ICE repeatedly exercises a gratuitous use of force.
Multiple ICE agents have threatened protestors by referring to the killing of Renee Good. These are threats to kill people by law enforcement, often for simply being annoying. The implications are more aggressive than simply, ‘hey, if you protest or/and don’t listen to my orders, we may possibly get into the situation where I have to kill you to defend myself.’ The implications are, ‘Keep annoying me or disobeying me, and I’ll fucking kill you like we did that woman.’
Reportedly: ICE Agent: “You guys got to stop obstructing us. That’s why that lesbian bitch is dead.”
That ICE agent seems ready to use deadly force in more than a strict self-defense situation.
A border control agent reportedly said that he and his comrades thought the protesters were crazy. It’s easier to use force against someone who you perceive as crazy.
Last year, more people died in ICE detention than any previous year.
Citizens are being detained because they seem illegal to ICE and Border Patrol. Native Americans are being detained because ICE thought they were illegal foreigners. According to a Native American woman, an ICE agent told her “we’re coming for you” for no reason. She said that she was Native American, and he said, “yeah, you’re next.” That doesn’t sound like someone professionally enforcing the law.
“The war has ebbed and flowed over the past 54 years, but the results are clear. Drugs won. But instead of learning the requisite lessons, the Trump administration is ramping up anti-drug-war rhetoric to lunatic levels. The president recently issued an executive order designating fentanyl as a “weapon of mass destruction.” He’s empowered the military to destroy Venezuelan boats that likely aren’t carrying that synthetic opioid or even headed to the United States.
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“Enforcing prohibition incentivizes those who market prohibited substances to develop more potent forms that are easier to smuggle in smaller sizes.” Now “other highly potent synthetic opioids are becoming more attractive for drug trafficking organizations to produce and sell.”
Drug-warriors ignore how their own policies helped create the latest crisis. The feds began cracking down on prescription opioid analgesics (OAs) to combat their overprescribing to people with pain issues. “Unfortunately, opioid dependence and addiction do not simply dissipate with the contraction in the availability of OA pills…Instead, individuals who lost access have turned to cheaper, more accessible and more potent black market opioid alternatives,” per a 2017 article in the International Journal of Drug Policy. The prime alternative was heroin. The feds cracked down on that, too, and then black markets shifted to fentanyl.
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Most Americans are aware of the foolhardy nature of alcohol Prohibition, which empowered organized crime, led to alcohol poisonings as illicit operations rarely have great quality control, corrupted police agencies and politicians, and caused prison overcrowding. We see similar results after a half-century of drug prohibition.”
“instituting a “duty of care” for AI developers to “prevent and mitigate foreseeable harm to users” (per Blackburn’s summary of the bill). This duty would be enforced by the Federal Trade Commission (FTC).
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“It’s basically just an invitation for lawyers to sue any time anything bad happens and someone involved in the bad thing that happened somehow used an AI tool at some point.
And then you have to go through a big expensive legal process to explain “no, this thing was not because of AI” or whatever. It’s just a massive invitation to sue everyone, meaning that in the end you have just a few giant companies providing AI because they’ll be the only ones who can afford the lawsuits.”
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Section 11 of Blackburn’s bill is promoted as combating “the consistent pattern of bias against conservative figures demonstrated by Big Tech and AI systems.” But, in practice, it could require AI systems to have a pro-conservative slant—at least as long as President Donald Trump or other Republicans are in power.
The bill would set up “audits of high-risk AI systems to undergo regular bias evaluations to prevent discrimination based on protected characteristics, including political affiliation.”
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“Right now, 230 lets platforms get frivolous lawsuits dismissed quickly at the motion to dismiss stage. This change would force every platform to go through lengthy, expensive litigation to prove they weren’t “facilitating” (an incredibly vague term) or “soliciting” third-party content that violates federal criminal law.
That’s gutting the main reason Section 230 exists. Instead of quick dismissals, you get discovery, depositions, and trials, all while someone argues that because your algorithm showed someone a post, you were “facilitating” whatever criminal content they claim to find.””
Trump called his Department of Justice lawyers weak and told them they needed to get on his retribution campaign. After this meeting, the lawyers went after the Fed chairman, Jerome Powell.
Unusually, some Republican Congressmen are breaking with Trump and criticizing this move.
Inflation is still at 3%. The goal is 2%. The official numbers are 2.7%, but they just assume steady prices on objects they don’t have data on due to the government shutdown. Other experts who don’t just assume steady prices, estimate three percent.
If Trump successfully abuses the rule of law and uses lawfare to gain control over the Fed, inflation will likely go higher.
Before Trump’s new tariffs, inflation was getting close to 2%.
“It would appear that Kavanaugh has finally come to recognize what has been apparent to some of us all along. Namely, that Trump’s immigration crackdown actively imperils the rights of many U.S. citizens.
Good for Kavanaugh, right? Better late than never? Well, maybe. Because it is also worth noting that Kavanaugh’s December opinion makes no reference to his September opinion. How should we make sense of this mysterious and rather glaring absence or omission?
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It seems impossible that these two Kavanaugh opinions are unrelated to each other. So what are we left to conclude about their connection? What is Kavanaugh not saying about the link?
One conceivable conclusion is that Kavanaugh now seeks to walk back his unfortunate past statement without explicitly acknowledging his past misjudgment.
Another conceivable conclusion is that Kavanaugh now hopes to apologize for butchering the Fourth Amendment without doing any actual apologizing. Call it a mea culpa minus the mea.
Needless to say, none of this reflects well on Kavanaugh and his possible motivations. Perhaps we’ll get a more forthright account from him in a future case.”
“First, the men at the center of the 60 Minutes segment were in fact shipped off to CECOT without any sort of judicial review. Second, even after the Supreme Court ruled that alleged “alien enemies” have a due process right to challenge their removal via habeas corpus petitions, the administration made that option nearly impossible to pursue in practice, as the Court subsequently recognized. Third, the government maintains that federal courts have, at most, a highly circumscribed role in these cases, saying they have no authority to question Trump’s historically unprecedented invocation of the AEA against alleged gang members.
Trump’s assertion of unreviewable power under the AEA is part of a broader pattern that became clear during his first year in office. He has made similar claims regarding his tariffs and National Guard deployments. In these and other cases, Trump’s position undermines civil liberties, the rule of law, and the separation of powers by attacking the crucial role that the judicial branch plays in making sure that presidents respect statutory and constitutional limits on their authority.”
The Minneapolis police chief said that ICE’s irresponsible behavior is creating great strain on the city’s police force. So is people’s aggressive antagonization and anger at ICE.
Viewing the incident where the ICE officer killed a woman, the chief said ICE officers appeared to create a situation that was dangerous and acted against good policing.
He made tough progress to rebuild the Minneapolis police department after the George Floyd protests, and he fears that ICE tactics are going to create a huge setback.