Tag: trump

Mahmoud Khalil Tells His Story | The Ezra Klein Show

Posted on by Lone Candle

President Trump literally arrested a legal resident based on his speech. This is a huge, massive infringement of basic democratic rights by a president who ran on free speech.

Because the man was educated, in custody, people getting deported would talk to him and ask him questions. A man who had been in the country for over 20 years and had four children under 11, was showing up to his immigration hearing when he was grabbed to be deported. Another person asked him what a paper he signed was. The paper said he was to be deported. Another 19-year old asked if it would be safe for his mom to visit him, the answer was no. The immigration detention center had a lot of crying people in it. These people were depicted as criminals by the administration when they were picked up at their immigration hearings and their jobs.

Khalil missed the birth of his child because Trump decided to arrest him based on speech. The justification required the Secretary of State to go along with it. Marco Rubio did, losing what little dignity he had left. Khalil requested to be temporarily let out for the birth of his child. HIs request was denied.

I disagree with a lot of what he says about Palestine and Israel, but his detention was an insult to the principles that democracy stands on.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A2BLU3Gy3YE

‘Alligator Alcatraz’ Contracts Disappeared From a Florida State Database

Posted on by Lone Candle

“State contracts for Florida’s controversial “Alligator Alcatraz” detention camp were removed from a public database and replaced with far less detailed documents after media outlets began writing about them…

The Florida Division of Emergency Management (FDEM), which is overseeing the state’s new immigrant detention camp in the Everglades, says the contracts contained “proprietary information.”…

open government advocates and state Democratic lawmakers say that removing details of the contracts flies in the face of Florida’s promises to provide transparency in public spending, especially given the massive expenditures of taxpayer money involved. The most recent reporting on the ballooning costs of the Everglades detention camp puts it at $250 million and growing.”

https://reason.com/2025/07/22/alligator-alcatraz-contracts-disappeared-from-a-florida-state-database/

Trump Administration Plans To Spend $1.26 Billion on an Immigrant Detention Center in Texas

Posted on by Lone Candle

“The Trump administration has awarded a Virginia-based defense contractor a $1.26 billion contract to build a 5,000-bed immigration detention center in El Paso, Texas, reports Bloomberg. The newest—and biggest—facility will be located at the 1 million-acre Fort Bliss Army base, equipped with tents for detention infrastructure and an airport to serve as a deportation hub.”

https://reason.com/2025/07/22/trump-administration-plans-to-spend-1-26-billion-on-an-immigrant-detention-center-in-texas/

Republicans are full steam ahead on redistricting — and not just in Texas

Posted on by Lone Candle

“Trump’s team is putting “maximum pressure on everywhere where redistricting is an option and it could provide a good return on investment,” according to a person familiar with the team’s thinking and granted anonymity to describe it.

…

a handful of Democratic-leaning states — including California — handed mapmaking power to independent commissions instead of leaving it in the hands of the state legislatures. States where Democrats retain the power to gerrymander, like Illinois and Maryland, have very little room to draw more advantageous maps than their current ones.”

https://www.politico.com/news/2025/08/07/republicans-are-full-steam-ahead-on-redistricting-and-not-just-in-texas-00496450

Vance meeting doesn’t immediately convince Indiana leaders to redistrict

Posted on by Lone Candle

“Republican Gov. Mike Braun remained noncommittal about a mid-decade redistricting push following his meeting with Vice President JD Vance in Indiana on Thursday.
“We covered a wide array of topics. We listened,” Braun told reporters in response to a question about whether an agreement was reached.

…

Vance’s visit to the state comes amid a push from President Donald Trump’s team to redraw maps “everywhere where redistricting is an option.” A plan in Texas is already well underway, where Republican lawmakers drew a new map that could net Republicans as many as five Republican-leaning seats, and Democrats in the Lone Star state fled in a last-ditch effort to stop the map from passing.”

https://www.politico.com/news/2025/08/07/vance-indiana-00497634

Fareed’s Take: Trump’s tariffs have caused a seismic shift in world affairs

Posted on by Lone Candle

The U.S. created a world based on relatively free trade. Most benefited from it. Now Trump is pulling us back from that world, and most people, including most Americans, will be hurt by that.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-4wiPYWVV_4

Trump’s Tariffs and Japan Deal Could Encourage Toyota To Move Manufacturing Jobs Out of America

Posted on by Lone Candle

“With a series of short-sighted tariff maneuvers, the president has effectively told Toyota (and other Japanese carmakers) that it should do more of its manufacturing in Japan and stop trying to create jobs in America.

Earlier this week, President Donald Trump announced a new trade deal with Japan that will include a 15 percent tariff on Japanese goods, including imported cars. The details of the deal remain somewhat vague, but that’s a significant discount compared to the 25 percent tariff the administration has imposed on cars imported from everywhere else.

The reduced tariffs for Japanese cars are significant because of how that provision interacts with the Trump administration’s other trade policies that are aimed at making it more expensive to manufacture cars in the United States. The president has imposed a 50 percent tariff on steel and aluminum (both of which are essential for automakers) and has slapped a 25 percent tariff on imported cars and car parts. Those tariffs are already dinging the profits of American carmakers—General Motors reportedly lost more than $1 billion in the second quarter of the year—and auto industry experts say they will raise prices, reduce demand for new cars, and generally make American cars less globally competitive.

In short, the Trump administration is offering an incentive to import finished cars from Japan, while making it more expensive to buy the stuff you need to build cars in America.

…

Ultimately, the problem here is not the specific tariff rates the Trump administration is seeking to charge on steel, car parts, or cars imported from Japan or Mexico. (Those rates are likely to change anyway, if the past few months of the trade war are any indication.)

No, the real problem here is the Trump administration’s belief that it can use tariffs to shape the global trading system toward contradicting goals with no tradeoffs or distortions. In reality, each new tariff move causes both. The market responds to incentives, and right now, the Trump administration is creating a set of incentives that will raise costs for American manufacturers while driving investors overseas.”

https://reason.com/2025/07/25/trumps-tariffs-and-japan-deal-could-encourage-toyota-to-move-manufacturing-jobs-out-of-america/