What does a TRUMP presidency look like?

[Valmy]

If they are here illegally, their very freedom does not include the freedom to reside here.

I mean that is legalistically true. But the whole thing is bullshit. We have been winking and nodding at these immigrants coming over and doing needed and essential labor for decades. If you set up a system where everybody benefits from breaking the law and is only loosely enforced for generations and generations, it is going to take a long time and considerable effort to break it. I always thought that since this is a system everybody benefits from and produces needed labor we should probably change the laws to conform to reality.

If instead we are going to bang our heads repeatedly to enforce idiotic laws that whose only impact will be the devastate our economy for some vague legalistic principle than that is a choice.

But our entire society and government have trained people, both employers and workers, for generations that this kind of migrant labor will be tolerated to some extent. So then to turn around and act like that reality doesn't exist and all these people are just criminals is...hypocritical and detached from reality.

I don't really understand the commitment to commit severe damage on our country for the cause of enforcing stupid laws that actively harm us. Outside of just racism. I certainly can't argue against the technical legalistic facts, no matter how stupid and counter-productive they are.

Like spending considerable amounts of money to round up every pot smoker and putting them in prison. Sure it might destroy our society and economy but it would be technically enforcing the laws!!11 No matter how stupid those laws might be.

The laws should be created for the sake of society, society should not be sacrificed for the sake of the laws.

[Tamas]

Jacob, sorry, on my phone so won't try to crop your quote but on the topic of us opposing fascist we actually adopt the fascist narrative unless we unxritically accept the protesters waving Mexican flags - I am sorry but the opposite is true.

The fascist narrative doesn't want to see you (well Americans to the left of fascism) on the side of human rights combined with nuance and understanding about national pride. They want you EXACTLY on the side that uncritically supports whatever they point to as wrong.

I have had 15 years of watching this in detail as fascism was built in Hungary.

This is a very classic method albeit on a more dramatic scale than Orban so far had the need or courage to do it, what's with the military getting involved. -

the fascist government creates (provokes) an issue. The opposition out of common decency, and what they think to be their political interest, immediately picks up the polar opposite view. But that view has already been discredited and painted as the boogey man by the overwhelming fascist media machine, so all they are doing is fitting into the fascist system like a glove.

[Solmyr]

I wonder if the Jews organized protests as they were being shipped off to death camps, and there were some socialist signs in those protests, some people would tell them that they are protesting the wrong way and it just reinforces the Nazis' point.

[Jacob]

I am curious as to why you seem to be saying that there is no in-between between no known attempt to present a coherent message and fully disciplined rallies with coherent messaging.

Oh there totally is. It's probably most of them. I expect where any given protest ends up on the spectrum is down to how much the participants know about the organizers, how much they respect them, and how much they buy into their messaging and strategy.

I think that we can al agree that using the Mexican flag as the symbol of a protest that has nothing to do with Mexico itself is at best incoherent and at worst self-defeating.

I don't agree with that, no.

If any of the organizers (SEIU seems to have doe at least part of the organizing) have tried to refocus protests on ICE actions rather than immigrant grievances, I haven't seen it yet.

That's a very good point, I agree. If I were to participate, that's probably the messaging I'd try to focus on?

The question I have in that context is to what degree the protests - or part of it at least - did focus on ICE actions and to what degree that was downplayed in favour of other narratives?

The problem with ICE is ICE, and Mexico can't do a thing about ICE.

Not sure about the first part (as in I think there's more to the problem with ICE than ICE itself). Agreed with the second point (that Mexico can't do a thing about ICE), but I'm not sure how relevant it is to the discussion about the flag. I don't think the presence of Mexican flags was an appeal to the Mexican state to help with ICE.

[Admiral Yi]

That is tautologically true, but not relevant to the point.  Everyone, whether a US citizen born in another country, a lawful permanent resident who has citizenship in another country, or even an individual in the United States unlawfully, has rights to due process of law, rights to speak freely, and rights to be protected from unlawful state violence. I don't know the breakdown of everyone carrying a Mexican flag in L.A.  and what their precise immigration status happnes to be.  I do know this administration has repeatedly targeted Hispanics for deportation regardless of their legal status and claims.

It's relevant to the point you made in the post I responded to.

Neither you nor I know the inner workings of the minds of the LA rioters.  It's theoretically possible they are sticklers for due process and that's what they were barricading the streets for.  I think it's much more naturalistic to infer they are opposed to deportations qua deportations.

What you know is different than what I know.  I know of one case where an illegal was deported to the one country a judge said he could not be deported to.  I know of one case where the US citizen children of an illegal were sent with their mother, whether consistent with her will or contrary to it not yet independently confirmed.

[Jacob]

Jacob, sorry, on my phone so won't try to crop your quote but on the topic of us opposing fascist we actually adopt the fascist narrative unless we unxritically accept the protesters waving Mexican flags - I am sorry but the opposite is true.

Hmm... I don't think I was advocating for uncritically accept the protesters waving Mexican flags. I think I'm looking for a way to navigate between "uncritical acceptance" and "adopting the fascist narrative", because you make a good point. The problem is that both of those situations help the fascists advance towards victory.

I think trying to chart a path down some sort of "let's bring more American flags to the protests" and "I'm not super keen on those Mexican flags, but some of the people carrying them are very good people I assume" middle might be the way to go. But it's a hard problem.

The fascist narrative doesn't want to see you (well Americans to the left of fascism) on the side of human rights combined with nuance and understanding about national pride. They want you EXACTLY on the side that uncritically supports whatever they point to as wrong.

I agree with you here here. I think, however, the answer is less about rejecting what falls outside of national pride, and more about laying a solid an undeniable claim to national pride while also including elements that fall outside.

Less "no Mexican flags" and more "here's my American flag, I love America, and the America I love has Mexicans in it too."

I have had 15 years of watching this in detail as fascism was built in Hungary.

This is a very classic method albeit on a more dramatic scale than Orban so far had the need or courage to do it, what's with the military getting involved.

It's heartbreaking

Like I said in another post earlier, I think the Trumpists (and others like them) are setting up win-win conditions for themselves. They have a path to victory with no protests and they have a path to victory with protests. And I think they have different strategies for dealing with different types of protests to the point that whatever approach is taken, they have a set of responses lined up (mainly focused either on "it's so weak we can ignore it" or "here's how we paint it as offensive to Americans").

the fascist government creates (provokes) an issue. The opposition out of common decency, and what they think to be their political interest, immediately picks up the polar opposite view. But that view has already been discredited and painted as the boogey man by the overwhelming fascist media machine, so all they are doing is fitting into the fascist system like a glove.

I don't know if Mexican flags are the polar opposite of the Trumpist agenda. I think the Trumpist machine is going to find elements of any given protest and focus on it as being opposed to America and decency, because that's how they win. I think we are in agreement that the Trumpists are happy when they can argue that the protestors are anti-American. And I think the challenge is figuring out how to undercut that as much as possible.

I think part of that is that whenever the Trumpist talking heads pick something to focus on, the right thing is to try to move the focus away from that and onto something more aligned with the opposition point of view. The issue is not being for or against Mexican flags, it's about letting the Trumpists decide that the rhetorical battle is being fought about the use of Mexican flags altogether (or whatever other thing they would've picked if there were no Mexican flags involved).

IMO the answer to the "they have Mexican flags" thing is not "yes and I love it" or "you're right, that's bad",  it's something like "it doesn't matter, what matters is [insert grumbler's point about ICE, or something else here]."

[Admiral Yi]

I mean that is legalistically true. But the whole thing is bullshit. We have been winking and nodding at these immigrants coming over and doing needed and essential labor for decades. If you set up a system where everybody benefits from breaking the law and is only loosely enforced for generations and generations, it is going to take a long time and considerable effort to break it. I always thought that since this is a system everybody benefits from and produces needed labor we should probably change the laws to conform to reality.

If instead we are going to bang our heads repeatedly to enforce idiotic laws that whose only impact will be the devastate our economy for some vague legalistic principle than that is a choice.

But our entire society and government have trained people, both employers and workers, for generations that this kind of migrant labor will be tolerated to some extent. So then to turn around and act like that reality doesn't exist and all these people are just criminals is...hypocritical and detached from reality.

I don't really understand the commitment to commit severe damage on our country for the cause of enforcing stupid laws that actively harm us. Outside of just racism. I certainly can't argue against the technical legalistic facts, no matter how stupid and counter-productive they are.

Like spending considerable amounts of money to round up every pot smoker and putting them in prison. Sure it might destroy our society and economy but it would be technically enforcing the laws!!11 No matter how stupid those laws might be.

The laws should be created for the sake of society, society should not be sacrificed for the sake of the laws.

When this all started I thought his mass deportations would create a palace coup, much like his tariffs did.  I figured meat packers, fruit growers, Gulf of MEXICO shrimpers, and road construction and repair guys, all bedrock Trumpists by my estimation and all areas where illegal labor is concentrated, would be screaming bloody murder as their labor disappeared. 

My theory is that has to some degree been mitigated by a large expansion of the temporary seasonal worker visa program during the first Trump term.

[Jacob]

Vanishing immigration is the 'real story' for the economy and a bigger supply shock than tariffs, analyst says
Jason Ma - June 8, 2025 at 3:42 PM EDT

Protests over ICE raids in the Los Angeles area this weekend highlight the crackdown on undocumented workers at businesses and the overall impact of immigration, legal or otherwise, on the economy. The collapse in immigration represents a bigger negative supply shock than President Donald Trump's tariffs do, Deutsche Bank said.

President Donald Trump's mobilization of California National Guard troops to protect immigration officers from protesters highlights his crackdown on undocumented workers and the economic impact of a sudden drop in labor supply.

Protests in Los Angeles began on Friday, when armed federal agents clad in camouflage uniforms, tactical vests, and helmets arrived in armored vehicles to carry out a raid on a clothing wholesaler. It was the latest in a series of similar high-profile operations at businesses around the country.

Also on Friday, the Labor Department issued its monthly jobs report, which showed the U.S. workforce shrank in May as the number of foreign-born workers saw the biggest back-to-back declines since 2020. That comes after a surge in immigration during the Biden administration helped boost economic activity.

According to a Deutsche Bank analysis of data from U.S. Customs and Border Patrol, the number of encounters at the Southwest border has plunged to 12,000 people per month since Trump's inauguration from an average of 200,000 during the more-than-two-year period between January 2022 and June 2024.

"While everyone is focused on the impact of tariffs, the real story for the U.S. economy is the collapse in immigration: down more than 90% compared to the run rate of previous years, equivalent to a slowing in labour force growth of more than 2 million people," George Saravelos, head of FX research at Deutsche Bank, wrote in a note on Friday. "This represents a far more sustained negative supply shock for the economy than tariffs."

While Trump has pointed to weaker payroll growth as reasons for the Federal Reserve to cut interest rates, his immigration crackdown gives the central bank, which is already wary of the inflationary effect of his tariffs, another reason to wait and see.

That's because a workforce that is growing more slowly doesn't need as much hiring to absorb the additional labor supply. In fact, even as average payroll gains have cooled to 124,000 a month this year from 250,000 in 2024, the jobless rate has hovered around 4.2% since last summer.

Wall Street sees a lower break-even rate for job growth, or the amount of hiring needed to keep the unemployment rate steady. By the end of this year, that pace should fall to 90,000 per month from 170,000 now and 210,000 last year, according to Morgan Stanley, which cited deportations and slower immigration.

Deutsche Bank warned the collapse of immigration will have broader implications in financial markets, including for the dollar, which has already been battered by Trump's aggressive tariff campaign.

"Last year we were writing that the U.S. was benefiting from a goldilocks mix of high employment growth and low wages precisely because of high immigration numbers," Saravelos said. "If recent immigration trends continue, it must follow that over the course of the year the reverse will happen. As the 2022 energy shock showed, a negative supply shock is not good news for a currency."

https://fortune.com/2025/06/08/immigration-collapse-economy-workforce-labor-supply-shock-trump-tariffs-ice-raid/

There's a lot of doom-saying about the US economy these days. It'll be interesting to see how it plays out.

[Solmyr]

Whose economy will collapse first, US or Russia's?

[crazy canuck]

Do you think there is a planning group that meets ahead of time to conceive of a plan and how they will execute it?

Do you think that the fact that some people were carrying a similar or even the same sign means anything more than signs were being handed out to whoever would take one?

The signs did not appear spontaneously.  Obviously, someone had to meet ahead of time in order for them to have been printed ahead of time.  Someone had to bring them to the rally in order for them to be handed out.

I'm not sure why you find this so difficult to grasp.

Planning to make a sign and then handing it out at a protest in hopes people will actually take one, is different from the sort of authority and control of protestors you were earlier proposing.

[viper37]

Neither you nor I know the inner workings of the minds of the LA rioters.  It's theoretically possible they are sticklers for due process and that's what they were barricading the streets for.  I think it's much more naturalistic to infer they are opposed to deportations qua deportations.

It's easy to know in this case as we have a point of comparison.

There were a lot of deportations during Obama and Biden's terms.  A lot more than during Trump's first mandate.

Yet, there were no violent protests that I can remember.  No riots in the streets against ICE. The only riots were about Floyd, from a minority of protestors.  Amplified by some dumb politicians and journalists that began echoing the anarchist slogan "defund the police" without thinking much more about it's significance.

[Syt]

700 Marines to go to Los Angeles.

https://abcnews.go.com/US/live-updates/la-immigration-protests-live-updates-trump-deploys-2000/?id=122621279

[Josquius]

Neither you nor I know the inner workings of the minds of the LA rioters.  It's theoretically possible they are sticklers for due process and that's what they were barricading the streets for.  I think it's much more naturalistic to infer they are opposed to deportations qua deportations.

It's easy to know in this case as we have a point of comparison.

There were a lot of deportations during Obama and Biden's terms.  A lot more than during Trump's first mandate.

Yet, there were no violent protests that I can remember.  No riots in the streets against ICE. The only riots were about Floyd, from a minority of protestors.  Amplified by some dumb politicians and journalists that began echoing the anarchist slogan "defund the police" without thinking much more about it's significance.

I don't think its the fact that illegal immigrants are being deported that has people pissed off.
Its the performative cruelty of it all. Masked up hyper militarised men breaking into homes and grabbing people off the street with little concern for due process. The hyper illegal deportations to El Salvador.

[Baron von Schtinkenbutt]

700 Marines to go to Los Angeles.

https://abcnews.go.com/US/live-updates/la-immigration-protests-live-updates-trump-deploys-2000/?id=122621279

Looking for a source besides this, but apparently the LAPD found about about this the same way the rest of us did.

[Admiral Yi]

Coincidentally this just popped up on my feed.

Head of a union arrested for a felony variation of impeding/obstructing.

Please note that the union has called for the release of the union head and an end to ICE raids in Southern California.  Not due process, not raids without flack jackets, not raids somewhere other on the street or in homes.