Mega-Thread: Trump Focused Discussion

[Draco-Onis]

I would imagine it would also be a requirement to live there if you work for the company who owns that "freedom" city. Meaning if Muskville was created, anyone that worked for any of his companies would be required to move there. While you can say you just wouldn't work for any Musk company, I think the goal they have is for all major companies to have their own "freedom" cities, so finding a job without one might get difficult. It'd be the next step of all the recent return to office mandates. "Move to Muskville or we'll consider this your resignation".

Company towns are not new they have been tried several times to the point where they had their own currency. All of them ended in complete and utter disasters apparently not learning from history these guys want to do that again.

[btlcryct]

Company towns are not new they have been tried several times to the point where they had their own currency. All of them ended in complete and utter disasters apparently not learning from history these guys want to do that again.

Agreed, but they don't care. If they can scam enough people to add to their own bank accounts before it falls apart and others are left holding the bag, that's all they care about.

[Cthulhu 2020]

So Trump wants to undo the blanket pardons done by Joe Biden before he left office. Pardons done for people who investigated Trump's crimes likely because the Democrats suspected (correctly) that Trump would try to go after these people who were just doing their jobs in investigating Trump's criminal activities. Not to mention Trump has been aggressively having his FBI and DOJ destroy any evidence and investigations into his criminal activities.

Ignoring the moral dubiousness of such blanket pardons that were first utilized by Trump in his first term, I wonder what kind of "precedent" @tehdang is going to pretend exists for undoing presidential pardons. After all he likes to pretend that every action done by Trump has some precedent behind it despite none of them having precedent.

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It's also interesting to me how much conservative politics are based purely around being proudly wrong about everything. It's the year 2025 and most conservatives still don't understand how progressive taxation and tax brackets work.

[Odinfrost]

Company towns are not new they have been tried several times to the point where they had their own currency. All of them ended in complete and utter disasters apparently not learning from history these guys want to do that again.

Well, the other towns failed because they weren't run by a genius like they are
- their logic, most definitely

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So Trump wants to undo the blanket pardons done by Joe Biden before he left office. Pardons done for people who investigated Trump's crimes likely because the Democrats suspected (correctly) that Trump would try to go after these people who were just doing their jobs in investigating Trump's criminal activities. Not to mention Trump has been aggressively having his FBI and DOJ destroy any evidence and investigations into his criminal activities.

Ignoring the moral dubiousness of such blanket pardons that were first utilized by Trump in his first term, I wonder what kind of "precedent" @tehdang is going to pretend exists for undoing presidential pardons. After all he likes to pretend that every action done by Trump has some precedent behind it despite none of them having precedent.

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It's also interesting to me how much conservative politics are based purely around being proudly wrong about everything. It's the year 2025 and most conservatives still don't understand how progressive taxation and tax brackets work.

This is why learning about taxes in school should be mandatory

[Kathandira]

So Trump wants to undo the blanket pardons done by Joe Biden before he left office. Pardons done for people who investigated Trump's crimes likely because the Democrats suspected (correctly) that Trump would try to go after these people who were just doing their jobs in investigating Trump's criminal activities. Not to mention Trump has been aggressively having his FBI and DOJ destroy any evidence and investigations into his criminal activities.

Ignoring the moral dubiousness of such blanket pardons that were first utilized by Trump in his first term, I wonder what kind of "precedent" @tehdang is going to pretend exists for undoing presidential pardons. After all he likes to pretend that every action done by Trump has some precedent behind it despite none of them having precedent.

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It's also interesting to me how much conservative politics are based purely around being proudly wrong about everything. It's the year 2025 and most conservatives still don't understand how progressive taxation and tax brackets work.

Especially because....

24%
Single Filer:$103,351 - $197,300
Joint Filer: $206,701 - $394,600

150 and 175 are in the same bracket.

[gondrin]

More News about "Freedom Cities" expanding on the wired article https://www.salon.com/2025/03/17/the...s-destruction/ this shit is real and what they are pushing for. We are quickly going to come a head I legitimately don't think we have two years.

And once again, these would be on federal lands. And unless they can ship in everything by air(good luck with much larger things), the states themselves can easily block their ability to generate anything resembling resources to come into those cities. Remember, most actual national lands aren't good for farming so they will need food. Most of them don't have major sources of water so water would have to be shipped in. And the states themselves can say you cannot come through our territory.

Company towns were a legit thing a long time ago. They died off also a long time ago because the only people that lived there were people who worked there. And libertarians also tried this in recent times too.

Want to know what happened?

Bears took over the town.

https://www.vox.com/policy-and-polit...ngoltz-hetling

I swear, people forget that the States within the United States are still sovereign entities with their own laws, their own constitutions and the like.

And unless these techobros are going to kidnap a bunch of people, there won't be enough people to actually work for these people like there isn't now.

[Rasulis]

Cheers in China as Trump dismantles Voice of America

One nationalist influencer called it “truly gratifying.” Another said he was laughing his head off. And a state-media editorial hailed the demise of what it called the “lie factory.”

For years, the Chinese government and its propaganda apparatus have relentlessly attacked VOA and RFA for their critical coverage of China, particularly on human rights and religious freedom.

Chinese nationalists and state media could hardly contain their schadenfreude after President Donald Trump signed an executive order Friday to dismantle Voice of America (VOA), Radio Free Asia (RFA) and other US government-funded media organizations that broadcast to authoritarian regimes.

And now, the Trump administration is silencing the very institutions that Beijing has long sought to undermine – at a time when China is spending lavishly to expand the global footprint of its own state media.

In an editorial Monday, the Global Times, a pugnacious Communist Party-run newspaper, denounced VOA as a “lie factory” with an “appalling track record” on China reporting.

From its coverage of alleged human rights abuses in the far western Xinjiang region to reporting on South China Sea disputes, Taiwan, Hong Kong, the coronavirus pandemic and the Chinese economy, “almost every malicious falsehood about China has VOA’s fingerprints all over it,” the editorial claimed.

“As more Americans begin to break through their information cocoons and see a real world and a multidimensional China, the demonizing narratives propagated by VOA will ultimately become a laughingstock of the times,” it added.

VOA’s China coverage stretches back decades. During the 1989 Tiananmen pro-democracy protests, its Chinese-language radio broadcasts became a critical source of uncensored information for the Chinese people. (VOA discontinued its Chinese radio broadcasts in 2011 but its Chinese language website remained online as of Monday.)

RFA, founded in 1996, broadcasts to China in English, Chinese, Uyghur and Tibetan-language services, catering to ethnic minorities whose freedoms the Chinese government has long been accused of suppressing.

RFA CEO Bay Fang called the US grant cutoff “a reward to dictators and despots, including the Chinese Communist Party, who would like nothing better than to have their influence go unchecked in the information space.”

On Chinese social media, nationalist influencers celebrated the demise of VOA, which has placed all 1,300 staff on administrative leave, and of RFA, which said it may cease operations following the termination of federal grants.

“Voice of America has been paralyzed! And so has Radio Free Asia, which is just as malicious toward China. How truly gratifying!” wrote Hu Xijin, a former editor-in-chief of the Global Times and prominent nationalist commentator.

“Almost all Chinese people know the Voice of America, as it is a symbolic tool of US ideological infiltration into China,” Hu wrote in a post on microblogging site Weibo, where he has nearly 25 million followers. “(I) believe that Chinese people are more than happy to see America’s anti-China ideological stronghold crumble from within, scattering like a flock of startled birds.”

Another nationalist commentator accused VOA and RFA of being “notorious propaganda machines for color revolutions,” referring to protests of the 2000s that toppled governments in the former Soviet Union and the Balkans.

“I’m laughing my head off!” they said.

Others cheered Trump, who during his first term in office was nicknamed “Chuan Jianguo,” or “Trump, the (Chinese) nation builder” by the Chinese internet, in a mocking suggestion that the US president’s isolationist foreign policy and divisive domestic agenda was helping Beijing to overtake Washington on the global stage.

“Thank you, Comrade Chuan Jianguo and Elon Musk, please take care and stay safe,” a Weibo user said on Monday.

Musk, the billionaire adviser to Trump who has been spearheading sweeping cuts to the US government, has used his social media platform X to call for VOA to be shut down.

“This news marks the end of an era,” said another comment on Weibo on Sunday.

The White House defended Trump’s executive order in a statement Saturday, claiming it “will ensure that taxpayers are no longer on the hook for radical propaganda.”

But as the US-funded stations dial down, China is busy amplifying its own messages to the world.

Under leader Xi Jinping, China has drastically expanded the reach and influence of its state media outlets as part of its push to gain “discourse power” in a world it sees as unfairly dominated by the Western narrative.

In 2018, Beijing announced the creation of a giant media conglomerate by merging three existing state-run networks aimed at overseas audiences to better combine resources. Its name? Voice of China.

[gondrin]

Much like the rest of the current administration, the moment they are challenged, they go run and hide.

I personally have zero issue with gang members that are from another country being deported back to that country. I have no issue with drug cartels and the like being lumped in with terrorist groups because that is what they are in their home countries. What I have a big problem with, as far as this administration goes, is the fact they refuse to use due process to determine if someone is or is not part of said groups. As due process is there to determine if someone actually committed a crime, part of a group that committed a crime or pretty much to determine if someone is actually accused of something.

When questioned about this exact thing, "How do you know they are part of these gangs?", Border czar Tom Homan basically ran away from reporters because he knew any answer he would give would state the exact thing that was happening, that due process was being suspended because they "look" like they could be part of these gangs.

https://www.rawstory.com/tom-homan-storms-off/

Homan spoke to reporters outside the White House on Monday after ABC News revealed that the Trump administration "made a calculated decision to ignore a judge's directive to turn around two flights containing hundreds of alleged Venezuelan gang members."

"Is every one of those guys a member of the gang? How do you know it?" one reporter asked. "And why can't they sort that out with a lawyer and an adherent, which is how it should be?"

"Look, we abided by the court's decision," Homan insisted. "His written order was on five illegal aliens, and they wanted to deport them, and we abided by that."

"By the time the other order came, the plane was already over international waters with a plane full of terrorists and significant public safety threats, and to turn a plane around over international waters, we're going to refuel over international waters, come back and bring terrorists back to the United States?" he continued. "That's not what this president promised the American people, but the president did the exactly right thing."

"I can't believe any media would question the president's ability to remove terrorists from this country."

Another reporter pressed Homan on the suspected gang members' civil rights.

"What do you say to those who claim you're using a 200-year-old law to circumvent due process?" the reporter asked.

"An old law?" Homan snapped. "It's not as old as the Constitution. We still pay attention to that, don't we?"

With that, the border czar turned and walked away, refusing any further questions.

"An old law?" Homan snapped. "It's not as old as the Constitution. We still pay attention to that, don't we?"

I guess you don't pay attention to it Homan and neither does your boss. Because the fact it sounded like you got upset when people are afforded their rights means that you literally have disdain for the same thing that allows you to exercise your rights.

How about this Homan? How about we start to label you part of the Aryan Brotherhood and say you are a criminal? Would that be ok? How about we have you arrested on charges that, since you are now part of that group, you help commit a bunch of crimes? How about that Homan?

Because, for any Trump supporter, that is what due process is about. To hopefully prevent someone from being falsely accused of something they are not. To hopefully prevent someone from being falsely accused of a crime they did not commit.

[Rasulis]

While the US is doing everything in their power to foster an atmosphere and fear among US foreign students.

How US immigration authorities tried to hunt down Indian student Ranjani Srinivasan and her escape to Canada

On the other hand, Canada is trying to figure out how to retain more of them.

Why Canada should do more to keep international students
They contribute billions to the economy every year and represent a much-needed highly skilled labour force for the future.

The girl is a Fulbright Scholar from India doing her PhD in Urban Planning. She is not a terrorist, nor a Hammas sympathizer.

The scholar came under scrutiny because of an incident last year when pro-Palestine protests gripped Columbia University. When protesters clashed with the police, she was arrested near the university grounds. She was not participating in the demonstration but was returning after spending the day with friends when she found herself in the middle of the commotion. She was detained along with close to 100 others.

“I was just trying to get back to my apartment,” Srinivasan was quoted as saying by The New York Times (NYT), distancing herself from the pro-Palestine protests. While she was issued two summonses – for obstructing traffic and refusing to disperse – her case was dismissed and did not result in a criminal record.

Srinivasan thought it was all behind her and did not disclose the summonses when she renewed her student visa as the case was dropped. Little did she know that months later, the Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) would come after her.

According to Srinivasan’s attorneys, while she attended a handful of protests, she did not participate in a protest last year in which students occupied Hamilton Hall. On social media, she shared or liked posts on human rights violations in Gaza. In 2023, she signed an open letter published by the Society of Architectural Historians in support of “Palestinian liberation”.

[gondrin]

How US immigration authorities tried to hunt down Indian student Ranjani Srinivasan and her escape to Canada

And this is why it is never about deporting people. It is about silencing speech they don't like. The girl self-deported. But to this current administration, she is still a "dangerous person" because of her speech.

No Trump, her speech isn't dangerous to anyone outside of zealots who want to genocide the Palestinian people.

[Rasulis]

And this is why it is never about deporting people. It is about silencing speech they don't like. The girl self-deported. But to this current administration, she is still a "dangerous person" because of her speech.

No Trump, her speech isn't dangerous to anyone outside of zealots who want to genocide the Palestinian people.

Not sure why the government went after her in the first place. Her involvement, at best, was barely peripheral. A like in 2023 and signing an open letter, with God knows how many other signatories, published by the Society of Architectural Historians (SAH) do not constitute supporting Hamas.

SAH mission statement "The Society of Architectural Historians promotes the study, interpretation, and conservation of architecture, design, landscapes, and urbanism worldwide for the benefit of all."

[korijenkins]

Well, the other towns failed because they weren't run by a genius like they are
- their logic, most definitely

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This is why learning about taxes in school should be mandatory

There's a big reason conservative politicians have invested heavily in creating skepticism around education. The only people who would vote for policies that blatantly screw them are the biggest idiots in America. With the old Christian fart vote dying off, they've replaced them with the moron vote.

[gondrin]

Not sure why the government went after her in the first place. Her involvement, at best, was barely peripheral. A like in 2023 and signing an open letter, with God knows how many other signatories, published by the Society of Architectural Historians (SAH) do not constitute supporting Hamas.

SAH mission statement "The Society of Architectural Historians promotes the study, interpretation, and conservation of architecture, design, landscapes, and urbanism worldwide for the benefit of all."

To fascists, any speech they don't like, no matter how peripheral, is an affront to them. They also fear that someone may get "ideas" and they cannot have anyone have those.

You see that in cults and extremist religious groups.

[DarkTZeratul]

Not sure why the government went after her in the first place.

Because she's an easy target.

[Doomcookie]

1). We have always had free/fair elections. There has never been any evidence of wide-spread voting fraud that has affected elections. Ever. Like Obama/Biden said, "you can't just love your country when you win."

2). Unlikely at this point that the GOP lose anything for another decade+. The markets will recover after this correction, like they always do. Eggs will be cheaper. Gas is already cheaper. Mortgages are coming down. The lasting memory of the Democratic party will be them defending that a violent international gang "only" took over a handful of apartments in CO, and not as many as had originally been claimed. Among other things.

3). N/A

Then, why do you support a guy who lied about an election being stolen, then tried to overthrow the government?

I'p note there wasn't a single comment of yours that condemned him for either.

Why the lies and hypocrisy?

[Poopymonster]

Not sure why the government went after her in the first place. Her involvement, at best, was barely peripheral. A like in 2023 and signing an open letter, with God knows how many other signatories, published by the Society of Architectural Historians (SAH) do not constitute supporting Hamas.

SAH mission statement "The Society of Architectural Historians promotes the study, interpretation, and conservation of architecture, design, landscapes, and urbanism worldwide for the benefit of all."

She is brown.
She is not a citizen.
She was near something Trump didn't like.

[fwc577]

Company towns are not new they have been tried several times to the point where they had their own currency. All of them ended in complete and utter disasters apparently not learning from history these guys want to do that again.

I mean the ketamine junkie went out and sig heiled twice on stage. You know these fucking retards don't learn from history. Just wish we'd be able to skip to the stage where their leader an heroes himself and the good guys come in and hang the rest.

[Poopymonster]

I mean the ketamine junkie went out and sig heiled twice on stage. You know these fucking retards don't learn from history. Just wish we'd be able to skip to the stage where their leader an heroes himself and the good guys come in and hang the rest.

Correction, they did learn from history.
The just learned the wrong lesson.

[Evil Midnight Bomber]

Not sure why the government went after her in the first place.

A picture is worth 1000 words.

[Xath]

And once again, these would be on federal lands. And unless they can ship in everything by air(good luck with much larger things), the states themselves can easily block their ability to generate anything resembling resources to come into those cities. Remember, most actual national lands aren't good for farming so they will need food. Most of them don't have major sources of water so water would have to be shipped in. And the states themselves can say you cannot come through our territory.

Company towns were a legit thing a long time ago. They died off also a long time ago because the only people that lived there were people who worked there. And libertarians also tried this in recent times too.

Want to know what happened?

Bears took over the town.

https://www.vox.com/policy-and-polit...ngoltz-hetling

I swear, people forget that the States within the United States are still sovereign entities with their own laws, their own constitutions and the like.

And unless these techobros are going to kidnap a bunch of people, there won't be enough people to actually work for these people like there isn't now.

I never said these people were smart however here's what you aren't factoring in. Small family run farms are dying and a lot of them rely on illegal labor. When these farms have to sell off they are being bought up by megacorps. If the megacorps stop supplying small towns or even cities and only supply "freedumb cities" you have major problem and the question is will the public act like sheep or revolt.