Lawsuits have been recently filed in IL and MN but if you're looking for state troopers to start bodily enforcing the 4th Amendment or arresting ICE brutes who assault old ladies on the sidewalk or murder them in their cars then please don't hold your breath. I think Democrats largely have the correct read that utilizing law enforcement physically against ICE is precisely the kind of escalation that Trump is trying to elicit in order to deploy the Insurrection Act and finally be rid of the pretense that this is anything but an armed uprising against blue America. It's a disappointing strategy, particularly for the DO SOMETHING crowd, but the alternative is I assure you far worse.
ICE
- Thread starter poochyena
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It’s like the old saying goes, “When you’re being raped, just lay there and take it because if you resist, they’ll rape you.”
60% of the time it works every time.
60% of the time it works every time.
I feel like Trump has entered a quantum state where he simultaneously advocates for violence against protesters (ICE v MN) and is ready to conduct military operations in defense of protesters (Iran).
Apparently he's more willing to protect the lives of Iranian Liberals than American Liberals?
Apparently he's more willing to protect the lives of Iranian Liberals than American Liberals?
I'm sure he and his handlers are very concerned about the plight of Iranian
So... appeasement? Play along until the math fundamentally changes and politicians and courts grow a spine and an enforcement mechanism? Courts ruled that ICE agents should have body cams in October, yet we still see agents without cameras, missing or non existent footage in response to FOIA requests.
The alternative isn't worse, it's just delayed.
Prove it. This is a strong assertion to make with no evidence. Abusers share one thing in common, a sense of entitlement, and that must be broken if we are to survive this as any kind of “free” nation. We have nothing of value to lose by just doing the good thing (arresting ICE agents) and everything to gain if it fails (explicit knowledge that law enforcement across the US is a gang of state sanctioned criminals).
After watching how rapidly the public response has escalated I'm not sure holding out for help from cops or politicians is a good idea or would be helpful even if it happened. This has been incredibly radicalizing for a lot of people and they are actually doing something about it: getting organized, preparing resources, making plans, etc. I think it is much better for people to understand they are their own best defense than to look to the police or politicians. There will come a point where the police or politicians try to swoop in, once the hard work has been done, but they will be followers, not leaders, and I think that organization and those mental habits are far more valuable and will continue to be useful.
Just watch the escalation curve. We're not even a week out from Nicole Good's death and ICE can't show its face in the Minneapolis CBD without facing a crowd large enough to force a retreat in single digit seconds. Do you know how hard it is to get people ready to respond to something in single digit seconds? Those people are now much more prepared for literally anything. Fascist takeover, natural disaster, bake sale, literally anything, than they were before, and that is a much more valuable thing than grudging assistance from the people that imagine themselves to be "in charge". Once people are organized it is far more difficult for the supposed leaders to set the agenda, and that is something we desperately need.
This isn't just Trump doing asshole things, this is a forcing function to instill the kind of solidarity that has been stripped away over the years. Think about it. Everything we do encourages us to relate to each other in transactional ways. It steers us away from what Musk calls "the sin of empathy", because what is empathy but evolution's way of warning you "that could happen to you"? They want that because they want to disappear your neighbor without you freaking out and doing something. They want one guy to be homeless without the next guy thinking "that could happen to me". Or health care or literally anything in our economy or way of life. This isn't just an adaptive response to deal with the immediate threat, it is the foundations for what comes next.
Recall after the Vietnam War they got rid of the draft, in large part because the unrest caused by the draft jeopardized the stability of the entire political system of the US. You do not, as the ruling class, want people uniting against you in that way, so you can't just give everyone the same grievance at once. Well, that's exactly what Trump is doing here, except he's drafting whole towns at once. And even worse, he's doing it to middle class people that by and large didn't understand how vulnerable they were. If you want a chance at real change I can't imagine a greater boon. Trump's unintentional gift to America is that he is, and hires, such incorrigible morons.
Mmmm, bit of a stretch to say they got rid of it. They stopped drafting people...but you still have to register for it, and they can draft again if they so choose.
But I think it's quite well understood that attempting to invoke it for the military adventure of the week would create much more problems than it would solve, so we've never really come close, and even stop-loss during the Iraq conflict created significant problems.
That seems like an overly romantic view of the role protest played here. They stopped drafting people before the end of the war, and the formal announcement it was over happened the same day the US signed the Paris Peace Accords. It seems like the primary reason the draft ended is the US was exiting the war.
Did protest play some role in the war ending? Maybe. But just a few months earlier McGovern campaigned for president promising immediate withdrawal from Vietnam and he lost by 23 points. The people writ large were not exactly united against the Nixon administration. Literally no one since then has had such a large share of the presidential vote.
If you're eager to ponder on what it might look like, imagine if instead of ICE rolling through suburbia it's the US Army smashing tanks into houses they think might house immigrants. It's the Marines and federalized National Guard landing choppers at the Governor's house, arresting city and state politicians and installing regime-friendly commissars to convert Democratic areas into conservative hellpits. It's nationwide martial law, curfews, Kent State, summary execution type of stuff. Russia stuff. Nazi stuff. How many historical examples of authoritarian government regimes slaughtering their population would you like me to provide to satisfy your query? Do you not think Trump's looking at what's happening in Iran right now and that tiny gear in his empty skull is trying to turn and formulate a solution to his domestic resistance?
Do you think what we see right now is the worst it can possibly get?
Ultimately I cannot prove, and you cannot disprove, what will happen in an uncertain future. But it is my assertion that the Narcissist in the White House is ravenously eager to start killing people (more quickly, anyway) and that only the overtures we make that the Rule of Law exists and remains important to the fabric of our nation are holding him back.
Yeah, sure, a stall tactic until the Dems win back the house (or Trump prevents the election and then all of this is moot), leverage congressional power to defund his initiatives and keep him in check until his term expires or the hamburders do their job, and then maybe the cult falls apart and we get our country back. A combination of organized public resistance and legal entanglement within the institutions that still operate for the law and the public, slowing down ICE as much as possible without turning it into an armed conflict. Then we seek strong justice afterwards. It sucks. I get it. It's not a satisfying resolution and people are going to get hurt in the meantime. But he's got more cards to play than we do right now, and a greater willingness to upturn the table and start blasting. I really don't want to see things deteriorate to, you know, war. I think pitting law enforcement agencies against one another is a massive step in that direction, especially when Trump and his fanatics don't have a conscience.
I would love to be wrong. I want nothing more than to watch these fat klan chuds in their balaclavas in bracelets being slammed into state trooper car doors like they're so fond of doing to children and old ladies, forgotten in cold prison cells, left to fester and wither. But I don't think that particular tale has a happy ending.
Relevant quote:
"During the Vietnam War... every respectable artist in this country was against the war. It was like a laser beam. We were all aimed in the same direction. The power of this weapon turns out to be that of a custard pie dropped from a stepladder six feet high."
Vonnegut
Speaking of protests, several Minnesota schools staged mass walkouts yesterday. I can only hope that the kids that are this fired up keep on and don't end up disillusioned like the kids from all the previous gun control protests did.
https://www.mprnews.org/story/2026/01/13/students-walk-out-decry-ice-as-surge-continues
https://www.mprnews.org/story/2026/01/13/students-walk-out-decry-ice-as-surge-continues
Its important to realize the a large goal of protests is getting people together. When people get together, they talk, share ideas, and organize. People are strongest when they are together.
The popularity overall doesn't say much about the effect on the demographics impacted by the draft, both within the military and outside it. It had a debilitating effect within the military (conscripts that didn't want to be there) and on the system as a whole (there were too many cases to effectively punish, calling up a new group would not yield a reliable number of recruits).
Let that be a lesson not to give up just because the task seems insurmountable or your efforts aren't having a visible effect.
This Phoenix man was unexpectedly detained by Border Patrol agents on cruise ship in Miami
The article goes on to describe how Martinez regularly gets singled out for checks e.g. at the airport, how racism plays a role in his treatment, and how the couple would like to move to Belgium because even though they're citizens it's safer there than here with the anti-immigrant goon squad.
They do this because they're fucking thugs, and nobody has stopped them.
That's a violation of their rights even more than the false arrest, that's destruction of evidence.
It's a coin flip these days whether DHS comes out with vague nonsense like this or goes full-bore "THEY WERE RADICAL TERRORISTS!!!" whenever confronted with their pet attack apes committing crimes.
The article goes on to describe how Martinez regularly gets singled out for checks e.g. at the airport, how racism plays a role in his treatment, and how the couple would like to move to Belgium because even though they're citizens it's safer there than here with the anti-immigrant goon squad.
OK, but now you're either making a completely different claim or a very weird one. Before you were saying the draft needed to end because of the protests. Now it seems like you're saying it needed to end because draft-age men didn't want to participate. Are you saying they didn't want to participate because of the protests rather than the banal fact that risking one's life in a pointless war on the other side of the world is not a very desirable experience?
To extrapolate forward about what to do about ICE atrocities, the protests back then were not particularly persuasive - hence the popularity overall. Protests are a good way to generate media attention and force issues onto the agenda that elites in both parties would prefer to ignore. But the Vietnam War was already on the political agenda and getting a lot of media attention. I think people actually trying to be persuasive should bear in mind the kind of voter that thought "this war is bad, but I don't want to put these hippies in charge" and focus on being very reasonable and low key rather than an extreme counterreaction.
Not the same at all. We already know where escalation here goes. It involves the army and the Insurrection Act. You might feel better about your initial response, but the outcome will be worse, with 100% certainty.
What's happening with the protests and the constant civilian presence is making a difference. It's hindering them while it's being fought in courts. It may not seem like a lot, but they actually don't have that many people. They can't do this to multiple cities at the same time. The public is heavily turning against them, and they'll get dogged in every city they try this in.
I wonder if a streaming video app could be built where the video taken would be immediately uploaded to a server where the user couldn't be forced to delete it to push back on this? Maybe something managed by the EFF, ACLU or similar organization.
I would expect ICE has more people given how much money has been allocated. The salary must be very high.
One absolutely terrific (sarcasm) outcome of all of this, should a Democrat win the White House in 2028, is that the next Democratic Administration will be paying out all the settlements from the lawsuits over ICE activities.
I think I see the source of confusion. What I said was "unrest", not "protests". Protests are specific actions, unrest is am ambient condition that pervades society as a whole, there is unrest at some time and place even when there is not a protest happening at that time and place. It is quite silly and genuinely baffling that you seem to consider the two words close enough to synonyms that you think you can substitute them without comment. In the military it wouldn't necessarily show up as protests but morale was quite bad, leading to high drug use and the phenomena of "fragging" among other problems.
Glad I could clear this up.
They've been staffing up but recruiting has been going quite badly for them, and morale has tanked, over the course of 2025 but even more so since the recent surge to Minneapolis.
Opened up Nextdoor.com to see people supporting ice. "They are deporting illegals" "Don't do anything illegal and you won't be shot or deported"
It makes my blood boil with rage. You honest to god are telling me you have never in your life committed a crime? You have never gone even 1mph over the speed limit? Never made an illegal u-turn? Never jay-walked? Never downloaded a free pirated song or movie? Never lied about your income on your taxes?
Let he without sin cast the first stone
It makes my blood boil with rage. You honest to god are telling me you have never in your life committed a crime? You have never gone even 1mph over the speed limit? Never made an illegal u-turn? Never jay-walked? Never downloaded a free pirated song or movie? Never lied about your income on your taxes?
Let he without sin cast the first stone
The numbers that have come out regarding new recruits, and the rate at which they make it through training into deployment is laughable. Intake was in the hundreds, and the attrition rate was higher than 50% during the training period.
Nextdoor's only useful for showing you just how awful your neighbors actually are. I have forbid my wife from relaying to me anything she sees on there, as I really don't want to know.
Its a mixed bag. I at least feel like commenting on nextdoor is more impactful than replying to trolls on twitter or whatever.
Its like most social media, the worst people are the loudest.
The ACLU used to have that, developed during the 2020 BLM protests. But they just took it down in February last year.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ACLU_Mobile_Justice
The hosting page is defunct and the app isn't available in stores anymore.
Federal prosecutors in Minnesota are resigning, it seems there's been pressure from Washington to open some kind of criminal investigation into Renee Good's widow for the crime of speaking up when her wife was shot by the fascists. As of posting details are sparse.
https://www.mprnews.org/story/2026/...nesota-fraud-joe-thompson-resigns-from-office
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The point according to the hawks was to protect American democracy from the sinister tentacles of international communism. It was the protests that allowed military aged men to see through the propaganda to the pointlessness of the war.
The problem with ICE is that it doesn’t need half as many men to do its job - they’re not cannon fodder like in vietnam. And the regime can easily find sufficient sadists to join ICE ranks - people who don’t give a fuck about the protests. So I’m all for protests, raising the visibility of ICE’s bullshit and public shaming. But it’s not clear to me that the mechanism of action will be that similar to Vietnam protest.
It's not clear to me that there's a mechanism of action in either case. Protests are good for raising visibility of things most people aren't paying attention to. But that's not the case with Vietnam. People were paying a lot of attention to it and the media was covering it. And it seems the same with the ICE atrocities. They're getting a lot of attention and media coverage.
I gotta pipe up here. Unless by city you're specifically calling out major metropolitan areas (and even then, Rochester and Mankato are not small towns) they are 100% operating in multiple cities in southern MN at once and have been since Friday, with word coming in that they're still ramping up. I have heard reports of them in Minneapolis and St. Paul of course, but also in suburbs going down the I35 corridor all the way to Iowa and including cities on I90 as well not limited to: Burnsville, Faribault, Owatonna, Austin (yeah, there's an Austin MN), Waseca, Mankato, and Rochester. I believe Waseca is the smallest town on that list so if this is all accurate my eyeballing a map skills say there in 8+ cities spanning around 250 square miles ranging from cities with a population as low as 10k surrounded by nothing but corn fields for 10-20 miles in any direction to major metro areas like Minneapolis and St. Paul very much simultaneously. That's far from being everywhere at once, but it absolutely is able to be in multiple places at once, big or small.
Most of the big media coverage and events are surrounding Minneapolis, but make no mistake, they have units to spare for other places apparently.
Edit: ok I used a tool instead of "that looks like 25 miles and that looks like 100 miles" (and then dropping a zero) and we're looking at closer to 2000-4000 square miles. Sorry, it's not like I estimate these things frequently. Perhaps it's a bad metric but the point is they've spread out.
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You’re aware of course that 100% of the escalation up to this point is predicated on complete fabrications? Like, literally all of it. 0% of any of what’s going on is justified, reasonable, or motivated by any actual problem or obstacle. Zero. Percent. So, can we stop falling for this line of thinking that these monsters are patiently waiting around for some justification to be monstrous?
Is it true that if you antagonize, disrupt, or otherwise inconvenience the Trump regime that they might arbitrarily and unapologetically execute you in cold blood in broad daylight? Yes.
However, it turns out they’ll also do that when you’re smiling and following their directions.
The reason why the city & state governments need to participate more aggressively on behalf of the civilians, is so that the civilians see that there’s some system of justice that’s still intact and that there’s some element of their government that supports them. In the same way that ICE and CBP know that the Trump regime has their back, the civilians in these places need to know that their local government has got the civilians’ backs.
edit: Also, the civilians didn’t sign up for that job. The politicians, police, and national guard did. So, they absolutely, positively should be first into the breach. If they don’t want the responsibility, then they should resign.
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If the local governments fail to act, we are going back to gangs protection. The trust in police is already lower in USA vs. other countries. It is going to sink even lower.
The problem is they are doing the insurrection act already we just get to play make believe that they aren't because most of us don't live in Minneapolis.
The honest truth is that this is just the bystander effect writ large. We have passed the point of restoration and we all know the concept of free and fair elections next year is a joke but we will sit here and talk about each new incident and get mad and do nothing.
The only difference between the alternative you say is far worse and the reality we live in now taking no action is simply time. Time they will use to remove our strongest support and position themselves to win the fight they are instigating every day now despite our peaceful inaction. They are setting the pace and tone and they do not need us to respond to in order for them to justify the advancement of their fascism.
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I would classify his rose colored glasses as less off the mark than this obvious minimizatory* (coining this term) statement. It also ignores the reason McGovern lost and ascribes by implication his Vietnam stance to have been the reason for said loss.
minimizatory - tending to downplay, confuse, dishonesty , or doomerism
There was no organized resistance to the rise of Nazism in Germany like you are arguing against. This means in my opinion we already have a preview of where inaction takes us and it is worse than the picture you paint here.
Worse because instead of a nation in civil war settling this issue for all time we would instead be a fully functional superpower with the very same horrors inside except done on their schedule piece by piece and only where we live. This fully functional superpower has also invaded greenland and mexico and crossing the panama canal to south America.
We already tried it that way and it wound up in a worse place with a world war behind it.
I understand, but it is an "unpopular policy is unpopular" statement. Conscription has NEVER been a popular thing, all the way back to Roman times...
The draft now isn't to get people to work for ICE (which is volunteers). The draft is now, effectively, everyone in targeted cities like Minneapolis. Everyone is on the front lines whether they like it or not.