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Trump's Second Term

Safe-Keeper said:
I just had a sinister thought. With crime going down in the States and prisons going empty, rounding up large numbers of 'illegals' would be a nice way to fill prisons again. Dough for the profit-driven prison industry, with ICE being modern-day slave catchers.

Jason Pargin reflecting on how crime is decreasing in the USA.
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Yeah that's pretty much the idea. But I doubt it will be built out to completion for a number of reasons. I suspect there are going to be serious issues arising with ICE.

There was a bill doubling the number of Border Patrol agents way back under Bush (W). and nothing changed. They simply couldn't hire people for these jobs. Turnover was high. But then, they were confined to the border area, ICE can range around.

For now Trump has told them to lay off restaurants, hotels and farms. Construction may be next, or else there will be a shortage of construction workers to build the new prisons. I am also not convinced that this approach is all that popular. If ICE is doing some real digging and extricating gang members etc. then there's a purpose other than being a perpetual-motion machine. Instead they go for the lowest-hanging fruit (people with steady jobs) which worsens a labor shortage ... just a cascade of negative effects. The optics will add up. They're probably going to start trying to seize kids at schools. Taking U.S. citizen kids out of school and using them as bait to get to their possibly illegal parents. Hospitals might also be useful. Demand to see the papers of anyone exiting. Can't prove citizenship? Come with us. But the hospital has his emergency contact number and his extended family calls the news.

By some point, congress critters are hearing from people - even white people - that abuses are going on, or terrible situations that may have legal cover but are just bad. Cases that have nothing to do with public safety. Where it all just starts to look like kind of a cruel boondoggle.

So anyway! While I would not describe my mood as optimistic I repeat my post-election mantra, "Unintended consequences." Trump keeps enough balls in the air to distract the press but with all the lousy advice he gets, and his own whims, and the incompetent Cabinet, maybe there will be a super-scandal that turns off some of his support. ICE is slippery, things can tip.
 
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Minoosh said:
By some congress critters are hearing from people - even white people - that abuses are going on, or terrible situations that may have legal cover but are just bad. Cases that have nothing to do with public safety. Where it all just starts to look like kind of a cruel boondoggle.
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What makes you think that there's a majority in either house that disapproves of cruel boondoggles?
 
Armitage72 said:
It takes special economic talents to go bankrupt running a casino.
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Unless he *planned* to go bankrupt. Did he make more money on his feckless financial practices than he would have running a successful casino?

This was what the faithful would say, probably. Every misstep the president makes is part of a brilliant pattern. A negotiating tactic.
 
Y'all worrying too much about this ICE expansion and immigration; it's not for immigration at all, it's just Trump building up a private army that answers only to himself and has a large budget and no oversight and no courts have power over it. So we can all relax it about it, immigration is the least of its purposes.
 
Mike! said:
But he got to name it, and that's the important thing.
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Except that he didn’t.
Chuck Shumer successfully moved to have that stupid name removed from the act.
While Sen. Pete Ricketts, R-Neb., was chairing the Senate, Schumer raised a point of order against lines three to five on the first page of the legislative proposal that said, "SHORT TITLE. This Act may be cited as the ‘'One Big Beautiful Bill Act.'"

Schumer argued the title of the bill violated Section 313 B1A of the Congressional Budget Act of 1974, or what's commonly referred to as the "Byrd Rule."
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Mojo said:
What makes you think that there's a majority in either house that disapproves of cruel boondoggles?
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I think individual *people* might disapprove, and that will hurt some of them at home. On humanitarian or other grounds. As long as ICE gives the impression it's sending home people with rap sheets, people will be OK with it. But when they run out of those, and they still have quotas they will just be back to snatching people en masse, I think Trump is going to reconsider the deployment. And almost certainly the Supreme Court would get involved. And there will probably be corrupt ICE agents. Lobbying by corporations, blah blah blah.

I just kind of think it's not going to work out how they planned.

ETA: There's a little idealism, I don't think too much, in my views. This also applies to the Medicaid topics. I wouldn't put it past Trump to try to shore up Medicaid in red states while cutting it in blue states. Someone has to make sure that doesn't happen. Press needs to be looking.
 
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TragicMonkey said:
Y'all worrying too much about this ICE expansion and immigration; it's not for immigration at all, it's just Trump building up a private army that answers only to himself and has a large budget and no oversight and no courts have power over it. So we can all relax it about it, immigration is the least of its purposes.
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I had the same thought. It's a slush fund.
 
Minoosh said:
From a Trump tweet
Trillions of Dollars are now being invested into the USA, more than ever before.
Likewise, hundreds of Billions of Dollars in Tariffs are filling up the coffers of Treasury

Trillions of whose money? and "Hundreds of Billions in tariffs?" Can that possible in any sense be true? Seems like they could restore a lot of people's Medicaid if it's bringing that kind of revenue.
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In Trump's fantasies. I don't think those tariffs/taxes are flowing into the country's coffers. Do we have any evidence of that?
 
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