It sounds like the point they’re trying to make is that Americans don’t want to have children because things in the USA are getting bad, but if that was the correct explanation then we would expect to see (1) people in countries where it’s worse having even fewer children, which we don’t see, and (2) people in countries where it’s better having more children, which we also don’t see.

It’s annoying to repeatedly read the same completely unsupported explanations for fertility rate declines.

Except for the part where the fertility rate in El Salvador is higher than it is in the USA. If we’re becoming more like them, our fertility rate should be increasing.

This is Bond-villain level megalomania, and therefore actually kind of cool.

Convicted?

I was also a very active user of traditional forums but, in my experience, small niche subreddits (when I was on Reddit) were a decent substitute in terms of content, since posts could stay on their front page for several days. Lemmy isn’t big enough to have those yet but I hope it will be. The thing I miss most about forums isn’t the format but rather the community. The forum I posted on the most had only a few dozen regulars and I knew them.

There was the guy with a kind, insightful take on controversial issues and a fetish for women with more than two arms. The active duty marine who reliably posted harsh truths. The feminist I didn’t get along with at all despite agreeing with her about most things. The dedicated father who bought real razor wire for his daughter when she wanted a UN-peacekeeper-base themed birthday party. The very determined conservative who defended his position no matter how outnumbered he was and once bragged that he had given his wife several dozen orgasms in a row…

I suppose I was the young man with strange views about what was or wasn’t fair and a great deal of anger over any perceived unfairness. (I don’t think I was particularly well-liked.) The internet is so much less personal now.

My hope is that if they wait two years then it’ll be to minimize the damage until the midterm elections, at which point Democrats will win both the house and the senate. I think that’s the best-case scenario.

There isn’t much the court can do if Trump refuses to comply and Republicans in Congress continue to support him. I hate to say it, but avoiding a confrontation may be better than getting into that situation, both for the court and for the country.

So, do I sell because he’ll keep wrecking the economy, or do I hold because he’ll keep backing down? What do the licensed financial advisors here, acting in their professional capacity and accepting full legal responsibility for the consequences, think?

Challenging them is one thing. Disrupting the CEO’s public speech is another. I think almost every company would fire any employee who did that for any reason.

I think this is not a straightforward case as a matter of law, even though it is as a matter of justice. Generally, a court couldn’t reasonably order the US government to exfiltrate a person from a prison in a foreign country (even if he was there as a result of US government wrongdoing). This case is different because when the US government is paying the foreign country to keep that person in prison, the reasons why such an order would generally be unreasonable don’t apply.

The question is, where do you draw the line between the general case and this specific case? What if, for example, El Salvador decides to do what presumably makes Trump happy rather than what he’s being ordered to ask for, and refuses to free this man despite an official request from the US? Can a court decide that the US needs to try harder? What if El Salvador stubbornly keeps refusing?

We all know that this man would be back in the US if Trump wanted him back in the US, but how do you prove that?

After the tariffs were unveiled in front of TV cameras at the White House, Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent told those countries named: “Do not retaliate, sit back, take it in, let’s see how it goes, because, if you retaliate, there will be escalation.”

I’m sure that went over well. Xi loves sitting back and taking it in, especially when this is on Trump’s mind:

“'Oh, he used the word ‘rape.’ That’s right. I used the word ‘rape,’” Trump said at the Detroit Economic Club after his remarks were met with what sounded like some gasps from the audience. “They raped our country,” he repeated.

I’m curious about how well-informed most Americans are about the Soviet Union. Do they know that it was once a place where ordinary people were accused of crimes without evidence, taken away without a trial, and never seen again? Do they know that this generally happened because of the smallest suspicion that a person was not fanatically loyal to the government, rather than a violent criminal? Do they know that a million people were killed this way? And do they know that the Soviet Union was one of many places like that?

I expect that the Soviet Union doesn’t seem particularly relevant to younger generations of voters, but isn’t this the sort of lurid history that did interest them as adolescents? And don’t older voters remember the Cold War?

Titled “The Perimeter” and published on Monday, the report said the stated purpose of the plan was to create a thick strip of land that provided a clear line of sight for the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) to identify and kill militants. “This space was to have no crops, structures, or people. Almost every object, infrastructure installation, and structure within the perimeter was demolished,” it said.

The article presents this as a new revelation, but wasn’t creating a wider buffer zone on the Gaza side of the border one of the explicitly stated war goals? (And visible from space.) I’m surprised that there isn’t signage and barbed wire to prevent civilians from wandering in accidentally, but the rest seems to be describing what a buffer zone (or “kill zone”) is almost by definition.

I am not a lawyer, but I think that presenting the defendants’ case as written in their memorandum would not be lying, although I can see how doing so would make an honest man uncomfortable. Reuveni supported the morally right side when, in effect, he argued for the plaintiffs, but in doing so he failed to fulfill a lawyer’s obligation to zealously defend his client. If he wanted to do both, he should have declined to take the case in the first place (although presumably he would have been demoted or fired for that too).

With that said, a man can do the right thing now even when he could have done so earlier and didn’t (and doing so in court was certainly more dramatic than refusing to take the case would have been). I wouldn’t mind donating money to him the way that people of a different sort donated money to Daniel Penny.

I’m not sure how to reconcile my view with the principle that even the worst criminal defendants have the right to competent legal representation. I suppose I make an exception here because the federal government is never in danger of being railroaded.

I don’t think that’s how people would have “gathered for instructions on an attack” especially when “attack” would mean launching missiles. But I’m glad that and we can trust Laura Loomer to handle the sort of intelligence gathering that would guide strikes like this.

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Obviously the judge can’t order the dead raised, but if El Salvador won’t release him then does the judge have the authority to decide whether or not Trump made a good-faith attempt to have him released? I don’t think anyone knows at this point. It’s clear to all that Trump could in fact have him released (or at least have his body returned if he has been killed) so what happens if Trump says that he tried and El Salvador said no? Will the judge accept Trump’s transparent lie, or will he risk creating a Constitutional crisis that Trump would probably win?

I’m not optimistic. I don’t think the American system of government is capable of handling the executive branch along with a majority of the legislative branch acting in bad faith with the support of a large part of the public.

Newsom is directing his state to pursue “strategic” relationships with countries announcing retaliatory tariffs against the U.S., urging them to exclude California-made products from those taxes.

It sounds like he wants foreign countries to do California a favor without getting anything in exchange (and even that might be unconstitutional). Or is there something that he has the authority to offer in exchange which I’m missing?

Note that the argument about whether or not he is a gang member is beside the point. The White House concedes that he should not have been taken to El Salvador even if he is a gang member, but denies that the court has the authority to order the White House to make even the smallest attempt to bring him back.

The White House is saying that if they grab you and take you to a foreign country where you are imprisoned, that’s it. The courts can’t do anything. It won’t matter if you’re a law-abiding citizen or if taking you out of the USA was unambiguously against the law. Only the executive branch, the people responsible for your predicament, get to choose if and when they do anything at all to secure your freedom.

Read the document they submitted to the court.

I don’t see how that’s related to excluding particular countries.

Edit: What I mean is that I don’t understand how you conclude

So if you aren’t exporting/importing from those countries they wouldn’t be included. It doesn’t even matter if there was a trade surplus.

based on the formula.