Like the dudes shoes. Or the “feeling” of the ICE officer.
No matter how you slice it, the SC has just declared open season on skin color.
Well, Donald Trump was nostalgic for the America of the 1950s and it appears he’s getting the America of his dreams.
So, fourteen months from now, not only is Trump going to control all American news gathering media outlets, he’s also going to have locked down the Internet so that I can’t use a VPN to check out Reuters and the BBC?
Trump is consolidating power with unusual speed. But no dictator, no matter how brilliant, can consolidate power that fast. Look at how long it took Putin and Erdoğan to control the media. America can not be that much weaker of a democracy than newer democracies.
Also, if there still is mail-in or early voting, the election day voters they arrest are going to be disproportionately Republicans.
The arrest-citizens-to-win-the-midterms plan would backfire. It is guaranteed that they would arrest lots of Republicans. So, even if they were mostly arresting Democrats, which I doubt, the number you need to arrest is millions in excess of the vote changes needed. And ICE now arrests only a couple thousand people a day, despite quota pressure. And if arrests were really widespread enough to change results, boards of election, or equivalent, would extend voting.
Free elections are the last thing to go. They are how you stop these guys. Sending the message that the elections are now going to be rigged risks reducing Democratic vote totals by more than anything ICE can do.
is there any evidence that this is happening?
I think you’ve taken what I’ve said to the extreme for some reason.
It’s certainly possible that your average “swing” voter will not hear much about the coming intimidation at the polls because much of the mainstream American media will be diligently practicing anticipatory obedience. Do you think that most Americans check out the BBC? Do you think most Americans will get a VPN to check things out? No. No they will not.
Were you aware that Paramount has appointed a former Trump appointee as ombudsman to review ‘complaints of bias’ at CBS News? Expect more of this. Your “news” will be carefully vetted in future so as not to disturb Dear Leader.
Oh, they won’t have to arrest them. Just get them into custody for a while, and release them the next day with no charges. Just intimidate enough to make them stay away. And e number just has to be enough in swing states.
They now have the data (thanks to Musk) to pinpoint exactly where to target.
They’ve flipped that old saying:
“A liberal is a conservative who got ICE’d.”
Regarding nabbing non-white citizens on the way to vote, you wrote:
But you did not say that the media takeover was absolutely going to happen. Fair enough.
Yes, and I started a thread on it:
AFAIK my state does not release separate precinct level vote results for election day and early voting. Are you saying that Musk got that? Is there a link for this?
If you are just thinking that they would target polling places that went overwhelmingly for the 2022 congressional Democrat in a swing congressional district, that’s on the web, at least for Pennsylvania, but what does Musk have to with it?
Are you planning to vote? It’s a waste of time if I am wrong!
If something is true, we should tell it to each other regardless of whether it makes Trump’s job easier. I just do not see where the evidence is that ICE has the means to rig nationwide elections, or the intention.
They’ll be after many more D than R voters, surely.
…as long as this growing wave of systemic authoritarianism hasn’t intimidated its way into said boards (or equivalent).
And language/accent. So beware of going shopping with Abuela.
Yes, this. We’re already seeing the effects of such intimidation, as many people are making the choice not to participate in public events that might be targeted by ICE.
At least one Mexican fest in Milwaukee was already cancelled.
“While we navigate a challenging landscape for nonprofits, particularly considering current and anticipated federal funding constraints tied to the broader political climate, pausing this event will allow us to focus short-term resources where our impact on individuals, families, and communities is most needed.”
They’re playing it off as a budget issue which I have no reason to doubt, but I have to believe it’s an ICE issue as well.
We are at a point now where the government can demand you prove your lawful presence based on being brown-skinned and sitting in the bed of a pickup truck speaking Spanish with your friends wearing an LA Dodgers hat near a Home Depot. And SCOTUS says nothing to see here? If the Dems ever control the House and Senate, there are six justices that need impeached & removed for letting it get to this point.
Here’s my best-case scenario.
Replace John Roberts with any vertebrate. Replace Brett Kavanaugh with someone with actual empathy rather than crocodile tears and nothing concrete. Leave Gorsuch in, because he’s good on Native American issues. Coney Barrett can stay, as she seems to have some degree of conscience about how the court runs itself.
Don’t remove Thomas and Alito - force them to stick around well past their planned comfortable retirements spewing their vitriol into dissenting opinions at the behest of their corporate masters until they go belly-up. “C’mon, Clarence, just stick around a few more years until we have the Senate, then we’ll get you and Ginny that beach mansion you’ve always had your eye on - call it a gratuity!”
Hey, a SunUp can dream…
According to the SCOTUS majority, there is no need to be in the bed of the pickup truck. Somehow looking Mexican, and speaking Spanish, lined up near the Home Depot, is enough. I base that partly on the Kavanaugh concurrence, but also on the fact of what the majority voted to allow.
It is the three dissenters who mentioned the vehicle you got to the Home Depot or car wash in as the kind of additional factor, supposedly correlating with being undocumented, that could get ICE to the point of meeting the applicable “reasonable suspicion” standard.
No one on SCOTUS said that being lined up to vote qualifies as part of a legitimate reasonable suspicion stop..
Is there anyone here who actually is now unwilling to vote,or who plans to advise friends or loved ones not to vote?
Fear feeds MAGA. I am confident that, despite the challenges to democracy we face, one we are not seeing, and will not see in the foreseeable future, is qualified voters being detained.
Don’t need to detain anyone lining up to vote. Just keep detaining brown people wherever they may congregate and I would imagine they’d be afraid to line up to vote. I would be.
(my ellipsis)
Detainment is not nearly necessary. As @Euphonious_Polemic pointed out above, just having a few stooges walking around near the polls in ICE jackets will be more than sufficient. Some strategically parked ICE vehicles for added effect.
We’ll see.
Based on experiences of other countries in the earlier stages of dictatorship, when independent media still exists, I predict they will not try it so long as it could be televised. And if they do try it, I predict that turnout in heavily Hispanic precincts will average at least as high as in 2022.
I have to admit that if Trump succeeds in stopping ALL early and mail voting, three stooges intimidation, if at thousands of polling places, has potential to hurt the Democrats. But the Trumpers probably will not be that organized, and, as a result, most of the Election Day brown voters, who could be scared away, would be Republicans. To change the election results it would have to be less of a matter of a few stooges, and much more like kristallnacht. And, at this point, predicting that will discredit Democrats.
Democrats or Republicans, the naturalized U.S. citizens I know are pretty darn brave. So is Democratic Party polling day officialdom. This is not the same crowd that gets too scared to parade.
Other countries have not had wanna-be dictators this bone-stupid. I think these evil shitheads will WANT the intimidation to be televised. The whole ICE clown show is designed to be viewed, televised, and talked about. It’s a PR campaign as much as anything.
They’ll focus the intimidation tactics on major cities in swing states. The cities skew heavily D, and that will give them the biggest bang for the buck.