State of the Discussion

His administration (Mayorkas) stated that the unlawful presence was not by itself a basis for an enforcement action. 

People LIke Me always make this point when immigration comes up, but since I am a Person LIke Me, I guess I'll make it again.

Being in the United States without some kind of legal status is a civil, not a criminal, violation.

Law enforcement, at all levels, needs to prioritize where they will direct their efforts. Resource are not infinite, so choices have to be made.

Here is a discussion of the policies instituted under Mayorkas:

https://www.valverdelaw.com/unlawful-status-alone-should-not-be-the-basis-for-an-enforcement-action-under-new-guidelines

The purpose of the guidelines is to provide direction to ICE to help them prioritize who they will pursue, and why. The guidelines state that enforcement should be directed toward people who *pose a threat* to the public.

Mayorkas further observes, correctly, that there are 11 million undocumented people in the US. I hope we can all agree that it's not practical to find and deport 11 million people. So choices have to be made.

Go after people who are a threat.

I live very close to large immigrant communities. For a number of years, I lived in the Point neighborhood in Salem MA, which was then and still is a largely Dominican community. I attend a church that has about a 60% Latino congregation. I've volunteered at a local food bank whose clientele includes Dominicans, Brazilians, Haitians, Russians and other Eastern European folks. Also plain old white bread Americans who need access to free or cheap food.

I am aware of the issues around immigration, aware in general of the problems it creates, and also aware of how we benefit from immigrants.

The sticking point for immigration - the place where it is hugely problematic, rather than just one of several issues to deal with - is at the southern border. Because it's closer to the countries that many migrants come from, and because people can basically just walk there.

I absolutely understand that the issues facing someone living in a border area in TX or AZ or CA are different than the issues facing me. I'm surrounded by migrants, but they aren't wandering homeless through my neighborhood in large numbers. Or any numbers.

It's a problem of a different quality.

My understanding is that the Biden policies exacerbated the problem *at the southern border*. Maybe exacerbated it a lot, i don't have numbers. If you want to blame him for that, I will recognize that as a fair point. He did take steps to remedy that, as you point out "because of an election". He recognized he was vulnerable there.

And Trump prevented those changes from taking place. Because of an election.

Politicians' minds are concentrated by elections. Not ideal, but that's the reality.

The approach Trump and Miller are taking right now is creating holy f***ing havoc where I live. People afraid to leave their homes, afraid to send their kids to school, afraid to go to work. Not just illegal people, but literally anybody brown, anyone who speaks Spanish or speaks English with an accent.

People who were born in this country, and who have lived all their lives here. Afraid to go out of the house. Because ICE under Trump and Miller are a freaking terroristic goon squad.

Illegals are seized, citizens are seized, anybody who looks like they might possibly by Latino.

I sometimes attend a standing weekly demonstration at the local ICE facility in Burlington MA. It's basically an office building, with no facilities for holding people. The agreement ICE has with either the leaseholder or the town (not sure which) is that nobody will be held overnight, or at least for more than a day.

People are held there for many days. Weeks in some cases. They sleep on a concrete floor with a Mylar blanket. Many in one big room, with one toilet that offers minimal privacy. No place to shower. No medical facilities. No kitchen.

Undocumented people, people who are not citizens but have legal status, and citizens. All picked up and held in this shithole.

ICE has been unresponsive to requests from the town to inspect the facility. They have refused entry to members of Congress.

They are an unaccountable violent militarized goon squad.

I'm sympathetic to folks who live in southern border areas. I have family that lives in a southern border area, and they often feel that things are out of control.

But what Trump and MIller are doing is not making things any better. It's freaking mayhem.

Long post, sorry for that. Need to get some of this crap off my chest.

Non-partisan discussion of Biden's border policies.

The summary is that Biden went back to policy before Trump, which hadn't much differed between Republican and Democratic administrations. Calling that an "open-border policy" is not factual.

So if you like Trump, yes, you'll think Biden wasn't cruel enough. But you wouldn't switch from your previous support for Democratic candidates because Biden agreed with the presidents you'd previously supported.

Russell:

When is it appropriate for a nation to borrow? What is accomplished with the money that is borrowed?

Totally valid questions. I was simply focusing on "indifference to deficits." And I think Biden was a mixed bag. I don't cast much if any blame on the COVID spending bills themselves, whether by Biden or Trump. But BBB was such a grab bag. I didn't mind the pure infrastructure components. The resulting IRA was anything but its name. That was simply too much given the huge amount of spending on COVID, IMHO. And that's even before one considers the green pork.

"Elite", like "Woke", is a purposefully hazily defined word. Like woke, its used to denigrate a class of people as Them, the Problem. To obscure, rather than enlighten.

Elite does have a real definition, but its so broad as to be pretty useless. Its a sub-group of people with exceptional skill in some endeavor, but the usual meaning is a class of people with some combination of exceptional wealth, privilege, and status. Power is assumed in any combination. In this definition there is no single Elite, but the use of the word always implies it, because the point is to accuse The Elite of abusing their power for their benefit and the detriment of The Rest Of Us, the common clay of the West. Whether its a Harvard professor brainwashing midwestern students, movie stars sticking their noses where they don't belong, or a billionaire doing billionaire things, the Elite are shoving things down our collective throat.

Actual elites have power, whether through politics, wealth, or celebrity, though the 3 naturally go together. The people who can directly affect our lives from a distance, who convince us who we should trust and believe. The people we look up to, because we want to or we have to.

"No one else will lease us enough space for the air base we operate there."

Thank you Michael. That makes sense, and I appreciate your calling it out.

bc:
1) Legal immigration was lower under Biden than Trump. As to the effects of Biden's "open border policy" on illegal immigration: there were none, because there was no such policy.
2) Trump was and is keen on deficit-funded tax cuts. Biden was keen on deficit-funded spending. Biden at least was spending the money to boost an economy which had been depressed by COVID (and it worked). Neither should be attractive to a deficit hawk.
7) Yes, the US is a net exporter of natural gas, a net importer of oil. But the oil imports are not because of reduced domestic production - it reached a record high in 2023 (the last year I've found data for).
6) (I left this out before because I didn't know about it). So far as I know, shoplifting is not a federal matter - it's nothing to do with the president.

I imagine we could get somewhere near a consensus on these things, if we discussed them for long enough. And that at most it would support Ackman's preference for some of Trump's policies where they favour the things Ackman likes, such as burning fossil fuels. And we could go through the whole list similarly.

The one thing I clearly agree with him about is his distaste for the Ds' nomination of Biden in 2024. That's a reason to vote for the obviously dementing Trump rather than Harris?

One more jab: (3) is ridiculous - he voted for Trump because Biden implemented the withdrawal from Afghanistan which Trump had committed to?

It seems weird to me to be discussing whether or not Omelas was in better shape under Biden or under Trump when the part of the story that is being ignored in order to make this response is that Trump has decided that too few children have been tortured in order to make Omelas great, and that Biden was a pussy for having not had the courage to grab more kids to torture in order to launch Omelas into high gear towards greatness.

Oh, and everyone else in the world sucks compared to Omelas and needs to jump on the kid torturing regime ASAP or else their countries are going to sink just like Omelas under Biden.

I have a few questions about blog format that you mentioned bc, so I hope I can ask you later about that, but I did want to point out one thing

I guess it depends on who you read. I do think there is some truth here (Trump being somewhat indifferent in the first term), but I think Biden was far worse than Trump.

I'm guessing that COVID spending could be debited 50/50 to Trump and Biden, but the article doesn't mentions the CHIPs act or the Infrastructure Investment act. Also, I had to look, but another program that significantly increased debt was the PACT act
https://www.va.gov/resources/the-pact-act-and-your-va-benefits/
One has to wonder how all these things are going to fare after the DOGE CF.

So yes, all of these things increased the debt under Biden, but you can't wave your hand and have the underlying issues disappear. That heritage page is pretty disingenuous, imo.

Ben Meiselas pops on on my youtube list quite a lot, while I'm watching chess or cycling videos. I must click on enough of his stuff for it to keep being suggested to me.

But he's not really my cup of tea. Ever since the primaries he's been announcing several times a week that Trump is failing. It's not sufficiently contemplative for me.

Well! I'd barely heard of this Ben Meiselas guy before, but it looks like he may be getting the message across - bigger audiences than Joe Rogan apparently. What do any ObWi people think of him?

https://www.theguardian.com/tv-and-radio/2025/oct/11/podcaster-ben-meiselas-on-taking-on-the-maga-media-and-winning-the-ratings-battle

Give me a shiny plane and I’ll let you build a base in Idaho.

The request for a training facility was made in 2017, shortly after the Obama administration approved selling current versions of the F-15 Strike Eagle to Qatar. Like most military base construction, there's a ton of hoops to jump through. Not long ago the final environmental impact statement was finished, so they announced the training facility. Badly. Horribly. Using terms that don't describe things accurately.

Singapore already has a training facility at the same air base for their F-15 pilots and mechanics. And a facility at Luke Air Force Base in Arizona for their F-16 pilots and mechanics. Both planes are supersonic; neither Singapore nor Qatar are big enough (in square miles) to support a supersonic practice range. Mountain Home is close to the Utah Test and Training Range, and Luke to the Nevada Test Site, where low-level supersonic flights are allowed. And it's easier to house a few of the exact planes you're buying in the US than try to ferry some in over great distances.

Every other President in my lifetime has represented himself as serving in the interests of all Americans: this one is for his people only.

He's not even doing that, at least if equate "his people" with people who voted for him. His tariff war is seriously damaging for a variety of farmers. Cutting the ACA market subsidies will do particular damage in red states that haven't expanded Medicaid. The Medicaid cuts are going to exacerbate the financial problems facing rural hospitals.

When I was on the budget staff for my state's legislature, from time to time I heard members from rural areas say, "The Front Range urban corridor has declared war on rural Colorado." My job was understanding the state's cash flows. I was always tempted to say, "No, they haven't. You'll know they've declared war when the subsidies for your schools, roads, health care, electricity, and phone service stop."

I agree: what Pro Bono said. And on his last bullet point, about the SCOTUS, it's going to be interesting to see if this makes any difference (my guess is not, but I suppose it could give a bit of cover in case any of the disgraceful 6 is starting to feel uncomfortable)

https://www.nytimes.com/2025/10/13/us/politics/originalism-trump-supreme-court-unitary-executive.html?unlocked_article_code=1.tE8.z6ee.Bseton8hbgR1&smid=url-share

*what this tells me about the other side is that influential people on it are unconcerned with reality.*

I wonder about that. Is it that they are unconcerned with reality? Or are they (at least many of them) just as caught up in the alternate reality as any Faux News viewer?

Certainly there are some there who will ignore anything that looks like an inconvenient fact. Not to mention those who are simply delusional. But the (mis)information bubble there is both very real and very pervasive.

I understand the reasoning that the best vote-winning arguments are ones which appeal to voters' legitimate self-interest. But there are other things which must be said loud and often:

• this Administration is not normal. Every other President in my lifetime has represented himself as serving in the interests of all Americans: this one is for his people only.
• Troops are the streets should be there only to address an urgent crisis, not because the President has been confused by old videos.
• Everyone who is not reasonably suspected of serious crime should be immune from being dragged from their bed by government agents.
• corruption is rampant in this Administration.
• election procedure should not be a partisan matter.
• The Supreme Court has abandoned any shred of legitimacy. During the Biden administration it adopted a "major questions doctrine" to stop him doing things which the literal text of the law allowed. For Trump, the Court is using its emergency docket to allow him, without explanation, to do things which the literal text of the law and the Constitution disallow. The Court must be radically reformed.

1) Immigration. Immigration was higher in Trump's first term than in Bidens. Ackman is wrong.
2) Trump in his first term showed himself to be indifferent to the national debt. Ackman is wrong.
7) The USA has been a net fossil fuel exporter since 2019. Ackman is wrong.

I could go on - there are very few valid points. Yes, it's important to understand why people voted for Trump. But what this tells me about the other side is that influential people on it are unconcerned with reality. I hope that most of the electorate thinks otherwise.

Ok, I forgot that the comments now read in an opposite direction, so a lot has been posted since I started writing this (in spurts, given my crazy schedule). That link by GftNC was particularly interesting, especially the description of how limited the ideologues really are on either side. So the following didn't take all of that into account.

"I think it’s worth exploring how to communicate with MAGAs because, even when King Pussygrabber strokes out on the toilet at three in the morning, we won’t be over the madness. We will still have the MAGA voters, the Republican party’s commitment to the election tactics of Othering and engineered polarization, and the extensive well-funded Republican hate/fear propaganda bubble (Faux, etc) which, for many people, substitutes for news and shapes their voting behavior."

Well, with respect, I probably wouldn’t start like this.  Criticizing a side for “othering” by what seems to be to be “othering” of another sort isn’t a winning proposition. And dialing up the rhetoric to 11 isn’t likely to do any good either.  And claiming the other side “lies” when the issues are often nuanced only makes each side more entrenched. You could substitute in MSNBC for Faux, Democrat for Republican, woke Democrats for MAGA, and post this on a right-wing site and it would fit right in. And that, IMHO, is the problem.  

I’d say the first thing to do is to try to understand the other side. And not the talking heads on TV, but real people of good faith.  Why did so many vote for Trump? What policies were behind that decision?  Or what was it about Biden/Harris that voters didn’t find attractive? You can argue that the election was lost by not being loud enough, or confrontational enough, or tough enough, but I think that misses the mark.  

IMHO, a lot of people that voted for Trump/Vance were not anywhere close to the cartoonish MAGA voter you describe. There were so many reasons to vote for or not vote for Trump, just as there were so many reasons to vote for or not vote for Harris.  And many of those reasons deserve respect. To claim otherwise is to have blinders on.   You can hate a position, but hating the person holding that position is an entirely different matter.

Take just one former Democrat, Bill Ackman, and his voiced reasons for voting for Trump over Harris.

https://x.com/BillAckman/status/1844802469680873747   

I chose him simply because he has a list handy that I read some time ago. I may not agree with all of his reasons (and you won’t either) but I think his reasons deserve respect on the whole.  And this is his list. I think there are several more that could be added, but IMO, numbers 1, 2, 6, 7, 8, 9, 11, 12, 14, 15, 22, 24 , 28, 31, 33 were quite resonant with those that voted for Trump (not necessarily in that order).  Ackman was not “born” or “made” in the sense you describe.  

I am deliberately not responding to the specific examples in your post, Wonkie (i.e. Calloway, Walz, healthcare truth, Portland). I just didn’t want you to think those arguments were lost on me. I can acknowledge some validity in what you say. I just didn’t want any differences I have to detract from the tenor of my response.  

russell - I also disagree with nous’ thought that health care “codes” as a management issue. At the policy level, it does. At the level of “do I have to choose between health insurance and rent” it does not.

Then we agree, because that is what I was trying to get at with my: It doesn’t register for workers as a policy thing so much as it does a wages and benefits thing. The voters that the Dems are losing are going to tune out as soon as the conversation starts focusing on the details of health policy, same as rank-and-file union members start getting sore feet and shuffling as soon as the rep with the bullhorn starts babbling on about the importance of changing the language in Article 5 Part 3 of the CBA.

Keep the language focused on struggles and outcomes and whose side you are fighting on. And if there are cleavage lines over policy choices, focus on the need for solidarity.

And it has the huge merit that it will classify as elite a whole bunch of people that today's self-important elitists will be horrified to be classed with.

Nobody cares.

Until they lose it, or can't afford it. Especially if they or someone they care about has an expensive and / or chronic illness.

I also disagree with nous' thought that health care "codes" as a management issue. At the policy level, it does. At the level of "do I have to choose between health insurance and rent" it does not.

IMO (D)'s do well to hammer the hell out of this one.

I second wjca's thought that most people aren't really motivated by the whole "threat to democracy" thing. "People Like Me" might be, most people aren't. The connection between that and their daily life is not always clear.

I'd go so far as to say if you give a lot of people a choice betwen democracy and a basic level of personal and financial security, they would choose the latter without a second thought.

"Democracy" is kind of abstract. "My job is going away" is not. "I can't afford insulin" is not. "My hospital closed and the nearest one now is an hour away (or two hours away, or not even in my state)" is not. "I can't afford to not work, but I can't afford to pay for care for my kid" is not. "I work a full time job and have to take care of my disabled kid / my parent with Alzheimers / my partner who had a stroke" is not.

The price of eggs is too small bore. Have you lost your job? Are you clinging to a job you don't really like because you don't know if you can find another one? Do you make enough to buy a house? Do you make enough to start a family? Do you have a kid that needs any kind of special ed? Trump just took that away. Can your kids afford to go to college without taking on six figures of debt? If they don't go to college, can they find a job - not just a "job", but a career, a path in life - that will give them a decent quality of life?

Does your life feel stable? Can you see a path forward for yourself and your family, if you have one? Can you see a path forward to the life you thought you might have?

How worried are you about your future?

When I listen to folks, especially young folks (which for me at this point is basically anybody 45 or younger) this is the stuff that nags at them.

(D)'s should absolutely give zero ground on basic human rights. Women'sLGBTQ, trans people, black people, Latinos, immigrants of any stripe.

Defend them all. Do not give an inch.

But that needs to happen in a context that makes people understand that those folks' rights are not being defended at the expense of everybody else. That the (D)'s are not forgetting the folks who aren't "marginal" - not a member of a non-mainstream demographic.

I.e., to more or less stereotype it, people who might self-describe as more or less a plugger. Someone trying to do the right things, trying to "play by the rules". Someone who isn't trying to change the world, they're just trying to take care of themselves and their family. And who nonetheless finds themselves lying awake at night trying to figure out how to make it work.

(D)'s should be able to chew gum and walk at the same time. They should be able to say "those people who aren't like you are no threat to you, they're just living their lives" AND ALSO say "we see how tentative life is for you, here is what we will do to help that".

Not either / or.

It's a really unsettled time, people are worried, and everything Trump does makes it worse. Hammer that, every single day.

If you aren't rich, Donald J Trump is making your life worse. Less secure.

Are you rich? What exactly are you getting out of this administration?

Hammer that.

You can tell the difference between the Dems with close union ties and allies and the ones who have never been a part of a union and only have ties to people in management.

Healthcare codes as a management concern. It doesn't register for workers as a policy thing so much as it does a wages and benefits thing. Policy details don't land with working class voters because those decisions are made by other people. What matters is whether they are feeling like government is fighting for workers or for the big people.

I really think it's that simple. Low information voters don't listen to policy discussions, and they don't trust people who spend all their time talking about that stuff. It's a cultural divide.