This just seems like a power grab to empower federal level personal thugs for the executive branch.
Most of these departments have rules about how they use our data. ICE now gobbles it all up and can use it without rules by a department that operates with little regard and lots of exceptions to typical protections for citizens afforded by the constitution.
The majority in SCOTUS does not seem to care (it’s ok as long as their guy does it). Whatever rules we thought there were seem to be out the window because someone magically moved data or ICE got to do it or so on ...
dmix · 5h ago
> lots of exceptions to typical protections for citizens afforded by the constitution
Almost the entire US constitution applies to non-citizens in the country, with some small exceptions like voting and holding public office.
TimorousBestie · 5h ago
You’re technically correct, but in the last few decades a great deal of legal scholarship has gone into convincing the relevant parties that this isn’t so.
cogman10 · 2h ago
All that matters is what the supreme court believes that the constitution and laws mean.
It's true that if you applied prior judicial standards that its crystal clear the constitution and bill of rights extend beyond just protecting citizens. Same for the law. However, with a lot of the recent rulings it seems that now "might makes right" and "if the president does it, it's not illegal".
Both the judicial and legislative bodies have ceded nearly all their power to the executive. We're in for a bumpy ride.
privatelypublic · 1h ago
I don't think it's ever been the case of "convincing" in my or my parents' lifetimes.
9/11 just gave the bigwigs the excuse to tell the masses that if you didn't agree you are a terrorist.
I'm not going further because its a quagmire.
adrr · 2h ago
Its very dangerous when it doesn't. Saying due process only applies to citizens, government can just label anyone they don't like a noncitizen and with no due process, those people will never be able to challenge it.
avgDev · 4h ago
On paper, but the average citizen and current admin disagree. The check & balances also don't seem to work.
lsidllljjjj · 3h ago
I'm an average citizen and I believe non-citizens have rights. And so do most of the people I know. So if you believe that, then recognize that that's just the consensus in your clique.
avgDev · 1h ago
Average citizens are not on this platform.
Average citizens are commenting on YT and FB.
Most citizens are average and I don't see mass strikes while things are getting stripped away.
skybrian · 3h ago
Does anything other than due process rights help for people facing deportation?
cogman10 · 2h ago
"Due process" is the most important right for everyone. It's what determines if someone should even be deported in the first place.
Without it, the executive gets to just say "that person shouldn't be here" and they can send them wherever the whims of the government are in the day.
Due process is how someone says "Hey government, you've made a mistake".
It isn't just due process. It's "I'm a US citizen, you can't legally deport me" Due process is what enables making that argument at all.
skybrian · 1h ago
Certainly it’s important! But I’m wondering what other constitutional rights might prevent deportations. It seems like for non-citizens, due process alone will often be just a delaying action?
cogman10 · 59m ago
The 4th, the 8th, and the 9th amendments I'd say all should be applied in deportation actions.
4th because of "The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures" A warrantless search and seizure seems to be pretty unconstitutional. (See: ICE rolling up to farms and home depots and arresting everyone brown there)
The 8th
> nor cruel and unusual punishments inflicted.
It seems both cruel and unusual to imprison people in concentration camps without enough food or water. It further seems pretty cruel to send people to countries not of origin known to torture. (See SECOT and Alligator Alcatraz)
The 9th
> The enumeration in the Constitution, of certain rights, shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people.
This amendment is rarely applied which is a shame. It is the amendment that grants rights not listed by the constitution. It's what justifies the existence of human rights. It should not be controversial, but it seems like people should have the right to not be victims of genocide. Which is what mass deportation based on race ultimately is. (Homan is pretty open about race being the primary tool used to determine who's here illegally)
But beyond that, laid out in law is how deportation should function. That's where the actual process is laid out and that's what the executive is trying to avoid by rushing deportations.
nonethewiser · 3h ago
Im confused. What else could there possibly be than due process? Force?
skybrian · 1h ago
I meant, what other rights might be relevant in that situation?
xdennis · 3h ago
There are some differences for illegal immigrants, though. For example they don't have the right to due process under expedited removal (passed by Bill Clinton in 1996).
wombatpm · 3h ago
How do you prove you are not an illegal immigrant when picked up off the street? Surely there must be some due process around the determination of your illegal status.
jahewson · 1h ago
That’s not true. They have the right to due process, as enshrined in the constitution. Clinton did not suspend that right he merely limited specific legal options available.
empath75 · 3h ago
This is a little misleading. Under Clinton, they could basically just turn them around at a port of entry. Eventually (2004) this was expanded to people within 100 miles of a border within 2 weeks of entering the country, and then in 2020 they _dramatically_ expanded this to people anyone who has been here for less than 2 years, and that has not been tested in court, really.
This is sort of a classic example of a slippery slope, FWIW. As soon as you deny anybody due process, the category of people that applies to will just constantly expand.
Now, there's basically nothing stopping immigration officials from immediately deporting anybody they want, citizen, non-citizen, illegal or legal immigrant.
jahewson · 1h ago
> Now, there's basically nothing stopping immigration officials from immediately deporting anybody they want, citizen, non-citizen, illegal or legal immigrant.
What nonsense. We have the courts. There must be a valid determination made that a person entered illegally for expedited deportation to apply. Due process applies to that determination - if it is not made correctly then sue. But more importantly why on earth would it not be made correctly? If you can’t prove that you’re a US citizen then something is very wrong.
friendlyasparag · 1h ago
It’s tricky to argue it in court if you have already been deported to a prison in a foreign country.
phkahler · 3h ago
Since medicade wasn't established by the constitution, how do resident aliens get coverage? Maybe they do, maybe they don't. I'd like to know.
wombatpm · 3h ago
If you want to go back to people dying in the streets because they are poor I guess that’s OK. But at some point it affects the health of everyone.
aceazzameen · 51m ago
They also pay US taxes. They should benefit from those taxes like everyone else.
ItCouldBeWorse · 4h ago
Turns out the law is just two in the ink, one in the pinky finger in the air "I swear!". But in the end, the law is in people, the society is in people, not in paper, not in officials, not in institutions.
If the people carry something and change their minds and moods, have fun holding back that energy with a creaking dam made of paper. Even this Ice nightmare, was voted in democratic and will be one day, when the mood has swung again, pushed back by the people in some colorful revolution.
wlesieutre · 5h ago
Getting access to Medicaid data for public health research is a giant pain in the ass with layers upon layers of red tape and IRBs and training about how you are allowed to handle it.
fnordpiglet · 4h ago
Only if it’s done in compliance. There was been little to show this administration follows the constitution, laws, or judicial orders let alone regulation. Especially when it comes to Stephen Miller there’s a significant “move fast and break the law” effort knowing judicial or legislative remedy can take a long time and is not assured given the penetration of captured justices and congressional independence. Especially in something like this where you have to establish standing, do discovery, etc, it’s an uphill battle to ensure compliance and the out of compliance stuff happens behind closed doors. With most of the federal government oversight functions either gutted or entirely captured by politically partisan sycophants, I would not hold my breath expecting any boundaries or relief.
This is what a real deep state looks like. “He who smelt it dealt it” seems to be a natural law.
wlesieutre · 3h ago
Yes, I am assuming that ICE is not being held to the same (or any) standards and this is a real heap of bullshit
nonethewiser · 3h ago
>Getting access to Medicaid data for public health research is a giant pain in the ass with layers upon layers of red tape and IRBs and training about how you are allowed to handle it.
Can you contextualize this comment? Are you saying it shouldnt be so difficult? Or that the government should have to jump through the same hoops? Or?
wlesieutre · 40m ago
See previous reply to sibling comment
lr4444lr · 1h ago
> Most of these departments have rules about how they use our data
Yes, but law enforcement agencies can typically be granted access for investigations, so long as the information is used only for such investigations. This is how CSAM distributors are hunted down. They don't literally need to amass evidence for each and every suspect and then get a warrant: they have a legally recognized enforcement directive, and so can perform surveillance of information sources where that people breaking those laws can be caught. Or in this case, they may have imperfect information on a variety of actual suspects, but not enough to find them or build a case. Medicaid data may provide those clues.
cosmicgadget · 4h ago
> The majority in SCOTUS does not seem to care
Well plain 'rules' are going to be firmly within the executive's discretion to change. So what you need is statutes.
Statutes might not help much though, due to the immunity/pardon hack. And we may even be seeing SCOTUS reexamine if the president is bound by statute.
This is fine.
michael1999 · 4h ago
I think HIPAA always had a carve-out for LE. Trump is lawless, but this might not be.
Indeed seems this way. Also consider the recent budget bill increased ICE's budget 3X and it's now more funded than the entire federal prison system.
This is roughly on the level of post Pearl Harbor internement of Japanese people, with potential to grow larger.
No comments yet
Joeri · 5h ago
(it’s ok as long as their guy does it)
You put that between parentheses as if it was just a detail, but it is the fundamental question that nobody is talking about: what happens after their guy is gone?
Are they really ok with president AOC getting all of Trump’s powers? Or do they secretly hope democracy in the U.S. comes to a halt?
moogly · 4h ago
> Or do they secretly hope democracy in the U.S. comes to a halt?
Hope? They're working on it. And they're not being particularly secretive about it.
jpadkins · 3h ago
can you share some of these plans to halt democracy?
TheOtherHobbes · 2h ago
You mean apart from ridiculously obvious gerrymandering, voter suppression, crippling the Federal Election Commission, increasing state control of the media, the end of habeas corpus, state kidnapping of citizens, the entirety of the Project 2025 document, the destruction of constitutional norms, the clauses to neuter judicial oversight in the Big Beautiful Bill, and a president planning to run for (at least) a third term?
jahewson · 1h ago
You know the Dems are just as bad about the gerrymandering, right? Also the media control: see the Twitter files.
input_sh · 3h ago
Sure thing! If you go to Trump's official store (ridiculous statement on its own for a sitting president), you'll find a whole lot of "Trump 2028" merch.
I personally can't think of many ways to be more blatant than that.
davidcbc · 4h ago
If a democratic president is elected they will reverse their decisions until a GOP president is elected again.
colpabar · 4h ago
I doubt that very much. I think what will happen is that the dems will run on doing that, get elected to do that, and then not do any of it, and nobody will really care or even remember. Everything will be cool because it’ll be a cool dem president and all the problems will be the republicans fault, just like obama.
Steltek · 3h ago
We've seen the GOP reaction at a State level. When a Dem governor is about to take office, the GOP legislature passes sweeping bills to limit executive power and the about-to-be-former GOP Governor signs them.
TimorousBestie · 4h ago
I’m pretty tuned in to the conservative water cooler, and I’ve heard three realistic theories on post-Trump executive power. To be clear, these are real opinions I’ve heard self-described Trump voters espouse—not my opinions:
1. Most of the federal judges and SCOTUS will overturn bits and pieces of executive power once a Democrat tries to use them. See Biden and school loan forgiveness. They firmly believe that Thomas and Alito will retire during this administration, and they hope Sotomayor or Kagan retires or dies. I’ve also heard noise about impeaching Barrett.
2. Democrats are too skittish to use executive power to do anything revolutionary with it. Even when they had a trifecta during the first Obama term they barely did anything with it.
3. Regardless of the other two points, it’s very unlikely for the Republicans to lose control of House and Senate again, and the Senate can revert to being effective when the executive is a Democrat. A Republican House can constantly submit articles of impeachment and a Democrat president will get bogged down dodging the accusations, even if they’re spurious.
BeetleB · 2h ago
> Democrats are too skittish to use executive power to do anything revolutionary with it. Even when they had a trifecta during the first Obama term they barely did anything with it.
This.
A lot of the focus these days is on SCOTUS, but most of what Trump is doing was already permitted by law for the executive branch well before he came into office. The real question is: Why didn't past presidents utilize that power that they clearly had?
zimpenfish · 4h ago
> Are they really ok with president AOC getting all of Trump’s powers?
I can confidently predict that whatever out-the-arse-shadow-docket rulings SCOTUS have made for Trump will suddenly not apply to a Democratic president and the office will be hamstrung by executive limits pretty darn toot suite.
stuaxo · 3h ago
Secretly?
krapp · 4h ago
>Are they really ok with president AOC getting all of Trump’s powers? Or do they secretly hope democracy in the U.S. comes to a halt?
They aren't even being remotely secretive about it.
api · 3h ago
This isn't new at all and has been happening for decades, a continuous ratcheting up of Presidential and Executive Branch power since the dawn of the Cold War. Usually it's because of "national security," and it happens when both parties are in power. The march pretty much began with the National Security Act of 1947, though some might place it earlier with FDR and the New Deal. An argument can be made for both, with the left tending to blame the former and the right the latter. (I think the real answer is both to some extent but the National Security Act is the more significant of the two.)
An argument can be made after things like the second Iraq war that we have already entered the decadent empire phase of US history and the President effectively does have a great deal of dictatorial power. It's not supposed to be possible to wage a war like that without a congressional declaration, making such wars a pretty huge abdication of power by the legislative branch. If the President can just start a war on a whim, that power can be used to drag along the entire rest of the government.
Now, with ICE, we are establishing a lawless executive branch police force. This is just the unilateral power of the President to wage war coming home and being applied to domestic affairs. It will soon be possible, if it isn't already, for the President to order their own independent police to do anything, and if it is considered illegal the power of the pardon can be used to make that go away. The arbitrary power of the pardon is a pretty awesome power when you think about it.
When the ratchet gets far enough down this path we may indeed see a president remain in power forever like Xi Xinpeng. Trump may or may not be that person. If it's not him it might be the next, or the next. It could just as easily be a left-wing populist demagogue as a right-wing one depending on which way the winds happen to be blowing when the final ratchet click happens.
Rome continued to exist for quite some time after its Republic collapsed, but it was definitely the beginning of the end.
onlyrealcuzzo · 3h ago
> The majority in SCOTUS does not seem to care (it’s ok as long as their guy does it).
I doubt they'd care if a democratic president wanted to do the exact same thing...
Their job isn't to be benevolent.
Their job is to determine what is ACCORDING to the laws. The reality is, many legal protections only apply to US citizens - and it is EXPLICITLY for these reasons that they do.
The Privacy Act of 1974 applies only to citizens. The Patriot Act opened up a can of worms ripe for abuse that will probably never be sealed.
The executive branch can almost get away with murder by saying, "Well, we thought they were a terrorist, so..." Which does appear to be the defense they're trying to set up, saying anyone in any, way, shape or form related to Mexican gangs is a terrorist.
The Supreme Court doesn't really seem to be exceptionally awful.
They're obviously bias, and have been for a very long time, if you look at how they vote.
But the larger problem is that we have bad laws.
It's not the Supreme Court's job to override laws passed by congress because they're terrible or anti-American.
It's our job as voters to start caring about what matters.
jewayne · 2h ago
> I doubt they'd care if a democratic president wanted to do the exact same thing...
Of course they would. They literally blocked Biden's student loan relief, calling it unconstitutional. These people are not there because they are exceptional legal scholars or because they established themselves as outstanding judges in their previous appointments. The six majority justices are there to help their side wield power, pure and simple. And they understand that part of that job is making it difficult for the other side to wield power. Because only their side is legitimate, you see.
> The Supreme Court doesn't really seem to be exceptionally awful.
The are exceptionally, extremely, extraordinarily awful. When the DC circuit court ruled on presidential immunity, legal scholars across the land pointed to the ruling as the probable last word, given how sterling the ruling was. Many were shocked that the Supreme Court even took the case up afterward. After all, what more was there to say? To have the SCOTUS overrule two centuries of established precedent in making the entire Executive branch above criminal law shocked just about everyone - this entirely for the purpose of keeping a single man out of jail.
> It's not the Supreme Court's job to override laws passed by congress because they're terrible or anti-American.
That is exactly their job, if said laws are unconstitutional.
polski-g · 33m ago
Yes. The supreme court blocked student loan forgiveness because Congress did not appropriate funds for that purpose.
It's not their job to do things that are good or nice, it's to determine legality.
michael1999 · 4h ago
This sounded like a straight-forward HIPAA violation, but I checked. There's a carve out for LE.
You can see the bones of a stronger limit during drafting (as "required" by warrants), but then weakened to allow mere "administrative requests".
> Law Enforcement Purposes. Covered entities may disclose protected health information to law enforcement officials for law enforcement purposes under the following six circumstances, and subject to specified conditions: (1) as required by law (including court orders, court-ordered warrants, subpoenas) and administrative requests; (2) to identify or locate a suspect, fugitive, material witness, or missing person; (3) in response to a law enforcement official's request for information about a victim or suspected victim of a crime; (4) to alert law enforcement of a person's death, if the covered entity suspects that criminal activity caused the death; (5) when a covered entity believes that protected health information is evidence of a crime that occurred on its premises; and (6) by a covered health care provider in a medical emergency not occurring on its premises, when necessary to inform law enforcement about the commission and nature of a crime, the location of the crime or crime victims, and the perpetrator of the crime.
Additionally from the article the data seems limited to identification information and not medical information.
Language in the agreement says it will allow ICE to access personal
information such as home addresses, phone numbers, IP addresses, banking
data, and social security numbers. (Later on in the agreement, what ICE is
allowed to access is defined differently, specifying just “Medicaid
recipients” and their sex, ethnicity, and race but forgoing any mention of IP
or banking data.) The agreement is set to last two months. While the document
is dated July 9, it is only effective starting when both parties sign it,
which would indicate a 60-day span from July 15 to September 15.
diamond559 · 4h ago
You still think this is just about immigrants? They are coming for the dissenters next, they will just make excuses as to why.
Geeek · 3h ago
They are coming? They are already here. RE: What the president said about Rosie O'donnell last week. Norms have been eroded and we are now clearly in the laws-are-being-eroded territory.
djeastm · 2h ago
Correct. Rosie is an American citizen born in the US and Trump threatened to "revoke" her citizenship.
We are all provisional citizens at this point.
lr4444lr · 1h ago
Oh really? And charge them with what? The USA doesn't have vague laws around social harmony by which to prosecute people. This is exactly why it's so important to protect so called "hate speech".
jahewson · 57m ago
The tendency to replace what is actually happening with some dark figment of the imagination is telling. Do you have real objections or just conspiracies?
But, of course, you already know that. So why bother with the theatrics?
hcurtiss · 4h ago
What evidence do you have to believe that’s true?
pksebben · 3h ago
the 1950s comes to mind...
mrexroad · 3h ago
… and 2/19/1942.
Two thirds of those required to report to camps for internment, per the Executive Order, were US citizens.
jahewson · 1h ago
That was a Democrat president.
strathmeyer · 1h ago
Does the state you live in have concentration camps, yet?
bigyabai · 3h ago
Deportations without due-process, for a start. Why not deprive you of due process, too?
miltonlost · 3h ago
Trump just said he's going to try to take Rosie O Donnell's citizenship away.
phkahler · 3h ago
Do people still take his comments like that seriously?
ilikecakeandpie · 2h ago
Why wouldn't they? He's the president. As an official of the state he shouldn't say it if he doesn't mean it. The president isn't supposed to be fun or jokey
zippothrowaway · 3h ago
The people of Greenland do. I'm old enough to remember when that was considered just "one of his jokes".
padjo · 2h ago
The fact that people are willing to shrug and say he’s just joking is honestly pretty astounding.
nozzlegear · 2h ago
Yes? Nothing about the prospect of him revoking the citizenship of one of his longtime bugbears seems unlikely at this point. The fact that we're even discussing the "will he, won't he, who knows" right now should be alarming.
wombatpm · 3h ago
How are we to know which official statements repeatedly made by the President in public are True?
kashunstva · 3h ago
> Do people still take his comments like that seriously?
Yes, because he has a pattern of staking out one extreme position and then doing something slightly less extreme; but both of which would have been unthinkable when laws and due process meant something.
And also, yes, because joking around is something you do on your own time and when you’re a child. Like not wanting your pilot to announce his intention to do some aerobatic maneuvers on an airline flight. Whether they carry it out or not is almost beside the point.
AlecSchueler · 2h ago
Do people still downplay the seriousness of statements like this?
Terr_ · 2h ago
That's like asking: "Do people still take the elementary-school principal seriously when he keeps joking about having sex with the children?"
First, the situation itself is always serious, because because nobody in that kind of position should ever be "joking" about such a thing.
Second, this guy's not joking. A threat does not become a joke simply because it is weak/unlikely or delivered while chuckling.
speed_spread · 2h ago
If you only take it seriously when it'll be about you, it will be too late.
micromacrofoot · 2h ago
He's given us more reason to take him seriously than not at this point, you can probably measure it objectively. He's practically perfected "just kidding... unless"
ljsprague · 2h ago
Y'all shouldn't have tried to replace the electorate.
tastyface · 24m ago
Immigrants are the electorate and have always been. *They* are what make America great, not some racist, talentless bums who believe they are entitled to an entire nation by virtue of their ancestry.
ASinclair · 2h ago
Just to clarify, you're espousing the Great Replacement Theory here, correct?
jahewson · 1h ago
That (conspiracy) theory pertains specifically to France, and Europe more generally w.r.t. Muslim immigration. It gets mentioned over here but it’s not a US thing.
ljsprague · 1h ago
I'm espousing the idea that one group of people can replace another group and that politicians can cynically exploit this fact for their own benefit.
loourr · 5h ago
The inevitable end of all government compiled lists of people
autoexec · 2h ago
It doesn't matter who compiles the lists anymore. Corporations will sell that data to the government (and anyone else willing to pay enough) or the government will march in and take it by force.
As long as lists of people are useful they will be created, and as long as our government is unaccountable to the people and the law those lists will be at risk of being abused by the state for other purposes.
mlinhares · 5h ago
Its the other way around, authoritarian governments will now compile even more and larger lists of everything they can possibly get from their citizens. North Korea would be proud of what this administration is doing.
bl0b · 4h ago
I think they meant 'end' as in the 'ultimate destination' rather than 'conclusion'.
yongjik · 2h ago
In many other countries, people would be asking "This is horrible, how can we bring down this leader, and how can we ensure that it never happens again?"
But here in glorious America, people are asking "This is inevitable, how can we starve the government more, so that it cannot hurt us when it eventually tries to?"
It's telling that, every time there's an election, we keep hearing complaints about who can vote, because its citizens decided that the government shouldn't keep track of who are its citizens and where they live. In most other countries it's the government's job to issue a photo ID to every citizen, but no, here in America that sounds too convenient and it must be some evil big-gov agenda.
jahewson · 55m ago
Remind me which side of the Atlantic is throwing its citizens in jail for tweets?
skybrian · 5h ago
Trump getting elected wasn’t inevitable. There were unusual events during the 2016 election campaign that could have resulted in a different outcome if their timing had been different.
giantg2 · 5h ago
What they're saying is that government lists get abused. That's true no matter who is in power.
leptons · 5h ago
Sorry but both sides are not the same.
orthecreedence · 2h ago
Agreed. One side is actively fascist and the other side passively fascist.
leptons · 1h ago
You do not agree with me. You're still using the tired old "both sides" argument. The voting record proves you wrong.
ilikecakeandpie · 2h ago
Yep. Anyone saying that they are is being intellectually dishonest and likely trying to feel better about doing nothing
gosub100 · 3h ago
Billionaires paid for Hillary, dems couldn't be bothered to listen to the people. Took 0 responsibility for it. Just took her campaign war chest and dumped it into a media smear campaign.
ilikecakeandpie · 2h ago
> dems couldn't be bothered to listen to the people
No one was forced to vote for Clinton and nominating a loser of the primary would have set an awful precedent.
kashunstva · 3h ago
> Billionaires paid for Hillary, dems couldn't be bothered to listen to the people.
To be fair, other billionaires paid for this one; and this one is still not listening to the people.
gosub100 · 3h ago
That's fair. I want people to understand it's not about my tribe vs your tribe. If the goal is to get idiots like Trump out of Washington, you must first remove money from politics. Then even if "your guy" doesn't get elected, you at least have a decent specimen installed who your party can work with. No one of average intelligence can even see that as an option. For this reason, the DNC is just as responsible for his election as the utterly deranged MAGA avatar.
bigyabai · 3h ago
Client Side Scanning tried to hash your files to help the government find any "child predators" using iPhone.
You know, the same federal government that refused to assign a special prosecutor to the Epstein files. You can rest assured Apple and the Fed are very interested in protecting the children. Anyone who refuses to allow that sort of process is probably a criminal anyways, right?
xdennis · 3h ago
But the lists were compiled before Trump took office. Countries that have experience with totalitarianism don't make those lists to begin with.
That's why in France, for example, it's illegal for the government to keep track of people's race or religion. When the Nazis occupied France they used such documents to figure out who the Jews were.
shakow · 2h ago
> it's illegal for the government to keep track of people's race
We don't even have the concept of “race”.
freedomben · 3h ago
We really don't seem to like learning the lessons of history
tiahura · 2h ago
Countries that have experience with totalitarianism don't make those lists to begin with.
I’m pretty sure the German government has a list of people enrolled in the German socialized medical system.
donatj · 2h ago
I attended Amazon Re:Invent a number of years ago and one of the keynote speakers was talking about providing medical information to law enforcement - the theory being that if they know you suffer from schizophrenia, for instance, the police would be informed of this and in theory less likely to murder you.
I found the whole idea very prone to abuse and posted about it on social media, and the whole thread flew into people fighting about Obamacare… but I still think I was right.
The older I get, the more I become a strong proponent of keeping data out of the hands of the people who can murder you without recourse.
theyinwhy · 2h ago
Coupled with 150 billion USD for ICE, the same amount as for the Pentagon, what can go wrong?
jahewson · 53m ago
The Pentagon’s budget is 900 billion per year. That 150bn ICE figure is over 4 years, so 37bn a year. You are wrong by a factor of 24x.
ktallett · 5h ago
No government agency should get access to any private data without the appropriate protocols in place. Even more so considering the many issues surrounding ICE and their actions already, this will not improve things. Let alone the moral problem of trying to deport people which have been used by American companies for cheap labour to build the nation they want and supposedly are. Now of course that is ignoring the ludicrous view that undocumented migrants are the key issue, as opposed to so many other home made issues in the US, such as unfair wealth disparity, and a lack of fundamental basic rights for citizens.
tiahura · 2h ago
It’s not private data. It’s the government’s data.
ktallett · 2h ago
Medical information is not government data that can just be shared.
tastyfreeze · 4h ago
That is the danger of central data collection. I know we like to pretend that federal departments are discrete units. At the end of the day the federal government owns the data. No subpoena needed if your boss already owns the data. You just have to ask nicely.
autoexec · 2h ago
The problem is even worse when that data is in private hands. One of the most common ways the government gets data they couldn't justify subpoenaing themselves is to simply hand over cash to corporations who have already collected that data for other uses. for example: https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2022/08/how-law-enforcement-ar...
nonethewiser · 2h ago
I've never thought that controls prevented centralizing all our data, but incompetence and just bureaucratic bloat.
We are very, very far away from a state where the government doesn't know all about you. Im not sure what we should do about that fact. Im not simply arguing for an inevitable erosion of privacy on one end or soveriegn citizenship, for example, on the other. It's just that you would have to rewind way back. Social security, income taxes, etc.
anthk · 2h ago
When I played Deus Ex back in the early 2000's (now with GMDX 9), the game looked exaggerated, a blend between The X-Files and Neal Stephenson/Gibson.
It doesn't any more.
Terr_ · 1h ago
I've always felt DX was an ironically realistic vision of 2052 when you consider what the average person would be able to see.
Sure, the protagonist sees hidden bunkers with weird science, but the average person? It's hard find work, their votes don't seem to matter, there's no real privacy anymore, and nobody will honor the warranty on the little floor-cleaner robot.
ck2 · 4h ago
Imagine 7000 people per day being "disappeared" for the next 1200 days
(peak covid was 3000 deaths per day)
This country is going to get really horrific, really really fast
> Tom Homan, as well as Deputy Chief of Staff Stephen Miller have made very clear that they intend on spending the billions in this bill. Tom Homan said this week that they want to arrest 7,000 people every day for the remainder of the administration
apwell23 · 4h ago
> Imagine 7000 people per day being "disappeared" for the next 1200 days
lol ppl here would be singing a different tune if 7000 people per day were entering this country on H1B visa.
gosub100 · 3h ago
I have no problem with it. Send them back from whence they came.
orthecreedence · 2h ago
You think they'll stop just before they get to you?
ljsprague · 2h ago
They are literally going to deport everyone. There will only be a few people left hiding in the forests.
ck2 · 3h ago
They are deporting babies born here and have never lived anywhere else, some taken right out of the hospital
There are kids sitting right now in cages at Alligator Auschwitz without an adult for days and days and have never known any other country
Your parents were born in this country? How about their parents?
Because now they've run out of "criminals" they are putting people with legal status ("green cards") into the concentration-camps and when they run out of those next year who do you think they are going to keep busy with?
US Citizens have sat for days in prison before even given the chance to show citizenship, why don't you think that's going to happen to you eventually?
micromacrofoot · 2h ago
That's not what they're preparing to do. They're building open air prisons for tens of thousands of people. It would take years to deport that many people. If they fill these things it will be a humanitarian disaster.
jasonlotito · 5h ago
The amount of precedent being set here for big government and overreach is amazing. I'm not really surprised though that Conservatives and other small/limited governemnt people worked to enact this massive overreach of power.
davidcbc · 4h ago
The GOP is not a party of small/limited government people. It's a party of people who want absolute control and use the language of small/limited government to gain power.
gosub100 · 3h ago
Both parties are the same. Democrats want to make it illegal to protect myself from a violent attacker, enact legislation designed to block poor people from starting businesses, buy votes by promising handouts. They are both filthy and dirty and serve corporations.
kashunstva · 2h ago
> Both parties are the same.
That is absolutely not true. They occupy very different philosophical spaces and have very different proclivities for extrajudicial acts.
> Democrats … buy votes by promising handouts
Didn’t Mr. Musk do something akin to this in Wisconsin?
> Democrats want to make it illegal to protect myself from a violent attacker.
I couldn’t speak for every elected Democrat but few, if any, stake out a position anywhere close to what you wrote.
cosmicgadget · 1h ago
> Democrats want to make it illegal to protect myself from a violent attacker
What an intellectually dishonest take.
micromacrofoot · 2h ago
They're both status quo loving elites, but to say they're both the same is complete nonsense. The scale of these ICE camps is something we haven't seen for nearly 100 years. The level of access given to Musk and DOGE is absolutely disgusting. The storming of the Capitol was embarrassing.
gosub100 · 20m ago
I'm all for enforcement of laws. I am very careful to obey the law because I know it will potentially ruin my life if I don't. If you want to change immigration law, that's another topic. But what happened was blue states let them in, created the problem, and now are using the predictable and preventable suffering to try to win voters. This is the second most popular move in their playbook, next to calling everyone a racist. They let their policies cause suffering and say "vote for us and we'll fix it, vote for them and the suffering continues". It's a scam.
micromacrofoot · 8m ago
Blue states aren't letting people into Texas. Texas is. They have a number of employers that rely on them.
This will result in thousands of people in cages for undetermined amounts of time with no due process. It's unconstitutional whether or not you're here legally. Democrats are not forcing Republicans to build outdoor prisons to house farm workers and their families.
Not to mention that there are a number of people getting caught up in this that are in the US legally, under asylum claims or birthright citizenship.
Democrats attempted to pass immigration reform twice in 2024 and Republicans shot it down for reasons including the asinine lack of border wall funding.
The impasse is largely that Democrats want to provide a reasonable path to citizenship for people who have already been living and working here (many of whom have been here for decades and have american-born children). Republicans will not budge and chose to impose suffering directly.
hollerith · 3m ago
>Blue states aren't letting people into Texas. Texas is.
You're going to have to explain what you mean by that: people in the US have a right to move to any state they want, and the state they move to has almost no say in the matter. The most Texas could do is pass laws that restrict the supply of housing or maybe some other thing that most people need.
kevingadd · 5h ago
I don't understand why ICE would need access to Medicaid data. You need to be a citizen or lawful permanent resident to access that program, not to mention all the other additional criteria. The idea of illegal immigrants somehow bypassing all the checks and balances successfully en masse feels a little silly to me.
They have a pamphlet available one more click away from the link you shared that gives detailed information on how undocumented immigrants can get free/reduced-cost health care, and what all of their options are: https://www.wahealthplanfinder.org/content/dam/wahbe-assets/...
kevingadd · 4h ago
This is not what the federal website for Medicaid says, though.
Just because it's illegal doesn't mean it isn't happening. From a May 25, 2025 article on the official CMS website: "The Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) announced today increased federal oversight to stop states from misusing federal Medicaid dollars to cover health care for individuals who are in the country illegally. Under federal law, federal Medicaid funding is generally only available for emergency medical services for noncitizens with unsatisfactory immigration status who would otherwise be Medicaid-eligible, but some states have pushed the boundaries, putting taxpayers on the hook for benefits that are not allowed."
Emergency Medicaid is provided due to EMTALA passed in 1986. There's nothing illegal about it.
Both of those sources are just bullshit propaganda. There are no 'open borders'. You're just being manipulated.
They also are really poor about citing evidence for their claims. The best thing they've got is a vague '124 percent more' with no real figures, and 'some states have pushed boundaries'.
If they want to tighten policy around what qualifies as emergency care then be my guest. The rest of this is just pushing a bullshit narrative.
prometheus76 · 3h ago
I didn't say anything about emergency medicaid being illegal. What I did was present evidence that illegal immigrants do, indeed, use Medicaid funds in the form of emergency care, and I presume those are the records that are now being reviewed by ICE. Your original claim was that illegal immigrants don't get Medicaid, but you neglected to consider emergency medicaid funds.
arrosenberg · 5h ago
> I don't understand why ICE would need access to Medicaid data.
It’s a class war. Once they’ve run out of immigrants to harass and deport, they’ll be going after the poor.
yakz · 4h ago
They are:
- significantly raising taxes on imported goods
- letting ACA subsidies expire
- reducing access to medicaid
- allowing medical debt on credit reports
- resuming collections/garnishment for student loans
- reducing options for student loan repayment / forgiveness
they're going after the poor
pstuart · 4h ago
> they're going after the poor
That's just a bonus feature
The tariffs serve 2 purposes:
1. They can replace income taxes and protect the wealthy (per their reasoning)
2. They are a tool for power over other countries and a mechanism to compel them to pay personal tribute to The King of America™
I would love to be proven wrong because I'm hating this timeline.
autoexec · 2h ago
You forgot the third purpose which is market manipulation so that they can make huge profits in the stock market for themselves and their friends whenever they feel like it.
pksebben · 3h ago
I think it might even be more boring and straightforward than that.
Get power => cause market instability, make trades and bets on volatility (or have your friends do it) => offshore your gains
libraryatnight · 3h ago
The instability also damages trust in the US which loss of trust has its own economic and geopolitical fallout, so big wins for the Putins of the world.
standardUser · 4h ago
The important thing is they go after someone.
dmix · 5h ago
There's something called "Qualified Non-citizens", federal funding is prohibited for non-citizens but states could optionally cover it
so ultimately there is some source of non-citizen data to be gleaned
giantg2 · 5h ago
Some states have different requirements for undocumented persons. Most states permit medicaid for emergency situations. Some permit it for pregnant people.
thomas_ma · 4h ago
Are there any states where Medicaid funds "emergency situations" for people who are not otherwise eligible for Medicaid? I've never heard of that. EMTALA requires hospitals to treat anyone in emergency situations, but doesn't to my knowledge provide a mechanism to pay for those treatments. The patient still gets billed and hospital likely just doesn't get paid.
giantg2 · 38m ago
I don't think the funds get used. My understanding is that medicaid is administered by the states and can be expanded (at state expense). So the people covered by the expansion are still in the system.
kevingadd · 4h ago
My understanding from reading the federal website is that this would not be Medicaid, it would be a different program. So they would not be in the Medicaid database, right?
delfinom · 3h ago
Several blue states expanded their medicaid programs to allow illegals. This was with the intention to pay for it with state dollars instead of federal dollars.
Some states even allow legal temporary visa visitors like students to sign up for their state level funded medicaid. NY is constitutionally required to do so.
ICE however is making a play to obtain all of that state level data.
tiahura · 2h ago
Finding illegal family members of enrollees.
klooney · 3h ago
Lots of people with no papers buy social security numbers so they can work legit jobs- and you could presumably get benefits too. Presumably they're looking for people who don't make sense- receiving benefits in two states, live in Minnesota but get benefits in Arizona, that sort of thing.
libraryatnight · 3h ago
I live in AZ and your example is awful because we're literally full up on Minnesota snowbirds 6 months out of the year.
dandanua · 2h ago
Why is everyone surprised by this? Is America that blind or what? You are being run by an organized crime group, a Nazi cult essentially, they don't give a single fuck about laws or ordinary people. There is no civilized end to this, that chance has long gone.
zetanor · 1h ago
Source?
ljsprague · 2h ago
This is what happens when you try to replace a people in their own country.
No comments yet
buckle8017 · 5h ago
Well you gotta be a citizen for Medicaid, so they shouldn't find anything interesting.
Right? /s
charlimangy · 2h ago
Many poor children are on Medicaid. If you are born in the US to an undocumented person then you are a citizen and eligible for Medicaid. So they can use this info to find the undocumented parents of these kids and deport and disappear them. Then the kids have to chose between staying with their family or leaving the only country that have ever known.
ljsprague · 2h ago
Wow their parents really screwed them over.
cosmicgadget · 4h ago
Oh good, so they are raiding databases that predominatly contain personal information on people they aren't looking for.
ch4s3 · 5h ago
States can have supplements for non-citizens that don't use federal dollars and several do.
hcurtiss · 4h ago
It’s not all state dollars though. There’s a Medicaid match for ACA expansion populations. The OBBB reduces that match by 10% for states that expanded the population to include unauthorized immigrants. In Oregon, to maintain that program Oregonians are going to have to pony up hundreds of millions more per year. Much of the country is fine with that.
buckle8017 · 4h ago
Nobody believes those programs isolate state and federal funds effectively.
At the very least they're using federal funds for administrative costs.
adgjlsfhk1 · 4h ago
From TFA:
> Medicaid, state and federally government-funded health care coverage for the country’s poorest, is largely available only to some non-citizens, including refugees and asylum seekers, survivors of human trafficking, and permanent residents. Some states, like New York, provide Medicaid coverage for children and pregnant people, regardless of their immigration status. States report their Medicaid expenditures and data to the federal government, which reimburses them for some of the costs.
The Trump admin is aggressively deporting refugees and asylum seekers who entered legally.
aerostable_slug · 4h ago
California provides full coverage to undocumented migrants. This is who the administration is targeting.
As a related aside, Federally-funded California clinics are about to start requiring proof of citizenship. This is causing a panic.
Also, due to the massive cost of providing care to undocumented migrants, Newsom is about to freeze all registrations for Medi-Cal (so the message is get in now before the gates close). He's also proposing charging undocumented migrants a modest premium.
thr0waway001 · 3h ago
In what world is this not overreach for ICE? It is positively authoritarian.
You just know this goes beyond illegal immigrants. This is some Gestapo shit right there.
nonethewiser · 2h ago
The article states that the agreement claims compliance with a 2019 System of Records Notice, which it says allows the data to be used "to assist another federal or state agency."
The article notes that a former information security lead from the VA says the SORN needs to be updated for this specific ICE/CMS agreement and has not been. Clearly that fact is a disputed.
The ACLU argues that the sharing is only allowed if it contributes to the accuracy of Medicare or Medicaid, administers a federal health benefits program, or is necessary to implement a federally funded health benefits program. Im not sure if this it true (sharing only allowed in these cases) but if so it seems reasonable that detecting fraud would contribute to the accuracy and integrity of Medicaid. Furthermore, ICE does administer a federal health benefits program (IHSC [1]), so the basis for the ACLU's objection really seems unfounded, although the administration doesnt cite this basis and is quite upfront that its about identifying illegal aliens.
https://archive.ph/a9KaW
Most of these departments have rules about how they use our data. ICE now gobbles it all up and can use it without rules by a department that operates with little regard and lots of exceptions to typical protections for citizens afforded by the constitution.
The majority in SCOTUS does not seem to care (it’s ok as long as their guy does it). Whatever rules we thought there were seem to be out the window because someone magically moved data or ICE got to do it or so on ...
Almost the entire US constitution applies to non-citizens in the country, with some small exceptions like voting and holding public office.
It's true that if you applied prior judicial standards that its crystal clear the constitution and bill of rights extend beyond just protecting citizens. Same for the law. However, with a lot of the recent rulings it seems that now "might makes right" and "if the president does it, it's not illegal".
Both the judicial and legislative bodies have ceded nearly all their power to the executive. We're in for a bumpy ride.
9/11 just gave the bigwigs the excuse to tell the masses that if you didn't agree you are a terrorist.
I'm not going further because its a quagmire.
Average citizens are commenting on YT and FB.
Most citizens are average and I don't see mass strikes while things are getting stripped away.
Without it, the executive gets to just say "that person shouldn't be here" and they can send them wherever the whims of the government are in the day.
Due process is how someone says "Hey government, you've made a mistake".
It isn't just due process. It's "I'm a US citizen, you can't legally deport me" Due process is what enables making that argument at all.
4th because of "The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures" A warrantless search and seizure seems to be pretty unconstitutional. (See: ICE rolling up to farms and home depots and arresting everyone brown there)
The 8th
> nor cruel and unusual punishments inflicted.
It seems both cruel and unusual to imprison people in concentration camps without enough food or water. It further seems pretty cruel to send people to countries not of origin known to torture. (See SECOT and Alligator Alcatraz)
The 9th
> The enumeration in the Constitution, of certain rights, shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people.
This amendment is rarely applied which is a shame. It is the amendment that grants rights not listed by the constitution. It's what justifies the existence of human rights. It should not be controversial, but it seems like people should have the right to not be victims of genocide. Which is what mass deportation based on race ultimately is. (Homan is pretty open about race being the primary tool used to determine who's here illegally)
But beyond that, laid out in law is how deportation should function. That's where the actual process is laid out and that's what the executive is trying to avoid by rushing deportations.
This is sort of a classic example of a slippery slope, FWIW. As soon as you deny anybody due process, the category of people that applies to will just constantly expand.
Now, there's basically nothing stopping immigration officials from immediately deporting anybody they want, citizen, non-citizen, illegal or legal immigrant.
What nonsense. We have the courts. There must be a valid determination made that a person entered illegally for expedited deportation to apply. Due process applies to that determination - if it is not made correctly then sue. But more importantly why on earth would it not be made correctly? If you can’t prove that you’re a US citizen then something is very wrong.
If the people carry something and change their minds and moods, have fun holding back that energy with a creaking dam made of paper. Even this Ice nightmare, was voted in democratic and will be one day, when the mood has swung again, pushed back by the people in some colorful revolution.
This is what a real deep state looks like. “He who smelt it dealt it” seems to be a natural law.
Can you contextualize this comment? Are you saying it shouldnt be so difficult? Or that the government should have to jump through the same hoops? Or?
Yes, but law enforcement agencies can typically be granted access for investigations, so long as the information is used only for such investigations. This is how CSAM distributors are hunted down. They don't literally need to amass evidence for each and every suspect and then get a warrant: they have a legally recognized enforcement directive, and so can perform surveillance of information sources where that people breaking those laws can be caught. Or in this case, they may have imperfect information on a variety of actual suspects, but not enough to find them or build a case. Medicaid data may provide those clues.
Well plain 'rules' are going to be firmly within the executive's discretion to change. So what you need is statutes.
Statutes might not help much though, due to the immunity/pardon hack. And we may even be seeing SCOTUS reexamine if the president is bound by statute.
This is fine.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44606965
This is roughly on the level of post Pearl Harbor internement of Japanese people, with potential to grow larger.
No comments yet
You put that between parentheses as if it was just a detail, but it is the fundamental question that nobody is talking about: what happens after their guy is gone?
Are they really ok with president AOC getting all of Trump’s powers? Or do they secretly hope democracy in the U.S. comes to a halt?
Hope? They're working on it. And they're not being particularly secretive about it.
I personally can't think of many ways to be more blatant than that.
1. Most of the federal judges and SCOTUS will overturn bits and pieces of executive power once a Democrat tries to use them. See Biden and school loan forgiveness. They firmly believe that Thomas and Alito will retire during this administration, and they hope Sotomayor or Kagan retires or dies. I’ve also heard noise about impeaching Barrett.
2. Democrats are too skittish to use executive power to do anything revolutionary with it. Even when they had a trifecta during the first Obama term they barely did anything with it.
3. Regardless of the other two points, it’s very unlikely for the Republicans to lose control of House and Senate again, and the Senate can revert to being effective when the executive is a Democrat. A Republican House can constantly submit articles of impeachment and a Democrat president will get bogged down dodging the accusations, even if they’re spurious.
This.
A lot of the focus these days is on SCOTUS, but most of what Trump is doing was already permitted by law for the executive branch well before he came into office. The real question is: Why didn't past presidents utilize that power that they clearly had?
I can confidently predict that whatever out-the-arse-shadow-docket rulings SCOTUS have made for Trump will suddenly not apply to a Democratic president and the office will be hamstrung by executive limits pretty darn toot suite.
They aren't even being remotely secretive about it.
An argument can be made after things like the second Iraq war that we have already entered the decadent empire phase of US history and the President effectively does have a great deal of dictatorial power. It's not supposed to be possible to wage a war like that without a congressional declaration, making such wars a pretty huge abdication of power by the legislative branch. If the President can just start a war on a whim, that power can be used to drag along the entire rest of the government.
Now, with ICE, we are establishing a lawless executive branch police force. This is just the unilateral power of the President to wage war coming home and being applied to domestic affairs. It will soon be possible, if it isn't already, for the President to order their own independent police to do anything, and if it is considered illegal the power of the pardon can be used to make that go away. The arbitrary power of the pardon is a pretty awesome power when you think about it.
When the ratchet gets far enough down this path we may indeed see a president remain in power forever like Xi Xinpeng. Trump may or may not be that person. If it's not him it might be the next, or the next. It could just as easily be a left-wing populist demagogue as a right-wing one depending on which way the winds happen to be blowing when the final ratchet click happens.
Rome continued to exist for quite some time after its Republic collapsed, but it was definitely the beginning of the end.
I doubt they'd care if a democratic president wanted to do the exact same thing...
Their job isn't to be benevolent.
Their job is to determine what is ACCORDING to the laws. The reality is, many legal protections only apply to US citizens - and it is EXPLICITLY for these reasons that they do.
The Privacy Act of 1974 applies only to citizens. The Patriot Act opened up a can of worms ripe for abuse that will probably never be sealed.
The executive branch can almost get away with murder by saying, "Well, we thought they were a terrorist, so..." Which does appear to be the defense they're trying to set up, saying anyone in any, way, shape or form related to Mexican gangs is a terrorist.
The Supreme Court doesn't really seem to be exceptionally awful.
They're obviously bias, and have been for a very long time, if you look at how they vote.
But the larger problem is that we have bad laws.
It's not the Supreme Court's job to override laws passed by congress because they're terrible or anti-American.
It's our job as voters to start caring about what matters.
Of course they would. They literally blocked Biden's student loan relief, calling it unconstitutional. These people are not there because they are exceptional legal scholars or because they established themselves as outstanding judges in their previous appointments. The six majority justices are there to help their side wield power, pure and simple. And they understand that part of that job is making it difficult for the other side to wield power. Because only their side is legitimate, you see.
> The Supreme Court doesn't really seem to be exceptionally awful.
The are exceptionally, extremely, extraordinarily awful. When the DC circuit court ruled on presidential immunity, legal scholars across the land pointed to the ruling as the probable last word, given how sterling the ruling was. Many were shocked that the Supreme Court even took the case up afterward. After all, what more was there to say? To have the SCOTUS overrule two centuries of established precedent in making the entire Executive branch above criminal law shocked just about everyone - this entirely for the purpose of keeping a single man out of jail.
> It's not the Supreme Court's job to override laws passed by congress because they're terrible or anti-American.
That is exactly their job, if said laws are unconstitutional.
It's not their job to do things that are good or nice, it's to determine legality.
You can see the bones of a stronger limit during drafting (as "required" by warrants), but then weakened to allow mere "administrative requests".
> Law Enforcement Purposes. Covered entities may disclose protected health information to law enforcement officials for law enforcement purposes under the following six circumstances, and subject to specified conditions: (1) as required by law (including court orders, court-ordered warrants, subpoenas) and administrative requests; (2) to identify or locate a suspect, fugitive, material witness, or missing person; (3) in response to a law enforcement official's request for information about a victim or suspected victim of a crime; (4) to alert law enforcement of a person's death, if the covered entity suspects that criminal activity caused the death; (5) when a covered entity believes that protected health information is evidence of a crime that occurred on its premises; and (6) by a covered health care provider in a medical emergency not occurring on its premises, when necessary to inform law enforcement about the commission and nature of a crime, the location of the crime or crime victims, and the perpetrator of the crime.
https://www.hhs.gov/hipaa/for-professionals/privacy/laws-reg...
We are all provisional citizens at this point.
But, of course, you already know that. So why bother with the theatrics?
Two thirds of those required to report to camps for internment, per the Executive Order, were US citizens.
Yes, because he has a pattern of staking out one extreme position and then doing something slightly less extreme; but both of which would have been unthinkable when laws and due process meant something.
And also, yes, because joking around is something you do on your own time and when you’re a child. Like not wanting your pilot to announce his intention to do some aerobatic maneuvers on an airline flight. Whether they carry it out or not is almost beside the point.
First, the situation itself is always serious, because because nobody in that kind of position should ever be "joking" about such a thing.
Second, this guy's not joking. A threat does not become a joke simply because it is weak/unlikely or delivered while chuckling.
As long as lists of people are useful they will be created, and as long as our government is unaccountable to the people and the law those lists will be at risk of being abused by the state for other purposes.
But here in glorious America, people are asking "This is inevitable, how can we starve the government more, so that it cannot hurt us when it eventually tries to?"
It's telling that, every time there's an election, we keep hearing complaints about who can vote, because its citizens decided that the government shouldn't keep track of who are its citizens and where they live. In most other countries it's the government's job to issue a photo ID to every citizen, but no, here in America that sounds too convenient and it must be some evil big-gov agenda.
No one was forced to vote for Clinton and nominating a loser of the primary would have set an awful precedent.
To be fair, other billionaires paid for this one; and this one is still not listening to the people.
You know, the same federal government that refused to assign a special prosecutor to the Epstein files. You can rest assured Apple and the Fed are very interested in protecting the children. Anyone who refuses to allow that sort of process is probably a criminal anyways, right?
That's why in France, for example, it's illegal for the government to keep track of people's race or religion. When the Nazis occupied France they used such documents to figure out who the Jews were.
We don't even have the concept of “race”.
I’m pretty sure the German government has a list of people enrolled in the German socialized medical system.
I found the whole idea very prone to abuse and posted about it on social media, and the whole thread flew into people fighting about Obamacare… but I still think I was right.
The older I get, the more I become a strong proponent of keeping data out of the hands of the people who can murder you without recourse.
We are very, very far away from a state where the government doesn't know all about you. Im not sure what we should do about that fact. Im not simply arguing for an inevitable erosion of privacy on one end or soveriegn citizenship, for example, on the other. It's just that you would have to rewind way back. Social security, income taxes, etc.
It doesn't any more.
Sure, the protagonist sees hidden bunkers with weird science, but the average person? It's hard find work, their votes don't seem to matter, there's no real privacy anymore, and nobody will honor the warranty on the little floor-cleaner robot.
(peak covid was 3000 deaths per day)
This country is going to get really horrific, really really fast
https://www.pbs.org/newshour/show/gop-gives-ice-massive-budg...
> Tom Homan, as well as Deputy Chief of Staff Stephen Miller have made very clear that they intend on spending the billions in this bill. Tom Homan said this week that they want to arrest 7,000 people every day for the remainder of the administration
lol ppl here would be singing a different tune if 7000 people per day were entering this country on H1B visa.
There are kids sitting right now in cages at Alligator Auschwitz without an adult for days and days and have never known any other country
Your parents were born in this country? How about their parents?
Because now they've run out of "criminals" they are putting people with legal status ("green cards") into the concentration-camps and when they run out of those next year who do you think they are going to keep busy with?
US Citizens have sat for days in prison before even given the chance to show citizenship, why don't you think that's going to happen to you eventually?
That is absolutely not true. They occupy very different philosophical spaces and have very different proclivities for extrajudicial acts.
> Democrats … buy votes by promising handouts
Didn’t Mr. Musk do something akin to this in Wisconsin?
> Democrats want to make it illegal to protect myself from a violent attacker.
I couldn’t speak for every elected Democrat but few, if any, stake out a position anywhere close to what you wrote.
What an intellectually dishonest take.
This will result in thousands of people in cages for undetermined amounts of time with no due process. It's unconstitutional whether or not you're here legally. Democrats are not forcing Republicans to build outdoor prisons to house farm workers and their families.
Not to mention that there are a number of people getting caught up in this that are in the US legally, under asylum claims or birthright citizenship.
Democrats attempted to pass immigration reform twice in 2024 and Republicans shot it down for reasons including the asinine lack of border wall funding.
The impasse is largely that Democrats want to provide a reasonable path to citizenship for people who have already been living and working here (many of whom have been here for decades and have american-born children). Republicans will not budge and chose to impose suffering directly.
You're going to have to explain what you mean by that: people in the US have a right to move to any state they want, and the state they move to has almost no say in the matter. The most Texas could do is pass laws that restrict the supply of housing or maybe some other thing that most people need.
Just a quick check of the official website to try and get onto Medicaid in WA state shows that it requires a social security number and citizenship information: https://www.wahealthplanfinder.org/us/en/health-coverage/get...
Just because it's illegal doesn't mean it isn't happening. From a May 25, 2025 article on the official CMS website: "The Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) announced today increased federal oversight to stop states from misusing federal Medicaid dollars to cover health care for individuals who are in the country illegally. Under federal law, federal Medicaid funding is generally only available for emergency medical services for noncitizens with unsatisfactory immigration status who would otherwise be Medicaid-eligible, but some states have pushed the boundaries, putting taxpayers on the hook for benefits that are not allowed."
From this article: https://www.cms.gov/newsroom/press-releases/cms-increasing-o...
Both of those sources are just bullshit propaganda. There are no 'open borders'. You're just being manipulated.
They also are really poor about citing evidence for their claims. The best thing they've got is a vague '124 percent more' with no real figures, and 'some states have pushed boundaries'.
If they want to tighten policy around what qualifies as emergency care then be my guest. The rest of this is just pushing a bullshit narrative.
It’s a class war. Once they’ve run out of immigrants to harass and deport, they’ll be going after the poor.
- significantly raising taxes on imported goods - letting ACA subsidies expire - reducing access to medicaid - allowing medical debt on credit reports - resuming collections/garnishment for student loans - reducing options for student loan repayment / forgiveness
they're going after the poor
That's just a bonus feature
The tariffs serve 2 purposes:
I would love to be proven wrong because I'm hating this timeline.Get power => cause market instability, make trades and bets on volatility (or have your friends do it) => offshore your gains
https://www.medicaid.gov/medicaid/enrollment-strategies/down...
so ultimately there is some source of non-citizen data to be gleaned
Some states even allow legal temporary visa visitors like students to sign up for their state level funded medicaid. NY is constitutionally required to do so.
ICE however is making a play to obtain all of that state level data.
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Right? /s
At the very least they're using federal funds for administrative costs.
> Medicaid, state and federally government-funded health care coverage for the country’s poorest, is largely available only to some non-citizens, including refugees and asylum seekers, survivors of human trafficking, and permanent residents. Some states, like New York, provide Medicaid coverage for children and pregnant people, regardless of their immigration status. States report their Medicaid expenditures and data to the federal government, which reimburses them for some of the costs.
The Trump admin is aggressively deporting refugees and asylum seekers who entered legally.
As a related aside, Federally-funded California clinics are about to start requiring proof of citizenship. This is causing a panic.
Also, due to the massive cost of providing care to undocumented migrants, Newsom is about to freeze all registrations for Medi-Cal (so the message is get in now before the gates close). He's also proposing charging undocumented migrants a modest premium.
You just know this goes beyond illegal immigrants. This is some Gestapo shit right there.
The article notes that a former information security lead from the VA says the SORN needs to be updated for this specific ICE/CMS agreement and has not been. Clearly that fact is a disputed.
The ACLU argues that the sharing is only allowed if it contributes to the accuracy of Medicare or Medicaid, administers a federal health benefits program, or is necessary to implement a federally funded health benefits program. Im not sure if this it true (sharing only allowed in these cases) but if so it seems reasonable that detecting fraud would contribute to the accuracy and integrity of Medicaid. Furthermore, ICE does administer a federal health benefits program (IHSC [1]), so the basis for the ACLU's objection really seems unfounded, although the administration doesnt cite this basis and is quite upfront that its about identifying illegal aliens.
[1] https://www.ice.gov/detain/ice-health-service-corps