Completely authoritarian and unacceptable. This entire saga shows the American political system has serious flaws where it cannot hold the executive branch accountable.
This story in particular seems like a flaw. There should not be such a thing as a privilege that the executive branch can revoke with no explanation or process.
It was a long period of time voting for totalitarians. Checks and balances worked by design: preventing immediate radical changes. And they worked by design: allowing changes gradually over a period of time if people keep voting for the same thing. And now it's here.
It's not "cannot" but "will not", and the flaw is not with the American political system but with the GOP and the American populace. Congress could absolutely rein this in at any time if Republicans in Congress cared to do so; the Supreme Court could rein this in at any time if the Republicans on the Supreme Court cared to do so. Do not let yourself be convinced that the problem is Trump or a too-powerful executive; the problem is an entire party and the people who cheerfully vote for it.
How on earth can you say that with a straight face?
> Attached to this order is an appendix that identifies 96 court orders that ICE has violated in 74 cases. The extent of ICE’s noncompliance is almost certainly substantially understated. This list is confined to orders issued since January 1, 2026, and the list was hurriedly compiled by extraordinarily busy judges.
> ICE has likely violated more court orders in January 2026 than some federal agencies have violated in their entire existence.
This is an official filing--facts, not a news report. A judge placed his job on the line and said these things in a written, filed, official ruling.
The problem isn't judicial rulings; the problems are petulant bullies who simply ignore the rulings; and completely subservient sycophants who only can say "As you wish, master."
I agree the voters and party are a problem, but disagree that we shouldn’t do more. We need better checks and balances on an administration that willfully and casually violates constitutional rights all the time. Not to mention the constant corruption and grifting that enriches the Trump family. We should have a system that can protect against this even when the majority makes a bad voting decision.
There were some. They all got dismantled. Loyalists have been systematically installed into all relevant positions. What system is immune to this? There is none. Voters have to take responsibility for what they voted for, which is the complete destruction of the United States of America as a political unit.
But neither congress nor the presidency is an accurate representation of the will of the people, and that is one of the flaws with the American political system.
The problem is that it does represent a lot of people in America. A very vocal and active part of America. It’s not some tiny demographic either. It doesn’t represent the majority but the majority doesn’t vote, doesn’t take action, and is overall extremely passive in their political position. Some of this is good because most Americans are wildly uneducated. Problem is that people are more likely to try to protect what exists than try to move towards a new paradigm. That’s the biggest reason we have such a slow moving system in the US. Most people in the US are very wary of change at this point because they’re not educated about anything.
The American political system has definite problems, but so does every other system. If you rank democracies by any metric, the USA has done rather well, if not the best. If you disagree with that statement, I invite you to list the countries you consider democratic, in your order of ‘successfulness’.
Yes, and in part because of that. The way they teach history and make their citizens resistant to authoritarianism through schooling is different from the really basic ways history is taught in America.
Not that they had a wide field of choice and not that they can actually fire him.
Both reasons the US political system isn't all that great - it nosedived into a two party Hotelling's Law quagmire despite the founders being against party politics. It's hardly suprising a system centuries old and creaking failed to scale.
Washminster systems are a literal reaction to the cracks in the Westminster and Washington systems.
Maybe check those American Exceptionalism / Manifest Destiny blinkers and look about a little, it's hard to see out of a rut.
Washington captured many issues of the party system in his farewell address. This can relate to many times in history for both parties.
"They serve to organize faction, to give it an
artificial and extraordinary force—to put in the place
of the delegated will of the nation the will of a party;
often a small but artful and enterprising minority of
the community; and, according to the alternate
triumphs of different parties, to make the public
administration the mirror of the ill concerted and
incongruous projects of faction, rather than the organ
of consistent and wholesome plans digested by
common councils and modified by mutual interests.
However combinations or associations of the above
description may now and then answer popular ends,
they are likely, in the course of time and things, to
become potent engines by which cunning, ambitious,
and unprincipled men will be enabled to subvert the
power of the people and to usurp for themselves the
reins of government, destroying afterwards the very
engines which have lifted them to unjust dominion."
Ben Franklin on why the US Constitution is "Probably the best we can do for now" but will likely "fall to a Despot" is worth a revist in these Trumpian times.
> The Germans literally elected the Nazis... you think they’re better at democracy
FYI - Germany changed their government after this regime fell, to ensure that it would become more democratic and harder to concentrate power in the executive. So they became more democratic as a learning process.
The US had an actual civil war (over slavery no less) and didn't change anything fundamental about their constitution nor government structure as a result. It was less deadly than the holocaust, but enduring a civil war is not a sign of a functioning democracy.
LOL, the first list also seems to use the US as the cut-off & first country that is a “deficient democracy”. The magic number must be between somewhere between 0.811 and 0.821.
Having spent a good chunk of my life in Canada and the US, a list that has Canada as more democratic doesn’t make any sense to me. In the end, it’s just a random mix of different measurements, weighted to tell whatever story you want to tell.
Agree. This is absolutely unacceptable by any measurement you can name. They are not respecting equality under the law, they are behaving like a terrorist regime. Every one of these people needs to be held accountable and prosecuted to the fullest extent the US Constitution allows. End of Story.
"While becoming a U.S. citizen, Kurt Gödel confided in his friend Albert Einstein that he had found an inconsistency in the U.S. Constitution that would allow the U.S. to become a dictatorship, causing Einstein to worry that Gödel's unpredictability would lead to his application being denied."
Since she was in her car they could have identified her by her car’s number plate - but facial recognition sounds scarier - which I guess is the point.
it's not speculation, they specifically tell people that they're using facial recognition. They threaten protestors that they're entering them into a domestic terrorist database using facial recognition. They're arresting people and detaining them for long periods of time without due process, even while having proof of citizenship (real id, passports) on them, because of a facial recognition hit.
Who knows, but ICE agents are terrorizing people with the threat. It’s fascinating that the Ministry of Information is trying to redefine terrorist to mean something other than the people who try to induce mass terror for political gain:
Along with MAGA supporters who buy pizzas and leave threatening messages for judges and politicians who rule against or oppose Trump after he makes a social media post decrying them. Senator Elissa Slotkin talked about all the death threats she and her family received when the president was calling her treasonous and saying she along with the five others who were reminding military and intelligence members of their oath to the Constitution.
Would be cool if America required law enforcement not to be able to lie to citizens so we could actually know what is going on, and what law enforcement is doing. But I guess police secrets/secret policing/lies are better for an open society.
With the protestors entering in rental car license plates of ICE or suspected ICE agents into their own database, I wouldn't want to rent a car anytime soon - the possibility of getting a car previously rented by ICE or suspected ICE, and being assaulted by having whistles blown in my ears, is off-putting.
it starts with a rental car trip, an "incidental roadrage" incident while travelling, then the surveillance and whistle blowing starts at a rest stop, and then the complete lockout from any business, lodgings, or financial dealings.
It seems easy enough to not cover your face, not look like you're itching to kill someone, and honk your horn in support when you see some protestors. I'd be more worried that they had been smoking meth in the car.
> With the protestors entering in rental car license plates of ICE or suspected ICE agents into their own database, I wouldn't want to rent a car anytime soon - the possibility of getting a car previously rented by ICE or suspected ICE, and being assaulted by having whistles blown in my ears, is off-putting.
Oh this, 1000 times. I believe some of the protesters are also targeting cars out-of-state plates.
I recently had a rental with out-of-state Texas plates, which just gave me another reason to avoid any place where there was ICE activity. Otherwise I'd have to show my passport to one group and I suppose point to my child car seat to the other, just to avoid getting caught in the middle.
Note how these thugs just casually lie to create some fantasy narrative that runs completely counter to the ideas of the Constitution, an open society, and government responsible to The People. When the fascist talking heads get on TV and claim that agents had no choice but to execute another American because they were being "impeded", everyone would do well to remember how readily their whole organization characterizes passive and peaceful democratic activity as "impeding".
Maybe this is not helpful either, but I wonder if that person is correct. The national debt is already bad. With the trillions of new national debt from the Trump administration, and also the destruction of basically every foreign relationship, how will the country manage its finances? I feel like the only way out is to print money and cause extreme inflation. But that also means the death of the US dollar as the global reserve currency.
Look at any other country that went through a similar period. These regimes never voluntarily relinquish power, but they're forced to within 20 years due to some crushing military defeat, economic collapse, assassination, violent revolt, etcetera. It's never ended with a peaceful transition of power and a smooth winding down of the bad stuff.
The US existed just fine before 2003. We can structure any replacement organization to hold it accountable with checks and balances, like every other agency.
Yeah, but there is quite a gulf between possible and even likely.
I can think of very few time seen the state give up extra powers it gives itself in emergencies, and the few places where I see it give up powers are at the behest of industries demanding "de-regulation".
Even, say, cannabis decriminalization can be understood (from the stand point of the legislators) as pro-business.
So serious question: when has the US given up powers? It'd do my brain a lot of good to have a picture of how this has happened in the past so I can be less cynical in the present.
You might site the Church commission, maybe, but that seems to be exactly the kind of thing that is both likely and wholly ineffective beyond a the 5-10 year timescale.
This is a bit thin to be drawing any conclusions. Only what one person claims. Has this happened to anyone else? Might there be another reason (that they're not telling us) that this happened?
The authoritarianism infrastructure was always there, it's been built for decades from red scare, McCarthyism, post 9/11 legislation, carnivore type monitoring with joke oversight, and now AI for the firehose.
We are extremely lucky that this is the form of authoritarianism is currently being exerted.
gnabgib | a day ago
SilverElfin | a day ago
hackingonempty | a day ago
foweltschmerz | a day ago
BobaFloutist | 5 hours ago
There's no democratic system of government that's completely immune to a majority of voters actively trying to erode and damage the system.
SpicyLemonZest | a day ago
BrenBarn | a day ago
direwolf20 | a day ago
jjav | 22 hours ago
Unfortunately turns out that in practice two of the three don't actually have any power at all when push comes to shove.
direwolf20 | 22 hours ago
jamincan | 12 hours ago
clipsy | a day ago
zeroonetwothree | a day ago
MengerSponge | a day ago
bsder | a day ago
> Attached to this order is an appendix that identifies 96 court orders that ICE has violated in 74 cases. The extent of ICE’s noncompliance is almost certainly substantially understated. This list is confined to orders issued since January 1, 2026, and the list was hurriedly compiled by extraordinarily busy judges.
> ICE has likely violated more court orders in January 2026 than some federal agencies have violated in their entire existence.
Ref: https://storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.mnd.230...
This is an official filing--facts, not a news report. A judge placed his job on the line and said these things in a written, filed, official ruling.
The problem isn't judicial rulings; the problems are petulant bullies who simply ignore the rulings; and completely subservient sycophants who only can say "As you wish, master."
SilverElfin | a day ago
direwolf20 | a day ago
notarget137 | 22 hours ago
BrenBarn | a day ago
bradlys | 13 hours ago
nickff | a day ago
kortex | a day ago
https://www.democracymatrix.com/ranking
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Economist_Democracy_Index
https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/democracy-index-eiu
nickff | a day ago
SilverElfin | a day ago
HWR_14 | a day ago
direwolf20 | a day ago
defrost | a day ago
Not that they had a wide field of choice and not that they can actually fire him.
Both reasons the US political system isn't all that great - it nosedived into a two party Hotelling's Law quagmire despite the founders being against party politics. It's hardly suprising a system centuries old and creaking failed to scale.
Washminster systems are a literal reaction to the cracks in the Westminster and Washington systems.
Maybe check those American Exceptionalism / Manifest Destiny blinkers and look about a little, it's hard to see out of a rut.
Diesel555 | a day ago
"They serve to organize faction, to give it an artificial and extraordinary force—to put in the place of the delegated will of the nation the will of a party; often a small but artful and enterprising minority of the community; and, according to the alternate triumphs of different parties, to make the public administration the mirror of the ill concerted and incongruous projects of faction, rather than the organ of consistent and wholesome plans digested by common councils and modified by mutual interests. However combinations or associations of the above description may now and then answer popular ends, they are likely, in the course of time and things, to become potent engines by which cunning, ambitious, and unprincipled men will be enabled to subvert the power of the people and to usurp for themselves the reins of government, destroying afterwards the very engines which have lifted them to unjust dominion."
https://www.senate.gov/artandhistory/history/resources/pdf/W...
defrost | a day ago
Ben Franklin on why the US Constitution is "Probably the best we can do for now" but will likely "fall to a Despot" is worth a revist in these Trumpian times.
vineyardmike | a day ago
FYI - Germany changed their government after this regime fell, to ensure that it would become more democratic and harder to concentrate power in the executive. So they became more democratic as a learning process.
The US had an actual civil war (over slavery no less) and didn't change anything fundamental about their constitution nor government structure as a result. It was less deadly than the holocaust, but enduring a civil war is not a sign of a functioning democracy.
beeflet | a day ago
amscanne | a day ago
Having spent a good chunk of my life in Canada and the US, a list that has Canada as more democratic doesn’t make any sense to me. In the end, it’s just a random mix of different measurements, weighted to tell whatever story you want to tell.
jjav | 22 hours ago
https://www.ft.com/content/b474855e-66b0-4e6e-9b73-7e252bd88...
jaybrendansmith | a day ago
rasz | 8 hours ago
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kurt_G%C3%B6del#Princeton,_Ein...
ChrisArchitect | a day ago
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46823261
chvid | a day ago
notepad0x90 | a day ago
caminante | a day ago
Is this in article? I figured it was using traveler photos stored in Customs/Border Patrol systems (e.g., Global Entry).
fnordpiglet | 23 hours ago
https://newrepublic.com/post/205629/ice-agent-threat-domesti...
eproxus | 16 hours ago
goatlover | 10 hours ago
_DeadFred_ | 10 hours ago
kmoser | a day ago
caminante | a day ago
Besides, it's a good guess:
>Hey Maggie
>I'm not Maggie. I'm Sarah. Here's my ID. Maggie loaned me her car.
JohnFen | 15 hours ago
caminante | 12 hours ago
rationalist | a day ago
rolph | a day ago
due to the vehicles recent usage:
it starts with a rental car trip, an "incidental roadrage" incident while travelling, then the surveillance and whistle blowing starts at a rest stop, and then the complete lockout from any business, lodgings, or financial dealings.
no fuel, no food no water...
i wonder how the story ends.
fnordpiglet | 23 hours ago
mindslight | 23 hours ago
palmotea | 14 hours ago
Oh this, 1000 times. I believe some of the protesters are also targeting cars out-of-state plates.
I recently had a rental with out-of-state Texas plates, which just gave me another reason to avoid any place where there was ICE activity. Otherwise I'd have to show my passport to one group and I suppose point to my child car seat to the other, just to avoid getting caught in the middle.
mindslight | a day ago
Note how these thugs just casually lie to create some fantasy narrative that runs completely counter to the ideas of the Constitution, an open society, and government responsible to The People. When the fascist talking heads get on TV and claim that agents had no choice but to execute another American because they were being "impeded", everyone would do well to remember how readily their whole organization characterizes passive and peaceful democratic activity as "impeding".
mannyv | a day ago
Distractions are not serious until they are.
mindslight | a day ago
mcfunley | a day ago
direwolf20 | a day ago
etrautmann | a day ago
SilverElfin | 22 hours ago
direwolf20 | 22 hours ago
HaZeust | 12 hours ago
direwolf20 | 10 hours ago
HaZeust | 8 hours ago
mfru | 23 hours ago
Gud | 18 hours ago
Why the fuck would I want the country most capable to destroy us all to deteriorate?
wookmaster | 16 hours ago
tencentshill | 15 hours ago
scarecrowbob | 13 hours ago
I can think of very few time seen the state give up extra powers it gives itself in emergencies, and the few places where I see it give up powers are at the behest of industries demanding "de-regulation".
Even, say, cannabis decriminalization can be understood (from the stand point of the legislators) as pro-business.
So serious question: when has the US given up powers? It'd do my brain a lot of good to have a picture of how this has happened in the past so I can be less cynical in the present.
You might site the Church commission, maybe, but that seems to be exactly the kind of thing that is both likely and wholly ineffective beyond a the 5-10 year timescale.
_DeadFred_ | 10 hours ago
scarecrowbob | 7 hours ago
HaZeust | 12 hours ago
dyauspitr | a day ago
AtlasBarfed | a day ago
dns_snek | 22 hours ago
Even then it's just one camp, it's not that bad. Real fascism is when you have hundreds.
readams | a day ago
conception | 15 hours ago
_DeadFred_ | 10 hours ago
AtlasBarfed | a day ago
We are extremely lucky that this is the form of authoritarianism is currently being exerted.
It could be so so so much worse
etrautmann | a day ago
ChrisArchitect | 23 hours ago
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46832751
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46823261