falling vaccination rates in the United States and a rise in cases of measles and whooping cough. His detractors say he twists snippets of science to make questionable claims that will deepen vaccine hesitancy, threatening the system of childhood vaccines that is credited with saving millions of lives.

One critic is Dr. Stanley Plotkin, who in the 1960s invented the vaccine that eliminated rubella, a disease that killed thousands of newborns. Dr. Plotkin, who was subjected to a nine-hour deposition as an expert witness in a lawsuit brought by Mr. Siri, said having Mr. Siri in a position of influence “would be a disaster.” He added: “I find him laughable in many ways — except, of course, that he’s a danger to public health.”

A fruitful alliance
Mr. Siri first made news in a vaccine case in New York City in 2015, challenging a rule that required preschool children to get an annual flu shot. He delayed the rule for several years, but lost the case on appeal.

The work caught the attention of with Mr. Bigtree, a former television producer who was winding up a national bus tour for the movie “Vaxxed: From Cover-Up to Catastrophe,” which was pulled from the Tribeca Film Festival over the concerns of public health leaders.

Mr. Bigtree has said on his podcast that he had realized that he needed a capable lawyer to advance his campaign challenging vaccine safety. Through his nonprofit, which flourished during the coronavirus pandemic, Mr. Bigtree began funding Mr. Siri’s legal efforts, paying his law firm $5.3 million in 2022, the most recent year records are available.

Over the years, Mr. Siri has helped clients avoid vaccination requirements. He won a case seeking a religious exemption from vaccines in Mississippi schools, and convinced a judge to strike down a Covid vaccine mandate in a San Diego public schools.

In 2017, Mr. Siri and Mr. Bigtree joined with Mr. Kennedy to meet with the government’s top vaccine experts, including Dr. Anthony S. Fauci, who has since retired from government service, and Dr. Francis Collins, then director of the National Institutes of Health.

Afterward, N.I.H. leaders worked through Mr. Kennedy’s relatives to introduce him to Dr. Peter Hotez, a vaccine expert who had a daughter with autism. Dr. Hotez said he tried to explain that researchers believe autism is largely genetic and is observed in early fetal development, before vaccines are administered. “R.F.K. Jr. was deeply dug in,” Dr. Hotez said. “He wasn’t interested in information and the science.”

In 2018, Mr. Siri’s star rose with vaccine skeptics after he deposed two renowned vaccine scientists: Dr. Plotkin and Dr. Edwards, who helped create vaccines for whooping cough and flu and one to prevent infection with a deadly bacteria, Haemophilus influenzae type B.

Mr. Siri grilled them each for more than eight hours for two separate cases, one in Tennessee, the other in Michigan. Mr. Bigtree later posted snippets of both depositions online, which made the doctors pariahs among vaccine skeptics.

“You’re taking the leaders in vaccinology,” Dr. Edwards said, “the people that have spent their whole lives studying these vaccines and seeing their impact, you’re marginalizing and making them look like they are prostitutes of pharma.”

Mr. Kennedy, who is also a lawyer, joined Mr. Siri and others in pushing the Tennessee case forward, accusing a doctor of malpractice for giving a boy a measles, mumps and rubella shot in 2001 that they claimed caused his autism. They sought $75 million to cover his lifetime care.

Mr. Kennedy sat through the trial and at the end, in early 2022, delivered closing arguments to the jury. He lost: The jury ruled in favor of the doctor.

As Mr. Kennedy campaigned for the presidency in 2023 and this year, Mr. Siri remained at his side as his personal lawyer, exhorting federal officials to provide Mr. Kennedy with a security detail and working to remove Mr. Kennedy’s name from ballots in the final days before the election.

The placebo issue
One of Mr. Siri’s arguments against vaccines is that some, including the polio and hepatitis B vaccines, have not been tested against placebos in randomized, double-blind clinical trials — the gold standard for medical research, in which some patients get inert vaccines and doctors don’t know which patients get which.

He has called in his petitions for the shots to be pulled from the market until placebo-controlled trials — which would deny some children polio shots — can be completed. Given the known risks of polio causing paralysis that can seize major organs and kill people, such work is considered unethical.

“You’re substituting a theoretical risk for a real risk,” said Dr. Paul A. Offit, a vaccine expert at the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia. ”The real risks are the diseases.”

Mr. Siri’s petition to withdraw the polio vaccine also claims that the manufacturer “only assessed safety for up to three days after injection,” and therefore did not meet the F.D.A.’s standard for safety.

Ayman Chit, head of vaccines for North America at Sanofi, which makes the polio vaccine that is subject to the petition, said the vaccine has been widely used in North America and Europe and studied carefully in trials with as long as six months of safety follow-up.

Dr. Chit said development of the vaccine began in 1977 and included more than 300 studies before and after it was approved. He said more than 280 million people had received the vaccine worldwide.

Mr. Siri has also pushed to eliminate secrecy around government decision making. Last week, in response to a lawsuit he filed in 2021, a federal judge ordered the F.D.A. to turn over records related to authorization of the Pfizer Covid shot.

The agency said in court filings that it has processed more than 1.2 million pages of records, spending more than $3.5 million on “unprecedented and extraordinary operations” to comply with Mr. Siri’s requests.

“This is a way to hobble a public health agency like the F.D.A. — you can just drown them in paperwork so they can’t do their work,” said Lawrence O. Gostin, an expert in public health law at Georgetown University.

Mr. Siri has indicated he has no intention of stopping. This week, on behalf of ICAN, he sent an “official demand” letter to Xavier Becerra, the current health secretary, instructing the health agency and all of its divisions, including the C.D.C. and F.D.A., to “preserve all documents.”

It ended with a warning: “Note that we will contact the Department of Justice and the Inspector General if there is any evidence that any records are destroyed, deleted, modified in any manner before January 21, 2025.”

 

 

[mdmost 43809]

Nah, they'll just cripple children and given them lifelong hardships because dipshit parents will believe something they saw online instead of trusting their pediatrician on vaccines. You know, the same person they trust taking their child to for care, apparently except for vaccines. 

My grandmother was born in 1910. She had polio as a child and had to walk with the help of a crutch for the entirety of her life. So glad we're back to a time where that might be in another kid's future. 

[Brisketexan 106430]

Nah, they'll just cripple children and given them lifelong hardships because dipshit parents will believe something they saw online instead of trusting their pediatrician on vaccines. You know, the same person they trust taking their child to for care, apparently except for vaccines. 
My grandmother was born in 1910. She had polio as a child and had to walk with the help of a crutch for the entirety of her life. So glad we're back to a time where that might be in another kid's future. 

We are literally going to make polio great again.
We live in the dumbest timeline in human history. Imagine achieving the greatest things in the history of human health, saving countless millions from death and disfigurement. For all of human history, all of humanity would have wept for joy at these achievements. And now…we’re going to chuck every one of them into the trash because some insane contagious belief that ACTUALLY….these things are a plot by “them” to accomplish…something.
We are committing species suicide by stupidity.
Fuck it. Bring back smallpox. Ban chlorine from drinking water treatment. Fuck it all.

[Brisketexan 106430]

Seems relevant: we have a movement taking power that to some degree opposes every one of these:



Some of the greatest achievements in human history…and we want to junk them.

[gernblansten 3251]

 

 

[yoladu 4185]

On 12/11/2024 at 2:44 PM, BillyBadAss said:

It will be interesting to see how America reacts if they do succeed at massive deportations. It's one thing to think about it in the abstract and far away. It's another to see people in your own community affected.  What happens when local restaurants or services start to be visibly affected? Food prices increase or there are shortages of things like chicken. Construction halts, you can't find a lawn service, the office trash stops being emptied, etc. 

exactly. Is there any moment in history where people have been removed from their homes, held in camps, and transported in mass that is looked upon favorably with pride years later?

Edited Friday at 04:59 PM by yoladu