#Trump Immigration Policy 2025

[inc-immigrationnewscanada]

Selena Gomez's Tearful Plea Fuels Fierce Immigration Debate

In an era where social media can turn a personal moment into a global conversation, Selena Gomez, the multi-talented actress, singer, and philanthropist, has inadvertently become the focal point of a heated political debate. On the morning of January 27, 2025, Gomez took to her Instagram Story with an emotional video that would soon capture the attention of millions, sparking a fierce dialogue…

[dontmean2bepoliticalbut]

[justinspoliticalcorner]

Zack Beauchamp at Vox:

Throughout the entire Republican National Convention, I struggled with one big question: What is the Republican Party for? That it was for former President Donald Trump went almost without saying. Look at the way that solidarity ear bandages became the RNC’s must-have fashion accessory, or how long the audience managed to put up big cheers during his historically long and rambling acceptance speech on Thursday night. Beyond Trump worship, the RNC has been billed as proof that the populist takeover of the Republican Party is complete. On issues like trade, immigration, and foreign alliances, this analysis is surely correct; the Trumpian insurgency has gone head-to-head with the party old guard and defeated them. Yet elements of the old Republican Party remain thoroughly in place.

Unlike Europe’s far-right populist parties, the GOP remains unyieldingly opposed to the welfare state and progressive taxation. It remains committed to banning abortion, an issue where its actions at the state level speak for themselves. It remains deeply hostile to unions; vice presidential nominee Sen. J.D. Vance, allegedly the avatar of the party’s pro-worker populism, has a 0 percent score from the AFL-CIO. On foreign policy, it is by no means strictly isolationist: it seeks to ramp up military spending and aggressively confront China even as it tears down both military alliances and the American-led global trade regime. Ideologically, the GOP is a mess, a political party constructed less out of one cogent worldview than an assemblage of different parts, a zombie given life by the lightning of Donald John Trump. It is Frankenstein’s party. And while Trump and his loyalists are clearly our Shelleyian monster’s head, they do not (yet) have full control over all its limbs.

The Trump coalition is so new that it has yet to produce an equilibrium, a stable set of policy commitments that will endure as long as it aligns. It basically works by Trump getting his way on issues he really cares about — like democracy, trade, and immigration — while others claim what they can when they can claim it. The monied class is still calling the shots on taxes and regulation; the social conservatives are still in the driver’s seat when it comes to issues like abortion and LGBT rights.

You can see this at work in documents like the RNC platform and Project 2025, which together help us understand the GOP’s ambitions going forward. Some of the most notable policies in them, like Project 2025’s proposal to end the Justice Department’s independence or the platform’s call for “the largest Deportation Program in history,” is pure Trump (right down to the random capitalization). But in issue areas where other elements of the right prevail, things sound a bit more old Republican. Project 2025’s chapter on the EPA is about as old-school business friendly as it gets; the GOP platform promises to “slash Regulations” and “pursue additional Tax Cuts.” Project 2025 calls on the next president to “rescind regulations prohibiting discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation, gender identity, transgender status, and sex characteristics.” When there’s tension between Trump’s instincts and the old Republican agenda, the result is not always clear.

[...] Post-World War II American conservatism was a “three-legged stool” formed of three groups: free market libertarians, social conservatives, and foreign policy hawks. These groups often disagreed with each other on matters of both principle and policy. Hence an ideology contradiction: a “small government” conservatism that aimed to build the world’s largest army and police consenting adults in their homes. There was nothing natural about this alliance, no reflecting of an enduring and transhistorical American tradition. “Movement conservatism,” as it was called, was a movement — one built, like any other political faction, by people molded by a specific time and place (Cold War America) in response to its particular challenges.

Vox takes a look at how the GOP has changed to a Trumpian right-wing populist party in several key policy areas such as trade, foreign policy to some extent, the role of democracy, and immigration. There are still areas in policy, however, in where the pre-Trump GOP positions still remain: taxation, regulatory powers, unions, Israel, and abortion.

Read the full story at Vox.

[davidaugust]

Trump has no work to do: elected president, escaped criminal prosecutions, & profited billions from Truth Social; personally set. His campaign promises already happened: low inflation, illegal immigration reduced, Israel conflict winding down, & economy turbocharged, Chinese imports down, interest rates dropping, US energy production high, & crime, especially murder, has dropped. His Project 2025 will ruin it all.

https://jabberwocking.com/donald-trump-should-have-the-easiest-presidency-ever/

[creativemedianews]

Project 2025 Mastermind Allegedly Told Colleagues He Killed a Dog with a Shovel

[commiepinkofag]

Harris on immigration — perfect for the nationalists

’tougher than Trump' is along the lines of RNC mass deportation celebrated at their convention & Project2025 …

this places political & LGBTQIA asylum, human rights in jeopardy

US border policy will undoubtedly worsen as the climate crisis shall

[head-post]

Berlin approves stricter migration controls amid political tensions, Trump’s rise to power

The joint vote of the right-wing Alternative for Germany (AfD) with the Christian Democratic Union and Christian Social Union (CDU/CSU) on measures against migrants caused a scandal in the Bundestag. For the first time in post-war history, a right-wing political force helped a centrist party form a majority, Deutsche Welle reports.

Bundestag passed controversial migration policy

By a margin of three votes, the Bundestag approved a resolution demanding passport controls on Germany’s entire external border, banning undocumented people from entering the country, strengthening police powers to expel illegal immigrants and increasing the number of deportations.

It was preceded by a two-hour debate with shouting and insults. After the results were announced, Bernd Baumann, a spokesman for the AfD, announced the beginning of a new era in Germany, led by his party. He said:

“And you, Mr. Merz, can still follow us. If you have the strength.”

Conservative opposition leader Friedrich Merz of the CDU. had previously said he regretted bringing the AfD to his side.

However, German Chancellor Olaf Scholz, a Social Democrat, accused the conservatives of breaking their own promises, as they had previously said they would refuse to co-operate with the AfD in principle.

Left Party called fellow citizens to the barricades, after which the meeting was suspended. Earlier, the American media wrote that Friedrich Merz “flirts” with the right-wing AfD. Merz himself denied this.

The discussion about tightening migration policy in Germany heated up after the attack in Aschaffenburg, Bavaria on January 22 when a man and a child were killed and several other people were injured. The suspect was 28-year-old Afghan Enamullah O., who, according to the Bavarian Interior Ministry, had to leave Germany because he was denied asylum in June this year.

The day after that incident, Merz presented a five-point plan to tighten Germany’s migration policy. It calls for the introduction of permanent controls at Germany’s borders, as well as refusing entry to those who do not have permission to stay in the country.

Last year, the German authorities took a number of measures to tighten migration policy. From September 16, 2024, Germany introduced border controls at all internal borders for six months. Berlin has also started negotiations with the authorities of Syria and Afghanistan on the consistent deportation of refugees, in particular “Islamist rapists,” who pose a danger to these countries.

On August 30, for the first time since the Taliban came to power in Afghanistan, Berlin expelled 28 Afghans convicted in Germany to that country.

The decision to temporarily close the borders caused discontent among Germany’s neighbours. Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk said that “this is a de facto large-scale suspension of the Schengen zone.”

Under the Schengen agreement, controls at internal borders are only allowed as a last resort. Previously, the regime could be extended for a maximum of two years, but in May the European Council approved the possibility of extending it for three years if there is a threat to a country’s security, linked in particular to terrorism, organised crime or sudden large-scale unauthorised movements of citizens from third countries.

Trump prepares facility at Guantanamo for  30,000 migrants

Donald Trump’s rise to power signalled a new anti-immigrant policy in the western bloc. Trump said he signed an executive order on January 29 to prepare a 30,000-person migration centre at the Guantanamo Bay base to hold detained illegal migrants.

The US leader said:

“Today, I’m also signing an Executive Order to instruct the Departments of Defense and Homeland Security to begin preparing the 30,000 person migrant facility at Guantanamo Bay to detain the worst criminal illegal aliens threatening the American people.”

According to him, the camp will hold “the most dangerous illegal criminals.” Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, is home to the US naval base of the same name, which became a prison for international terrorists after the attacks of September 11, 2001. Human rights activists have repeatedly criticised the facility for torture against prisoners.

On January 27, the new US Secretary of Defence Pete Hegseth said that the Pentagon would provide all necessary resources to control the border between the US and Mexico, including additional troops. Trump said he wants to finish building the wall on the Mexican border.

Earlier, the Trump administration allowed illegal migrants to be deported without trial and also announced the resumption of the “Stay in Mexico” programme, which was cancelled by his former US president Joe Biden.

Read more HERE

[myberndpulch]

✌Trump's Start in 2025: Measures, Consequences, and Team Bios

“Trump’s Bold Second Term Begins: Inauguration Day 2025 Unveils a New Era of Policy and Division” Introduction On January 20, 2025, Donald J. Trump was sworn in as the 47th President of the United States for a second term. With a renewed vigor and a clear mandate from his voter base, Trump embarked on an ambitious agenda to reshape American governance, policy, and international relations. Here,…

[kdkeenan]

Project 2025: What's All the Fuss About?

What is Project 2025? Project 2025 is a blueprint for actions the Trump administration should take once it regains power. Trump has tried to distance himself, but he can’t. The name “Trump” is mentioned approximately 201 times in the text, not counting footnotes or author bios. The people who wrote Project 2025 are all Trump adherents and colleagues. More than 140 people who formerly worked for…

[ceilidhtransing]

The discussions around whether or not to vote for Kamala keep being dominated by very loud voices shouting that anyone who advocates for her “just doesn't care about Palestine!” and “is willing to overlook genocide!” and “has no moral backbone at all!” And while some of these voices will be bots, trolls, psyops - we know that this happens; we know that trying to persuade progressives to split the vote or not vote at all is a strategy employed by hostile actors - of course many of them won't be. But what this rhetoric does is continually force the “you should vote for her” crowd onto the back foot of having to go to great lengths writing entire essays justifying their choice, while the “don't vote/vote third party” crowd is basically never asked to justify their choice. It frames voting for Kamala as a deeply morally compromised position that requires extensive justification while framing not voting or voting third party as the neutral and morally clean stance.

So here's another way of looking at it. How much are you willing to accept in order to feel like you're not compromising your morals on one issue?

Are you willing to accept the 24% rise in maternal deaths - and 39% increase for Black women - that is expected under a federal abortion ban, according to the Centre for American Progress? Those percentages represent real people who are alive now who would die if the folks behind Project 2025 get their way with reproductive healthcare.

Are you willing to accept the massive acceleration of climate change that would result from the scrapping of all climate legislation? We don't have time to fuck around with the environment. A gutting of climate policy and a prioritisation of fossil fuel profits, which is explicitly promised by Trump, would set the entire world back years - years that we don't have.

Are you willing to accept the classification of transgender visibility as inherently “pornographic” and thus the removal of trans people from public life? Are you willing to accept the total elimination of legal routes for gender-affirming care? The people behind the Trump campaign want to drive queer and trans people back underground, back into the closet, back into “criminality”. This will kill people. And it's maddening that caring about this gets called “prioritising white gays over brown people abroad” as if it's not BIPOC queer and trans Americans who will suffer the most from legislative queer- and transphobia, as they always do.

Are you willing to accept the domestic deployment of the military to crack down on protests and enforce racist immigration policy? I'm sure it's going to be very easy to convince huge numbers of normal people to turn up to protests and get involved in political organising when doing so may well involve facing down an army deployed by a hardcore authoritarian operating under the precedent that nothing he does as president can ever be illegal.

Are you willing to accept a president who openly talks about wanting to be a dictator, plans on massively expanding presidential powers, dehumanises his political enemies and wants the DOJ to “go after them”, and assures his supporters they won't have to vote again? If you can't see the danger of this staring you right in the face, I don't know what to tell you. Allowing a wannabe dictator to take control of the most powerful country on earth would be absolutely disastrous for the entire world.

Are you willing to accept an enormous uptick in fascism and far-right authoritarianism worldwide? The far right in America has huge influence over an entire international network of “anti-globalists”, hardcore anti-immigrant xenophobes, transphobic extremists, and straight-up fascists. Success in America aids and emboldens these people everywhere.

Are you willing to accept an enormous number of preventable deaths if America faces a crisis in the next four years: a public health emergency, a natural disaster, an ecological catastrophe? We all saw how Trump handled Hurricane Maria in Puerto Rico. We all saw how Trump handled Covid-19. He fanned the flames of disaster with a constant flow of medical misinformation and an unspeakably dangerous undermining of public health experts. It's estimated that 40% of US pandemic deaths could have been avoided if the death rates had corresponded to those in other high-income countries. That amounts to nearly half a million people. One study from January 2021 estimated between around 4,200 and 12,200 preventable deaths attributable purely to Trump's statements about masks. We're highly unlikely to face another global pandemic in the next few years but who knows what crises are coming down the pipeline?

Are you willing to accept the attempted deportation of millions - millions - of undocumented people? This is “rounding people up and throwing them into camps where no one ever hears from them again” territory. That's a blueprint for genocide right there and it's a core tenet of both Trump's personal policy and Project 2025. And of course they wouldn't be going after white people. They most likely wouldn't even restrict their tyranny to people who are actually undocumented. Anyone racially othered as an “immigrant” would be at risk from this.

Are you willing to accept not just the continuation of the current situation in Palestine, but the absolute annihilation of Gaza and the obliteration of any hope for imminent peace? There is no way that Trump and the people behind him would not be catastrophically worse for Gaza than Kamala or even Biden. Only recently he was telling donors behind closed doors that he wanted to “set the [Palestinian] movement back 25 or 30 years” and that “any student that protests, I throw them out of the country”. This is not a man who can be pushed in a direction more conducive to peace and justice. This is a man who listens to his wealthy donors, his Christian nationalist Republican allies, and himself.

Are you willing to accept a much heightened risk of nuclear war? Obviously this is hardly a Trump policy promise. But I can't think of a single president since the Cold War who is more likely to deploy nuclear weapons, given how casually he talks about wanting to use them and how erratic and unstable he can be in his dealings with foreign leaders. To quote Foreign Policy only this year, “Trump told a crowd in January that one of the reasons he needed immunity was so that he couldn’t be indicted for using nuclear weapons on a city.” That's reassuring. I'm not even in the US and I remember four years of constant background low-level terror that Trump would take offence at something some foreign leader said or think that he needs to personally intervene in some military situation to “sort it out” and decide to launch the entire world into nuclear war. No one sane on earth wants the most powerful person on the planet to be as trigger-happy and careless with human life as he is, especially if he's running the White House like a dictator with no one ever telling him no. But depending on what Americans do in November, he may well be inflicted again on all of us, and I guess we'll all just have to hope that he doesn't do the worst thing imaginable.

“But I don't want those things! Stop accusing me of supporting things I don't support!” Yes, of course you don't want those things. None of us does. No one's saying that you actively support them. No one's accusing you of wanting Black women to die from ectopic pregnancies or of wanting to throw Hispanic people in immigrant detention centres or of wanting trans people to be outlawed (unlike, I must point out, the extremely emotive and personal accusations that get thrown around about “wanting Palestinian children to die” if you encourage people to vote for Kamala).

But if you're advocating against voting for Kamala, you are clearly willing to accept them as possible consequences of your actions. That is the deal you're making. If a terrible thing happening is the clear and easily foreseeable outcome of your action (or in the case of not voting, inaction), in a way that could have been prevented by taking a different and just as easy action, you are partly responsible for that consequence. (And no, it's not “a fear campaign” to warn people about things he's said, things he wants to do, and plans drawn up by his close allies. This is not “oooh the Democrats are trying to bully you into voting for them by making him out to be really bad so you'll feel scared and vote for Kamala!” He is really bad, in obvious and documented and irrefutable ways.)

And if you believe that “both parties are the same on Gaza” (which, you know, they really aren't, but let's just pretend that they are) then presumably you accept that the horrors being committed there will continue, in the immediate term anyway, regardless of who wins the presidency. Because there really isn't some third option that will appear and do everything we want. It's going to be one of those two. And we can talk all day about wanting a better system or how unfair it is that every presidential election only ever has two viable candidates and how small the Overton window is and all that but hell, we are less than eighty days out from the election; none of that is going to get fixed between now and November. Electoral reform is a long-term (but important!) goal, not something that can be effected in the span of a couple of months by telling people online to vote third party. There is no “instant ceasefire and peace negotiation” button that we're callously overlooking by encouraging people to vote for Kamala. (My god, if there was, we would all be pressing it.)

If we're suggesting people vote for her, it's not that we “are willing to overlook genocide” or “don't care about sacrificing brown people abroad” or whatever. Nothing is being “overlooked” here. It's that we're simply not willing to accept everything else in this post and more on top of continued atrocities in Gaza. We're not willing to take Trump and his godawful far-right authoritarian agenda as an acceptable consequence of feeling like we have the moral high ground on Palestine. I cannot stress enough that if Kamala doesn't win, we - we all, in the whole world - get Trump. Are you willing to accept that?

And one more point to address: I've seen too many people act frighteningly flippant and naïve about terrible things Trump or his campaign want to do, with the idea that people will simply be able to prevent all these bad things by “organising” and “protesting” and “collective action”. “I'm not willing to accept these things; that's why I'll fight them tooth and nail every day of their administration” - OK but if you're not even willing to cast a vote then I have doubts about your ability to form “the Resistance”, which by the way would have to involve cooperation with people of lots of progressive political stripes in order to have the manpower to be effective, and if you're so committed to political purity that you view temporarily lending your support to Kamala at the ballot box as an untenable betrayal of everything you stand for then forgive me for also doubting your ability to productively cooperate with allies on the ground with whom you don't 100% agree. Plus, if the Trump campaign gets its way, American progressives would be kept so busy trying to put out about twenty different fires at once that you'd be able to accomplish very little. Maybe you get them to soften their stance on trans healthcare but oh shit, the climate policies are still in place. But more importantly, how many people do you think will protest for abortion rights if doing so means staring down a gun? Or organise to protect their neighbours from deportation if doing so means being thrown in prison yourself? And OK, maybe you're sure that you will, but history has shown us time and time again that most people won't. Most people aren't willing to face that kind of personal risk. And a tiny number of lefties willing to risk incarceration or death to protect undocumented people or trans people or whatever other groups are targeted is sadly not enough to prevent the horrors from happening. That is small fry compared to the full might of a determined state. Of course if the worst happens and Trump wins then you should do what you can to mitigate the harm; I'm not saying you shouldn't. But really the time to act is now. You have an opportunity right here to mitigate the harm and it's called “not letting him get elected”. Act now to prevent that kind of horrific authoritarian situation from developing in the first place; don't sit this one out under the naïve belief that “we'll be able to stop it if it happens”. You won't.

[nuadaargetlamh]

One is a convicted criminal that wants to:

Institute a dictatorship “on day one only” (with majority support from his party!)

Give a greenlight to Project 2025

Use a weakened Schedule F to install THOUSANDS of cronies

Institute military tribunals for his political enemies (and allies!)

Gun down “enemies from within”

Support Russia in wiping Ukraine off the map

Use the combo of the removal of the Chevron deference/the Supreme Court allowing people to openly bribe them/Schedule F to extend the far-right’s reach into every government agency and deregulate everything to the benefit of his rich capitalist buddies

Has gotten total immunity for “official acts” (what counts as “official”? Whatever his Schedule F appointed judges choose of course.)

Already took away so many freedoms from racial minorities/queer people/women/anyone-that-isn’t-a-rich-white-man that it would take ages to list them all in this post

and so so so so SO MUCH MORE.

The other is a typical neoliberal politician.

Remember also, you’re not just choosing a president, you’re choosing their cabinet, potential Supreme Court justices, federal employees as well. With the above listed ALONE, Trump would do so much more damage than just what he can do himself. That’s not including everything else his Federalist Society Supreme Court would and have given him on a silver platter. Supreme Court Justices are for LIFE, and we’ve already seen the potentially irreparable damage this far-right activist court has done to the fabric of democracy.

Project 2025 really deserves a part to itself just to list some of what it includes: complete abortion/contraceptive ban (no exceptions), destroying worker’s unions and protections, remove Social Security/Medicare/Affordable Care Act, end civil rights protections in government, ban teaching the history of slavery, remove climate protections while gutting the EPA, end equal marriage and enforce the “traditional family ideal”, use the military to gun down protests, mass deportation of legal immigrants (especially Muslims), ending birthright citizenship, pack the lower courts, and plenty more. The far-right wasn’t able to take full advantage of Trump’s presidency the first time since it was so unexpected. They’re preparing so that they won’t make the same mistake again. THERE ARE OVER 900 PAGES OF POLICIES AND PLANS THAT THEY ABSOLUTELY WILL IMPLEMENT IF THEY WIN. READ IT. Anyone that says they won’t is either a liar or already drank the Kool-Aid. Isn’t it interesting that every politician that supports it, including his vice president, wants Trump to win?

Not to mention, if you care about Palestine (like I do, a lot), Trump would be MUCH WORSE for Palestine than the other candidate, supporting Bibi going “from the river to the sea” and already cut off millions in aid to Palestine in 2018 (which Dems reversed!). If you support a free Palestine and don’t vote blue, you have categorically hurt them more than if you did. Even Palestinians themselves want the Democrat candidate over Trump. There is no quick and bloodless peace deal that both Palestine and Israel would ever agree to. The road to an end of the Palestine-Israel conflict is going to be long and difficult, probably decades of dedicated de-radicalization in both states, and will involve far more than one person’s decisions in the end. Unless Trump takes power, and avoids all that by sending enough bombs to turn the Gaza Strip into dust.

There are a few reasons you would choose to vote third party in a FPTP system (support ranked choice voting btw) or not vote “in protest” while ignoring all the state and local elections that affect your area more than the president. Either you’re privileged enough to not be affected by what Trump would bring, you’re ignorant of the consequences, or you care more about doing nothing perfectly rather than doing something, anything that isn’t 100% ideologically “pure” to fight against the far-right fascist movement.

Am I a democratic socialist? Yes. Am I a realist? Also yes. In every single down-ballot race, and through my activism, I will fight for the rights of the oppressed and working-class. But the Presidency isn’t fucking winnable right now, and probably won’t be for decades. Pro-corporatist/anti-worker sentiment is baked into the fucking bones of this country and its people. A majority of eligible voters wouldn’t vote for Bernie, and he’s barely center-left. Voting for anything other than one of the two big parties is a useless feel-good gesture at the moment. Or you’re a dumbass accelerationist, and if you are, honestly go fuck yourself.

Let’s say you want a socialist revolution, full-tilt government takeover. I want that too, in my wildest dreams! We’re on the same page there. So how are you going to do it. How? HOW? What pro-worker activist groups are you working with? Are you encouraging your workplace to form a union? Volunteering for/donating to your local farmers’ co-op? Canvassing for pro-worker legislation? Hell, even something as small as distributing free copies of high-school/college textbooks, so that those of poorer means have a better chance at affording advanced education? Are you doing anything to help? Any praxis at all, rather than typing wishful thoughts of revolution alongside insults to people who aren’t as “correct” as you on the internet?

Every voter that still supports Trump is energized by every cruelty he enacts, while millions of Democrats and third-partyists care more about purity tests and manifesting socialist revolution tulpas than avoiding a fascist dictatorship.

Have a brain, touch grass, and vote blue all the way down that fucking ballot.

[mariacallous]

The first thing to say about the hate and scorn currently directed at the mainstream US media is that they worked hard to earn it. They’ve done so by failing, repeatedly, determinedly, spectacularly to do their job, which is to maintain their independence, inform the electorate, and speak truth to power. While the left has long had reasons to dismiss centrist media, and the right has loathed it most when it did do its job well, the moderates who are furious at it now seem to be something new – and a host of former editors, media experts and independent journalists have been going after them hard this summer.

Longtime journalist James Fallows declares that three institutions – the Republican party, the supreme court, and the mainstream political press – “have catastrophically failed to ‘meet the moment’ under pressure of [the] Trump era”. Centrist political reformer and columnist Norm Ornstein states that these news institutions “have had no reflection, no willingness to think through how irresponsible and reckless so much of our mainstream press and so many of our journalists have been and continue to be”.

Most voters, he says, “have no clue what a second Trump term would actually be like. Instead, we get the same insipid focus on the horse race and the polls, while normalizing abnormal behavior and treating this like a typical presidential election, not one that is an existential threat to democracy.”

Lamenting the state of the media recently on X, Jeff Jarvis, another former editor and newspaper columnist, said: “What ‘press’? The broken and vindictive Times? The newly Murdochian Post? Hedge-fund newspaper husks? Rudderless CNN or NPR? Murdoch’s fascist media?”

These critics are responding to how the behemoths of the industry seem intent on bending the facts to fit their frameworks and agendas. In pursuit of clickbait content centered on conflicts and personalities, they follow each other into informational stampedes and confirmation bubbles.

They pursue the appearance of fairness and balance by treating the true and the false, the normal and the outrageous, as equally valid and by normalizing Republicans, especially Donald Trump, whose gibberish gets translated into English and whose past crimes and present-day lies and threats get glossed over. They neglect, again and again, important stories with real consequences. This is not entirely new – in a scathing analysis of 2016 election coverage, the Columbia Journalism Review noted that “in just six days, The New York Times ran as many cover stories about Hillary Clinton’s emails as they did about all policy issues combined in the 69 days leading up to the election” – but it’s gotten worse, and a lot of insiders have gotten sick of it.

In July, ordinary people on social media decided to share information about the rightwing Project 2025 and did a superb job of raising public awareness about it, while the press obsessed about Joe Biden’s age and health. NBC did report on this grassroots education effort, but did so using the “both sides are equally valid” framework often deployed by mainstream media, saying the agenda is “championed by some creators as a guide to less government oversight and slammed by others as a road map to an authoritarian takeover of America”. There is no valid case it brings less government oversight.

In an even more outrageous case, the New York Times ran a story comparing the Democratic and Republican plans to increase the housing supply – which treated Trump’s plans for mass deportation of undocumented immigrants as just another housing-supply strategy that might work or might not. (That it would create massive human rights violations and likely lead to huge civil disturbances was one overlooked factor, though the fact that some of these immigrants are key to the building trades was mentioned.)

Other stories of pressing concern are either picked up and dropped or just neglected overall, as with Trump’s threats to dismantle a huge portion of the climate legislation that is both the Biden administration’s signal achievement and crucial for the fate of the planet. The Washington Post editorial board did offer this risibly feeble critique on 17 August: “It would no doubt be better for the climate if the US president acknowledged the reality of global warming – rather than calling it a scam, as Mr Trump has.”

While the press blamed Biden for failing to communicate his achievements, which is part of his job, it’s their whole job to do so. The Climate Jobs National Resource Center reports that the Inflation Reduction Act has created “a combined potential of over $2tn in investment, 1,091,966 megawatts of clean power, and approximately 3,947,670 jobs”, but few Americans have any sense of what the bill has achieved or even that the economy is by many measures strong.

Last winter, the New York Times columnist Paul Krugman, who has a Nobel prize in economics, told Greg Sargent on the latter’s Daily Blast podcast that when he writes positive pieces about the Biden economy, his editor asks “don’t you want to qualify” it; “aren’t people upset by X, Y and Z and shouldn’t you be acknowledging that?”

Meanwhile in an accusatory piece about Kamala Harris headlined When your opponent calls you ‘communist,’ maybe don’t propose price controls?, a Washington Post columnist declares in another case of bothsiderism: “Voters want to blame someone for high grocery bills, and the presidential candidates have apparently decided the choices are either the Biden administration or corporate greed. Harris has chosen the latter.” The evidence that corporations have jacked up prices and are reaping huge profits is easy to find, but facts don’t matter much in this kind of opining.

It’s hard to gloat over the decline of these dinosaurs of American media, when a free press and a well-informed electorate are both crucial to democracy. The alternatives to the major news outlets simply don’t reach enough readers and listeners, though the non-profit investigative outfit ProPublica and progressive magazines such as the New Republic and Mother Jones, are doing a lot of the best reporting and commentary.

Earlier this year, when Alabama senator Katie Britt gave her loopy rebuttal to Biden’s State of the Union address, it was an independent journalist, Jonathan Katz, who broke the story on TikTok that her claims about a victim of sex trafficking contained significant falsehoods. The big news outlets picked up the scoop from him, making me wonder what their staffs of hundreds were doing that night.

A host of brilliant journalists young and old, have started independent newsletters, covering tech, the state of the media, politics, climate, reproductive rights and virtually everything else, but their reach is too modest to make them a replacement for the big newspapers and networks. The great exception might be historian Heather Cox Richardson, whose newsletter and Facebook followers give her a readership not much smaller than that of the Washington Post. The tremendous success of her sober, historically grounded (and footnoted!) news summaries and reflections bespeaks a hunger for real news.

[wiisagi-maiingan]

Statements that HAVE to coexist:

Reassuring people about the low chances of certain laws and policies being passed, especially with regards to Project 2025, is incredibly important and good for keeping people from burning out and falling into doomerist cycles.

"It can never happen here" is a statement that people have said for all of history all throughout the world and it is an EXTREMELY dangerous mindset. It CAN happen. The worst possible thing you can imagine Trump doing can happen. Understand that and accept it because this comfortable idea of "this threat is so ridiculous that it doesn't even need to be taken seriously" is an attitude that kills. We've been seeing this attitude so much with regards to abortion and queer rights and immigration and we keep being proven wrong and then just saying it again about the next thing and it HAS to stop.

[rebel-girl-queen-of-my-world]

IMMIGRANT RIGHTS RESOURCES (forwarding from a friend -- share widely)

Hope you are having a blessed day! With the help of a friend, I have compiled a list of resources that provide info in several different languages regarding immigrant rights.  I am sharing these links to resources with you and others because we never know who will come into our orbit that might need help or the orbit of others dear to us. This is by no means a complete list but it useful and helpful nonetheless.

Immigrant Rights Resources 

Flyers regarding immigrant rights if ICE raids the home, workplace or arrest them in the street. 

https://www.aila.org/library/know-your-rights-handouts-if-ice-visits-public

Red Cards (template to be printed and laminated) are small cards that immigrants can carry in their language which would have course of action if they get stoped but also in the back it explains to the ice agent in English that the person being stopped is instituting their rights under the la which applies to them. 

https://www.masslegalservices.org/content/red-card-templates

https://www.ilrc.org/red-cards-tarjetas-rojas

National Immigration Law Center Press Release:

https://www.nilc.org/press/nilc-statement-on-reports-that-trump-plans-to-revoke-policy-safeguarding-schools-churches-from-ice/

Undocumented Immigrants’ Rights Under the United States Constitution

https://www.accessiblelaw.untdallas.edu/post/undocumented-immigrants-rights-under-the-united-states-constitution

Daily Immigration News Clips 2025

https://www.aila.org/library/daily-immigration-news-clips-january-14-2025

Also here are some local immigrant rights groups throughout MA that could be helpful to people (depending on geography)

Massachusetts Immigrant rights groups!

https://miracoalition.org/

https://www.ifsi-usa.org/

https://braziliancenter.org/

https://www.truealliancecenter.org/8203achievements.html

https://bcnc.net/

https://cct-newbedford.org/

my addition: https://www.beyondbondboston.org/

[saywhat-politics]

Jan. 27, 2025, 1:00 PM MST

By Laura Strickler

A group of Quaker congregations is suing the Department of Homeland Security for changing a policy that prevented Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents from carrying out operations in so-called “sensitive locations” such as houses of worship, playgrounds, schools and hospitals without approval from supervisors.

The policy, which had been in place under multiple administrations — including during President Donald Trump’s first term — was rescinded last week.

The lawsuit, which was filed in federal district court in Maryland on Monday, alleges, “The very threat of that [immigration] enforcement deters congregants from attending services, especially members of immigrant communities,” and argues that attending religious services is at the heart of the “guarantee of religious liberty.”

Faith leaders, local officials and educators have objected to the policy reversal and have been vocal about their opposition, but the suit appears to be the first from a faith-based organization challenging the change in court.

“A week ago today, President Trump swore an oath to defend the Constitution and yet today religious institutions that have existed since the 1600s in our country are having to go to court to challenge what is a violation of every individual’s constitutional right to worship and associate freely,” said Skye Perryman, president and CEO of Democracy Forward, which is providing the lawyers representing the Quaker groups.

Perryman said the lawsuit addresses more than churches that act as sanctuaries. “The troubling nature of the policy goes beyond just houses of worship with sanctuary programs — it is that ICE could enter religious and sacred spaces whenever it wants,” she said.

Noah Merrill, secretary of the New England Yearly Meeting of Friends, one of the plaintiffs in the suit, told NBC News in an email: "Quaker meetings for worship seek to be a sanctuary and a refuge for all, and this new and invasive practice tangibly erodes that possibility by creating unnecessary anxiety, confusion, and chilling of our members’ and neighbors’ willingness to share with us in the worship which sustains our lives. This undermines our communities and, we believe, violates our religious freedom."

According to the lawsuit, the policy that protected “sensitive locations” from immigration enforcement without prior approval dates back to the early 1990s. It was meant to allow undocumented people to operate freely in certain public areas with the idea that doing so would ultimately benefit not just them, but also the larger community — for example, by allowing children to be in school during the day, and letting sick people visit hospitals without fear of deportation.