Traitor Watch - The 45 & 47 Thread

[Pale Rider]

FB friend:

Trump believes that tariffs will end foreign imports and make America self-sufficient. He also believes that tariffs will raise such huge revenue that America will be swimming in money.

It is literally impossible for those two things to both happen. If tariffs end imports as he promises, then they won't raise any revenue. If tariffs raise gigantic economy-altering revenues (as he also promises), then the imports are obviously continuing at a huge scale and the tariffs are just a tax increase on Americans.

Funny how easily Trumpers pivoted from "you can't take down Confederate statues because that's erasing history" to "Trump is absolutely right to erase every article, photo, or mention of DEI in every government website, including every historical action which might appear like DEI".

Gee, what a surprise: Trump's mass-deportation policy is being used against people who are in the country legally, but who are using their first amendment rights in a way that annoys the establishment.

His wife is eight months pregnant and they won't even tell her where they took him. The ICE Gestapo is revelling in their cruelty.

 

[Rhinox]

I am not a lawyer, I have no clue whether the First Amendment protections I enjoy every day apply with equal strength to green card holders when there are black-ink lists of activities that can get them deported. I don't know if there's precedent either way, and knowing Trump's SCOTUS it probably wouldn't matter.

Am I allowed to find both the guy and this entire process disgusting?

As a green card holder, he is entitled to the rights espoused in the Constitution and the Amendments.
Mere speech is not material support.

 

[Axaday]

Trump halts doubling of tariffs on Canadian metals after Ontario suspends electricity price hikes

President Donald Trump’s threat to double his planned tariffs on steel and aluminum from 25% to 50% for Canada has led the provincial government of Ontario to suspend its planned surcharges on electricity sold to the United States.

apnews.com

It makes me feel icky to root against my country, but I really thought Ontario was a in a strong position here and it looks like the crumpled.

 

[wonko the sane?]

Ford is a ******* coward in the first place, and trump will not let it go anyway. We're going to be right back to where we were in a week or so.

 

[Pocket]

The above, published on the 1-year anniversary of the Oct. 7th massacre, is just one of the ways that CUAD - the student group for which Mahmoud Khalil is a leader and negotiator - has undeniably endorsed terrorism. Another CUAD leader, Khymani James, said Zionists (=most of the world's Jews) should be killed.

As a green card holder, immigration law says Khalil can be deported for multiple reasons, including "being a representative of a political, social, or other group that endorses or espouses terrorist activity."

I'd still rather not deport him. He's liable to find and join one of the groups he endorses if he's sent back to the part of the world where they actually operate, and do some real damage. Here he's just another impotent fist-waver.

 

[Axaday]

A college student organizing college protests CAN become a terrorist bomber, but generally these are two entirely separate groups of people, I think.

I want him not deported because it is illegal and they shouldn't get away with doing illegal things even if I don't like this guy. If they have him on crimes, put him in jail.

 

[Ironbite4]

What a can of worms.




I am not a lawyer,

Should've stopped right there.

 

[Pale Rider]

 

[Cybersnark]

If they have him on crimes, put him in jail.

They have openly admitted that they don't have him on crimes.

And a White House official told The Free Press that Khalil’s detention was just the start of a larger crackdown on foreign student activists: “I suspect we’ll have other schools roped into this.” (The official also admitted that Khalil had not committed a crime. “The allegation here is not that he was breaking the law,” said the official, instead arguing that Khalil is a “threat to the foreign policy and national security interests of the United States.”)

 

[Rhinox]

They have made it clear that their actions in seizing him is because he was protesting and saying something the administration didn't like. These are blatant violations of civil rights regardless of this individual's history. These are illegal actions taken against someone for exercising their freedom of speech.
There is no way to spin this where the administration isn't acting outside the law and their scope. Again, this person's history doesn't mean anything. He is not suspected of any criminal activity nor has he been convicted. This is solely based on his speech. Wildly outrageous and outside the law. Period.

 

[Ironbite4]

But because he's saying things like "Free Palestine" it's ok to make him disappear.

Ironbite-cause he's saying the wrong things...right?

 

[Thylacine 2000]

Reasonable people cannot reasonably disagree that, as a widely recognized negotiator and leader of CUAD, Mahmoud Khalil is "a member of a group that endorses and espouses terrorism." Black-ink immigration law says green card holders who join such groups risk deportation.

https://www.nytimes.com/2024/10/09/nyregion/columbia-pro-palestinian-group-hamas.html

The pro-Palestinian group that sparked the student encampment movement at Columbia University in response to the Israel-Hamas war is becoming more hard-line in its rhetoric, openly supporting militant groups fighting Israel and rescinding an apology it made after one of its members said the school was lucky he wasn’t out killing Zionists.

“We support liberation by any means necessary, including armed resistance,” the group, Columbia University Apartheid Divest, said in its statement revoking the apology.

The group marked the anniversary of the Oct. 7 attack on Israel by distributing a newspaper with a headline that used Hamas’s name for it: “One Year Since Al-Aqsa Flood, Revolution Until Victory,” it read, over a picture of Hamas fighters breaching the security fence to Israel. And the group posted an essay calling the attack a “moral, military and political victory” and quoting Ismail Haniyeh, the assassinated former political leader of Hamas.

“The Palestinian resistance is moving their struggle to a new phase of escalation and it is our duty to meet them there,” the group wrote on Oct. 7 on Telegram.

https://x.com/LishiBaker/status/1897384284702564777

That is the ONLY circumstance in which they can make a case for holding Khalil. If they don't actually care about that law and aren't even pursuing him under it, then they have nothing and should let him go. But the question will remain unanswered. That's bad. Everyone, on whichever side, should want a firm answer to what the immigration law banning "joining groups that endorse terrorism" really means.

 

[The Mighty Mollusk]

Republicans don't want a firm answer. If it's left vague, they can interpret it however they want to lock up dissidents. Then they can follow their typical practice of commiting more problems so the last ones get lost in the media shuffle until people forget about it.

 

[Pale Rider]

Kinda like how cops broadly interpret "disorderly conduct" to fit any given situation if they want to arrest you badly enough.

 

[Rhinox]

Kinda like how cops broadly interpret "disorderly conduct" to fit any given situation if they want to arrest you badly enough.

Or "interference". I'm so tired of seeing cops throw that tired accusation out just because they don't like someone refusing illegal directives.

 

[Tuxedo Prime]

Am I allowed to find both the guy and this entire process disgusting?

Of course.

And it's an understandable part of the human condition, I expect, to be all for free speech up until the point that someone says something that one finds reprehensible.

But disappearing people for crimethink -- as has happened -- is very much in "First They Came" territory: and the ADL's "appreciation" for the current maladministration's "broad" and "bold" efforts to "counter campus antisemitism" even as said league was shrugging and saying "what salute?" when Elno sieg-ed twice at a rally is not a path to a good ending. I would have thought they had longer memories, but here we are.

ICE Yanking Green Card Holders Out Of Their Houses For Wrongthink Now

Yeah, this ain't right.

www.wonkette.com

Also, from "Domestic Enemy Hat", formerly "Popehat", via Bluesky and bridged from Mastodon:

Terminated Hat (@kenwhite.bsky.social)

Ok I know this is old-man irritability but I don’t care if Mahmoud Khalil has a pregnant wife, I don’t care if he and his wife are childfree, I don’t care if he’s in a ******* polycule with a hedgehog and a jar of mayonnaise, NOBODY should be detained for protected speech, including singletons.

fed.brid.gy

 

[abates]

Former Trump spiritual adviser indicted for child sex abuse cases dating back to the 80s.

Texas pastor Robert Morris indicted for child sex crimes

Morris is a former spiritual adviser to President Donald Trump, and Gateway — one of the nation’s largest megachurches — has been particularly active in Dallas-area GOP politics.

www.texastribune.org

Only the best people.

 

[KidTDragon]

Pardon incoming.

 

[Rhinox]

Trump can't pardon state crimes. I'm sure there will be an influence campaign for his good buddy, but Trump can't drop trou, wave his magic wand and make this one go away.

 

[Dekafox]

NASA, Yale, and Stanford Scientists Consider 'Scientific Exile,' French University Says

“We are witnessing a new brain drain.”

www.404media.co