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Trump's Second Term

Andy_Ross said:
Los Angeles residents were outraged after dozens of federal agents marched through MacArthur Park, in one of the city’s most immigrant-heavy neighborhoods. Homeland Security officials said it was an immigration enforcement operation, though it was unclear if anyone had been arrested.

https://bsky.app/profile/nytimes.com%2Fpost%2F3lthrhk7ut22v
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How could anyone tell they were federal agents? Did they show ID's? Have proper uniforms? Or were they just masked thugs in camo?
 
I think the raid on MacArthur Park was just the kind of thing we can expect from Trump and his minions. First of course it's a direct response to his political enemies. Expect any sanctuary city to be swamped with stupid, useless, violent and disruptive invasions. The result is irrelevant. The arbitrary, violent, invasion by a new breed of storm troopers is the point. If the whole country does not fall into step with him, life for everyone will be increasingly hellish, and it will be, according to him and his creatures, all the fault of his enemies. It's "See what you made me do" writ large.
 
bruto said:
I think the raid on MacArthur Park was just the kind of thing we can expect from Trump and his minions. First of course it's a direct response to his political enemies. Expect any sanctuary city to be swamped with stupid, useless, violent and disruptive invasions. The result is irrelevant. The arbitrary, violent, invasion by a new breed of storm troopers is the point. If the whole country does not fall into step with him, life for everyone will be increasingly hellish, and it will be, according to him and his creatures, all the fault of his enemies. It's "See what you made me do" writ large.
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More agents in your communities and more collateral arrests

Homan: "I'm gonna head to Portland. I'm going out there. They aren't gonna bully us ... we're gonna double down and triple down on sanctuary cities ... what you're gonna get, sanctuary cites, is exactly what you don't want: More agents in your communities and more collateral arrests."

https://twitter.com/x/status/1942680195669934316
 
Andy_Ross said:
More agents in your communities and more collateral arrests

Homan: "I'm gonna head to Portland. I'm going out there. They aren't gonna bully us ... we're gonna double down and triple down on sanctuary cities ... what you're gonna get, sanctuary cites, is exactly what you don't want: More agents in your communities and more collateral arrests."

https://twitter.com/x/status/1942680195669934316
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Homan: "Bullying is our job!"
 
Jack by the hedge said:
Well. He's really uncomfortable about having anyone talk about Epstein, isn't he?
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The guy who may well have committed sexual crimes against a 13 year old alongside Epstein and, at last check, is on the record publicly showing knowledge that Epstein went after kids is really uncomfortable about the subject of his old friend Epstein? Shocking. To poke a little more about what's going on in that direction -

These comments follow a MAGA-world implosion on Monday, after Trump’s administration released a report saying that not only did Epstein kill himself but also that there was no existence of a client list. In other words, the administration shut down the right-wing conspiracy about a supposed laundry list of celebrities and politicians who have committed sexual crimes.

The timing of that report is almost uncanny, given that just last month Trump’s former bestie Elon Musk told the entirety of X that they weren’t releasing the so-called Epstein list because Trump himself was on it.

“[Trump] is in the Epstein files. That is the real reason they have not been made public,” he wrote in a since-deleted post.

The administration has been dangling the Epstein carrot over their loyal MAGA followers for quite some time.

In February, they pulled another unsavory stunt by doing a spoof release of the “Epstein files.” As Daily Kos previously reported, Trump and his team gathered up as many MAGA influencers as they could at the White House, and gave them all cute little Epstein-themed binders with stickers and infographics that had, well … nothing new in it.

And now, just like last time, they’re delivering their voters a big pile of nothing.

This time, however, it seems to conveniently absolve everyone of any potential ties to criminality.
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The Trump Administration protecting Trump would be entirely par for the course, of course.

Elsewhere...

Signal is back to haunt the Trump team—this time targeting Marco Rubio
There’s an impersonator of Secretary of State Marco Rubio on the loose, and they’re using artificial intelligence to target high-level officials.

First detected in mid-June, the AI-powered scam involves voice and text messages that mimic Rubio. The messages are sent via Signal from an account labeled “Marco.Rubio@state.gov”—a fake email designed to look official. According to a State Department cable obtained by The Washington Post, at least five non-State Department officials have been contacted so far, including three foreign ministers, a U.S. governor, and a sitting member of Congress.
Authorities still don’t know who’s behind the campaign, but the State Department believes that the goal is to trick powerful targets into sharing sensitive information and account access.

“The actor demonstrated extensive knowledge of the department’s naming conventions and internal documentation,” the cable noted.
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Yeah... if this were a Democratic Administration, there would probably be no notable cause for concern, because they'd be working to uphold standard security instead of actively working to subvert it in pointedly illegal ways. Unfortunately, what we have is the latter.

Also, for a bit more surrounding context regarding the many people likely lost in that Texas flooding... short version?

Per the Houston Chronical on July 7th: In Kerr County they were looking into upgrading their flood system starting in 2016. They KNEW it wasn’t up to snuff.
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Note: upgrading was uprading, so that's a slightly edited quote. Either way, they were unable to secure the $1 million to implement the recommended solutions, despite repeated attempts. It's not like that's more than a drop in a bucket for a government that's happily wasted billions on Operation Lonestar, much of that stolen from actually essential expenses. Well, essential if you aren't a sociopath.

Oh, and as a little side note -

Per The Calling Times: Wes Virdell, the representative of Kerr County voted against House Bill 13.
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His comment now that he has seen the destruction: “I can tell you in hindsight, watching what it takes to deal with a disaster like this, my vote would probably be different now,” said Virdell, a freshman GOP lawmaker from Brady.
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My simple reply to that? 🖕

All the more reason to believe that voting for the far right is voting for the US to be an authoritarian hellhole under the delusional thought that they'll come out on top and voting for the Republican Party is little more than voting to hurt people under the delusional thought that it'll just be those people who you don't like suffering. Voting for the Democratic Party is far more variable, at least. The Democratic Party at least tries to help people, too, though, in practice, it doesn't actually shy away from hurting people when there's cause. Even then, though, they normally try to keep things above board, thanks to the different kinds of pressure from progressives, who seek to uplift the nation and largely pursue very popular policies, and Republicans, who actively seek things to condemn Democrats for - especially to distract from Republicans doing far, far worse in some direction and thus manufacture misunderstandings among those not paying as much attention.
 
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TragicMonkey said:
The other part of Trump's psychology is that he takes credit for all the successes and blames all the failures on other people. In his mind he's got a 100% success rate with everything because he simply discards all results that aren't favorable. That's why he's able to believe he's the greatest genius businessman leader president king ever. And why he gets mad when anyone disagrees because he thinks they're actually lying when they attribute a failure to him.
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I disagree. He gets mad when anyone disagrees with him because he knows he lies.
He gets made when someone has the “audacity” to point out his lies.
 
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Andy_Ross said:
No amnesty for farm workers, the deportations will continue.
People on Medicaid will do thee work apparently.

Brooke Rollins on farm laborers: "There will be no amnesty. The mass deportations continue, but in a strategic way. And we move the workforce toward automation and 100% American participation, which with 34 million able-bodied on Medicaid we should be able to do fairly quickly."


https://twitter.com/x/status/1942586137572233347
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It's Trump's Cultural Revolution. His MAGA Red Guards will round up intellectuals and liberals and ship them to work in the fields for his Great Leap Backwards.
 
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Now he wants to takeover New York City AND Washington DC. ABC News reports:
President Donald Trump on Tuesday suggested a federal takeover of New York City and Washington. The comments came when Trump, during a meeting of his Cabinet at the White House, was asked about New York City's upcoming mayoral election..."We're not going to have -- if a communist gets elected to run New York, it can never be the same. But we have tremendous power at the White House to run places when we have to," Trump said..."We could run DC...We would run it so good." ABC News article link
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Wow, this is getting hard to take. Day-after-stinking-day. Never stops. Always something. :mad:
 
newyorkguy said:
Now he wants to takeover New York City AND Washington DC. ABC News reports:


Wow, this is getting hard to take. Day-after-stinking-day. Never stops. Always something. :mad:
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It's called "flooding the zone [with feces]". It's a Bannon tactic. Given the latest "outrageous move", can you remember what the leading Trump-generated crisis was this time last week? LA riots? Tariffs? Insulting allies? Bombing Iran? Without referring back down this thread, I can't be specific either. So how about a month ago? Three months ago? Yeah...

Nobody remembers specifically unless they are keeping a list, especially MAGA. And that's the point. These Trumpy outrages don't accumulate. Each just fades into the memory when a new one is pushed out the Xcreta-hole. Not that Trump does anything much with most of them. They are mostly hot air and bait. All the bad stuff this administration does is decided and enacted not by Trump but by the fascist backroom psychopaths, hidden by these stupid smokescreens Donny throws up each day. And the media gobble it up... :cautious:
 
Norman Alexander said:
Nobody remembers specifically unless they are keeping a list, especially MAGA. And that's the point. These Trumpy outrages don't accumulate. Each just fades into the memory when a new one is pushed out the Xcreta-hole. Not that Trump does anything much with most of them. They are mostly hot air and bait. All the bad stuff this administration does is decided and enacted not by Trump but by the fascist backroom psychopaths, hidden by these stupid smokescreens Donny throws up each day. And the media gobble it up... :cautious:
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Which is why I'm keeping a list.

As of the close of the day on July 8, my positive/negative score on the Trump administration stands at -927.

8 July 2025
+1: Reversing July 1, Department of Defense announces it is sending additional unspecified weapons to Ukraine
-1: Trump gives bad reasons for why high-speed rail between Los Angeles and San Francisco should not have been built [358]
-1: Trump muses about running the District of Columbia [359]
-1: Border Czar Tom Homan promises a further crackdown on undocumented people [360]
-1: Headline: Federal Agents March Through L.A. Park, Spurring Local Outrage (New York Times)

References

358. Trump: “It shouldn’t never been built because airplanes do it better. And you can drive it. No problem with driving it. The road aren’t even crowded.”

359. Trump: “We have tremendous power at the White House to run places when we have to. We could run DC. We’re looking at DC ... we would run it so good ... we’re thinking about doing it, to be honest with you.”

360. Homan: “I’m gonna head to Portland. I’m going out there. They aren’t gonna bully us ... we’re gonna double down and triple down on sanctuary cities ... what you’re gonna get, sanctuary cites, is exactly what you don’t want: More agents in your communities and more collateral arrests.”
 
Andy_Ross said:
More agents in your communities and more collateral arrests

Homan: "I'm gonna head to Portland. I'm going out there. They aren't gonna bully us ... we're gonna double down and triple down on sanctuary cities ... what you're gonna get, sanctuary cites, is exactly what you don't want: More agents in your communities and more collateral arrests."

https://twitter.com/x/status/1942680195669934316
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'Collateral arrests' is not a term I am familiar with.

So he is saying that residents of 'sanctuary cities', US citizens will be, randomly? subject to 'collateral arrest' as punishment for being a resident of a city with a policy of not doing the work of the federal government, whether they support that policy or not. Presumably in the hope that if they harass those residents sufficiently it will change who they vote for?
 
Planigale said:
'Collateral arrests' is not a term I am familiar with.

So he is saying that residents of 'sanctuary cities', US citizens will be, randomly? subject to 'collateral arrest' as punishment for being a resident of a city with a policy of not doing the work of the federal government, whether they support that policy or not. Presumably in the hope that if they harass those residents sufficiently it will change who they vote for?
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Residents of sanctuary cities tend not to vote Republican - indeed states with sanctuary cities tend to lean Democrat.
 
shemp said:
It's Trump's Cultural Revolution. His MAGA Red Guards will round up intellectuals and liberals and ship them to work in the fields for his Great Leap Backwards.
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I think he did actually say that? Suggesting that people with gender studies or black studies degrees should do the work in the fields or the factories to replace migrant workers.

Perhaps a harvesting and labouring skills laboratory should be a compulsory part of any black studies degree?
 
The Don said:
Residents of sanctuary cities tend not to vote Republican - indeed states with sanctuary cities tend to lean Democrat.
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So after collateral arrests of democrat voting citizens I assume there will be collateral detention, and collateral deportation. No wonder ICE needs a 265% increase in detention funding if they are going to hold all these collateral detainees.

Is there any way they can then bring a conviction against people for obstructing federal officers, and lever that into making them ineligible to vote?
 
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