Mega-Thread: Trump Focused Discussion

[Mayhem]

https://www.cnbc.com/2025/04/30/trum...-overhang.html

We are going to keep hearing this well into 2026 lol

Nothing attracts foreign business and investors like random deportations to El Salvadorian prisons and a president who wants to punish foreign business and investors.

[Edge-]

https://www.nytimes.com/2025/04/29/u...funds-gao.html

An independent federal watchdog has opened more than three dozen investigations into the Trump administration to determine if it has illegally withheld billions of dollars in congressionally approved funds, raising the odds of a high-stakes constitutional clash over the power of the government’s purse.

The acknowledgment by the Government Accountability Office came on Tuesday, as House and Senate Democrats estimated for the first time that President Trump might have blocked the delivery of at least $430 billion during his first 100 days in office. That imperiled money enacted for foreign aid, green energy, health and transportation-related programs, potentially in violation of the law.

The dispute originates in Mr. Trump’s vast, chaotic and continued reconfiguration of the federal government. Since the first days of Mr. Trump’s term, he and his top advisers — including the tech billionaire Elon Musk — have shuttered programs while blocking or slowing a wide array of funds seen as wasteful, unnecessary or incompatible with the president’s broader political agenda.

Many Democrats and legal scholars contend that Mr. Trump’s budget maneuvers violate the Constitution, which vest the powers to tax and spend with Congress, not the executive branch. The spending interruptions have also prompted a wave of court challenges as state officials, nonprofits and other federal aid recipients say the White House has acted illegally.

36 federal investigations from the GAO

ooph

this sure does look like the most lawless administration ever

[Xath]

Not really, it seems more about giving PDs access to military training and technology. I'm not sure how you read non-lethal capabilities and think martial law.

Granted it's not a good thing either way for the record, it's just not martial law. The military is not being deployed to control the population and nothing in that says this.

This is fucked cause imagine how shit our police are now imagine them with fucking drones and shit and putting entire cities under surveillance. This is what this is actually about, giving cops more power that they don't need.

It specifies personnel as well

[Bwgmon]

https://x.com/atrupar/status/1917576...Vzclh4KfQ&s=19

I really don't want to post all the stupid shit the Trump toadies are going to stay today, but Holy Crap.

"If you don't count the fire, your house isn't on fire."

[Edge-]

https://truthsocial.com/@realDonaldT...40568643216314

THIS IS THE TRUMP STOCK MARKET BECAUSE MY POLLS AGAINST BIDEN ARE SO GOOD THAT INVESTORS ARE PROJECTING THAT I WILL WIN, AND THAT WILL DRIVE THE MARKET UP — EVERYTHING ELSE IS TERRIBLE (WATCH THE MIDDLE EAST!), AND RECORD SETTING INFLATION HAS ALREADY TAKEN ITS TOLL. MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN!!!

Posted January 29, 2024, before he was in office.

If he wants to take credit for the markets in early 2024 then these are still his markets and he gets the credit for them taking.

[Tech614]

It specifies personnel as well

The personnel are there to train the PD... They can't use any lethal force. That is what it specified.

Like it's a shit order that hopefully states fight against regardless. No need to make up bullshit about how it's martial law. How many martial law situations you ever seen where a military can't use lethal force?

[Xath]

The personnel are there to train the PD... They can't use any lethal force. That is what it specified.

Like it's a shit order that hopefully states fight against regardless. No need to make up bullshit about how it's martial law. How many martial law situations you ever seen where a military can't use lethal force?

Non lethal is separated also yeah we aren't at the camp stages yet but rubber bullets fired into a crowd still fucking hurt and can do massive soft tissue damage especially to eyes.

[btlcryct]

Can add Connecticut to the list of places ICE is nabbing people at courthouses:

https://www.wfsb.com/2025/04/30/unan...wn-courthouse/

[Edge-]

Can add Connecticut to the list of places ICE is nabbing people at courthouses:

https://www.wfsb.com/2025/04/30/unan...wn-courthouse/

it gets better!

https://www.newsweek.com/ice-agents-...lahoma-2065984

Federal immigration authorities seized a family of U.S. citizens' phones, laptops and life savings in Oklahoma City before forcing them to stand outside in the rain in their underwear, a family member said.

The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) acknowledged that the previous tenants were the intended targets of the enforcement operation.

"The search warrants included the location of an address where U.S. citizens recently moved. The previous residents were the intended targets," a senior DHS official told Newsweek.

A warrant, at least...

The woman, identified by Nexstar's KFOR as "Marisa," had moved with her family from Maryland to Oklahoma City just two weeks earlier.

On Thursday, April 24, about 20 armed agents stormed the property.

"I don't know who they were," Marisa told KFOR. "It was dark. All the lights were off."

This should be 100% illegal. Display ID and identify yourself or law enforcement should be treated as armed home invaders.

Marisa said the men claimed to be federal agents from the U.S. Marshals Service, ICE and the FBI.

"I keep asking them, 'Who are you? What are you doing here? What's happening?'" Marisa said. "And they said, 'We have a warrant for the house, a search warrant.'"

The woman said the agents had a search warrant for the home, but the people named in it do not live there.

Marisa said the agents forced her and her daughters outside into the rain before they had a chance to get dressed.

Because why would law enforcement ever bother to verify if a suspect was still living at the residence before raiding it and terrorizing the current occupants?

"They wanted me to change in front of all of them, in between all of them," she said. "My husband has not even seen my daughter in her undergarments—her own dad, because it's respectful. You have her out there, a minor, in her underwear."

Marisa discovered that the names on the search warrant didn't belong to her or anyone in her family. Instead, she recognized them from mail still being delivered to the house—likely addressed to former residents.

"We just moved here from Maryland," Marisa said. "We're citizens. That's what I kept saying. 'We're citizens.'"

"They were very dismissive, very rough, very careless," she added. "I kept pleading. I kept telling them we weren't criminals. They were treating us like criminals. We were here by ourselves. We didn't do anything."

sounds like getting into law enforcement might be a good way to look at underage girls!

Marisa said the agents searched the entire house and went through their belongings, ultimately seizing their phones, laptops and their entire cash savings as "evidence."

"I told them before they left, I said, 'You took my phone. We have no money. I just moved here,'" she said. "'I have to feed my children. I'm going to need gas money. I need to be able to get around.' Like, how do you just leave me like this? Like an abandoned dog."

Marisa said her family is now left with virtually nothing. Her husband had remained in Maryland for a few additional weeks and was planning to join them later that weekend.

A senior DHS official said that ICE conducted a court-approved search warrant as part of a large-scale human smuggling investigation.

Fuck you, Americans!

Marissa told KFOR: "What if I would have been armed?" she said. "You're breaking in. What am I supposed to think? My initial thought was we were being robbed—that my daughters, being females, were being kidnapped. You have guns pointed in our faces. Can you just reprogram yourself and see us as humans, as women? A little bit of mercy. Care a little bit about your fellow human, about your fellow citizen, fellow resident.

"We bleed, too. We work. We bleed just like anybody else bleeds. We're scared. You could see our faces that we were terrified. What makes you so much more worthier of your peace? What makes you so much more worthier of protecting your children? What makes you so much more worthy of your citizenship? What makes you more worthy of safety, of being given the right that they took from me to protect my daughters?"

Yep. All very true.

Marisa told KFOR that the agents refused to provide a business card and gave her no information or contacts about how to retrieve the items they confiscated.

ok so did those ICE agents just commit grand theft, then or something?

[Tech614]

Non lethal is separated also yeah we aren't at the camp stages yet but rubber bullets fired into a crowd still fucking hurt and can do massive soft tissue damage especially to eyes.

Brother, cops are already gonna fire rubber bullets at protestors. You think you need the military for that?

Again, you seem to be completely misunderstanding the point of this which is giving cops more tech and training to to put their cities under surveillance. It's not a good thing, but it's completely different from martial law and there is nothing to be gained by improperly describing it as such.

[Edge-]

https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news...sed-rcna203675

Columbia University student Mohsen Mahdawi is free on bail after a judge ordered his release from federal immigration custody on Wednesday, weeks after armed DHS agents detained him in Vermont during his naturalization interview.

Mahdawi, a 34-year-old U.S. permanent resident who was born and raised in a refugee camp in the West Bank, was detained April 14 and had been held at an Immigration and Customs Enforcement facility, the Northwest State Correctional Facility, in St. Albans, Vermont.

"I am saying it clear and loud to President Trump and his Cabinet: I am not afraid of you," Mahdawi said Wednesday outside the Vermont courthouse after his release.

"What we are witnessing now and what we’re understanding is exactly what Dr. Martin Luther King has said before: Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere," he added.

From the bench, Judge Geoffrey W. Crawford ordered the release of Mahdawi from prison on bail, pending the resolution of his habeas petition.

The government requested that Judge Crawford pause Mahdawi's release from prison for seven days by issuing a stay of the order, but the judge denied it.

Following Wednesday's hearing, DHS Assistant Secretary Tricia McLaughlin issued a statement stating that the judge would not prevent the Trump administration from "restoring the rule of law to our immigration system."

"It is a privilege to be granted a visa or green card to live and study in the United States of America," she said. "When you advocate for violence, glorify and support terrorists that relish the killing of Americans, and harass Jews, that privilege should be revoked, and you should not be in this country."

The Justice Department did not immediately return a request for comment.

One of the illegally detained students is released.

Secretary of State Marco Rubio justified Mahdawi’s detention, saying his "presence and activities in the United States would have serious adverse foreign policy consequences and would compromise a compelling U.S. foreign policy interest," according to the DHS notice for Mahdawi to appear.

First Amendment protected speech is not a threat to US foreign policy.

On March 8, immigration authorities detained Columbia graduate student Mahmoud Khalil, who helped lead student protests against the war in Gaza at the school last year, at his New York apartment. A judge ruled on April 11 that the Trump administration can deport Khalil, but Khalil has been permitted to fight the ruling while in detention in the U.S.

DHS agents similarly apprehended Tufts University student Rümeysa Öztürk, who previously co-wrote an essay about Israel and the war in Gaza, off a Boston suburban street in March.

A reminder of the other students being punished by this racist, white supremacist administration for exercising their First Amendment rights.

Eventually these masked, unidentified ICE agents are going to run into someone who is armed and treats them like the unknown assailants/kidnappers they appear to be.

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Brother, cops are already gonna fire rubber bullets at protestors. You think you need the military for that?

Again, you seem to be completely misunderstanding the point of this which is giving cops more tech and training to to put their cities under surveillance. It's not a good thing, but it's completely different from martial law and there is nothing to be gained by improperly describing it as such.

i feel like some folks are forgetting the floyd protests and all the heinous shit cops were doing even without the local national guard showing up like repeatedly illegally kettling protesters and repeatedly intentionally firing those rubber bullets etc. at head level when that is literally the thing you're not supposed to do

wild

[Dontrike]

Trump actually believes MS-13 was tattooed on Garcia's hand, and gets really upset like a toddler with dementia when facted to his face.

President Donald Trump complained that an interviewer for ABC News wasn’t “being very nice” when he refused to back up the president’s claims about a Maryland dad who was mistakenly deported.

During an interview Tuesday with Terry Moran to mark the first 100 days of his second term as president, Trump insisted that Kilmar Abrego Garcia, who was mistakenly deported to El Salvador’s brutal CECOT mega-prison on March 15, had “MS-13” tattooed across his knuckles.

“There’s a dispute about that,” Moran said, trying to move on to the next topic.

“Wait a minute. Wait a minute,” Trump objected. “He had ‘MS-13’ on his knuckles, tattooed.”

“He had some tattoos that are interpreted that way,” Moran clarified. “But let’s move on.”

Earlier this month, Trump posted a photo on social media of Kilmar Abrego Garcia’s hand showing four tattoos—a marijuana leaf, smiley face, cross, and skull. In the picture, the numbers and letters “M-S-1-3” were digitally added above each tattoo to argue that the symbols were a code to signify gang membership.

Experts, however, have said the tattoos are not associated with Mara Salvatrucha, a criminal gang that originated among Salvadoran immigrants in Los Angeles in the 1980s. The gang spread to Central America when its members were deported after the Salvadoran civil war ended in the early 1990s.

Criminal justice experts told CBS News that members have been known to tattoo the gang’s colloquial name “MS-13” on their bodies, along with images of devil horns. But a community activist who had worked with gang members for more than 25 years said he had never seen a gang member with Abrego Garcia’s knuckle tattoos.

A former gang member turned professor told CBS he had consulted current gang members, and even they didn’t think the tattoos stood for MS-13.

“Wait a minute. Terry. Terry, Terry,” Trump said during Tuesday’s interview, refusing to move on.

“He did not have the letter ‘M-S-1-3,’” Moran said.

“It says ‘M-S-1-3,’” Trump insisted.

“That was Photoshopped,” Moran said.

When Trump first shared the photo on April 19, internet sleuths argued it was misleading because Trump did not make it clear that the image had been digitally altered to include the alleged gang “context.”

The president’s online defenders countered that it was obvious the letters and numbers had been added to illustrate the president’s claims. Trump’s exchange with Moran, however, made it seem like Trump believed the letters and numbers were part of the original tattoo.

“That was Photoshopped? Terry you can’t do that,” Trump told Moran.

“Hey, they’re giving you the big break of a lifetime,” he continued. “You’re doing the interview. I picked you because—frankly I never heard of you but that’s OK. I picked you but you’re not being very nice. He had ‘MS-13’ tattooed—”

“We’ll agree to disagree. I want to move on to something else,” Moran said.

“Terry. Terry. Do you want me to show you the picture?” Trump said.

Moran said he’d seen it, and repeated again that Abrego Garcia only had tattoos that can be “interpreted” as evidence of gang membership. He tried to turn the topic of conversation to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, but Trump wasn’t having it.

The administration has tried to justify deporting Abrego Garcia, a migrant from El Salvador whom an immigration judge had granted a form of legal protection called a “withholding of removal order,” by saying he’s a “terrorist” and a member of the notorious MS-13 gang.

The 29-year-old is married to a U.S. citizen and was working full-time as a sheet metal apprentice when he was suddenly detained and deported without being allowed to appear before a judge.

He doesn’t have a criminal record, and no court has found him to be a member of a gang. Instead, Trump officials have offered up tenuous evidence of Abrego Garcia’s MS-13 “membership,” including the tattoos.

“No, no. Terry. Terry,” Trump insisted. “No, no. No, no. He had ‘M-S’ as clear as you can be, not ‘interpreted.’ This is why people no longer believe the news, because—”

At that point Moran—who had responded to Trump’s earlier digs with a smile—sighed the kind of deep sigh that parents of toddlers know well.

He pointed out that the word “MS-13” doesn’t appear in any of the photos of Abrego Garcia that have been taken since he was deported to El Salvador.

“Terry!” Trump interjected.

“Ukraine, sir,” Moran practically begged.

“He’s got ‘MS-13’ on his knuckles, okay?” Trump said. “You’re just such a disservice. Why don’t you just say, ‘Yes he does’ and go on to something else?”

“It’s contested,” Moran replied. “Ukraine.”

[Edge-]

Trump actually believes MS-13 was tattooed on Garcia's hand, and gets really upset like a toddler with dementia when facted to his face.

moran is still a bit of a coward

it's not contested

you don't just move on

it's a lie, it's not true, it's fictitious.

continuing to refuse to call this out to his face and to the public is how we got donald trump again to begin with

[Rasulis]

Shock and anger: Florida immigrant communities react to 'Operation Tidal Wave'

Hanson said several community members who work in landscaping have called her and allege their trucks are being pulled over for no apparent reason and highway patrol deputies proceed to question everyone in the vehicle for their immigration status and detaining those that are undocumented – even those without a criminal record.

Creepy as hell. On the other hand, Florida Hispanic communities did overwhelmingly vote for Trump. He even won Miami Hispanic voters. I see lots of buyer's remorse cases.

Pew Research April 23, 2025 - 72% of Hispanic voters disapprove of Trump's performance.

Unisdos Survey - 37% approval rating.

[Edge-]

Shock and anger: Florida immigrant communities react to 'Operation Tidal Wave'



Creepy as hell. On the other hand, Florida Hispanic communities did overwhelmingly vote for Trump. He even won Miami Hispanic voters. I see lots of buyer's remorse cases.

Pew Research April 23, 2025 - 72% of Hispanic voters disapprove of Trump's performance.

Unisdos Survey - 37% approval rating.

that sounds like super racist profiling, to me.

also, shame that folks voting republican keep voting against their own interests in a range of issues. maybe they should think about that next time.

then again it is fuckflorida

can't wait until they pass legislation allowing minors to do landscaping work during school hours!

[Tech614]

Shock and anger: Florida immigrant communities react to 'Operation Tidal Wave'



Creepy as hell. On the other hand, Florida Hispanic communities did overwhelmingly vote for Trump. He even won Miami Hispanic voters. I see lots of buyer's remorse cases.

Pew Research April 23, 2025 - 72% of Hispanic voters disapprove of Trump's performance.

Unisdos Survey - 37% approval rating.

He won Miami hispanic vote because of Cubans and I doubt they have any buyers remorse. They have been republican voters for a long time at this point and are completely brain rotted into thinking "if we vote dem we will end up like Cuba". These people don't even realize the reason Cuba ended up how it did is because of the US to begin with.

- - - Updated - - -

can't wait until they pass legislation allowing minors to do landscaping work during school hours!

They can go after grandma and grandpa first since their social security checks won't be enough to live on soon. Put them back to work.

[Edge-]

They can go after grandma and grandpa first since their social security checks won't be enough to live on soon. Put them back to work.

bonus points: grandpa's bad back has him hunched over already so he's primed for weed pulling! watch out with the leafblower though, need to make sure to get one with less than 3 horsepower or he'll blow himself over and break a hip

there's no workers comp for that

[btlcryct]

Snipped

JFC, that's insane!

- - - Updated - - -

They can go after grandma and grandpa first since their social security checks won't be enough to live on soon. Put them back to work.

Insert why not both meme here. I mean they've shown, they don't care as long as they get richer.

[Edge-]

JFC, that's insane!

at least they appear to have had an actual warrant and not an administrative warrant this time, so that's something.

[btlcryct]

at least they appear to have had an actual warrant and not an administrative warrant this time, so that's something.

While true, that's like saying you only have diarrhea and not explosive diarrhea. It's still shit.