This seemed like a good one to close the year out with. Happy New Year, Alas readers!
I don’t have a cartoon syndicate and I’m not in newspapers. But I get to do this for a living because lots of readers support my Patreon with mostly small pledges! I also have prints and books for sale.
I’m actually pretty serious about this. History is full of events – both good and bad – that most people never saw coming.
I understand people feeling pessimistic- I do too. And without a doubt, bad things are going to happen in the US, especially to trans people and for immigrants. And the catastrophe in Gaza is certain to continue and may even get worse.
But I try to remember that not only do I not know what’s going to happen – past experience shows I’m actively terrible at knowing what will happen. This is the most recent of several times in my life when the far right has won the White House and congress. And each time, terrible things have happened – but it’s never been the end of progress. It’s never meant that civil rights never advanced again, and it’s never meant that nothing good will happen again.
This one was fun to draw. The two-people-talking-while-walking-through-the-park thing is something I’ve drawn a lot, but I’ve decided that’s all right. Charles Schulz did a lot of cartoons showing Peanuts characters talking while leaning their elbows on a brick wall. Walt Kelly did a ton of strips featuring Pogo characters talking while hanging out in a swamp, or rowing a boat.
My goal with the park walk scripts is to keep it fun, for me and (I hope) for readers. Every drawing is a new challenge, and a new chance to make what I draw look lively and interesting. Every new strip is a chance to get something right, and maybe to make people feel touched or angry or at least less alone. I’m awfully lucky that this is my job.
TRANSCRIPT OF CARTOON
This four-panel cartoon shows two women talking as they walk through a park. The first woman has red hair and glasses, the second woman has a red hoodie and black hair held in a bun.
PANEL 1
GLASSES: So what do you think – is democracy done for?
BUN: What do I know? I thought Trump was definitely going to lose. Twice.
PANEL 2
A close shot of Bun, who looks distressed.
BUN: When I was a kid lots of smart people said we were doomed to be destroyed by nuclear war, and I believed them.
PANEL 3
BUN: I was shocked when the Berlin Wall fell. And I thought we’d never get gay marriage or legal pot in my lifetime.
PANEL 4
Both characters smile, and Bun spreads her hands expansively.
GLASSES: So you predict things will be all right?
BUN: No, I predict catastrophe. But it gives me hope that my predictions are always complete garbage.
CHICKEN FAT WATCH
Chicken fat is a venerable cartoonists’ term for unimportant details put into the backgrounds.
PANEL 1: There’s a hole in the ground, and Marge Simpson is popping her head out of the hole.
An almost illegibly tiny newspaper lies on the ground. The newspaper is called “The New Fork Tines.” The top headline says “Democrats Choose Youth For Leadership Position,” with a sub-headline reading “Newly appointed leader only 71.”
A bottle lying on the ground has a label that says “Old Litter.”
A mouse is holding a skunk at gunpoint. The skunk has its hands raised and next to it is a sack with a “$” on it.
PANEL 3
A bird flying through the air is wearing sunglasses and smoking a cigarette.
A hole in a tree has a paper hanging from it, which says “Hole For Rent, utilities not included.”
PANEL 4
One of the buildings in the background has a gigantic teddy bear climbing it King Kong style.
The mouse from panel 1, holding a shovel, stands by a freshly dug grave. The money bag lies near the mouse’s feet.
I’m actually kind of disturbed at how accurate my predictions have been lately. I predicted that Brexit would pass, that Trump would win (both times), and that Roe was in trouble. I also predicted that Germany would be the next target for a fascist takeover and look what’s happening there. Admittedly, the “limited” nuclear war I was expecting hasn’t happened. Yet.
Oh, and my 2019 NanoWriMo project was a story about a world spanning pandemic.
@Dianne: Germany is hardly unique in being the target for a far-right takeover – France, Spain and Sweden are all facing a similar dynamic, in many cases much more advanced. (the French far right is much closer to actual power, as opposed to just influence, than their German colleagues) And arguably the far-right takeover has already happened in Italy. To say nothing of various smaller European countries. So if you predicted that Germany would be the particular target of a far-right takeover, I am not sure you nailed that one.
Mice deserve Second Amendment Rights! The well-regulated militia shall be composed entirely of mice.
Well regulated micetia.
@Dianne,
Did you predict that Biden would win?
I think everyone knew Roe was going down as soon the combo of Moscow Mitch not allowing a vote on *spit* Garland and Dollar Store Mussolini winning the EC happened. I know I posted a lot about the coming loss of Roe for years before it was overturned by the fascists on SCOTUS.
I kinda feel like Moldova, Romania, and Georgia have been the most recent targets of fascist takeovers. Moldova and Romania seem to have, maybe, put theirs down but Georgia is still in question.
I think Austria may be the next successful fascist takeover, as the fascists won the last election (largest party, 29% of parliament) and attempts to form a three-party anti-fascist coalition government fell through. A 1-seat two-party anti-fascist government is still possible, but would be very vulnerable to collapse, and efforts to keep the fascists out of government have increased their popularity.
Germany still has a chance of forming a new anti-fascist coalition after the next election.
@Jacqueline: I think with the Georgian President being forced out, the takeover is now essentially a done deal, at least for the moment.
@Charles: I think the Netherlands is in a worse place than Austria, there is a coalition that doesnt technically include the Party for Freedom but not only relies on them for support, it is effectively committed to carrying through their policy program, at least partially. I would say this is about as close as currently exists in Europe to having actual fascist control without it existing explicitly (as in Hungary, Italy, etc).
Compared to all this, the German neo-fascists are relatively weak (although obviously much stronger than I would wish for). But any electoral gains by German neo-fascists always attract more media attention than equivalent or even greater gains their fascist colleagues in Poland, Belgium, Denmark etc because… well, it´s Germany. So I guess it is understandable that it would seem that Germany is the “next target” even though other countries are closer.
It might be interesting to ask which European country seems least primed for a fascist takeover? Barring microstates, I´d say Ireland (for all Sinn Feinn´s problems, I don´t consider them fascists), Iceland and Norway all seem to have escaped the taint. I won´t speculate on why.
No one’s going to comment on Hungary?
@Hibernus: I agree that fascism is an active problem in multiple countries in Europe and that the AfD has been active for a while. However, Musk’s recent statement and the sudden (?) influx of cash suggest that Germany has become a specific “project” this year. I suspect that the AfD will be in the government soon. Maybe this election, maybe the next one. They’re running second in the polls right now and could from a coalition with the CDU if the CDU is pressured sufficiently.
@Jacqueline: Yes? No? Sorta? I thought that Biden would win 2020 because Trump had done such a terrible job with COVID and all other factors involved in actually governing. However, I was afraid to believe it and kind of set the idea aside until the election, so I can’t say that I really did, but I would have if I had dared hope. I think. P0st-hoc is so easy. So the implication that I’m not accurate, just pessimistic and cherry picking is a fair criticism. (If I’m interpreting your comment correctly. Sorry if not.)
Random guesses for the next four years:
1. Trump and his cronies will be incompetent at actual governing. Yeah, and the earth will continue to orbit the sun.
2. The civil service will be a major target of Trump and he’ll do considerable damage. It will get virtually no press because “bloated bureaucracy” is so embedded in the public mind that there will be little external opposition.
3. (Related) At least one sketchy medication will get approved in oncology and neurology. It’ll take forever to get them off the market again or even get the labels corrected.
4. (Related to 2 as well) There will be fewer recalls of foods but more food related illness.
5. Gas prices may fall initially, but will rise again by 2026. Mysteriously, this will go undiscussed.
6. Ditto food prices. In fact, depending on how successful Trump is with the removing immigrants and increasing tariffs, there may well be a famine as we have no one to pick the crops (or maybe even plant them) and imports are hella expensive. I find this outcome unlikely but not impossible.
7. In fact, inflation in general will be up, employment down, and every measure of economic health worse except for the stock market, which will be labile as crap. (There may be a transient period of good economy due to Biden having gotten the economy into relatively good shape and a probable sugar rush economy initially.
8. Ukraine’s screwed.
9. Netanyahu will “finish the job” with Trump’s approval and aid. However, there will be less coverage of the massacres and so people in the US will think that the situation in Gaza is better.
10. Major epidemics. Malaria might start being seen in the southern states, almost certainly there will be measles outbreaks, and more deaths in the “flu and pneumonia” category, with or without acknowledged covid, depending on Trump and/or his handlers’ wishes as far as pretending covid is gone. Oh, and gun violence, of course.
@Dianne,
I didn’t mean to imply you were cherry-picking. I just wondered about your prediction(?) for the ’20 election since you didn’t mention it.
I’m going to disagree with #4 because almost all food recalls are initiated by the manufacturer and usually only after food poisoning has happened. It’s not like food inspectors discover contamination and force a recall – there simply aren’t enough of them thanks to St. Reagan.
@Jacqueline: I may have been projecting. I sometimes think that I just pick the worst possible outcome and go with it, leading to my being right more often than not. OTOH, I remember being not terribly surprised at Obama’s election and re-election (not hard predictions either) or Bush the second’s. I was surprised that Clinton ousted Bush I after one term, but Clinton is a bouncy, sparkly person and Bush I wasn’t, so maybe he appealed viscerally to neurotypicals enough that the Republican propaganda machine couldn’t overwhelm that effect.
I’m going to stand by #4 since the FDA recently reorganized to try to regulate food better and there were a series of recalls following that, suggesting some level of success. They were “voluntary” recalls, but that generally means “you can withdraw this voluntarily or we can initiate the paperwork to make it mandatory, which would take up both of our lives for an indefinite period of time and neither of us want’s that, do we?” (Of course, if it becomes more difficult to initiate a mandatory recall, that’s yet another variable.)
If anyone’s shopping for nightmare scenarios, I have some.
Scenario 1: Trump succeeds in deporting a significant percent of immigrants, documented and otherwise, and institutes high tariffs. Farming immediately fails, because quite a lot of farmers or farm hands in the US are immigrants or seasonal workers from outside the US. Tariffs and annoyed foreign counterparts lead to severe limitations of importation of food. Hyperinflation and famine follow. Then the administration has a brilliant idea: There are all these people who have been legally deported but not yet removed physically sitting in camps “doing nothing”. Why not put them to work on farms? No need to pay them, of course, they broke the law and forced labor as punishment for a crime is constitutional. Speaking of which, we’ve also got this huge prison population. They can’t all spend their time sewing shirts that can be labeled “Made in the USA”. Why not put them to work in the fields as well? I think this may be, to some degree, the long term plan: it’s not Germany 1933 that they’re looking for, but US 1840 or so.
Scenario 2: RKF Jr manages to actually get something done. Unfortunately, that is weaken or abolish vaccination requirements. Measles, among other diseases, runs rampant. Eventually, a variant that breaks through the immunity provided by the current vaccine or past infection with the current form(s) of measles develops. Measles is about as infectious as you can get and it is frequently worse in adults than children. If you thought the covid pandemic was fun…
“No one’s going to comment on Hungary?”
I mean what is there to say? Hungary has been full-on fascist for 10 years now. It doesn´t belong in a conversation about countries -going- fascist. It´s long gone.
I did mention Hungary as an aside in the “already fascist” category alongside Italy in my comment 7 hours before yours, though, for the record.
“Clinton is a bouncy, sparkly person and Bush I wasn’t, so maybe he appealed viscerally to neurotypicals ”
While this is true, I think the 1991 economic recession had a major role to play in Bush´s loss. “It´s the economy, stupid” isn´t universally true, but I think it was true this time.
Point.
I missed it. My bad. I have slightly more hope for Italy than Hungary, based on the difficulty the fascists are having in keeping power. This may be overly optimistic of me.
Yeah, the ’91 recession hurt Bush very badly. We were also in the 3rd consecutive term -and 5th out of 6 terms – of Republican rule and the voters were ready for a change. It didn’t help Bush the Elder that he was an absolutely awful public speaker. There were some hilarious mashups made of his malapropisms in speeches that made the rounds in ’92.
@Jacqueline: Bush the Younger was an awful public speaker too. We did not misunderestimate him. And yet he won. Trump danced for something like half an hour at one of his own rallies and was frankly incoherent in the debates yet he won. The economy also tanked under both of them and yet they were re-elected. Why? I can’t help but feel like the rules are changing.
Bush the Yunger had the advantage of opponents who weren’t good public speakers. Definitely not as good as Clinton was.
DollarvStore Mussolini, otoh, benefited from a VERY different political and media landscape. I can’t imagine how to compare a campaign from 1992 to one this year. I agree with you there.
@Dianne: I guess the silver lining with Italy is that it shows that even when fascists can capture the executive and the legislature in a previously functioning democracy, there are still institutional obstacles behind them pushing full on fascism, e.g. Mellonis attempt to imprison asylum seekers in Albania was pushed back by the courts, and she complied with the ruling (while griping about it, but she still complied). Of course Italy has its own particular constitutional and political cultural foibles which do not necessarily apply elsewhere, but it does show that the game is not completely over once the fascists take formal political power. Perhaps Poland shows that even better, where the fascists were voted out – although, to counter my own counterpoint, the Polish fascists are down but not out, and may well return via another election some day in the future.
I guess big picture, this current wave of fascism behaves somewhat differently to the 1920s-1940s wave. Which shouldnt be surprising, a lot has changed, even if the core of fascist ideology and political practice hasnt.
(Now that I think of it, Mussolini took a few years to fully transform Italy into a fascist state, as opposed to a state with a fascist government, so maybe I should not be quite so upbeat – we might just be witnessing birthing pains, rather than fundamental weaknesses).
Hey, what is the best way to share your work on social media? If I want anyone to read my post, a link does not work, because (Bluesky and Mastondon excepting) most major social media denigrate links. But if I past directly, that directs nobody to your web page. The usual compromise is to paste in the post and then link in the first comment or reply. But that really does not do you a great deal more good than just pasting, cause few will click on the link if 1st comment. Would you prefer I just link, and we both live with the fact that about six people will see that link.?
Mental Floss “Word Nerd” 2025 Calendar
January 9: Ampersand
“Yes, an ampersand is a punctuation mark, but in the 1900s, it was also slang for the butt–or, as Slang and its Analogues Past and Present put it, “the breech; or posteriors.” Why? Because way back when, the ampersand was often the twenty-seventh letter of the alphabet, coming behind all the other letters. Plus, it has nice curves.”
Gar, thanks!
Any sharing is good sharing! My URL is on the image itself on the left border, so anyone who really wants to find me can do so pretty easily. And I like having my comics seen even if it doesn’t lead to delicious yummy clickthroughs.
For what it’s worth, when I post on Facebook, I post the comic, then post the links in a reply. If you’d rather not do the reply, my preference would be to post the comic without a link, rather than to post it in a way that fewer will see.
Nobody, LOL! I honestly haven’t run into that factoid before.
_Railsea_ by China Mieville has ampersands as part of the story– both text and symbolism. A genuinely weird surrealist novel.
I see the term “far-right” being used a lot, but I’ve never seen it defined. What kind of policies would you say represent “far-right”? Especially as compared to merely “conservative” or “right-of-center”? Do you consider that those latter distinctions even exist? I’ve asked this question on X a lot of people who have used the term but I have never gotten an answer of any sort.
As far as the various predictions regarding expelling all the people here illegally resulting in crops rotting in the field and starvation resulting, it seems to me that one solution would be to start prioritizing the H-2A mechanism. I have no idea if anyone in the Trump administration is actually thinking about that (I certainly haven’t heard anyone talk about it), but it’s there.
One thing I think we may see if RFK Jr. actually gets through the Senate is that some common food additives are going to lose certification. One of the beneficial (or sometimes horrific) aspects of a degree in biochem is that I understand what the chemical names mean in the lists of ingredients in prepared foods. A lot of that $h!t needs to go. He just might be the guy to do it.
People might not get back to you because you’re not doing the basic work of educating yourself about common terminology. How about you Google it yourself (I had a quick look, and the Wikipedia entry looks like a good place to start) & get back to me if that doesn’t answer your questions.
I think they don’t make more use of H-2A visa holders for the same reason that they don’t make more use of U.S. citizens – they more difficult to exploit and too expensive. The cost to the employer of hiring H-2A visa holders is quite substantial – requiring the employer to pay for housing, transportation and fees associated with the visas in addition to wages. In any case, I think it is more likely that the plan is to redeploy the undocumented migrants gathered up as prison labor, paid a fraction of what they were before. To be clear, I think that is a form of slave labor and should be illegal. But, it will not cause food prices to rise. It might even mitigate some of the increases caused by tariffs, if all of the savings aren’t sucked up by CEOs and shareholders.
1.) I am all for a reevaluation of common food additives based on current scientific knowledge. I do not believe that RFK Jr. is the man to do anything rooted in actual scientific knowledge. If he does manage to get some harmful additives decertified it will just be dumb luck.
2.) I don’t think the benefits of getting rid of some harmful food additives would outweigh the likely consequences of his proposals to reduce restrictions on the sale of raw milk, much less the horrific consequences of the vaccine policies he may implement.
Quite a number of people being expelled are in the US legally. Some, apparently, have been citizens.
Want to give some specifics? What currently approved food additives do you think ought to be removed from the market, why, and what is the evidence that RFK Jr will act to remove these additives?
Again, specifics. Not that I don’t agree that there are some squicky but legal ingredients out there. My personal favorite is L-cysteine. (It is, or was, derived from hair. Human hair. Please, people, there is a reason that cannibalism is taboo. In any case, I think it’s mostly lab synthesized these days.) However, just having a long name does not make a food additive dangerous. So it’s hard to tell whether your argument makes sense without details.
This also raises a question for me. If the Supreme Court upholds the ending of birthright citizenship, how will people with no documentation about how their ancestors arrived in this country prove their citizenship?
Oh! I know this one. The answer is, “By being white.”
New Zealand ended birthright citizenship in 2006. I think the way it played out for them has some lessons for the USA right now. (Obviously there are differences, but they did cope with quite a lot of the same issues)
Did they boot out people whose parents weren’t NZ citizens but were born in NZ before they changed the law?
Or even if they do? After all, most people’s parents are citizens only through birthright and so on back. Even if they are ultimately descended from someone who obtained citizenship after migrating to the US, how often would these ancestors have been accepted as immigrants under current laws? If they don’t pass that test, can they really be said to have been legal immigrants or did they cheat their way into citizenship? Maybe the only actual citizens are those descended from freed slaves who have a documented constitutional statement that they have citizenship. Fourteenth amendment or so.
Certificate of live birth before the change ?
I’m pretty sure that in practice, at least at first, it’s going to be about deporting people whose parents provably weren’t born in the US, not about deporting those who can’t prove where their parents were born.
At first, yeah, but where will it end? Trump is literally deliberately destroying the country. He’ll need lots of scapegoats if he doesn’t want to be blamed for that.
I don’t think Trump has unlimited power. Under current circumstances, it’s very unlikely (I think/hope) that he’ll actually be able to pull off repealing birthright citizenship at all, let alone applying it super broadly.
Of course Trump doesn’t have unlimited power. It is important that we don’t give up and do what we can to push back against his illegal orders. That being said, based on the lawlessness of their recent immunity ruling, I think the Supreme Court will uphold the ending of birthright citizenship.
I’ve been saying for a long time that the fascists don’t want legal immigration, either. RonF has claimed otherwise. RonF was wrong.
Given what Trump is doing to the CDC, I’m going to up my prediction and say that Trump will preside over a second epidemic that kills on the order of 1 million plus in the US and add that he might well get a third as well. But how will we know without the MMWR numbers?
Also, this is now a post-diction because it’s already happened, but…planes will start falling out of the skies similar to the 1980s as air traffic controllers are replaced with Trump cronies or just not replaced at all.
Jackie-O: I think, in their brains, if the law says that legal migrants (or actual citizens) that they hate are legal, then the law is wrong. Any immigrant they hate, regardless of legal status, they consider illegal. Thus, it’s actually not possible for them to hate legal immigrants.
The extreme end of this is their attempt to repeal birthright citizenship. Just because they’re trying to take citizenship away from American children of noncitizen immigrants doesn’t mean they’re opposed to those people! After all, they don’t plan to deport them until after they’re legally declared illegal immigrants, at which point they’re only going after them because they’re here illegally.
Immigrants who are legal according to the “I support LEGAL immigration” crowd:
1) Hot asian women who date older divorced white men. They become illegal when they break up with them.
2) Lebanese christians who hate Muslims as much or even a little more than white Americans hate Muslims
3) That one guy who does the burritos from that food truck everybody loves, I thought he was Mexican but I heard he was Paraguayan, anyway whatever, that dude can stay
4) Wealthy white people
Everybody else is ILLEGAL regardless of what laws passed by corrupt Congress says
/s, in case it needed to be said
More “supporting legal immigration” news: At least two Oregon nonprofits – and I suspect, many similar ones across the country – have had their federal grant funds abruptly frozen. Both grants supported providing assitance to immigrants who are here legally and going through the process legally.
I can’t wait for RonF to explain how this gibes with his pro-legal immigration stance.
I saw that Luthern Charities were also potentially on the chopping block due to their work with legal refugee resettlement. They also run a lot of nursing homes.
Even more devastating long-term consequences could arise from abrubtly ending drug trials funded through USAID, including ones targeting drug resistant diseases (eg. Tuburcolosis and H.I.V.).
My understanding is that a judge has ordered and preliminary injunction for funding to be restored for the time being, but I it is not clear that it is being complied with.
Gee, I wonder where Ron is to tell us why this is all o.k.?
Jacqueline:
From the article:
That would be “temporary” as in “never intended to immigrate into the United States permanently”, correct? A discussion about the timing could be fair, but they were supposed to leave at some point no matter who the President is at the time.
Amp:
Don’t think that Trump figured he’d wave his magic wand and get his way immediately on this. Everyone knew that the E.O. on this was going to immediately end up in court and go to the Supremes at some point. The E.O. was just the quickest and best way to get the matter up to them. When I looked into this I found that the question of whether or not a child of a non-citizen mother illegally in the U.S. and a non-citizen father (regardless of where he is) is automatically an American citizen if born in the U.S. has never been adjudicated. There’s good arguments pro and con, all of which we’ll hear about ad nauseam once it gets to the Supremes in either their coming term or the next so I’m not going to talk about them here. The main objective seems to be to remove one of the great attractors for people to enter the U.S. illegally (or for a few people even legally but temporarily, at least in concept). That will make the Border Patrol’s job easier, among other things.
Amp again:
First, a lot of funding of NGOs and non-profit orgs with all different kinds of missions all over the nation is being either pulled or at least frozen. Why should this group be different? Note that the Feds are not putting them out of business by decertifying them or making them ineligible for 501(c)(3) tax-exempt status. Let’s say that they DO pull their funding. Tell me why a Federal government $36T in the hole should give this group tax money rather than having them rely on private contributions like other NGOs/NFP’s?
While we’re on that subject, I’m not in agreement with the meat-axe approach to reducing expenditures that the Trump administration has taken overall. I have friends who have been personally affected where their group has committed to contracts that they now will not have the money to pay unless they can find other sources of funding in short order. In my opinion the Trump administration figures they’ve only got a short window to act in before political wrangling in preparation for the mid-terms slows them down. So they’re applying what in I.T. we call a scream test. In our data center we have 1000’s of servers. The vast majority are well documented, but some have defied all attempts to find out who owns them and what they are for. After all other efforts have failed the data center admins apply the scream test; unplug the things and see who (if anyone) screams. Then they have to explain what the server is, what it does, and justify why it should be turned back on, with the full understanding that it might not get turned back on. It’s crude and can cause serious problems for whoever was using it. But it’s quick, and decisive, the kind of approach Trump is famous/infamous for.
Kate:
It’s not.
I don’t doubt your statement, you did the research not me. However, it does seem to me that the text of the 14th amendment is pretty clear: “All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside.”
Maybe its never been adjudicated because it’s unambiguous. Doesn’t say anything about the legal status of the parents, that’s not relevant. ALL persons born in the US are citizens.
It’s never been adjudicated because the major case on birthright citizenship, US v Wong Kim Ark, was in 1898, before the legal concept of “illegal alien” exactly existed. Nonetheless, Wong Kim Ark made it clear that “all children here born of resident aliens,” with a few narrow exceptions, are US citizens under the citizenship clause of the 14th Amendment.
Importantly, that case did adjudicate the meaning of the phrase “subject to the jurisdiction of” (“All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside”). The Court concluded the phrase means anyone required to obey US law. This matters because the arguments against birthright citizenship – including the Trump E.O. – rely on the false claim that “subject to the jurisdiction of” doesn’t apply to undocumented migrants or to people here legally but temporarily.
Although Plyler v Doe (1982) wasn’t specifically about this, in their ruling the Court did say “no plausible distinction with respect to Fourteenth Amendment ‘jurisdiction’ can be drawn between resident aliens whose entry into the United States was lawful, and resident aliens whose entry was unlawful.” As I understand it, that’s dicta, not binding precedent. This also came up in the unanimous INS v Rios-Pineda decision, in which the Court noted that a child of two undocumented migrants was “born in the United States” and thus “a citizen of this country.” (But again, not the main point of the case.)
Good point. Freezing or pulling grants already promised is wrong, whether the funding was to an individual, a non-profit, an NGO, or a university.
Ron, I feel you lost the plot of what I was saying.
Taking legal action against people who are unquestionably here legally – such as going after the children of undocumented migrants & the children of people legally in the US on nonimmigrant visas, or trying to rescind an already-granted temporary legal status for people who’d be in danger if they returned home, or defunding programs that help immigrants legally navigate the maze of immigration regulations – belies the claim frequently made by Republicans that they have nothing against immigrants, only so-called “illegal immigrants.”
And that was the point I was making.
The GOP doesn’t have to do any of those things. But they are, because they’re anti-immigrant. Not anti-illegal immigrant; anti-immigrant.
Amp:
These days the phrase “resident alien” is a specific legal term describing green card holders; aliens with legal permission to stay in the U.S. indefinitely and, if they choose, to try to gain naturalization. I cannot say what it meant in 1898. But the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882 certainly introduced the concept of “illegal alien”, even if it did not use the actual term (I don’t know if it did or not). My guess is that this is enough to support a case on the matter going to the Supreme Court.
I suspect you’re right. But I won’t guarantee it. It may turn on the acceptance or denial of the concept that such people have actively avoided subjecting themselves to U.S. law and that this therefore does not apply to them. That tortures logic some, I admit.
Diane:
There’s both legal and moral issues there. From the moral side I’d say that I’d agree as long as the purpose of the grant was itself legal and moral, but if the purpose of the grant is grossly antithetical or harmful to the country or its citizens or is fraudulent (i.e., is not actually going to be spent on the purpose it was claimed to be granted for) I get conflicted.
It seems like there’s a lot of people in the country who think that every good thing should be funded in whole or in part by the Federal government. I disagree, and I think it’s valid to disagree with that even if you and I might both agree that the said thing is in fact good. If for no other reason that at this point we just can’t afford it.
Amp again:
I have seen far too many conservatives welcome legal immigrants who become naturalized, celebrating with them and giving them gifts (usually American flags) to accept that.
I don’t think that means much. People have more than one facet. For example, in the 80s, there are plenty of people who knew and were friendly with individual gay people (from work, an old college chum, whatever) who nonetheless supported anti-gay stereotypes and anti-gay laws. I think it’s fair to say those people were homophobic. You can be a homophobe and still, at some level, like individual gay people.
A similar thing applies here. Someone who makes up and propagates horrible lies about Black immigrants – like that they’re stealing and eating pets – is a fucking bigot, against immigrants or Black people or both. Even if that person might be friendly with Clarence Thomas and is married to an immigrant.
The GOP, collectively, supports anti-immigrant laws. From what I’ve seen, most Republicans support this choice enthusiastically. So the GOP is collectively anti-immigrant. No number of tiny American flags gifted changes that.
The party of enormous tax cuts for billionaires has zero credibility claiming to be concerned about the deficit.
Interesting. But that makes the right-wing case for ignoring Wong Kim Ark weaker, not stronger. The Court’s decision in Wong Kim Ark listed some specific exceptions to their ruling about birthright citizenship – but they didn’t include undocumented migrants (under any name) in that list. If, as you say, they were well aware of the concept, then if they intended to exclude undocumented migrants from their ruling, they could have done so.
Trying to imagine the incompetence necessary to fund a grant that is immoral and/or illegal. How did the grant get past multiple layers of review without anyone noticing that it was illegal?
Grants also require annual reports and sometimes evidence of progress is needed before the next year’s budget can be disbursed. Not that this means that it is impossible for fraud to occur, but just that there are processes in place. Musk, Trump, et al, appear to have absolutely no idea how these processes work. They’re essentially destroying things at random to see what will happen. And sometimes they manage to fire the people who guard the nukes or try to control bird flu. Really astonishing incompetence given that Trump has experience as president.
Why not? DOGE claims it’s saving billions. Why not use these billions saved for funding whatever good thing we think is currently underfunded? There should be more money available for funding interesting projects…if DOGE actually works. If it is spending more than it saves, well, then, naturally the money won’t be there and we can’t afford it.
No need to imagine. Just take a look at the current administration and you’ll see exactly the kind of incompetence (and corruption) necessary.
Umm. Given the first Dollar Store Mussolini administration, I don’t find that incompetence to be astonishing. At all.
Good point. I was thinking about the grants that are being withheld by Trump and all those granted over past decades without any significant issues with illegal grants somehow being granted. Indeed, even with Trump, the actions so far have been to stop funding anything rather than to fund illegal activities. However, I think you’re right and they’ll get to this. I shudder to think. Probably a bunch of ineffective “natural” poisons and new ways to harass trans and neuroatypical children. With the occasional attempt to prove the earth is 3000 years old thrown in for comic relief. So much for the US lead in science.
Yeah, but in principle, people are supposed to learn from experience. It’s not the corruption or evil that’s worrying me here, it’s the shear unadulterated incompetence. Consider all the people that they fired and then rehired (or attempted to) after they found out what their actual jobs were. It seems like someone familiar with the government should know these things and not make embarrassing public errors. OTOH, I’m not sure that Trump is still capable of forming memories and his staff seems to burn out and quit or be fired pretty frequently, so maybe no one with intact neurology from the first administration is present in the second.
I think it’s only the tremendous incompetence of Dollar Store Mussolini and those willing to work on his agenda of becoming god-emperor that will save us from total descent into dictatorship.
@Jacqueline Squid Onassis: Yep, pretty much. And their public unpopularity. Protests show, if nothing else, that people are unhappy enough with them to sacrifice half a day to saying that they are displeased. That won’t stop a dictatorship, but it makes it more trouble and slows things down. I just wish I could see more evidence of action and blocking of wannabe dictators Musk and Trump from Congress (Democrats AND Republicans–they’re at risk too) and from upper levels of the civil service. Yes, I know that is unfair to those who have acted, including losing their jobs rather than cooperate, but no Congresspeople and none of the civil service should be cooperating with their own destruction and many are.
Some more “supporting legal immigration” news.
https://www.cbsnews.com/news/u-s-to-revoke-legal-status-of-over-a-half-million-migrants-chnv/
“maybe no one with intact neurology from the first administration is present in the second.”
There is almost no crossover in senior positions between the first and second Trump administrations. Stephen Miller and Richard Grenell are the only examples I can think of.
Normally you would see more continuity of senior personnel between two different administrations of the same party, let alone led by the same guy!
I think this is because in his first administration Trump didn’t expect to win so he relied more on “traditional” Republicans (I won’t say “moderate”). Now he has largely built his own movement which owes more allegiance to him personally than to any political party. Whether or not the traditional Republicans put a break on any of his policies is debatable – I am certainly sceptical – but they had more institutional knowledge of how government works than the current crop whose main pedigree comes from being media figures.