> Meanwhile, according to the disclosure and records of internal communications, members of the DOGE team asked that their activities not be logged on the system and then appeared to try to cover their tracks behind them, turning off monitoring tools and manually deleting records of their access — evasive behavior that several cybersecurity experts interviewed by NPR compared to what criminal or state-sponsored hackers might do.
The subsequent message about Russian activity could be a coincidence–Internet background noise-but given how these are not very technically skilled and are moving very fast in systems they don’t understand, I’d be completely unsurprised to learn that they unintentionally left something exposed or that one of them has been compromised.
There were already people auditing departments, but they got fired early on:
* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inspector_general#United_State...
* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2025_dismissals_of_inspectors_...
There's even an entire agency devoted to auditing:
* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Government_Accountability_Offi...
Trying to find efficiency by bringing in the private sector is not a new thing:
* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grace_Commission
* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brownlow_Committee
* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hoover_Commission
* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Partnership_for_Reinv...
No. But getting rid of cronyism/nepotism did happen at one point:
* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Civil_service_reform_in_the_Un...
These weren't random login attempts. It says the Russian login attempts had the correct login credentials of newly created accounts.
If the article is correct, the accounts were created and then shortly afterward the correct credentials were used to attempt a login from a Russian source.
That's a huge issue if true. Could be that someone's laptop is compromised.
Or perhaps someone got invited to the wrong group chat again.
https://www.politico.com/story/2018/07/16/trump-putin-russia...
ftfy
In fact I would imagine they would do exactly the opposite because they would look at the mere ability to hide what they did as an audit finding.
"We already have an audit from last year, we just need the funding to improv--"
"Oh, and they want to turn off all the security cameras next weekend. You'll know it's them because they'll be wearing masks."
"Sir, we have a responsibility to our customers, we can't ju--"
"Do it or you're fired."
manager: "the auditors found all of our money missing"
::silence::
manager: "they are clearly doing an amazing job, and you are all fired for allowing such fraud waste and abuse"
Well, maybe one shouldn't be using Google DNS server when violating ToU to download Google's video.
I should point out, though, that authoritarianism doesn’t necessarily mean that QOL drops for the average person (if you’re not part of a targeted group). Many people live quite happily in Hungary, Turkey, Russia. Local government will chug along as before, stonks might still go up. But you have to internalize a certain resignation over things you can no longer change or talk about, unless you wish to become a dissident and put yourself in danger. I’m not brave enough for that, so I’m opting out of the whole thing.
Perhaps the defining feature of the modern nation state is a monopoly on violence and power. Been that way my whole life.
I'm waiting it out for now. I'm "close" enough to communte to Los Angeles, but otherwise on the outskirts of the county as a whole. It's a weird place for any federal service to go out of their way to exploit.
As an aside, I also consider a civil war as "not making it". Having to wage war on the people you lead is fundamentally a failure of all systems.
But even if Trump is out of the picture, that just means we'll get president Vance, which is likely to be even worse.
Nobody else in the party has this kind of power. Not JD, not Desantis, not the Koch brothers, nobody. When he's gone, it's over.
Right now this is impossible because Trump sucks all the air out of the room. But with him gone, I don't see any reason why all those people who voted for him will suddenly not vote for the closest similar candidate, and that voting block is really where his power comes from.
And looking at history, cults of personality often survive replacement of the figure around which they are built - examples are numerous in various dictatorships, just look at North Korea for one that is still ongoing.
Trump is simultaneously a blunt force tool to destroy our institutions while also being a political wizard that always know exactly how to spin things and is completely impervious to pressure and stress.
I think those background forces know after trump there will not be anyone like him. Which is exactly why everything is being destroyed at such a rapid pace. Their opportunity is short and they are maximizing it. Things will look very different post trump
Along with the other points you made, rarely showing stress, always having a comeback with no care for the truth make him unique.
Vance is not even close.
When Trump goes all the smaller factions will compete for the top. That's the typical state.
The Senate has sole power over impeachment trials. The trial and conviction vote have no quorum requirement. Republicans will have to show up and vote to acquit, explicitly, to protect Trump.
The law is clear, upon conviction the president is removed from power. The only power any person has is the power people voluntarily give to him. He can also throw poop if so inclined, he's plenty full of it.
But if not one thing is yielded to him, if without any violence he is simply not obeyed, he becomes naked and undone and nothing, just as when the root receives no nourishment, the branch withers and dies. - Étienne de La Boétie, Discourse on Voluntary Servitude: Why People Enslave Themselves to Authority
Yes.
With a confidence level of some 99.9%+ of votes being legitimate, yes. with 155 million voters in 2024 nationals, that leaves a margin of about 155k illegitimate votes. Elections can be super close (see 2000), but any fraud that went undetected would not sway most American elections. At least not with this electoral college system.
>Do you honestly believe there will not be at least _some_ kind of election in 2028?
Yeah probably. I'm not even sure if Trump will get that far, though. we'll have to see how damning this SAVE act is on women first and if the courts strike this down in the next 18 months or so.
>Even if it's staged, form must be respected.
When has Trump ever done that? most other leaders I disagree with still did this. But not him.
Why aren't we to believe that this is Elon Musk going after anyone filing a complaint to the NLRB (from X, Twitter or SpaceX) or, worse yet (from Elon's POV), anyone potentially organizing any unionization effort?
There's absolutely no reason DOGE should have access to this information. There's absolutely no reason their activity, such as what information they accessed, should be hidden.
It looks to be both
https://www.astralcodexten.com/p/twilight-of-the-edgelords
At least I can share it. And wait. And hope.
By which I mean, stoicism is really becoming a survival stance for me. And I recommend it for others.
Some people will retreat from the news, but that’s not me.
What is happening is going to cause a great deal of lasting mental hardships, as well as the practical damage.
Second tack: remember we are still in history. History has always been crazy, with only short periods of less crazy.
A third tack is considering how to support other people, instead of needing support.
Best to find a way to reliably maintain internal peace and health right now. Things are unlikely to stabilize soon, without a miracle. Or eventually bounce back. But that could take a long time. And this could just be the preamble for much worse disasters. Gulp.
At least, this is how I am prepping myself! Scary times.
This is woefully ignorant of the fact that some people will be thrown into an El Salvadorian prison, killed, disappeared, threatened, lose civil liberties, lose human rights, ect.
Must be nice to just put on some headphones and wait for it to all blow over. Unfortunately for many immigrants, LGBTQ members, activists, union members, government workers don't have that luxury. The news you're ignoring are their lives being shattered.
I made no implication that very bad things are not happening. Or that anyone is immune. Quite the opposite.
But I don't want to be afraid, regardless of what happens. Not the, "I can't sleep at night" afraid. Nor the, "I can't speak up and take action" afraid. That is quite literally what the main actors want.
People's ability to maintain their mental health is going to matter. There are so many ways to spiral, internally and externally, during traumatic times, and we all need to be at our best. For ourselves, for each other.
Now might be a good time to be generally supportive of each other. A systemic lack of tolerance for differences of thought is a prime contributor to the fiasco we are in.
Right now, at this moment, society has a small window of opportunity.
People cannot get rid of autocracy by themselves, they have become controlled resources. It took millions of free people to get rid of the Nazi's.
Act now.Have conversations with your friends, the grocery store owner.
Join grassroots organizations, or start a local one. Keep people accountable. Your local politician bends over because he is afraid of consequences. Now give people no way out but do the right thing. When people are transported to concentration camps, than such is not an act of God, but people doing unconstitutional things while not being held accountable.
Fascism is not Hitler. It is collective, sociological behavior. Trump is a nuisance. The problem is a society engineered to give consent to the .1%, the Dark Mirror tech bro's, the christian cultists.
I disagree. It seemed blindingly obviously sarcastic to me -- and the rest of the comments it generated indicate the same.
EDIT: PS the peer comment by blindsight has a much more cogent critique
If government agencies are compromised - via software backdoors or any other mechanism - any data and systems they can access should be considered compromised too.
You are a Human Resource to be commercialized. Ad tech => Private Intelligence.
One is not a person. One has no rights. Unless one can free themself and their loved ones of neoliberal brainwashing.
And the same half of the population do not trust anything what npr.org says.
Understanding the above dynamic is key to grasping the current state of discourse in the U.S.
[1] https://edworkforce.house.gov/news/documentsingle.aspx?Docum...
Usually there's a shakedown, did Trump ever make NPR an offer they "couldn't" refuse?
Really feels like the fox is already in the coop.
Has some of the protected disclosure document from the whistleblower.
https://bsky.app/profile/mattjay.com/post/3ln2dgoksce2e
Looks like Elon's staff went in and made a copy of everything - which in this case NLRB, so sensitive stuff, but any state department going to have a ton of sensitive stuff - and sent it who knows where; this after disabling all logging and a ton of security, presumably to try to cover their tracks.
This is bad. These guys are looking like bad actors, with State-level authorization for access to everything.
Also looks like they're kids and don't have the hang of security, and the professional Russian State run APTs have hacked them.
https://oversightdemocrats.house.gov/sites/evo-subsites/demo...
The owner could, of course, just make it public again, or put it back up, and end all the speculation.
I'm trying to think through this:
1. if the screenshot is not doctored, then the implied ordering of last updated would have had it last updated before January 20, 2021; which would mean it has nothing to do with what is alleged in the article.
2. But in the archive.ph snapshot from 2/28/25 doesn't have it at all anywhere.
3. Archive.org's 3/21/25 snapshot shows the same thing as archive.ph
4. The article states that after this tweet (https://x.com/SollenbergerRC/status/1895609294810464390) dated 2/28/25 (the date of the archive.ph 2/28/25 snapshot), Berulis noticed NxGenBdoorExtract in the repo: "After journalist Roger Sollenberger started posting on X about the account, Berulis noticed something Wick was working on: a project, or repository, titled "NxGenBdoorExtract." Wick made it private before Berulis could investigate further, he told NPR.
Of course, if it really only was public for a very brief moment then it might not be in the snapshot, and the article isn't clear exactly how long after that tweet that Berulis supposedly discovered this.
All I can say is this: I can't figure out for the life of me what all this adds up to.
And they absolutely should be resisted with this deadline in mind...
And this Chief Executive was elected by the majority of the country, specifically to take these actions that he'd clearly stated he would take.
The resistance is actually the violation of federal law. It's no different from contempt of court; within the President's domain, he has a huge amount of power. The President can also modify existing policy (regulations) at any time and literally make new laws (Executive Orders have the force of law) as long as they don't conflict with current law, as well as overturning previous President's Executive Orders.
Of course, then the shoe will be on the other food someday, too, just as it was when Biden took over from Trump and then they switched places again.
As President Obama said, "I've got a pen, and I've got a phone."
https://www.npr.org/2014/01/20/263766043/wielding-a-pen-and-...
If he ordered you to break the law or professional standards, would you obey? This is not hypothetical for many people: if you’re a lawyer, professional engineer, healthcare professional, work in HR, etc. it is not at all uncommon to suggest legal ways to accomplish a goal.
According to the article, that’s exactly what happened here: they have various federal laws and regulations covering their work, but as at other agencies, DOGE decided they don’t need to follow those. This confirms that their stated purpose is not their true motivation but it remains to be seen whether there will be any consequences.
Your misunderstanding seems to be to think that the word of the president is the law, like in a dictatorship. In the US system of separation of powers, that's not how it is supposed to work.
As I understood it, this "immunity" is granted for POTUS doing things in the course of their responsibility as POTUS. Could it be argued that breaking laws & orders which bind the activity of POTUS is _inherently not_ the work someone in that role?
Immunity also isn't absolute. For example police in the US typically enjoy broad immunity but that doesn't imply not getting dragged into court. They just have sweeping legal defenses available to them that other people don't.
Except said "chief executive" was not elected by "a majority of the country."
He wasn't even elected by a majority of those who voted (~35-40% of the population), but rather a plurality of those who voted (~20% of the population).
Note that I am not claiming that there was anything nefarious (I have no evidence to support making such a claim), just that those who voted for that person represent only ~20% of the US population, not a "majority of the country."
There are procedures to do the things that he said he wanted to do, because we are well aware of how an unchecked executive can destroy our government by doing what they want however they want.
Allow me to illustrate Exhibit A, unfolding now.
We used to have a government like this, a spoils system, and it didn't work. So both parties created the civil service. Both parties passed things like that Administrative Procedures act.
The President is literally the Chief Executive officer in the United States.
https://people.howstuffworks.com/president4.htm
> Laws and budgets are set by Congress
That's correct, under Article 1, but the President does not have to spend every dime that was allocated.
> EOs do not have the force of law
"Both executive orders and proclamations have the force of law, much like regulations issued by federal agencies"
https://www.americanbar.org/groups/public_education/publicat...
You seem to underestimate the power that is vested in the office of the President as the Chief Executive.
> have been invalidated by courts
As have many, many legislatively-passed laws; this is simply checks-and-balances and allows the judiciary to act on other laws (which originate from Congress) and regulations (which originate from the Executive Branch).
No, he was not. He was elected by ~30% of the possible voters in this country because most people chose no one and stayed home.
But did they actually "turn off logging"?? How do you even do that? Anyone know what access control system they are talking about?
It will go down as the most successful assault on America since 9/11 once the true scale of the damage is understood.
Not only will Musk be able to tap into it for years but foreign governments.
Why are people being deported for no crimes or for far lesser crimes?
But those agencies cannot do anything if an elected/named official decides to work for an adversary, since those agencies are under command of the elected/name official.
That's why democracy is beyond the scope of those agencies.
Those agencies are "fences" to protect a teenager from doing mistakes. But it cannot protect the teenager from setting himself on fire.
In my view, democracy was always vulnerable if the people or elected official can be convinced of whatever.
My understanding was that they routinely do their work far outside of the law. Because such agencies have demonstrated a willingness to violate the constitution of the US, lie to both congress and the president, overthrow the democratically elected leaders of sovereign nations, perform acts of torture, rape, human experimentation, assassination, etc. it seems odd that they'd suddenly shy away from taking any action now.
"Supporting democracy" in Latin America always meant anti-communism, even to the extent of ending free elections.
> And Berulis noticed that an unknown user had exported a "user roster," a file with contact information for outside lawyers who have worked with the NLRB.
Possibly looking for lawyers for Trump to target with EOs or blackmail.
Given all of Musks actions, he is probably wanting to destroy any agency that went against him, because he truly believes he is the humanities savior and his companies are doing things the right way.
First the "average" american is softly but ideologically committed to liberalism¹ & democracy as fundamental values. From that perspective the mind kind of recoils from accepting this. If this is really what's happening, what does civic obligation demand of me? How does that reconcile with my inability to keep my family safe in the face of a motivated & powerful state that wishes to harm me through them? Easier to believe this isn't what is happening, I don't need to take action yet. A powerful example of motivated reasoning.
Second a significant part of the userbase here, as with the general population, supports some or all of these actions. Simple as.
¹ Like in the traditional sense, ie "a political and moral philosophy based on the rights of the individual, liberty, consent of the governed, political equality, the right to private property, and equality before the law" from wikipedia.
People support what they claim to do doing and are naive enough to believe they are doing what they say without asking questions about why they seem to be going out of there way to avoid transparency or providing any real evidence to their claims.
But when they start doing stuff like tarrifs for no reason what so ever, to the point where even Musk thinks its stupid, the situation is sad more than scary. US has lost its edge for literally nothing in return.
The Republicans are basically still at the mercy of the economy - Trump backed of tariffs real quick when Japan started selling off US debt on the cheap. So I don't think its going to get levels of Saddam Hussein authoritarian. But time will tell.
The thing is, just like in Russia, smart people will know when to leave, and will leave, which is good. As soon as it becomes economically better to work in EU, you will have lots of talented people immigrating there which will bolster their economy.
Part of me is sympathetic to them because a lot of these people are people who live privileged lives and have never before been in any political pressure. These people have previously been able to just detach from politics because they knew, no matter what, they would end up on top. And now, that assumption is no longer true and they have the enter a world that a variety of minority groups have already been living in. They have to face the reality that politics isn't just something on the TV, but something that affects their lives.
B) You can’t know if someone is here illegally if they don’t have a way to challenge that claim. They could easily abduct you or anyone else and ship you off without allowing you to challenge it in court
If they're accessing data that requires clearances, they have the required clearances. That's mandatory, and no one is going to show them anything without them.
My guess, based on the fact you use terms like "protected government data" is that you don't even know enough about this topic to make up words about it.
There is no "forcing access". It simply doesn't work that way.
If the President clears them, they are cleared. That's perfectly legal. The President is the federal government's OCA.
.....Regarding financing;
>Funding for NPR comes from dues and fees paid by member stations, underwriting from corporate sponsors, and annual grants from the publicly funded Corporation for Public Broadcasting.[4] Most of its member stations are owned by non-profit organizations, including public school districts, colleges, and universities. NPR operates independently of any government or corporation, and has full control of its content.[5]
.....Regarding governance;
> NPR is a membership organization. Member stations are required to be non-commercial or non-commercial educational radio stations; have at least five full-time professional employees; operate for at least 18 hours per day; and not be designed solely to further a religious broadcasting philosophy or be used for classroom distance learning programming. Each member station receives one vote at the annual NPR board meetings—exercised by its designated Authorized Station Representative ("A-Rep").
Now, I do question the authenticity of your question. Everyone knows that NPR is reputable and everyone knows why. Their reputation precedes them. But I entertained your charade and now I implore you to entertain one of mine.
Can you provide me the same detailed information which demonstrates why someone should trust OAN? How about Breitbart? How about Newsmax? Can you please pick one and demonstrate why they are trustworthy using a similar format that I provided for you?
Ehhhh... I remember vividly a moment during the Iraq war in which NPR's ombudsman spent 20 minutes justifying the network's use of the euphemism "enhanced interrogation" when speaking about torture conducted by the CIA and others. It was terminology being pushed by the then-current administration, which NPR chose not only to parrot, but to justify. To the benefit of the administration and the detriment of human rights. I haven't had illusions about the network's accuracy, neutrality, or journalistic integrity since.
24 years?
I guess you could call that well known. Not in a good way.
...
> This is a difficult topic for Dan to discuss, but prior to our filing the whistle-blower disclosure this week, last week, somebody went to Dan's home and taped a threatening note, a menacing note on his door with personal information.
> While he was at work, and it also contained photographs of him walking his dog taken by a drone. So…
> The best-known member of Elon Musk's U.S. DOGE Service team of technologists once provided support to a cybercrime gang that bragged about trafficking in stolen data and cyberstalking an FBI agent, according to digital records reviewed by Reuters.
It's not unusual to give an otherwise-qualified person limited access to certain data while their background checks are completed.
Do you need a source on that claim as well?
There's a reason Musk especially kept dodging trying to get proper clearance. He isn't even fully cleared to see all aspects of SpaceX. Some of his employees he brought in probably aren't better off.
Granted, the sample size is low, but it doesn't look likely the rest of the gang would be any different.
https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&qu...
These are a bunch of 20-something tech bro ego cases convinced of their crusade to remake government along libertarian axes they learned from Reddit/4chan/HN. These are simply not people motivated out of a genuine desire to improve the public good. And they've been given essentially unsupervised access to some outrageously tempting levers.
> Within minutes after DOGE accessed the NLRB's systems, someone with an IP address in Russia started trying to log in, according to Berulis' disclosure. The attempts were "near real-time," according to the disclosure. Those attempts were blocked, but they were especially alarming. Whoever was attempting to log in was using one of the newly created DOGE accounts — and the person had the correct username and password, according to Berulis.
this is exactly what you save a zero day for, and something gives me the vibe about some of these guys that they dont take opsec very seriously, probably would not even need one
Did you miss the presidential cryptocurrency?
DOGE guys will probably end up wiring money directly to their own bank account, proudly brandish the receipts on national television, and no Republicans will make a move against them.
Meanwhile, his attempts to raise concerns internally within the NLRB preceded someone "physically taping a threatening note" to his door that included sensitive personal information and overhead photos of him walking his dog that appeared to be taken with a drone, according to a cover letter attached to his disclosure filed by his attorney, Andrew Bakaj of the nonprofit Whistleblower Aid.Seems way more obvious to me that Thiel/Vance/Musk would have Trump whacked... probably in the 2nd or 3rd year so that Vance can take power during a Reichstag fire with enough time left till elections in order for them to consolidate power.
Trump is primarily an actor pretending to be a gangster/president on TV to serve as a front for the real gangsters pilfering our government, at some point he will better serve those people by becoming a martyr in a way which transfers his power to someone else they control.
The tariffs are a “reichstag fire” lighter - assume extra powers as things go down in flames.
Trump's been trying to be political for decades. It's no coincidence that it only started working when they brought in social media teams.
His supporters will continue to parrot whatever their preferred influencers insist, even after he is gone.
Because that's the background, it explains Trump's prominence. He is trusted by Russia in ways a Musk or Thiel can never be, so if we're talking mysterious falls from balconies, it would be Musk, Thiel et al who are more in danger. They have to work with Trump, because Trump is the one Russia trusts, and that's because Russia made him. His wealth has never been real: he's an op from way back.
The Kremlin absolutely will not trust Elon Musk, nor should they. He's more capable, but he is most certainly scheming against them or even looking to supplant/eject Putin and replace him. Thiel is on less drugs and has the sense to stay out of the spotlight, so he will be trying to offer eternal life to Putin or something like that. Whether there's any truth to that is moot: it's whether Putin believes there is.
None of them are safe replacements for Trump, because they all hold power of their own. Trump stays so long as he lives, because he doesn't hold power of his own, and is therefore safe to use as the puppet.
But you're out of patience with the wrong sources.
https://fortune.com/2025/03/27/a-doge-staffer-working-as-a-s...
It makes some sense to hire a former blackhat to secure your computers, with appropriate supervision. It's a lot less reasonable to hire a former blackhat to get into your own computer and treasury systems to run audits. I could almost buy an argument like "If you have a legal right to get in but the door is locked, you hire a locksmith to crack the lock. So they needed hackers to take control of the systems away from obstructionists." But you would then send the locksmith home, not have them root through all the records in the building and decide who to fire.
> At one point Obama had then-VP Biden in charge of government efficiency efforts utilizing USDS to do it: literally the DOGE playbook with a different name, except the person in charge now actively wants to have fewer federal employees.
Could you provide more information on Biden's nominal assignment, and what exactly he was supposed to make more efficient? I couldn't find it by Googling, as everything is about DOGE now.
Anyway, on USDS in general. From https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Digital_Service:
> It provides consultation services to federal agencies on information technology. The agency's 2014 mandate was to improve and simplify digital service, and to improve federal websites.[7][8][9] The mission of the agency is to "deliver better government services to the American people through technology and design."
I could agree that these could be termed "efficiency", but clearly they are very different from the goals of DOGE. USDS had a 2016 value statement that included "Hire and empower great people." So yeah, they didn't reduce the government headcount, as it wasn't their goal and that's not the only way to deliver "efficiency" or government improvement.
The Obama origins are a historical footnote and possibly done this way by Trump for legal expediency reasons. But USDS and DOGE have basically nothing else in common. Most of the USDS staff were fired, their mission statement is replaced. You're holding USDS accountable to DOGE's goals, when USDS didn't share those goals. In 2024 USDS reported "$285 million in projected estimated savings over five years in infrastructure expenses for the Social Security Administration" according to Wikipedia, so it's not like they were allergic to saving money, they just didn't do it by axing the bureaucracy.
You can think DOGE is better or more effective than USDS if you want, but it's partisan distraction to claim they are nominally doing the same work.
Here's some more information about the differences between the original USDS and DOGE: https://www.snopes.com/news/2025/03/05/trump-doge-obama/
Well, right now, the flagged one was "Oh, you guys are adorable.", which didn't try to make a substantive argument or convey information. At least the Cheeto one did. "Adorable" is the least-civil and least-useful comment, so it's not only ideology that explains why it got flagged.
I'd love it if partisan comments regardless of affiliation were more aggressively pruned and the accounts behind them more aggressively moderated, but what we have currently is... not that.
- When Biden did dumb stuff, pointing that out was "right-leaning"
- When Trump does dumb stuff, pointing that out is "left-leaning"
Honestly, the greatest improvement to discourse would be stopping trying to apologize for current fuck-ups by pointing at past fuck-ups. That only leads to all fuck-ups being excused.
'Well the last guy...' -> Doesn't matter, not what we're talking about (and will even out in the long run)
They could have done the exact same thing in the middle of the day when nobody was home and everybody would be alive today.
They could have waited until daylight and knocked on the door with their warrant and walked right in.
They could have worn body cameras as ATF policy and common sense demands.
"Arms trafficking" is a funny way to say "buying guns legally and reselling them at gun shows" but let's say every single thing said about him is 100% true. If you think someone is a gun runner why wouldn't you take their house when they're not home to get all the evidence without having to worry about what they're doing? Why wouldn't you arrest him at the airport, where he almost certainly isn't armed, and police presence won't raise any alarms?
Among many other points that are wrong - everyone involved agrees there was plenty of knocking.
> They could have waited until daylight and knocked on the door with their warrant and walked right in.
Search warrants almost always begin at 6am - and when weapons are involved, they almost always execute them soon after.
> Search warrants almost always begin at 6am - and when weapons are involved, they almost always execute them soon after.
I'm not making any comment on whether or not this itself is standard practice, but it seems pretty obvious to me that if this raid was conducted 4 hours later Malinowski would be alive today.
It likely could've been resolved if they'd just sent him a letter asking to meet him at the Federal Building but who wants to be a desk jockey when you can play dress up like GI Joe?
But kick a door down in your sparkling clean body armor and perp walk some guy who makes a quarter million dollars a year out of his mansion and you're well on your way.
This is the form you fill out when you purchase a gun[0]. Please let me know where on this form you "promise not to resell" a firearm you purchase.
Straw purchases are illegal. Reselling firearms is not.
[0] https://www.atf.gov/firearms/docs/4473-part-1-firearms-trans...
Plenty of people here can have a problem with this administration and Vance himself, or not, without those who disagree pretending that we're a week away from goose stepping down 5th Avenue in NYC.
Your lack of paying attention to this or lack of understanding how bad that is is not a problem in the rest of us.
Before you give me this nonsense of "they are criminals", number one this is still an inhumane way to treat convicted people, and number two they have not been convicted of anything, number three there have been tons of reports of the accusations made against these people being total BS.
Earlier this week, Trump was on microphone telling El Salvador's president that he wants him to build five more gulags and that we will send American citizens there.
At this point it simply looks like DOGE is yet another attempt to use a popular trope (Govt fraud and waste) to push through changes specifically designed to give unchecked power to one individual.
This much concentrated, unchecked power opens up vast opportunities for fraud and corruption and there are pretty much no instances in history where it turned out be to a good thing in retrospect.
Also, very surprised this story made it to the front page. Typically, stuff like this gets flagged off the front page within minutes.
Why would that be, because it's too "political" for tech news? Or are there actual DOGE sympathies within the HN population?
I wouldn't mind that so much, except they're minimally-active in the comment section and instead use flagging. At least defend your beliefs.
Switching to https://news.ycombinator.com/active (/active) with showdead is a better HN experience, nowadays.
From what I see, even good comments with facts and sources that go against the prevalent narrative are either downvoted or flagged a good chunk of the time, which discourages people from commenting(as it's meant to be) because of lack of visibility. It can also make the commenters unable to post comments for hours because HN's rate limiter kicks in, so they are effectively silenced.
Also, many times they're attacked personally and those comments violating HN's etiquette are not downvoted or flagged. Not to mention very low quality Redditesque are also not downvoted or flagged, but are upvoted, which lowers the quality of HN as a whole.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43710265
It happens all the time.
Here's an example of my comment on the same topic.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43256114
The tone policing one has to do has to be done only by one side, the other "side" can write very low quality comments with personal attacks and not get downvoted or flagged as frequently. It's same on Reddit too. Absolute misinformation and FUD gets voted up if they favor the prevalent side and countering comments are downvoted creating a chilling effect to reduce visibility and discourage participation of folks that don't agree 100% with the political narrative.
That is exactly how Reddit became more and more extreme leading to popular subs becoming full of death threats at one point. And HN is on it's way there.
I can't change other people, but I can change myself.
Sometimes, it is what it is. But often I can find a way to more effectively say what I was trying.
Exhibit A: avoiding the dangling ad hom after an otherwise solid point. Seductive but unproductive.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43710568
Zero ad hominem or anything else.
And I see this all the time. Not to mention only one "side" is subject to this suppression so it's no surprise that they prefer to(or are forced by the site mechanics to) disengage from commenting.
If sourced verifiable facts stated in a neutral way are punished, what chance do opinions or personal takes have? It's a textbook example of an echo chamber.
Anything Musk related on here has always been prone to less constructive conversation, even before he became a part of the partisan political circus.
It was downvoted for a while.
> In general, many of your comments have a slight bitter, combative air to them that probably hampers your communication effectiveness
Comments that are much more bitter and combative than mine and without sources are upvoted all the time, because they fuel a certain political narrative.
I think retaliating like this just makes HN worse. If you stop flagging perfectly good stories, HN will be a marginally nicer place for discussion. I'll say the same to anyone here who admits to blanket flagging of comments.
Please keep trying to discuss your views. Sometimes they'll get smacked down unfairly, but other times they'll stick around. The more you try, the more they'll stick, and hopefully it can shift the tone of discussion here.
What a way to live.
> Yeah, we elected Trump to fuck up the ball of worms that your left cherished so much, and Trump is following through.
Perhaps you ought to look in the mirror.
Or just drive-by up/down according to if they agree with you or not.
Sorry that was your experience, and hopefully we can all be less... that... together.
AFAIK a small number of them is enough to hide stuff from the front page. I don't know why is this the case, honestly I don't see any benefit over full time-moderators hiding problematic stuff, only negatives. Like why should a small political group be able to distort the news on the front page?
Politics are everywhere. It’s how we negotiate consensus and make collective decisions. From what a government should do down to what features will be worked on this sprint and where are we having lunch today.
Tech being apolitical is an illusion, and a very dangerous one.
“It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends on his not understanding it.”
Gumroad is not a YC company and its founder has no influence over HN or YC. Joe, whilst being one of the most successful, is still just one YC-backed founder out of more than 10,000, and doesn't represent YC. Paul Graham, YC's co-founder (who, whilst retired, is still actively involved and is very influential at YC) heavily criticises the current U.S. administration almost every day on Twitter. The other figures named in the GP comment have no involvement or influence on YC, and indeed some have had very hostile disputes with YC partners and notable founders in the past.
This is not to claim that we moderators are perfectly impervious to every influence and incentive at every moment. Awareness of our own potential to be biased and influenced is essential to being able to do this job effectively.
I just think it's important to point out that things are not nearly as simple as the GP comment purports.
There are worse places on the internet, but HN's role first and foremost is to serve as advertising and a job board for YC. There's a structural bent away from anything that might be seen as harmful to that core purpose.
It's unfortunate.
It's important that HN give things back to YC in exchange for funding it. Otherwise the lack of balance would eventually make the site, and thus the community, unsustainable. For all of us who care about HN, this is the way to ensure its long-term survival. But there's no reason not to be transparent about what those things are, which is what the FAQ does.
For example, there's a startup launch on the front page right now which our software placed there this morning:
Launch HN: mrge.io (YC X25) – Cursor for code review - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43692476 - April 2025 (89 comments)
One nice thing about startup launch threads is that, to judge by the comments and upvotes they receive, the community often (though not always!) finds them interesting. They fall off the front page more quickly if they're not resonating.
I watched the steady decline as the bros slowly took over. I tried commenting, only to be flagged and downvoted. I tried sharing articles, only to have them flagged. Starting with Gamergate, and then accelerating with Musk's purchase of Twitter, and metastasizing into its current form when leaders in the community (Andreesen, Thiel, Sacks, Rabois, Calcanis, Horowitz, Palihapitiya, Maguire, Zuckerberg, Altman, etc) decided that fascism was worth protecting their crypto deals. And it's time to accept that this is the reality of Hacker News today (and it's time to forget what it once was).
This is quite literally one of the most significant cybersecurity fails of all time.
And yet, right now, it's not on the Hacker News home page. But an article about how many supernova explode per year is. An article about how to "win an argument" with a toddler or similar set-in-stone-thinker is. The number one submission is about a "back-of-a-napkin" probabalistic calculator.
So let's just say it like it is...
If you're going to be forgiving, you can say that Hacker News is consistently gamed by the bros who have taken over the tech industry. If you're in a less forgiving mood, you can say that Hacker News is the Pravda for the bros of the Venture community.
"Oh... it's hard with an algorithm!!!" Total BS. Hacker News is making a choice. Hacker News made a choice a long time ago. Hacker News continues to make the same choice.
For what it's worth, I also made a choice and walked away from this place. You all can do the same.
Let me assure you: the trash can bully vibes were default here far before you were.
HN is fine for what it is, but it's never ever been good.
I've stopped commenting here. I've made it a personal rule to only speak out against this tyranny and never talk about tech fluff, which is 100% of the front page of HN. I don't give two solid fucks about SQLite when the US government is throwing people in death camps in El Salvador.
This site is straight tech bro fascism. People are finally realizing that Elon isn't the guy his PR team created. He's not Tony Stark.
Founders are (generally) not hackers and not your friends. They are money men and will always follow the money.
And the admins/mods are still refusing to admit it.
Things have stabilized on roughly one thread on the evils of Republicans per day. Unfortunately they're managing a lot more evil per day than that.
1. there's a tsunami of intense (and important) political stories right now
2. HN has 30 slots on its frontpage
3. HN is not a current affairs site
In other words, the fundamentals themselves are twisted in a knot. I don't see how one gets around that.
The current problem is that news that are critic of the current administration are suppressed. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43462783 (U.S. national-security leaders included me in a group chat) was off the front page for like ~24 hours?
You are describing the problem that there are too many actual politic related news on the front page. That is not a problem right now.
If you find that hard to believe, see these lists:
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43227619
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43168527
They are a couple months old now, but the point hasn't changed: the most-discussed (by far!) topic on Hacker News gets perceived as totally-suppressed-and-silenced by the passionate portion [1] of the audience that wants more of this material. I call this the "nobody goes there anymore, it's too crowded" theory of HN threads. [2]
This is not a new phenomenon [3]. Here's an example of the same thing from 5 years ago: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23624962. That was me responding to someone complaining that the most-discussed-by-far topic on HN was being "aggressively removed from discussion".
Meanwhile, the audience that wants less of this material perceives the site as being completely-overrun-by-politics. To these we have to give the inverse of the current explanation. You can see from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17014869 how far back that goes.
Both of these perceptions are wrong. Both are consequences of the fundamentals I listed in the GP comment. And both are special cases of a more general phenomenon: for anyone passionate about topic X, the HN front page never contains enough X.
The most passionate users rarely express their preference as "I would prefer more X on HN". Rather they say: "It's unbelievable how X is completely and utterly suppressed and censored on HN".
[1] https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que... I use 'passionate' or 'passion' a lot to describe these segments of the audience (on any topic and/or side). This is not intended disrespectfully. People have legitimate reasons for feeling passionately, and often the topics are far more important than most stories on HN. However, mitigating the power of these passions to shape HN is critical to keeping this the kind of site that it's supposed to be. If we didn't do this, HN would turn into a current affairs site overnight.
[2] https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que...
[3] The reason this is not a new phenomenon is because of what I said in my GP comment: it follows from the fundamentals of the site.
p.s. The thread you linked to spent 15 hours on HN's front page. That's a lot.
Particularly the argument "these types of posts don't warrant good discussion and turn into flame wars" or generate too many comments per up-votes, a signal for bad thread quality - this has really none of that. If this remains flagged after a time it is a statement.
If this story is true, this is potentially the biggest breach of all time. It's tremendously relevant and that's why I'm annoyed.
The other day on /active, there was a story about a French politician being banned from running for office, due to being convicted of outright fraud for the second time. Absolutely nothing to do with technology or business, nothing to do with the USA. Pure politics in a foreign country. Not flagged.
There was a story directly below which involved the USA, technology and business, but had an uncomfortable narrative for some users. Flagged.
As someone who still likes this site a lot, this just makes me laugh at this point. I don't know how else to react.
If you assume that rhyme or reason is involved, then of course the results seem bizarrely inconsistent and the only models that fit will be Rube Goldberg ones. Simply understand that randomness plays the largest role, and the mystery goes away. (But I know that's less internet fun.)
In terms of all these political stories getting flagged: it's a simple consequence of there being a huge influx of intense political stories while HN's capacity remains "30 slots on the frontpage" (https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que...). If these stories mostly didn't get flagged or otherwise moderator, HN would turn overnight into a current affairs site, which it is not and never has been.
That still leaves room for some stories with political overlap, though not nearly as many as the politically passionate would prefer. Btw, this is a special case of a more general principle: there are not nearly as many stories on any topic X as the X-passionate would desire. The front page, in that sense, satisfies no one!
But back to the politics thing—here are some links to past explanations about how we deal with that:
https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&so...
https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que...
https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que...
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42978389 has a good list of more.
For those who are up for a more complex explanation, this is really how I think about this problem: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42787306. The basic idea is to avoid predictable sequences: https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que....
But of course there's no rhyme or reason to "users" either, since that's really just a statistical cloud (https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que...).
(Also, if anyone is weary of my inveterate self-linking: sorry, I am too. It's just somehow the only semi-efficient way I've found to give enough background information on various points of HN.)
Now that dang has confirmed it's incorrect, maybe stop sticking with it.
Case in-point: a US-based family member employed at a FAANG just told me that his Canadian coworkers now reset their phones prior to entering the USA, then restore from backup. This is somewhat similar to what happens when they go to China.
This is terrible for business. This kind of information should not be ignored.
The problem isn't that the major stories are deleted; it's that even if a story spends hours on the front page, the set of users who actually see it still has measure zero [1]. Then inevitably a few of the rest assume that they didn't see it because it was sinisterly suppressed, whether by mods or user flags.
Where this ends up getting us is the 'nobody goes there anymore it's too crowded' theory of HN threads! [2] It's always been like this—it's baked into the fundamentals of how HN works (the limited frontpage space, the dynamics of the internet, the fact that most people don't use HN Search). It's just showing up more intensely these days because the times are more intense and we've been in a tsunami phase for a few months now.
[1] https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que...
[2] https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que...
---
Edit: I found these ones. Admittedly most weren't on the frontpage for all that long:
EU issues US-bound staff with burner phones over spying fears - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43680556 - April 2025 (46 comments)
How to lock down your phone if you're traveling to the U.S. - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43630624 - April 2025 (338 comments)
Cell Phone OPSEC for Border Crossings - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43555597 - April 2025 (36 comments)
How to protect your phone and data privacy at the US border - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43480730 - March 2025 (98 comments)
Is it safe to travel to the United States with your phone? - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43452474 - March 2025 (164 comments)
EFF Border Search Pocket Guide - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43441895 - March 2025 (32 comments)
Ask HN: Are you afraid to travel to US to tech conferences? - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43422350 - March 2025 (198 comments)
I am really not complaining about moderation, just attempting to appeal to the users who I have assumed are doing the flagging, in general.
You are funding and dang is running a forum for curiosity while the basis for curiosity is under attack.
Your dilemma is to support free inquiry and a platform for curiosity resulting in you being an enemy of the administration or to obey their wishes in order to protect yourself and your assets. What happens when everyone in every position of power rationally protects themselves in the short term by selling out their values in the long term, when they bury their head in the sand and stay in denial, or they run away to another safer country?
How many of your peers have any form of integrity? How many of them wouldn't sell out their mother for a dollar? How many of them fund and participate in building a world anyone would want to live in instead of a world where they are the supreme rulers of the ruins. Concentration camps were built by business men excited by cheap labor.
You cannot have curiosity without solidarity against forces that would submit reason to power. You cannot have curiosity without a consent based society. Curiosity fundamentally challenges power, because it elevates reason above authority. Curiosity presumes that reason is the ultimate form of legitimacy.
Hacker news has a goal of staving off Eternal September, when new students, people uninitiated to academic rigor or professional social conventions, would flood Usenet every September when they received credentials from their academic institutions. Those very same universities which helped build the type of culture you hold in high regard are under direct attack.
Curious environments won't survive neutrality. Curious environments won't survive lack of solidarity with other institutions that inspire curiosity. Systems, like authoritarianism, that demand obedience rather than reason are the default, and they require active maintenance to prevent. Neutrality under these conditions is neglect of curiosity.
You've got me confused with someone else cause I ain't funding anything beside my burrito habit.
As to the rest of this stuff... I don't find it terribly persuasive, personally. We do all have all sorts of moral responsibilities, individual and collective ones and it behooves us to meet them. We do not have a responsibility to turn every single facet and corner of our lives into some instrument of political power and expression - those are important individual (and group) choices and there's a name for disregarding them and imposing them on others - totalitarianism.
That is... other than sensationalism, which appears to be the story here.
That FAANG employed Canadians are suddenly taking these precautions when entering the USA, as standard practice, when coming to a meeting. Nobody can gaslight me into believing that this is a not a new thing.
Some people, who happen to be employed at a FAANG corp, have recently decided to protect their smart device during a border crossing, and this is cause for alarm?
What exactly is on their smart device they are afraid CBP might be interested in? Why did they not protect their device before? Why now? Are there occurrences of FAANG employees having their devices taken during border crossings? For what purpose?
Unless you have something definitive, this sounds like some alarmist individuals deciding to take their own personal security to the level that was already recommended of them.
Do you wonder why Canada has been issuing travel warnings for people travelling to the US? Or why they've been treating the US as a hostile power given that the current admin has threatened to invade Canada and make it the 51st state? All of which are leading to a massive drop in tourism to the US?
As an example, as a European, price a round trip ticket from Prague to Seattle, for around 2 weeks from now. The price is currently <60% of normal. It's ~$420.
These are the facts on the ground.
I did some fact checking on your ticket prices - you are quoting ultra-budget carriers that are normally in that price range. Normal tickets are $1200+, as you would expect.
There's plenty going on right now that you don't need to make stuff up to back up your narrative. Use something real...
Of course this is fucking cause for alarm. You are either cluelessly naive, or gaslighting.
- Peter Thiel
- Elon Musk
- Marc Andreessen
- Curtis YarvinI'm mostly convinced a lot of stuff is flagged and the mods work overtime to pick and choose what to unflag. On what metric? No clue, if I'm being honest.
edit: and to be clear, I was not originally critiquing the modding here.
But maybe the far more appropriate term has been there all along:
> The Knights Who Say "Ni!"
Many forums (including this one) have bans on "politics" or topics that are "inflammatory". 95% of the time what constitutes either is simply "things I disagree with".
For US politics in particular, as much as the right-wing cries about being censored, social media in particular bends over backwards not to silence such views whereas anything critical of those right-wing positions gets flagged or downranked as being "political" (eg [1]).
Typically this process isn't direct. ML systems will find certain features in submissions that get them marked as "inflammatory" or "low quality" but only on one end of the spectrum. For sites such as HN, reddit and Tiktok, right-wing views have successfully weaponized user safety systems by brigading posts and flagging them. That might then go to a human to review and their own biases come into play.
As for France vs the US, I'm sorry but France is irrelevant. As we've seen in the last 2 weeks, what the US does impacts the entire world. All the big social media sites are American (barring Tiktok) so American politics impacts what can and can't be said on those platforms.
Twitter has become 4chan, a hotbed for neo-Nazis, racists and homephobes.
And which French politican are we talking about? Marine Le Pen? If so, the relevance is the rise of fascism in Europe between National Front in France, Reform in the UK, AfD in Germany and, of course, Hungary.
[1]: https://www.dropsitenews.com/p/leaked-data-israeli-censorshi...
Here on HN anti-musk/regime posts get deleted automatically, TERF and other bigoted posters are allowed to post through spam filters from freshly made accounts, and everything else that isn't clearly delineated as 'liberal media' but negative for the regime just gets flagged or deranked from listing.
HN has shifted into a lagging Reddit, and preemptively shutting down any discourse about the falling quality of discourse on HN is ludicrous and plain annoying.
HN has changed, and A LOT of Reddit does leak onto HN, and this absolutely deserves conversation.
> Yuri Orlov: [Narrating] Every faction in Africa calls themselves by these noble names - Liberation this, Patriotic that, the Democratic Republic of something-or-other... I guess they can't own up to what they usually are: the Federation of Worse Oppressors Than the Last Bunch of Oppressors. Often, the most barbaric atrocities occur when both combatants proclaim themselves Freedom Fighters.
For the sake of context, this is an old Soviet-era joke, that translates to about the following:
> In "Pravda" (The Truth, CPSU's newspaper) there are no news. In "Izvestiya" (The News, national newspaper of the USSR, under the control of the Supreme Soviet) there is no truth.
Technically, maybe you can squint and find small pieces that are more efficient but in the grand scheme of things they goal doesn't seem to be a smaller government.
Reducing headcount reduces labor costs and can be a form of financial efficiency. Reducing headcount also usually reduces the sheer number of people involved in any project, much like a small startup can move drastically quicker than a large, established org.
That said, there goal here doesn't seem to be clear as to what is being made efficient and they definitely aren't reducing the budget or size of government (outside of literal headcount, most people complain instead of red tape and regulations).
Their real goal is more likely a combination of grift and settling grudges.
Edit - typos
Btw. there is NO reason why they couldn't do all of that in a sincere way. Trump was voted in for 4 years.
https://krebsonsecurity.com/2025/02/teen-on-musks-doge-team-...
This is on purpose. Trump has been slowly pushing the Overton window. It seems everything is fair game and US citizens are largely apathetic, scared or favorable to Trump's action.
US Citizens aren't apathetic. Our representatives on the other hand...
Is Abrego Garcia not real?
Though I'd argue both uses are acceptable in common use discussion since even if we know where he is since he's going to be incarcerated indefinitely with no due process, no access to lawyers, no civil rights. How long could he be dead without anyone knowing? Literally indefinitely?
Disappearing has been consistently used to refer to illegal and inconspicuous detention since WWII. The person was there and now they are not. There is no arrest record. There are no lawyers. There is certainly no case record where government officials are being questioned [1]. They may be detained, dead or on holiday. The ambiguity, which permits bystanders to assume normality, is the terrifying key.
Diluting the term, particularly on this precipice, is incredibly dangerous.
> How long could he be dead without anyone knowing?
Going off sworn statements to courts (again, something victims of disappearance do not get), a few hours.
[1] https://www.politico.com/news/2025/04/12/abrego-garcia-el-sa...
It's already diluted, you've already lost the battle, but I neither believe it is dangerous nor do I believe it improper.
What I think is dangerous is this game of semantic precision you're playing where we lose the forest from the trees. I think we should be frightened of and wringing our hands about is not a dictionary definition, it's what we're literally seeing: never mind we know where they are at, we know that right now many are not being given due process and there are active attempts to subvert any attempts at them (i.e., rapidly moving to a more friendly district in LA, putting on planes faster than lawyers can respond).
If someone got black bagged and flown to a CIA black site in Yemen, would you "Well, actually" me if I said they'd been disappeared just because we know they're in a Yemen black site? Maybe you would, and I'd roll my eyes then too.
> Going off sworn statements to courts (again, something victims of disappearance do not get), a few hours.
The same courts whose authority is either being actively challenged AND actively ignored by the Executive branch, including so far in this exact case? The executive branch who has punished its DOJ lawyers for being candid with judges? The executive branch who fully controls the relationship with the government housing the detainment facility and who is the only route to fixing this issue? How many more breaks in normalcy and functioning governance do you need to see before you start doubting their good faith responses, much less effort?
It’s not. The only place you see it being used this way is in a section of social media that blows everything out of proportion.
Where I agree is that the battle may be lost. In the same way “defund the police” (versus better regulate) kneecapped the criminal-justice reform movement, and bee-lining to “genocide” (versus the horrors of war and alleged genocide) hurt the Palestinian cause in America, premature extrapolation makes this look unserious. Because if the person who is calling what’s clearly not one a disappearance or concentration camp, why bother with habeus corpus?
> If someone got black bagged and flown to a CIA black site in Yemen, would you "Well, actually" me if I said they'd been disappeared just because we know they're in a Yemen black site?
No. That’s disappearance. The CIA doesn’t comment on its renditions, much less argue them in an open court.
> same courts whose authority is either being actively challenged AND actively ignored by the Executive branch, including so far in this exact case?
Challenged, not ignored. From what I can tell the administration is begrudgingly complying with the letter of the judges’ (and justices’) orders [1].
[1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deportation_of_Kilmar_Abrego...
> No. That’s disappearance. The CIA doesn’t comment on its renditions, much less argue them in an open court.
You didn't engage with the hypothetical and changed the situation since it's not representative of how things work today. One year ago, the current situation would have been similarly described. I don't think it was an unfair thought exercise given the circumstances.
> Challenged, not ignored. From what I can tell the administration is begrudgingly complying with the letter of the judges’ (and justices’) orders
I guess we'll see.
On this topic, I think reasonable people can disagree, which we clearly do. I think a smart administrative state would disappear people just like this, it feels like an evolution of KGB tactics that adds some documentation, but the outcome is precisely the same.
Nobody is saying due process was followed. But do you really not see why the government saying “we have no record of this person and do not comment on matters of national security,” to the press and to the courts, would not be worse?
> didn't engage with the hypothetical and changed the situation
How did I change the situation?
> On this topic, I think reasonable people can disagree, which we clearly do
On Trump defying the courts, yes. On the definition of disappearance, I don’t think so.
> it feels like an evolution of KGB tactics that adds some documentation, but the outcome is precisely the same
You couldn’t sue to get your family—and information about them—out of the Gulag. Disappearance is where detention blurs into execution. We’re simply not there. Nobody is able to claim Garcia is on vacation, we have to confront the fact that he’s been extrajudicially detained.
Ha, well OK then! Well then we can make it one way: I understand what you're saying, I understand how a reasonable person might arrive at your conclusion, but I disagree. Whether you can do the same for me says less about me than you.
To me, your heels in the sand here feels like college-level semantic literalism and absolutism. Debates like this that focus on historical definitions rather than a discussion that considers the larger whole in evolving societies and changing contexts (technological, administratively, and others).
Yes, someone getting black bagged and executed in silence is clearly worse. It is the worst form of disappearance. But I don't think that's where the bar is for being "disappeared" - for me, that is when you are denied due process, prevented from receiving it, and all knowledge about you is now entirely reliant on the bad faith captors. This doesn't feel unreasonable or unfair to me, especially as it relates to everyday civilian discussions such as this one.
Will due process win out in the end, and I'm here wringing my hands like an idiot? Maybe so, we'll see how the next four years ago.
At any rate, I think we're clearly at impasse. Final shots are yours.
That this is not obvious to you is a clear indication of the fact that this isn’t something you personally worry about.
Have they targeted any single criminal yet? Because they have sent two planes of people here to Brazil and nobody there was wanted by either country.
Also, Brazil has a list of wanted criminals at Interpol with known addresses in Florida that they aren't arresting.
This was just a test, and it was successful. They can now disappear and deport anyone they want with no repercussions whatsoever. The GOP is a criminal organization and their followers share the responsibility of what happens next.
It was extra ridiculous/insulting/terrifying to see the heads of both countries in the same room saying that there was nothing they could do about the situation.
It's too soon to say it's "successful": SCOTUS was 9-0 against and that was still only a few days ago, so far from being a success it's now turning into a constitutional crisis... assuming the administration doesn't fold, or flip-flop, or some combination of the two - which we've already seen plenty of[1].
----------
[1] the seemingly arbitrary and capricious tariff changes announced almost every day ever since the-day-after-April-fools-day.
20: He gets brought back in good condition, 19-16: He is gonna get brought back in terrible condition, 15-11 he doesn't come back, 10-1 he is dead
Now, how's that working out so far?
The system more or less worked until the Spanish American War, when the government realized that the militias need some sort of standard in order to integrate properly with the regular army when called up. This led to the creation of the National Guard in 1903. It was tightly integrated into the Army structure in 1933.
What arguably made the Amendment obsolete was the advance of technology. By the early 20th century conventional warfighting took too much firepower, support, and coordination for a loose citizen militia to conduct. At best they could form the core of an insurgent force, but the goal is always to not get to that point.
In theory, that insurgent force could work against a tyrannical federal government. In practice, even if most of the people with the civilian firepower weren't supporting the tyranny I'm not sure it would work out. Conducting an insurgency against a foreign occupier is a lot different than conducting one against a domestic oppressor.
Yeah, precisely my personal take against the current "from utility" argument in the amendment's favor: it's very much not clear that they're especially useful for resisting oppressive governments, for one thing because those are often quite popular at first, and for another, because successful examples of that tend to involve a ton of foreign aid, making the role of private arms rather minor. Meanwhile, examples involving foreign invaders are extremely different (and also often involve lots of foreign aid).
Like, maybe the right deserves to stand anyway for other reasons (maybe it just ought to! Maybe it doesn't need a reason!) but I think that particular argument for it is really misguided, especially if one takes it seriously when forming one's opinions about the broader political landscape. IMO there is no meaningful safeguard against tyranny to be found in that amendment.
That said, there are plenty of examples of progressive forces arming themselves. The Black Panthers are a good example. Without their armed militancy I think the US government would have been a lot less likely to capitulate to the demands of the peaceful civil rights activists.
The people with guns support these measures.
Leftists (e.g. Anarchists, Marxists, Socialists, Communists, Queer Liberation, Black Liberation, etc.) groups typically are pro-firearms. Not always, but plenty are. The Black Panthers, famously, were armed, but so are are orgs like the Pink Pistols. Martin Luther King Jr. had many guns for self defense, and carried a revolver at times. Marx famously said that workers should be armed.
Centrists (e.g. Democrats, some Labour parties) typically abhor guns, and value the decorum and principle of the instution to keep us all safe. They are a "if society is well ordered, then there's no need for arms" group.
Right wing folks (e.g. Republicans, Proud Boys, KKK, etc.) are the folks who you are describing -- by and large supporting these measures and also want to use firearms to exert control.
It's really, really important if you consider yourself to be a progressive to ask, "Who will gun control laws in America be used to prosecute? Will that be minority groups dispraportionately?"
Historically and presently, armed minorities are more difficult to oppress, and many many leftist groups have historically and presently been armed for the purposes of community defense. By suggesting that arming oneself is a right wing position you erase history and erode current efforts for folks to build community safety systems.
Now, imagine if those people had gotten their way, and how much easier it would be for the administration to do some of the things people claim it wants to do (e.g. gulags).
*Broad generalization
Given that none of the people with firearms have done a damn thing to stop this and how many of them even voted for Trump and support his policies, because American gun and militia culture has been infested with Nazis since forever, I don't see how it could possibly have been any easier. There has been and continues to be no resistance to Trump of any significance. When he does open up the gulags for real, it's going to be America's armed patriot militias who round people up for the regime.
Probably more then one.
[1]: https://www.lawfaremedia.org/article/abrego-garcia-and-ms-13...
I'm assuming the response to this is going to be along the lines of 'oh this doesnt prove he was innocent, they say he was a member of ms-13 etc etc etc' because evidently innocent until proven guilty (which they provided no proof of) isn't a thing anymore
Try actually reading the article next time. Again, the burden of proof here should be falling on PROVING he is a member of ms-13, not proving he isn't. You are obviously arguing this in bad faith.
> Although the asylum claim proved to be time-barred—aliens are required to bring such claims within a year of entering the country—in October 2019 Judge Jones did grant his request for “withholding of removal” based on his “well-founded” fear of persecution by Barrio 18. The government did not appeal, so Jones’s ruling is now final.
> The removal being in error does not make him innocent.
Innocent is the default. That's a fundamental part of how our legal system works. The government must prove you guilty.
Guess we better send you to CECOT. Have fun with your 0.6m^2 of living space. Too bad you weren’t innocent.
Edit; see below for details
[1]: https://www.lawfaremedia.org/article/abrego-garcia-and-ms-13...
I've heard the legal status mentioned by an online-person-who-should-know-better. I'll let them know.
They can deport you (if they find a willing third party nation), as it's not a path to permanent resident status, but until they do so, you're allowed to reside and work.
https://www.americanimmigrationcouncil.org/sites/default/fil...
> As in the case of asylum, a person who is granted withholding of removal is protected from being returned to his or her home country and receives the right to remain in the United States and work legally. But at the end of the court process, an immigration judge enters a deportation order and then tells the government they cannot execute that order. That is, the “removal” to a person’s home country is “withheld.” However, the government is still allowed to deport that person to a different country if the other country agrees to accept them.
> Withholding of removal provides a form of protection that is less certain than asylum, leaving its recipients in a sort of limbo. A person who is granted withholding of removal may never leave the United States without executing that removal order, cannot petition to bring family members to the United States, and does not gain a path to citizenship. And unlike asylum, when a family seeks withholding of removal together a judge may grant protection to the parent while denying it to the children, leading to family separation.
False on both counts and contradictory to the source you cite. There is no right to reside, and you could only work if you were additionally authorised.
> "Withholding of removal" is a form of legal status.
In the same sense as trespassing is a legal status. The way in which it is not a legal status is that he does not have the status of legally residing in the US.
> As in the case of asylum, a person who is granted withholding of removal is protected from being returned to his or her home country and receives the right to remain in the United States and work legally.
I’ve seen you claim 1+1=3 all over this thread, so the gaslighting isn’t gonna work.
> In the same sense as trespassing is a legal status.
No. In the same sense that you’re allowed to stay in a homeless shelter legally for a while, but not necessarily forever.
https://www.tahirih.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/07/Withholdi...
MY CLIENT HAS BEEN GRANTED WITHHOLDING OF REMOVAL… NOW WHAT?
Your client may apply for an Employment Authorization Document by using the form I765 available on the USCIS website (www.uscis.gov). Her Employment Authorization Document will then be sent to her most recent address on file with USCIS. It is therefore important to make sure that not only the court but also USCIS is informed of any changes in her address through use of the form AR-11 (also available on the USCIS website). The EAD is only issued for one year at a time and should be renewed with ample time (at least three months) to allow for processing.
https://immigrationequality.org/asylum/asylum-manual/immigra...
> An applicant who has won withholding of removal does not receive as many benefits as an asylee. The individual can seek work authorization
https://immigrationequality.org/asylum/asylum-manual/withhol...
> they must have a valid CIS-issued employment authorization document in order to work lawfully in the United States.
---
Not one single claim I made is false, while this whole thread is in response to a blatantly false claim, that an innocent man was deported. You should check the mirror.
Until the government finds a different country to send him to, he's here legally. He's not breaking any law by remaining while awaiting that. Your source backs me up, in its first paragraph - "he can now safely remain in this country".
He had the required work authorization, as well.
https://wtop.com/maryland/2025/04/us-judge-to-question-trump...
> He also was given a federal permit to work in the United States, where he was a metal worker and union member, according to Abrego Garcia’s lawyers.
A court has ruled that someone broke the law, though; the administration. As upheld by SCOTUS, even.
https://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/24pdf/24a949_lkhn.pdf
> The United States acknowledges that Abrego Garcia was subject to a withholding order forbidding his removal to El Salvador, and that the removal to El Salvador was therefore illegal.
https://storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.mdd.578...
> The Respondent was arrested in the company of other > > ranking gang members and was confirmed to be a ranking member of the MS-13 gang by a > > proven and reliable source.
The same ruling was upheld on appeal which specifically upheld the finding of him being part of MS-13, and in the US illegally: https://storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.mdd.578...
He had his day in court, twice, he was not innocent. I never contended that the government did not wrongfully deport him, not once, but that does not make him innocent. He is still an MS-13 member that is illegally in the US and subject to deportation at the pleasure of the executive.
Word games aren't going to change the facts.
The proceedings are administrative, the people are "respondents" instead of "defendants", etc. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Removal_proceedings
You're also citing the government's assertions. If assertions were enough to deem someone a convicted criminal, we wouldn't need trials. It has never been proven, "beyond a reasonable doubt", that he was a member of MS-13.
The "proven and reliable source" they cite is a corrupt cop. https://newrepublic.com/article/194010/kilmar-abrego-garcia-...
> The Maryland police officer who formally attested to Abrego Garcia’s supposed gang affiliation in 2019—when he was detained the first time—was subsequently suspended from the force for a serious transgression: giving confidential information about a case to a sex worker, The New Republic has established.
Your two citations also preceed his being granted withholding of removal. At the time of his deportation, he had legal status here, until they found a valid place to send him. The deportation - again, per SCOTUS - was the illegal bit.
https://www.poynter.org/fact-checking/2025/kilmar-abrego-gar...
> But in Abrego Garcia’s case, to revoke his protections, the U.S. government “would have been required under law to reopen his immigration court proceedings and prove to the judge that he was a member of MS-13 and therefore no longer eligible for withholding.”
Never disputed this. Why do you keep returning to this when it is not in question? Do you not get how the US could deport someone and the person still not be innocent, being an MS-13 gang member and an illegal alien?
Because you keep falsely claiming the guy is a criminal. He has not been convicted of any crime; his membership in MS-13 is an allegation only. (And a shaky one.) Until convicted of a crime, our system presumes him to be innocent.
The only demonstrably, provably, without-a-doubt illegal act here was the deportation.
We deport and refuse entry to non-criminals (including for plenty of non-criminal acts, or even just vibes) all the time. It doesn't prove guilt.
This is false. You and I know that it is provably, without-a-doubt, that he entered the US illegally and was remaining in the US illegally. There is nobody disputing this.
No one has charged him, let alone convicted him, of a crime for entering the country as a minor. He has no criminal record. That's a fact.
You and I know he received withholding of removal (and a work permit!). His remaining here at that point was legal, albeit potentially temporary.
The Supreme Court of the United States has ruled the deportation an illegal act. No portion of the judicial branch has yet weighed in on Garcia's actions.
And that does make the deportation erroneous, that does not make him innocent.
[1]: https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/apr/14/abrego-garci...
[2]: https://www.reuters.com/world/us/trump-meet-with-el-salvador...
It is one of the biggest news stories in the last month, and various articles (at least 3 that I can think of) have been here on HN. It's trivially searchable. Asking for a citation is almost certainly bad faith.
>I checked the first two results and not one of them said the man was innocent
It's pretty obscure, but there's this thing called "innocent until proven guilty". The man never had his time in court. The US admitted it was a mistake. What are you looking for? Just being contrarian for the sake of it?
>the US government had every right to deport him,
No.
These are all from that article. Special attention to "his removal was illegal".
>Abrego Garcia, who has no criminal record in the United States or anywhere else
>the government has conceded that it wrongfully removed Kilmar Armando Abrego Garcia from the United States
>his removal was illegal because an immigration judge had granted him “withholding of removal”
>Jones’s 2019 ruling, barring Abrego Garcia’s removal
The Supreme Court has even stepped in, which I'm sure you're aware despite pretending not to be:
>On April 7, the U.S. Supreme Court issued a per curiam order, with no recorded dissents, requiring the government to “facilitate [Abrego Garcia’s] return”
And, despite any and all of that! There was no due process. Which, "illegal" or "legal", everyone is supposed to get a due process. If you remove due process for the people you don't like, someone else just needs to claim you're in that group and now you don't get due process! It's like Step 1 of authoritarianism.
Which, since you've not posted anything proving your innocence despite other commenters asking for it, perhaps we should remove your rights to due process.
Can you cite anything showing him having been convicted of something?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Presumption_of_innocence
You probably were taught this in elementary school.
If you think that's not enough, you're probably not innocent either... unless you have a way to prove that no charge exists against you in any jurisdiction in the world. Do you get why people assume innocence here now?
[1]: https://www.lawfaremedia.org/article/abrego-garcia-and-ms-13...
You would think this administration would jump at the opportunity of showing the media any proof that Abrego Garcia was a member of any gang, no matter how circumstantial or weak the proof is. But I've yet to see any of it.
[1]: https://www.lawfaremedia.org/article/abrego-garcia-and-ms-13...
Also, other users showed that his deportation was suspended as he had been threatened by the gang members you allege he's a member of.
Mr Garcia does not have a criminal record, but he was ordered to be deported years ago. He was able to get a temporary reprieve from this by hiring lawyers and working through the legal process, but he did this by almost certainly committing perjury by claiming there were criminal gangs who would kill him if he returned to El Salvador. If you believe the filings in immigration appeals you would have to believe that 99% of the people in the world are being personally pursued by criminal gangs. Perhaps you believe this but I don't find it to be credible. Regardless, whether the legal process is effective doesn't matter here, it IS the legal process and must be followed. My point is the fact Mr Garcia was deported is not itself the issue, it's that it was done in a way that ignores the rule of law (even though it did respect due process). Legally Mr Garcia should be deported eventually, he was only allowed to stay temporarily until he is not "at risk for his life" if he were deported, but the legal process must be respected.
SCOTUS did not command anyone be brought back. They declined to issue an emergency decision blocking an order to 'facilitate' his return, but specifically sent back to the lower court and took issue with the order to 'effectuate' his return. So they are not commanding the government to bring him back, rather they are commanding the government to not prevent his return. Yes this is tedious but reality is often tedious.
> They can now disappear and deport anyone they want
I think you have not made any case that it is valid to assume that we would go from "one person who has already been ordered for deportation by a federal court" who was very publicly deported to "anyone they want" and "disappear".
I basically agree with your sentiment inaccuracy and hyperbole doesn't benefit anyone.
> he did this by almost certainly committing perjury by claiming there were criminal gangs who would kill him if he returned to El Salvador
What evidence is there for this "near certainty"? Your argument here should be with asylum laws, not this individual.
For what it's worth, the situation in El Salvador at the time he left (when he was a minor) does make the claim somewhat credible. There's plenty of evidence that the choice for male youths at that time was leave or join whichever gang controlled your area. The idea that everyone is an "economic migrant" ignores the reality of the situation, which is far more complex.
I don't know what that % is, but we have courts that are deciding these cases every day. The actual court cases are more complex to analyze because lack of adequate council or other factors might influence outcomes. However, of people who attend their interview, about 44% are determined to not have a credible fear.
An awful lot of people move every day, even from areas where there are protection rackets. Do the protection rackets kill everyone who comes home to visit after moving to another city? How do they keep track of who is 'escaping' and who is just moving because they got married or found a job somewhere else? Again, you aren't suggesting that these rackets ban all movement in and out of the areas they loosely control?
People come to the US primarily to find work at a much higher wage than they would be able to find where they are from. Often there is no opportunity for work whatsoever where they are from. They can have a life here that they would never be able to achieve, they can have healthy children who get medical and dental care and will have a chance at an education and a good life here.
If I were in their shoes I would absolutely try to come here illegally if I couldn't do so legally. If I was caught I would, without hesitation, lie and say I would be murdered if I returned home, or whatever else my lawyer carefully prompted me to say, just like Mr Garcia and almost everyone else claiming this. The reality is if these protection rackets were here in the US and not at all in El Salvador, Mr Garcia would almost certainly still choose to live here and just pay the protection money rather than returning home. I doubt that he was ever influenced by gangs in his decision to move here, and I doubt that he has any fear of them if he would return, and I don't think it would change his decision either way.
"I don't find it to be credible"
I explained why it could easily be that the many coming from El Salvador when MS13 was heavily active could in fact be making this legitimate claim. It's a small world with social media. Yes, local MS13 that didn't get paid can catch when someone is back in the country. These are very sophisticated/organized gangs at higher level (at least according to the current US administration).
Nothing you said here negates that.
Which one of our beliefs seems more credible to you, that a man would claim to be in danger (which doesn't hurt anyone) to let him stay with his wife and children and access to employment which pays hundreds or thousands of times higher, or that he would say he's not in danger (even though it doesn't benefit anyone) which hurts his wife and children very badly, and forces him to be separated from his family and the country he has lived in his entire adult life?
The situation he is in is beyond cruel and unjust, but that doesn't mean he's telling the truth.
He proved to the immigration court that his life was in danger, to the point that the court ordered he not be removed to El Salvador. What's next, are you going to claim that court findings, experts in the field and based on hearings/evidence/etc, for criminals should be overridden by your gut feelings? Because of course all criminals claim they are innocent, so court rulings should be ignored? This is the friggen slippy slope people talked about. You see that right? Ignore the court order because populist government should have that power based on their feelings. Or because after violating the order the government claims the order was somehow not valid/illegal.
He didn't just make a claim, the US immigration court found his claim valid enough to issue a legally binding order that he can not be return to El Salvador. The President ignored the process for overturning that order, the President ignored the order itself, and sent this person not only to El Salvador, but to a prison solely housing the M13 members that the United States Immigration court found legally were a risk to this man's life.
You are allowed to form your own opinions also, you don't just have to read a news article and then try your best to update your thoughts to conform to the daily talking points for whichever side you follow.
You went pretty low in your comment by the way. Really shows you operating out of your feelings. Which is understandable, we are all human. But also shows maybe you shouldn't be making life or death judgements of other people.
BTW I think our immigration system has been HEAVILY abused by Democrats to get immigration policies they can't any other way. That they exploit more conservative people like me's empathy to create a loophole. That doesn't mean I judge the people that came here and placed determination of their life in our system, I blame the Democrats, and I try to change the system. Not condemn random people caught up in that. I want change, but this is the absolutely wrong way to go about it. I don't want a soul crushing machine running my country. I want the USA I grew up loving, that my family sacrificed for. The shinning beacon on a hill. And I'm not for turning off that light just because it's hard. Having civil rights is hard and expensive and nuanced.
I will ALWAYS try to learn and incorporate new thinking/understanding of events. Not sure how that is a shortcoming. It's actually really hard and uncomfortable.
I think:
- he's lying about being in danger, but I also say that is reasonable for him to lie and I would do the same thing without hesitation
- it's unjust, unfair, and cruel to deport him after half his life and entire adult life, and his wife and children here
- that legally he should *NOT* be deported while his deportation order is on hold because that is what the law says
- that legally he should (and probably would) eventually be deported since that is just what the law says and he was ordered to be deported already, and that is literally what 'temporary' implies (the rule of law cuts both ways)
- I never condemned the man or made any unfair assumptions about him. I certainly never said or implied at all that he was a criminal, that he had any relationship to any gang, that he should have been deported extra-legally and put in a foreign prison without trial, because that is all insane. I said his rights WERE violated, but specifically that his right to due process was not violated (he did have a trial already and lost). (Being returned to your home country is not a punishment and it doesn't deprive you of any rights, excepting if you have already become a citizen).
So my point, if I made it poorly, is that this individual being deported is not a legal injustice against him, most likely he should be deported under current law, and most likely he would have been deported in the next year or two in any case. The injustice here is that his deportation was carried out extra-legally and in defiance of the law and that the US is complicit (or really actively causing) humans to be jailed without due process or really any process.
That means that he was a father, that he was (or was not) a member of MS13, that he had (or didn't have) a job, that he was a nice man (or not a nice man), that he love (or hated) his mother, that his kids are honor students (or hoodlums) is all irrelevant and nobody should care about it in the context of what is going on. He was here illegally, but he was also legally allowed to stay for a little while longer. That any person was extra legally handed over to a foreign government with instructions and payment to imprison them without trial is beyond unacceptable.
I don't know what's low about any of that. It's very hard to comment in an online space on political issues because people, in general, do not use their ability to read and comprehend. They read the first 5 words, assume that the rest is either "good" or "bad" depending on whether it's leaning towards the opinion they read from whichever outlet conveys to them the talking points for their political party, and then they react by repeating those same talking points. If you have an opinion that is anything but repeating what one of the two approved opinions is that day people really fail to cope with that.
"I think: - he's lying about being in danger" - this is the basic premise you have made this entire time. Yet you also continue to claim:
"I never condemned the man or made any unfair assumptions about him"
Your entire premise is a blanket judgement should be applied to people seeking asylum as to them being liars, based on 'because of course they are'. While I agree that there are strong incentives to lie, I don't use solely that incentive to then baseless claim 'he and all asylum seekers are lying' like you continue to do. We have immigration courts and people directly responsible for determining this better than you or I. They determined the threat to his life was real enough to put a stay on him being sent back to his home country even though they denied his asylum claim. My 'current days talking point' position is that in America we don't apply blanket assumptions like this, and that we have a system of rules, laws, courts, and judges that make those determination. A truly toxic position to hold today I guess because... something unrelated to current talking points? I've held this position my entire life. As did every single person around me. From conservative grandfathers that fought in WW2, to hippie parents, to teachers, to... basically everyone until recently. But I'm adopting the current day take?
I think 'all members of XYZ immigrant group are liars' is a horrible take, and has led us down bad paths in the past. Using that claim to bypass due process, in situations where people's actual lives are in danger, because the Constitution/due process/the American way is expensive and takes too long is a popular take/is too hard on the scale of an entire country full of people, I just don't share it.
It's not that they should be assumed to be liars, I never meant that.
It's that there is no reason to listen to what they say. Either they can provide evidence that they deserve asylum or not. Everyone would say they should get asylum.
If they were not in danger: they say they were in danger
If they were in danger: they say they were in danger
Since they say the same thing either way, it is pointless to even factor in what they say. Some people are telling the truth, some people are lying, they all say the same thing so what someone says has no information value.
When making the initial determination on whether to allow someone to stay in the country, they do not have to show evidence, they just have to make a credible claim, and about 85% of those claims are accepted. Then later they have to show evidence at their interview and hearing. Of the people who pass the bar for the initial claim about 90% are not actually granted asylum, but about 80% drop out of the system (although the numbers don't prove they were lying because there are other factors). So initially 85% are approved (like the person in question here) and then later only 10% of those people actually show sufficient evidence of a credible fear. This doesn't prove that most of them are lying, but of all the people that claim they are in danger to be allowed to enter/stay 90% don't back it up with evidence, and 80% don't even complete the process, which I think is very strong evidence that a substantial majority are lying (even if you give the benefit of the doubt and think that maybe 50% of them can't complete the process because they don't understand it, lack resources, etc, that is still 50% that were lying).
It's notable that during covid, when claiming you were in danger did not give you an easy way to enter the country immediately, people also stopped claiming they were in danger.
Finally, it is probably important to quantify what 'danger' actually means. Is it a 10% chance of being killed? 1%? 1/1000? Does going home have to be more dangerous than the transportation to get there? Does it have to be more dangerous than riding a motorcycle? The murder rate in El Salvador is currently lower than Baltimore, a LOT lower. It's beyond unreasonable to defer deportations to a place if it's safer than where the person is staying now.
You keep trying to justify your claim with 'we need to categorize/make determinations on these groups because reasons' but not engaging with that you think we should categorize a class of immigrants as perjures simply because of the class they fit in' because to do otherwise makes immigration policies hard/able to be abused'. We used to believe as a nation in the theory we would rather that 10 criminals go free if it prevents one innocent person from going to prison. I get it's hard, and it has negative impacts to follow our Constitution and what our nation believes in. It's so hard that people have had to die to secure those things. It's so hard that my grandfathers faced crippling life long injuries fighting for their belief in it in WW2. My understanding it's hard doesn't mean I think we should just throw it away. Blanket 'xyz people are criminal liars' has no place in the United States of America. Systems that are aware of the incentive to lie, sure. But that is why we have courts and a rule of law, not labels on entire groups of people. That Democrats allowed abuse doesn't mean we give up on what America is. You can keep giving me bullet points but your basic premise is so flawed to me they don't matter.
Imagine you were talking about the Chinese in the U.S. in the 1800s. You’d have the same kinds of bullet points,claims about fraud, about them being impossible to integrate, claims it just too many people, about systems being overwhelmed. That’s how we got the Chinese Exclusion Act. A whole race of people labeled suspect by default, stripped of legal protections, barred from citizenship, and assumed to be lying just to get in. It was wrong then, and it’s just as wrong now. Policies built on fear and group guilt erode everything we claim to stand for. If we don’t push back against that, we’re not protecting our country we’re abandoning it.
I said I think it's unfair and cruel that he is being forced to leave at all. I think it's immoral. I also think he told the story that let him stay with his family rather than the truth, and I don't fault him if he did do that. Anyone would do that.
I think you should, for practice and because it would help you be a better person, try to have a disagreement with someone without thinking they must be racist. I think it would be new for you but I think it would be healthy to try it.
I don't think you are racist, I never called you racist, but I think what you are saying is wrong and is the type of group guilt assignment that has been used for very f'd up stuff in the past and not how we do things in the US. Again, your entire premise is he's lying because of the class he is in. That is the slippery slope that I am calling out. Your own words. You didn't judge him unfairly you say, you just said he committed criminal perjury based on your knowledge that he's a foreigner seeking asylum. I said that the system should be structured to recognize the incentives to lie, but we shouldn't judge people based on their class, you continued to say all foreigners seeking asylum are probably liars, especially your original example individual, based SOLELY on that he is a foreigner seeking asylum.
I explained my reasoning. And I even said I agreed that the Democrats have broken the system, and that the courts needed to be structured to account for the incentive to lie. But I didn't like classifying a group/class of people liars based on their class. 'All poor people steal because they are poor and have incentive' is basically what you are saying. 'All people in Alabama are dumb, Bob is from Alabama, Bob's dumb'. Nah, I refuse all of that, labeling a group, assigning a characteristic because Bob's a member of a group. I never just tried to shout you down saying 'racist', I responded in way too many words :)
And again you resort to the low, personal attacks. Super lame, basic internet dig you gave there too. Because I quoted your words back at you and I don't think in the USA we should classify groups as guilty.
What I'm saying is that if you can show that it is very likely that 99% of the people from Alabama are dumb (this is not true but for the sake of argument), and Bob is from Alabama, there's approximately a 99% chance that Bob is dumb if you don't know anything else about Bob to improve your estimate. This is just true, and it's obvious, and if you read what I said it's exactly how I framed it (he's very likely or almost certainly lying). This isn't because of class, or race, or age, or whether they are trans or whatever else.
One more time:
People come to the border or get caught in the US without a visa. If they say "I'm in danger" about 85% of them are allowed to stay in the US while their claim is processed. Of those people who stay, only 10% end up being approved. 10% are denied, and 80% don't show up for the interview, get arrested for something else, self deport, etc. So best case, if you trust our judges, half are not credible. Since the 20% that show up probably, on average, have the best cases it's a fairly safe bet that the 80% who don't show up wouldn't break 50/50, maybe more like 80/20. So 74% would be found not credible (10% who are denied with interview, and 80% of the 80% who don't show up), 26% credible. That's a pretty overwhelming majority who are not making an honest claim. But again, if we just go with the numbers we know, it's 50/50, half are lying (or if you prefer "making an incredible claim they are unable to support with plausible evidence").
You don't seem to be able to comprehend my basic argument. I concede that there are incentives to lie and the system should account for that, but that we shouldn't label a class criminal perjurers because down that path lies nothing good. I've given you more response/good faith than you have me. You keep saying you haven't labeled this man anything but then call him a criminal perjurer and imply his grounds for being in the country are bullshit. But other than that, yeah, you haven't called him anything. All based on 'he sought asylum'.
You say 10% are approved, which matches Americas past 'We would rather 10 criminals go free than 1 innocent person imprisoned'. By your words it sounds like this is a part of America's thought about itself/it's character that you don't agree with. (Now talking about your personal judgement).
You keep insisting that I'm making broad racist claims about a group of people, over and over.
You seem to think I have some secret agenda to support Trump or his policy, and you keep arguing as though arguing against that agenda is the same as arguing against what I'm saying. This is why I say you aren't honestly engaging and you are repeating talking points. I don't have a secret agenda, I'm a registered Democrat and I've never voted for a Republican as far as I can remember. I also think that most people claiming asylum are not being honest, because that's just what the information I have available clearly suggests.
You want to pick an arbitrarily impossible standard of evidence which is not reasonable and not even used in actual courts when evaluating whether testimony is credible or honest (that there is a criminal perjury conviction). People are caught lying in court every day, even when that's obvious and provable they are rarely (as in almost never) pursued for perjury charges.
Frankly at this point it's clear that you kindof agree with what I'm saying, that a lot of people lie in this process, and it's not the ground truth you are disputing but rather you want me to not say it because it might have consequences if we say things like this, but also you think the system needs to be reformed to address this problem, but also we shouldn't admit there's a problem.
These claims may well be false, but they deserve scrutiny, and waving them away while perpetuating a much repeated lie isn’t helping anyone except criminals and corruption.
Bottom line: this deserves investigation.
> I still don’t think this notion holds up.
What notion doesn't hold up? That a federal agency can be small & independent?
> Which branch are they under, who do they report to?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Labor_Relations_Board
> The NLRB is governed by a five-person board and a general counsel, all of whom are appointed by the president with the consent of the Senate. Board members are appointed for five-year terms and the general counsel is appointed for a four-year term. The general counsel acts as a prosecutor and the board acts as an appellate quasi-judicial body from decisions of 36 administrative law judges, as of November 2023.[4] The NLRB is headquartered at 1015 Half St. SE, Washington, D.C., and it has over 30 regional, sub-regional, and residential offices throughout the United States.
> Why would real Russian hackers not do anything to obscure their ip?
Why would the fox bother hiding the hole someone dug for it under the henhouse?
I'm a strong proponent of small government and don't know enough about the NLRB to say if I would find them useful, but that is well within the range of a small federal department today.
[1] https://www.nlrb.gov/sites/default/files/attachments/pages/n...
Yes. They are either in the legislative, executive, or judicial branch.
And before you send more Wikipedia links, be aware there is a long history and chain of Supreme Court cases about this question.
> Why would the fox bother hiding the hole someone dug for it under the henhouse?
Still spreading the Russian asset conspiracy theory? Why wouldn’t they want to hide their crimes from future enemies?
The current court has not, yet, overturned that precedent. There is lots of reason to believe they will, in an extremely contentious ruling. But for now they haven’t.
We are going to find out one way or another though because this admin is pushing hard up against the question.
Of course it’s also pushing hard up on the question of if the courts can constrain it at all so the grade school understanding of separation of powers is real.
That’s not what independent means here.
Most independent agencies are part of the executive branch (some are part of the legislative and judiciary but they are the exception).
They are independent because congress gave the president limited power in their ability to dismiss the agency head and its members. These agencies have some regulatory authority which Congress has vested them on purpose.
You might argue under the unitary executive theory of law that these agencies are actually under the control of the president and the current Supreme Court (for what it’s worth) might even agree with you.
I might argue that it’s a complete travestissement of the constitution spirit and intent pushed forward by people who wish to dismantle the American republic and replace it by an authoritarian regime. But that’s on me.
My only claim is that is false and misleading.
Well, according to what congress wanted when they were founded, this is neither false nor misleading and judicial precedents until now have agree with that.
The idea they are under the control of the president and his staff is a novelty (and a disgrace in my humble opinion) but given the sorry state of the Supreme Court anything is possible.
Not true. Do you know about how these agencies came to be? And the presidency under FDR?
The executive Power shall be vested in a President
Find a single phrase in the constitution about independent agencies.
If something smells like shit everywhere you go, it's not a conspiracy to suggest checking the bottom of your shoe.
And the concern probably isn't Russian hackers, it's American hackers spoofing their IP address. Also you are ignoring that DOGE made the server public when it wasn't supposed to be.
The question of whether the president is violating congresses power by downsizing or neutering an agency they have created is something democrats should pursue.
But no - there are no people outside the org chart. That’s just dysfunctional, no man can serve two masters, etc.
If it were true than congress can create agencies for themselves with more power than is granted them in the constitution.
More generally, nobody in the executive branch serves any master. They serve the law and are legally obligated to refuse and report illegal orders. The idea that they serve Master Donald Trump (or Vizier Elon Musk), and that illegal orders must be enforced because it is Trump's will, is precisely why Kilmar Abrego Garcia was illegally deported and why Trump is musing about doing the same thing to US citizens.
I guess we will wait and see.
Also it is concerning that the largest amount from an individual contract saved is a cancelled deportation facility contract. Seems at odds with the Administration’s goals to ramp up mass deportation but cancel the contract for building a holding facility for unaccompanied minors.
My suggestion would be if the goal is to eliminate debt we would need to target social security reform such as raising the retirement ages and eliminating the cap on the payroll tax. Additionally, but far less realistic would be implementing a Land Value Tax. Not cancel random contracts that amount to a tiny fraction of the budget and propose massive tax cuts like the current administration seems to be doing.
Nor does the propoganda define "waste", if one looks at the actual cuts, it seems to be focused on "things Herr M. doesn't like". which is not a good definition of "waste".
https://youtu.be/lG9pxvpGY-Q?si=cii2iggD-9hAj0ms&t=900
I've timestamped the above video to where it mentions the Clinton / Gore bit, but the whole video is enlightening.
They also love to throw around the word “fraud” while bringing no charges. Despite the DOJ being in Trump’s control. Same pattern as other lies (“rampant voter fraud! We have proof” ok so when you’re in change you’ll prosecute, right? You should! That’s bad if true! I mean I’ve looked at your proof and it doesn’t appear true, but maybe you have more proof you haven’t shown! “Uhhh… [smoke bomb]”)
Plus, we have the GAO and CBO. Trump won’t want to listen to them because they’ll say “our #1 problem is we keep cutting taxes”, and “there’s not much waste to be eliminated cutting government workers”, because that’s true at this point, but they exist. It’s not like nobody’s been looking at these kinds of things. That’s just bullshit.
The 8 billion saving that turned out to be a 8 million saving?
What they got was a pocket-lining idiot, and genuinely one of the most morally bankrupt people I've ever known of as his tech right-hand man. Musk is a moral imbecile, a 13-year old incel trapped in the body of an overweight mid-50s mess. Yes, he's been involved in some great things (SpaceX and Tesla), but he thinks that translates into a god-like ability to do anything and that he's right about everything.
These numbers don't even stand up to casual scrutiny. And I'm from the UK so it doesn't really directly affect me (although the orange idiot's shenanigans have done so to a small degree). But if you really believe this site, you're divorced from reality, and maybe drinking the same kool-aid that the tech muppets who are on DOGE are.
Like when this space youtuber suggested a change to his Mars rocket and he understood, accepted the validity of the idea, and decided to implement it on the spot? Er, I guess that's the opposite of what you said.
> megacastings
Wow, you brought your own counterexample! Cast frames were suggested to Elon by Sandy Munro. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WNWYk4DdT_E
To quote Sandy: "These guys at Tesla, they take everything you say literally, and then they go basically implement! It's amazing! It is truely to me amazing that these guys can do so much in such a short period of time."
The worst is that the effects of this shaving off will only be felt over time, when National Parks start crumbling, when ATCs start quitting, the government machine of the USA has been eroded, inevitably it will fall into a landslide.
Second, you have to look at the cost of their actions. They’ve disrupted the functioning of the entire federal government and doing in a very haphazard manner. That means that a lot of current spending is wasted by DOGE _and_ that the business of the government isn’t getting done. For example, whether or not you think the U.S. should engage in foreign aid, under DOGE they paid money to send people to help in Myanmar only to lay them off after they arrived on site, squandering all possible value. That story is being repeated all over the country right now and in many cases the loses are permanent: if they choose to waste payroll having people come back to an office where they can’t work, the job isn’t getting done and there’s no way to recover the wasted payroll. As they keep losing lawsuits, it’s also likely that the amounts cut will be exceeded by the cost of settlements when they breach contracts or fail to provide a service required by statute.
One really big area is tax collection: the IRS is already estimating revenue reductions on the order of half a billion dollars, and since they’ve been sacking a lot of the law enforcement for businesses and high-net wealth individuals, that will get worse as people feel confident cheating more aggressively.
Lastly, you have to look at the economy. Estimated have each federal job supporting 2-3 other jobs, and federal spending drives the economy in many parts of the country. They’ve already cut growth of the entire economy into the negative (from +2.5% in January to -2-3% now - see https://www.atlantafed.org/cqer/research/gdpnow) and a lot of that is driven by federal cuts.
And it will increase the debt significantly?
All of that while DOGE, some random dudes without any understanding how things work, stop things which are globally agreed on (global aid) or just not even worth mentioning in the grand schem?
But hey if you prefer to defend DOGE ssaving 160 Billion while the tax cut for the rich adds Trillions to debt, yeah do a happy dance. Be proud. Or whatever your comment is trying to do.
Funny that IRS also gets defunded. But hey taxes right? :D
I hope he doesn't think Trump is his boy and will keep DOJ off his back. The problem is that the institutional funds and market makers will not support this level of Watergate/Enron/WorldCom-like risk and Trump isn't going to become entangled in that (since it means the corporate death penalty as far as public equity and access to bank capital is concerned).
BUT the Report is from a super controversial NGO that has long been targeted by Republicans and may soon be DOGEd, so it could be filled with speculation, half-truths, innuendo and lies.
Still...They didn't use StarLink?! I mean, is that not the greatest evidence you could ever hope for of an obvious NSA backdoor in StarLink? They were willing to risk obscure premises-based (bandwidth) monitoring over holding a mini-dish out the window for a few seconds..Too much! I feel like I owe someone $20 for a ticket.
https://www.pbs.org/newshour/politics/trump-administration-p...
Meanwhile NPR has new reporting that DOGE has sent two of its boys back to NLRB, but they're going to work remotely. Is the hope here that this will provide ongoing justification for DOGE remote data access as the Feds sort out what they did in the first visit? Like even though NPR's first report stated that Russia has tried to login remotely using valid DOGE credentials just after DOGE personnel left the first time?
https://www.npr.org/2025/04/16/nx-s1-5366851/doge-nlrb-whist...
This entire article appears to be speculation about data they MAY have taken with no evidence besides large file size that they are misusing something.
The discussion with the “whistle blower” and other experts is only about how serious it would be IF they misused it.
Am I reading it wrong?
I would say you were treated with far more respect than you deserve. If i didn't know any better, I would say you were paid to act this stupid.
None of your arguments were in good faith, you constantly moved goal posts, and actively disregard every piece of eveidence that was presented.
You can claim I am biased. I would agree with you. I am biased against this blatant display of imbecilty.
"This entire article appears to be speculation about data they MAY have taken with no evidence besides large file size that they are misusing something ...[and] is only about how serious it would be IF they misused it."
This paragraph makes it clear it's not just about misusing data and large file sizes.
> Those forensic digital records are important for record-keeping requirements and they allow for troubleshooting, but they also allow experts to investigate potential breaches, sometimes even tracing the attacker's path back to the vulnerability that let them inside a network.
Let's be clear:
> Those engineers were also concerned by DOGE staffers' insistence that their activities not be logged, allowing them to probe the NLRB's systems and discover information about potential security flaws or vulnerabilities without being detected.
Neither of these have to do with "large file size" or misusing data.
"Am I reading it wrong?"
Yes. Now, before you go moving goal posts, you made claims, and I've debunked those claims with quotes you said you needed. Because clearly the article is ALSO talking about these other things as problematic as well, so it's not "the entire article". (Also, the "entire article appears"? Appears? Just read it, it talks about numerous things, and is very clear on the different elements it's talking about.)
This isn't the only stuff mentioned, so be careful about claiming "oh, I just missed that" or some such because there are other things that can be referenced, such as the massive amount of text spent on the whistleblower issues and the threats made to them.
And before you talk about this just being "speculation," that's why we have the process we have, so people can make claims that can then be investigated. And that's what's being stopped.
Finally, "no evidence besides large file size" is also not true.
"Am I reading it wrong?"
As someone said, it's more likely you didn't even read it.
This is just on top of all the other things. happened.
"The small, independent federal agency investigates and adjudicates complaints about unfair labor practices. It stores reams of potentially sensitive data, from confidential information about employees who want to form unions to proprietary business information."
"But according to an official whistleblower disclosure shared with Congress and other federal overseers that was obtained by NPR, subsequent interviews with the whistleblower and records of internal communications, technical staff members were alarmed about what DOGE engineers did when they were granted access, particularly when those staffers noticed a spike in data leaving the agency. It's possible that the data included sensitive information on unions, ongoing legal cases and corporate secrets — data that four labor law experts tell NPR should almost never leave the NLRB and that has nothing to do with making the government more efficient or cutting spending."
And because DOGE deleted the access records and logs, we cannot prove it either way. That is pretty suspicious.
> From what he could see, the data leaving, almost all text files, added up to around 10 gigabytes — or the equivalent of a full stack of encyclopedias if someone printed them, he explained. It's a sizable chunk of the total data in the NLRB system, though the agency itself hosts over 10 terabytes in historical data. It's unclear which files were copied and removed or whether they were consolidated and compressed, which could mean even more data was exfiltrated.
> Berulis says someone appeared to be doing something called DNS tunneling to prevent the data exfiltration from being detected. He came to that conclusion, outlined in his disclosure, after he saw a traffic spike in DNS requests parallel to the data being exfiltrated, a spike 1,000 times the normal number of requests.
> And Berulis noticed that an unknown user had exported a "user roster," a file with contact information for outside lawyers who have worked with the NLRB.
And more if you actually read the article. About a third of it is about the data that was taken.
- Spoliation of evidence - Intentionally destroying or concealing evidence can lead to legal sanctions and adverse inferences.
- Consciousness of guilt - Actions taken to cover tracks (deleting logs, hiding records) are often admissible to show awareness of wrongdoing.
- Obstruction of justice - Deliberately impeding an investigation by destroying evidence is itself a crime in many jurisdictions.
> Meanwhile, his attempts to raise concerns internally within the NLRB preceded someone "physically taping a threatening note" to his door that included sensitive personal information and overhead photos of him walking his dog that appeared to be taken with a drone, according to a cover letter attached to his disclosure filed by his attorney, Andrew Bakaj of the nonprofit Whistleblower Aid.
I'm so sick of the endless attempts to downplay or misdirect on the outrageous things Republicans/Trump/DOGE happening everyday.
If a Democratic admin were to do this they would be howling and rightly so. Trump and the GOP are turning the federal government into an authoritarian mob state.
Everyone should be outraged - even if it's for only the fact that you yourself may be a target of this or future administrations as it becomes normal practice.
As a Canadian I am already scared of visiting the US. I've re-posted UNRWA, Unicef, MSF and WFP criticism of Israel's actions in Gaza on social media. I could very well be viewed as being a someone who is undermining US foreign policy goals and either detained, deported or at best denied entry to the US.
https://www.uscis.gov/newsroom/news-releases/dhs-to-begin-sc...
> Whistleblower is a journalist word used to establish the good guy in a story.
It's not a journalist word, there is an official whistleblowing process to Congress and OIG the mentioned employee went through.
But you would either have needed to have read and understood the article you're commenting on or not be commenting in bad-faith.
Did you read the article yet?
Yes
Based on your comments, you're not reading the article at all.
The fact that someone tried to intimidate the whisteblower by posting threatening and stalking messages on his door shows there is something not above board here.