The New York Times has, in an email this morning, noted that:
President-elect Donald Trump confirmed [yesterday] that he intended to declare a national emergency and use the US military to assist in deporting millions of undocumented immigrants. He responded “TRUE!!!” to a post by a conservative activist summarizing the strategy.
Stephen Miller, Trump's top immigration policy adviser, described similar plans during the campaign. He said the military would be used to build “vast holding facilities” for migrants as their cases progressed, and suggested that Trump might invoke a public health emergency power to curtail the hearing of asylum claims.
I cannot be alone in thinking that there are horrible overtones to all this. A very large population - totalling maybe more than ten million people - are threatened with being rounded up, denied of their property and liberty, to then be interned in camps before their forcible transportation.
Is the world really going to stand by and watch this happen?
Are the people of the USA going to watch this happen?
Have we learned nothing from history?
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Why not condemn the actual concentration camps in China currently holding Uighur Muslims? Why not write about the largest refugee camp in the world in Bangladesh where hundreds of thousands of Rohingya Muslims currently live, having fled repression in Myanmar?
Funny how what might or might not happen in the USA is worthy of your attention but what is actually happening elsewhere gets no attention at all from you. I guess if it isn’t Trump doing it you don’t care, brutal dictators around the world can do what they like.
You’re not demonstrating concern for those affected, just your hatred of Trump.
I will, and have of course, condemned them
Politely, stop being stupid for your own small-minded gratification
I believe hate is the product of ignorance. Hate is Hate
You do realise that drawing attenion to unrelated subjects is a logical fallacy? Stick to the point at hand perhaps?
Well, he might and he would be in good company – they did it to Japanese citizens – and Germans to a second degree in the 1940’s.
If anyone watched the documentary ‘The U.S. and the Holocaust’ (2022) the really uncomfortable truth is that Hitler based his hateful pogrom on the Jews on how the United States treated indigenous Indians and black slaves in the pursuit of living space and capital (also those who were perceived as having their own failings as to why they had not flourished).
It really is an eye-opener that documentary I assure you.
‘The Shining City upon a Hill’?
The States is more like bloody Mordor if you ask me.
And British put Boers in concentration camps during the Boer War. This also does not excuse Trump.
It is utterly appaling. I am not sure how legal setting up these up would be under UN conventions?? The US is not party to some UN conventions, so maybe it would not apply, and indeed Trump would happily pull out (by executive order – like the Paris climate change agreement), if international human rights conventions get in the way.
It must be resisted, and full solidarity and support to the millions of Americans who oppose this (and other Trump fascist adjacent policies), needs to be given.
The assault on human rights cannot be normalised, tempting others to follow – especially with a Labour government here, instead of using their considerable power to tackle inequality and to stand up and promote human rights, are scared and timid.
Remember, that as far as the US (and UK for that matter ) is concerned the UN ( and indeed other international organizations )is a forum to control others, and can be ignored when it goes against US (interests).
International law doesn’t mean much to those with the most weapons unfortunately.
America sees international law as little more than a cudgel to beat it’s economic competitors with when convenient. It doesn’t see it as applying to it or its “allies” (puppets).
“Have we learned nothing from history?” – no – look at Gaza, the world stands around mute & powerless.
In the case of the USA, its very isolation makes it an ideal place for “prison feedlots” (a variation on the “feedlots” which are built to house 4 legged cattle – new system will house two legged cattle – the principle is identical). Drones will be used to monitor and kill those that try to escape. To get a first hand account of how this would look in practise – a HoC committee last week provided some evidence: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ey7tzv31cr4
Unless things change the USA will become the first example of a failed democracy with “The Man in the High Tower” providing a preview of how horrible it will be – for some – with most keeping their heads down and hoping for the best.
None of this is particularly surprising, it is a “changing of the guard” i.e. those that used to “run the show” (the neolibtards) being replaced with the neo-nazis. Thus we come full circle. Hayek, with his “socialism will lead to fascism” catergory error – whereas it was the implementation of Hayek neo-liberalism that is leading to neo-nazism. The man (& his followers) was, is, and always will be a simplistic, blind, moron.
Much to agree with
Thank you so, so very much for your penultimate sentence re Hayek.
That’s all.
I watched that video and a couple of similar ones, it’s shocking! And yet why does the western media not report this? All you hear from media reporters and interviewers is “but surely Israel has the right to defend itself”! They never show or report what’s actually happening in Gaza. It’s infuriating how were being made complicit with this genecide.
“And yet why does the western media not report this? “. Because “a view has been formed” which tends to be “Israel right – those opposing it – wrong”.
In the UK, “those opposing it – wrong” can take various forms. Loss of job if you are in high profile media, or, if an ordinary person that “pops their head above the parapet”, things start to look like this: https://youtu.be/hDJMeqU9RvQ ……….Haim Bresheeth (a jew who is opposed to zionism) was arrested under terrorism legislation for speaking at a protest outside the residence of the Israel Ambassador in Swiss Cottage.
The great British police kept him for +/- 12 hours – under terrorism legislation. The arrest was based on a note passed by zionists to the plods on duty at the embassy claiming that Proff Bresheeth was a terrorist supporter (he ain’t – but he does not think that the Israeli army can win against the forces ranged against it and said so – however that was enough for the zionists to claim he was a terrorist, for the plods to accept this claim and to hold him for 12 hours, begging the question: who, exactly controls UK plods? & on whose behalf do they police? Perhaps we need a class action against the Met Police who seem to be more interested in representing the interests of the Israeli state.
Our Prime Minister stands shoulder to shoulder with the USA on the basis of shared values, and our foreign Secretary is looking forward to working with Trump, so it looks like the answer to your question as far as the UK Gov’t is concerned, is, Yes, we are going to stand by and watch it happen. Just like last time. After all, we’ve been practicing watching such things happen for quite some time now, in Gaza, the West Bank, E. Jerusalem and Israeli prisons, detention centres and military bases. We’re getting used to it.
Let’s hope and pray that ordinary people don’t follow the lead of our gov’t.
Agree. I don’t think Starmer even wants to stand up to anyone, ever. He will always do what is politically convenient to him at the time. Unless he proves otherwise, but given his track record, he’s not a man of principles it seems.
I think, in this case at least, Trump is being perfectly reasonable. Illegal immigration is, after all, illegal and if illegal immigrants are not detained they will have to be caught all over again, and repeatedly so. Surely this is normal practice around the world? There also doesn’t seem to be much sign of refugees or asylum seekers here but simply economic migrants.
Who will protect you when they come for you?
Have you ever, for a moment, thought about?
Or wondered who gave you the right to be so callously indifferent to other human beings?
There is only one defence that H Scott has got and that is that an awful lot of people – too many – think like him. Even some senior colleagues at work I work with are saying things like this. I have to bite my tongue a lot at work.
John Warren has wisely stated that change is almost impossible and here another example as to why.
Fascism is unparalleled in its capacity to mislead, to offer ready-made, lazy succour to our problems.
It moves like wildfire, in a world terra-formed for it by the dumb austerity of stupid politics.
Just wait for the millions of people who will need to migrate because of climate collapse – then what will you say?
Many are looking at Trump’s first term, then stating he will have the same issues this time and fail to get his agenda pushed through. The situation is different now. He’s appointing on the basis of loyalty over competence. MAGA have also learned about organising since 2021 and are far more dangerous.
Hitler learned from the Beer Hall Putsch. Trump and MAGA have learned from his last term in office.
As a footnote, I’ve just finished reading ‘It Can’t happen Here’ by Sinclair Lewis. Although written in the 1930s, it’s eerily close to the current situation with Trump including the personalities of the two. The US dictator Windrup had his Minutemen, Trump has MAGA and that’s only one of the similarities.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/It_Can%27t_Happen_Here
Thanks
I am removed to get a copy
Q. “Is the world really going to stand by and watch this happen?”
A. Gaza
Sadly, you may be right
It’s not the world standing by, it’s the USA. And it’s not standing by helpless, the USA could stop Israel in its tracks if it chose. But those with the power in the USA choose not to.
There’s little reason to suppose those same people will be stopped from pursuing their goals within the USA.
I’m currently reading last year’s Booker prizewinner – Prophet Song by Paul Lynch – a powerful imagining of the way a ‘National Emergency’ declared by a right-wing government impacts an ordinary family, worms its way into every relationship, every feeling. It’s timely.
Apologies for shoehorning this in here. Understandably you close posts to restrict late responses so it’s natural home is unavailable.
It’s taken me a week to discover it. Whilst I would challenge some of the premise on which the author chastises Democratic policy failures, it is a thought provoking piece that comes at the reasons for Trump’s success from an angle that will not sit well with many.
https://open.substack.com/pub/samharris/p/the-reckoning?utm_source=share&utm_medium=android&r=1yu8f4
Evening reading….
I skimmed that piece and the author reckons the dems lost the election because of their embrace of identity politics and in particular transgender issues. It’s quite the diatribe. I wouldn’t recommend it as evening reading.
The author of this article makes the absurd claim that the ‘far left’ are in control of the Democratic Party, apparently conflating identity politics and the ‘far left’. I wonder what Bernie Sanders or AOC would make of that .
It’s interesting that the orange one feels the need to invoke emergency powers to get this done.
PotUS has too much power.
An American friend claims only in two state did all the counties vote the same way.
Oklahoma 44th of 50 in education
49th healthcare
top ten worst poverty
the other was Massachusetts 1st in education
2nd in healthcare
top ten least poverty
I can’t verify the figures
and I don’t need to point out which one voted for whom
Long-time listener, first-time caller.
This is a very memeable, attractive claim to make. One iteration of the meme got almost 25,000 retweets: https://x.com/paulprosseda/status/1857601490447200683. Another found its way onto Reddit’s front page, having been upvoted by no less than 136,000 users (a figure larger than the Seychelles’ resident population): https://old.reddit.com/r/massachusetts/comments/1gsf1sw/not_a_mass_resident_but_really_liked_this/.
It is an accurate comparison to make, as the data do indeed suggest that Massachusetts outpaces Oklahoma on all of these measures. Yet, at the same time, it contradicts the most recently-published data, to make the gulf look much vaster than it actually is. Nor does it really get into the heart of why MA and OK are where they are in the rankings.
~
The premise – that only two states voted unanimously – is wrong. All of West Virginia’s counties also voted for Donald Trump. Barack Obama in 2008 was the last Democratic Presidential nominee to win any of them. When all is said and done, Trump will have won Monongalia County, WV (home of West Virginia University) by around 4.4%; Oklahoma County, OK, by only around 1.7%. I strongly doubt that WV does much better than OK on any of these measures – even though Oklahoma’s school system has been deliberately underfunded since the 1990s.
It is true in any event that MA, in general, ranks far better on all of these measures than OK; I’ll get to that point in a short while. But the latest data available suggest that the specific statistics and rankings at issue are outdated at best, and inaccurate – sometimes wildly inaccurate – at worst.
According to the Annie E. Casey Foundation’s latest report, OK is 44th in education (not 49th); MA is 1st: https://assets.aecf.org/m/resourcedoc/aecf-2024kidscountdatabook-2024.pdf. I wasn’t immediately able to find any reliable state-by-state measure of educational performance beyond NAEP; see below. Indeed, the Foundation’s education measure banks heavily on NAEP proficiency scores (alongside the rates of nursery enrolment and timely high school graduation in each state).
According to the Commonwealth Fund’s rankings, OK is 49th in healthcare, tied with WV. MA is not 2nd; it is 1st: https://www.commonwealthfund.org/publications/scorecard/2023/jun/2023-scorecard-state-health-system-performance. OK does particularly badly on the Access & Affordability measure, but as the data is a few years old and OK voters enacted Medicaid expansion in 2020 – https://ballotpedia.org/Oklahoma_State_Question_802,_Medicaid_Expansion_Initiative_(June_2020) – there should be some improvement on that front in the coming years.
(I think the data used in this meme comes from the Commonwealth Fund’s 2020 rankings, which do have MA and OK in the stated positions – https://2020scorecard.commonwealthfund.org – but which I wouldn’t personally use as all the data were collected pre-COVID and, as aforementioned, they are not the latest rankings available.)
The most comprehensive quality of life ranking I was able to find was US News and World Reports’ Best States index. MA is 10th, OK is 43rd: https://www.usnews.com/news/best-states/rankings. It’s a big difference and it gets OK’s stated position almost spot-on, but it certainly doesn’t rank MA as the top quality-of-life state.
America’s Top States for Business (by CNBC), despite its name, also tracks quality of life. MA is tied with three other states in 9th; OK is 47th: https://www.cnbc.com/2024/07/11/americas-top-states-for-business-full-rankings.html. CNBC uses various sources of data, although they do not use the Best States index nor are they especially transparent about what specific sources they use for each composite measure: https://www.cnbc.com/2024/06/13/how-we-are-choosing-americas-top-states-for-business-2024.html
It’s also not completely true that MA has the best test scores or that OK has the worst test scores, at least going off the National Assessment of Educational Performance (NAEP; “The Nation’s Report Card”). MA is number one for Grade 4 reading and Grade 8 maths; it underperforms WY (a Republican state!) in Grade 4 maths and NJ in Grade 8 reading. OK is 40th for Grade 4 maths, 47th for Grade 4 reading, 48th for Grade 8 maths, and 47th for Grade 8 reading – which is atrociously bad, but not the worst. See: https://www.nationsreportcard.gov/profiles/stateprofile/overview/MA?chort=1&sub=MAT&st=MN&year=2022R3&sfj=NP&cti=PgTab_ScoreComparisons&sj=MA&tss=2022R3
OK does have a top-ten poverty rate – it ranked below only KY, LA, MS, NM, and WV. However, MA does not have a bottom-ten poverty rate – it ranks higher than CO, CT, HI, ID, MD, MN, NH, NJ, ND, UT, and VT. This data was collected as part of the American Community Survey, which is the second most important output of the US Census Bureau after the Census itself: https://www2.census.gov/library/publications/2024/demo/acsbr-022.pdf
Other than the specific statistics not being perfectly accurate, this state of affairs isn’t something for which Trump can be blamed, or Harris can be thanked, or about which we can say “Republican voters are necessarily dumber than Democratic voters” or anything like that. Instead, it is the output of MA’s and OK’s public services.
The quality of life indicdes measure factors – such as infrastructure quality, voting rights and law enforcement – that the federal government can affect, but isn’t entirely responsible for. Healthcare and education services are largely administered by the states, although the federal government provides assistance via Medicaid, CHIP, Medicare and the NAEP.
Welfare is largely the federal government’s responsibility (such as SNAP and Social Security), although the states are able to implement additional counter-poverty measures, and not all the programs are universally applied across the states – for instance, conservatives have railed against broad-based conditional eligibility, which some states have used to unlock access to food stamps for millions of people who might not otherwise get them, for some time now: https://thefga.org/research/how-usda-sidesteps-congress-rewrite-laws-expand-welfare/.
Put simply, MA has been more able to fund high-quality public services than OK for decades, before either candidate was in politics. This is not an issue of Republicanism or Democracy (although there is certainly a correlation): it is one of tax.
~
There are two important points to take away from this: about “lies, damned lies, and statistics;” and about the role of taxation in delivering good public services.
On statistics: Other than test scores and poverty rates, both of which are fairly objectively measured by the federal government, the other cited statistics – especially quality of life – are primarily at the mercy of the think tanks, news bureaux, and other charities which compile the relevant measures. It certainly doesn’t help that whoever created this meme completely failed to actually cite any sources; this isn’t a good look at a time when misinformation on the internet is rampant.
On taxation: although the Tax Foundation has a fiscally-conservative low-tax bias, their Facts and Figures rankings are instructive: https://taxfoundation.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/04/Facts-and-Figures-How-Does-Your-State-Compare-Tax-Foundation-2.pdf (especially Table 2).
OK’s combined tax burden is 9% of income. It nominally has a progressive tax, although it is progressive in name only as almost everyone pays the 4.75% rate. (GA had not updated its tax brackets in around seventy years, if memory serves correctly, before its recent transition to a flat tax.) It has a headline sales tax of 4.5%, although local sales taxes massively inflate that figure in practice, and a flat 4% corporation tax.
MA’s combined burden is 11.5% of income. Until very recently, it had a flat 5% income tax. (It legally still does, as the 9% millionaire tax enacted in 2022 is technically a surtax – although, from what I’ve been able to gather, it has been hugely beneficial to MA’s schools.) It has a sales tax of 6.25% and a corporation tax of 8%. Alcohol duty is a bit lower than OK, but tobacco and fuel duties are higher.
Also note that MA collects much more income tax per person than OK despite the marginally higher rates, as MA’s average income is much higher than OK’s: https://www.bls.gov/oes/current/oes_ma.htm / https://www.bls.gov/oes/current/oes_ok.htm.
Regardless of the accuracy of the statistics cited in the meme, it is striking that MA is able to provide much better public services than OK, despite relying on almost exactly the same taxes, because everybody contributes slightly more in tax than they would if they were living in OK.
The issue here isn’t that MA is Democratic or OK is Republican – MA’s last governor was Charlie Baker, a moderate Republican, and OK had a Democratic governor as recently as 2010. It’s that MA can afford high-quality public services, while OK cannot. As states (unlike the Federal Reserve) cannot print their own money and almost invariably have to keep to a constitutional balanced-budget requirement, the secret to MA’s success is higher taxation – although not as high as the “Taxachusetts” doommongers would have you believe.
There are many people – myself included – who would not mind paying a bit more in tax if that meant funding excellent public services. Very few of them are actually politicians. Is it any wonder that public services in many places remain dreadfully underfunded?
Been watching the news regarding the Middle East lately? Of course it can happen again. It is currently happening again. As it is happened again over Covid, over BLM (US cops still kill Americans at a rate of about two or three per day, call a cop, call a gun), the revocation of Roe, the existing carceral state and slave labor utilized all over the United States. Look what is happening to the climate.
And we can look at what has happened to the right of protest in the US and UK.
At this point within the US, there are families terrified not only of the measures already in place to assault their marriages and their children, struggling to find the resources to emigrate to a different state. All the while little boys run through their school hallways shouting “ your body my choice!” and on social media platforms people of color are deluged with messages that they should report to the detention center or worse.
In general, there is an air of grim resignation, to applying for and renew passports, and plans to be out of the country for a matter of months, or permanently.
Will conservative plans for the United States result in mass deportations? Probably nothing more than show. The intention has always been to create a permanent underclass. The majority targeted will end up in detention centers as a prison labor force.
Arbeit Macht Frei without the gas chambers.
@ Ian Stevenson: MSN has published a county-by-county map of the election results, along with a report by Snopes that finds a small handful of inaccuracies in states other than Oklahoma and Massachusetts.
It confirms that Massachusetts is the only state where Harris outpolled Trump.
If my eyesight is reliable, however, West Virginia, as well as Oklahoma, also voted for Trump by a plurality in every county:
https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/politics/fact-check-map-showing-trump-s-2024-reelection-victory-with-red-and-blue-counties-is-mostly-accurate/ar-AA1tLAJD
West Virginia ranks 45th in health, social and economic factors, according to the United Health Foundation:
https://www.americashealthrankings.org/learn/reports/2023-annual-report/state-rankings.
https://www.substack.com/@themadlibrarian
reports this
Based on the results of the 2024 U.S. presidential election, the states where all counties supported the same party’s candidate include:
1. Hawaii: All counties voted for Kamala Harris (Democratic).
2. Massachusetts: Unanimously supported Kamala Harris (Democratic).
3. West Virginia: All counties went for Donald Trump (Republican).
4. North Dakota: Entirely Republican, voting for Donald Trump.
5. Wyoming: Also completely supported Donald Trump (Republican).
These states reflected clear partisan unity in county-level results during the election .
The mystery deepens.
The same Substack account reproduces a Substack post by one The Opinionated Ogre (from, at my time of writing, two days ago) with an illustration captioned ‘In 2024 only two states voted unanimously [by county] – let’s compare’, and the two states are Massachusetts and Oklahoma – and adds the rankings of each state on five indices of social well-being, which conforms to Ian Stevenson’s data above.
A much better data-set, of course, would include every state’s social indices along with their voting figures for both candidates.
As I suspected, level of formal education broadly correlates with voting preference (according to Statista’s election exit poll): the higher the level, the greater the margin of Harris over Trump (59–38 respectively for holders of post-graduate degrees, 35–63 respectively for those who never attended university), except for the curious anomaly of holders of ‘associate’ (two-year post-school) degrees, who voted more for Trump than did those who attended university but gained no qualification.
I’m reminded of their Civil war where both sides, be they Union or Confederate, incarcerated many 100,000’s of captured soldiers in appalling conditions where many of them died.
An interesting point that does not seem to have been considered.
But what happens to the deportees if the intended country to which they are being shipped refuses to let the planes/boats etc land?
Will they be returned to the USA to incarceration? Bang goes the 30% Musk Federal Budget cuts?
Who knows?
During the campaign I was severely admonished for suggesting that the return of >10m people was impractical. I was reminded about the nearly 2m that were deported in the last century.
My response was that it is believed that maybe 1m of those deported actually returned, slowly, and that we live in a very different time. The idea that Mexico will take responsibility for all those that crossed the border from Mexico seems unlikely. So that necessitates identifying countries of origin and arranging transportation back. That sounds like a lengthy and costly task to me and if as predicted one that actually depresses US GDP, a double whammy as the press love to say.
The undercurrent already from some Republicans is that this will be watered down to mainly undesirables but whether the MAGA beast will settle for this token is to be seen at the midterms.
My prediction is that the US will be in total chaos by the time of the mid-terms, but it’s hard to predict whether this will result in a backlash against Trump at the polls. The Orange Buffoon is a genius when it comes to blaming minorities for the problems he causes.
The world is watching a live genocide with little to no hope of an end in sight or justice for the people affected . This I fear has changed the world and I dread what may come in the future
Writing as an ex Labour member, if you think Starmer will ‘do the right thing’ or there will be a parliamentary revolt, think again. Both major parties have been captured, and the minions are largely chosen for their compliance or effectively expelled.
Does anyone truly believe the FOUNDERS of American Democracy would allow Donald Trump to become president again? After what he did? NO WAY! Can you picture GEORGE WASHINGTON inviting Trump to the White House for a cordial transfer-of-power chit chat? IT WOULD NOT HAPPEN! NO WAY! LET’S BE REAL! The Founders’ democratic republic no longer exists!
Our democracy (here in America) crashed and burned on Jan 6 because we’ve got a slothful legal system, totally out-of-date with Modern American Media! WE SAW THE INSURRECTION ON TV!
We need to use the FREE WILL that GOD gave us to form new nation states from a union torn asunder by greed and malice towards many.
We-the-People did not legitimately elect Donald Trump, our anachronistic legal system did.
OUR LEGAL SYSTEM HAS DEMENTIA! It allowed a RAPIST lying con man to become “President-Elect!” Do you know how old our legal system is? Approximately two-hundred and forty-seven years old! WAY TOO OLD TO SAVE DEMOCRACY!
The Founders could not have anticipated MOVING PICTURES, CAMERAS, & THE INTERNET!
There was no way they could have anticipated modern mass media and thereafter created a constitution for the 21st century.
Equal Justice Under Law does NOT exist anymore, because LADY JUSTICE has severe arthritis. She is in a wheelchair, for Pete’s Sake! She is too old for the job! She can’t even lift the Scales of Justice anymore. The proof? An insurrectionist former president was allowed to get on the ballot all across America. Being blind is one thing, opening the door to tyranny, quite another!
We owe it to the Founders and over a million American soldiers who sacrificed their lives for democracy (since 1775) to convene a new constitutional convention or secede from MAGA’s illegitimate Trump-Merika!
The Founders must be turning over in their graves, watching pure insanity unfold in 2024.