Keep speaking up about the horrendous behavior by ICE! We deserve better. Demand accountability.
There’s a calendar on my spreadsheet so we can target our calls/letters/emails/faxes to flood offices in an organized manner.
Use/share this spreadsheet (bit.ly/Nokings) as a resource to contact members of Congress, the Cabinet and news organizations. Call. Write. Email. Protest. Unrelentingly.
Reach out (beyond your own) to as many in the Senate and House as you can. All of this is bigger than “I only represent my constituents” issues.
And I email senators that are not in my state by finding a school in their state, and using its address, zip code and phone number so I can give them a piece of my mind.
It works, and I get lots of emails back from "my" Republican senators. At the very least, their staffers are forced to hear some legitimate criticism of their abdications of their authority.
Brilliant! We have to be creative. Not only are they blaming for everything bad on Brown and Black people, they’re erasing everything good. A U.S. military cemetery in the Netherlands removed two displays recognizing more than 8,000 Black troops who helped to liberate Europe from the Nazis. This occurred after 47 issued a series of executive orders ending diversity, equity and inclusion programs. “Our country will be woke no longer,” he said in an address to Congress in March. https://apnews.com/article/netherlands-american-cemetery-black-liberators-trump-06d7a64d11a29736e999664054d29419
No, I think he IS an intellectual coma. Suggesting he is in an intellectual coma, means there must have been a time when he was better - there wasn't, and it wouldn't explain the infectiousness of it.
Step into reality. You’re being answered in chat gpt style from a 23 year old staffer making 39,000 a year who graduated from George Washington u in 2024.
My kids have friends whose job is to pluck words from letters and hit send on a pre-fab letter.
Hold on…according to reporting I heard on my local PBS radio station the reason republicans voted for the the release of the Epstein files was because of the number of calls, letters, and emails they received from their constituents. It does work.
Prof. Krugman quotes Vance as saying: "JD Vance claims that immigrants are responsible for soaring housing costs." He, and incredibly Trump during the debate with Harris, also said "They are eating the dogs. They are eating the cats. They are eating the pets of the people that live there".
Ironically, Trumps paternal grandfather would never have been allowed into the U.S. legally, if immigration laws were as they currently are. He fled Germany in order to avoid service in the German armed forces. When he tried to return to Germany with his newly married German wife, the government rejected his return! He then came back to NYC and settled.
Trump supporters aren't capable of thinking past their own noses. I dream that one day leopards will come and eat their faces?
Good ol' JD Vance. Someone who converted to Catholicism in 2019 somehow missed out on that whole "Thou shalt not bear false witness" thing. Not only did he knowingly accuse immigrants of eating pets, he →doubled down← on it after acknowledging that it wasn't true.
He's one of those converts attracted by the throwback attitudes of the Catholic Church.
Someone should remind Stephen Miller that as a Jewish person by family history, he is not considered to be white. So much for being part of a white nationalism movement -- So, go ahead and eat your "Own".
After the Jews, it will be Black Citizens. SCOTIS is already setting the presidents for that with their dismantling of the Voting Rights Act, DEI, and sponsorship of people like Nick Fuentes and other Neo-Nazis. SCOTIS has been laying the ground rules for Fascism to take hold in this Country for a long time! Democrats blindness to the importance of power of the Supreme Court and ownership of the Press was so short cited.
Pam, that's actually a job requirement for the lower-level Hill staffers: to tally the responses by constituents and pass that upward so the Member of Congress is informed. Of course, my (Republican) Members of Congress completely ignore everything their constituents say, but at least we've tried.
I don't think most of them completely ignore their constituents, though I'm sure some are such ideological hardliners that they do.
It's not worth making an impassioned, well thought out letter, because your opinion is just going to be tallied by a staffer. Still, those tallies are important. Everyone who writes a letter, even a short one is worth a lot of votes.
People in government care about fundraising and elections. That’s a broad statement I know. But congresspeople don’t read letters. They look at polls. Make ads to tell you things will get bad unless you send money- and then wait till the 12th hour to grandstand and move the country further in debt. The idea they care about anything other than power is not supported.
Look at Tim Walz. Loves kids. Wants kids to get needed funds to make their lives better. He apparently never visited a single day care or relief station to see his beloved kids. If I’m in charge of kids getting what they need- I’d go to see if the kids are being fed. Or if not me - someone I trust. This is a years-long problem. He doesn’t care. A nun overseeing daycare would check on the daycare ( if you know what I mean). It doesn’t happen because they’re not good people.
I think it would have been illegal for you to have worked on campaigns. If people look at the emails they receive, they can tell the difference between campaign offices (Jones. for Senate) and official office (Senator Jones)
Actually the letters to legislators are read. I was notified that one of mine was given to Lindsey Graham to read. That said, I am told that phone calls are more effective. I'm not so sure. But do both. Call your state legislators too. They are more likely to answer the phone themselves. I convinced one Republican in my state to change his vote on end-of-life matters that affect unmarried life partners who might not be allowed to make decisions for their loved ones, even when family members are estranged. As a result, the bill failed to pass.
What you would have done is exactly what happened. The woman in charge of the department was a carry-over appointment from a previous administration and a ya, you betcha Minnesotan who was no doubt thought to be trusted and competent. It was a shock that she hadn’t verified the food distribution and she’s spending time in jail for her neglect.
If they went to GWU, they should be raking in a lot more. They either have rich parents or tons of student debt that $39k/yr. won't make much of a dent in for a very long time.
So if they have rich parents, that means your letters to congress matter?
The point is - they’re read and responded to by lower level staffers.
It’s kind of remarkable you want to figure a way whereby other people are bad.
What if they are from Nigeria, attended gw on a scholarship and lost their parents to violence? Then their jobs are more respectable? The obsession with identity is absurd.
Please tell me your opinion of people whose parents make 171,000 combined. The fact you make these statements doesn’t flatter you. The fact there’s more than one of you making similarly ridiculous comments doesn’t bode well for krugman readers.
No, they don't all work in DC. Every member of Congress has at least one office in their home state or district. Why are you posting stuff on here that is easily disproved by a quick Google to find the websites of members of Congress?
Nobody here is claiming that the members themselves read every letter or write the replies themselves. That is totally not the point.
But if you have any experience at all in communicating with congresscritters, you have got to know that they routinely say stuff like "my mail is running 65% in favor of ... [xyz]." Maybe the absolute worst of the privileged denizens of Capitol Hill are just making that up -- some of them are perfectly capable of that level of lying. But one of the main reasons they have staffers at all is to tally the gist of communications from their constituents. It does have something to do with their getting reelected, after all.
I deem $23K a very low salary even in my poor state of SC, where a first year social worker makes over $43K. Skilled tradespeople and others all make more than this, which is less than $20/hr.
I don’t think we’ll see many big waves (like a major MAGA Congress member changing their opinions), however I think we can cause little ripples. I’m thinking staff members who hear the same thing over and over via voicemail, phone calls, letter after letter, email after email - maybe they’ll be a little more receptive each time they hear from us. Maybe they’ll talk more about our talking points to friends and family, maybeeee they’ll vote differently. I think we can cause ripples to push news organizations to be more honest and maybe even a bit accusatory about what’s happening. As a collective, our volume matters. And, at the end of the day, if we just annoy and overwhelm some staffers working for people hurting the average American, I’m ok with that too 🙃
My Republican Ohio Senators send the same form letter in response to every topic of my emails. It demonstrates their inability to perform their jobs. They seem incapable of considering another point of view. November can't come soon enough.
I hope as too. Many times Substack columnists at least in some cases, point out that such pressure on politicians causes actions. Not enough but sometimes!
Pam and others, my local NPR station reported that the reason republicans changed their vote to release the Epstein files was because of hearing from their constituents.
Don’t let anyone tell you that they don’t work. Keep using your voice!
I also just use one of their own in state office addresses (listed on the spreadsheet) - just to help so you don’t have to look up schools in each area you’re emailing about
I use faxzero to send 5 free faxes a day to gop senators. I have ChatGPT follow some basic parameters on the controversy du jour, edit it the way I like it and then customize per senator’s state. I have a basic maga sounding email (eg americabest@gmail.com) and use a phone number from that state. Not abusive faxes but pointed.
That’s part of why I started collecting in state office addresses and listing them on the spreadsheet. I’ve used some of their own addresses and they don’t notice 🤣
Except that your phone’s area code will instantly show that you aren’t in that state.
Calls work well if you’re calling your own senators and representatives. I’m a Minnesota resident and showed up with a group to a Minnesota State Representative’s office to protest. We had to sign in and those who lived outside the representative’s district were ignored and stopped from speaking.
This piece mistakes effect for cause. The 2025 crackdown didn’t come out of nowhere; it was the predictable result of the prior administration’s failure to enforce immigration law. For years, policy signals encouraged illegal entry, release into the interior, and non-removal, producing record crossings and overwhelming cities that already had the largest unauthorized populations — New York City, Los Angeles, and Chicago.
Once that breakdown occurred, enforcement was inevitable. You can criticize tactics without denying reality. Aggressive enforcement looks ugly when the backlog is massive, but that ugliness is the downstream cost of years of non-enforcement.
Labeling all concern as racism is a dodge. Large-scale, rapid inflows strain housing, schools, and local budgets even if legal immigration is beneficial in the long run. If the law had been enforced consistently earlier, there would have been no need for a sudden crackdown later. The real failure wasn’t enforcement in 2025 — it was the decision to abandon enforcement years before.
Recall that in the spring of 2024 there was an excellent bipartisan immigration bill led by a Republican senator, Lankford of Oklahoma, that was ready for passage until Trump ordered the Republicans to vote it down since it presented an excellent immigration/border policy to the American people. The bill would have removed one of his main campaign talking points.
That bill should have come sooner. If it had been brought up in 2022 when Trump wasn't nearly as powerful, it would have stood a far bigger chance of passing. It almost passed in 2024, but by then Trump had enough power to kill it.
Democrat leaders were stupid for not realizing that immigration would be a major issue in 2024. It's always an issue for the FOX right. They bang on about immigrant rapists and murderers almost everyday. The magas voted for the deportation of all of those criminals, not the guy at the carwash or at Home Depot doing day labor.
I think this misses the point that the bill Trump gave the thumbs down to was a bipartisan GOP/Dem effort. A Dem only sponsored bill would never have gained the necessary approval by the Senate during the Biden administration.
Its perhaps more telling that Trump has done nothing to enact immigration reform in 2025, which suggests he has no real interest in meaningful reform and instead, as is becoming increasingly clear, his real intent is to rid the US of all non-white residents, whether citizen or non-citizen. Passing meaningful immigration reform at this point would only undercut his efforts to achieve this goal.
Trump's approach to immigration is a classic case of blaming the "other" for all of our political, social and economic ills. Given that most of us in this country can trace our roots to some immigrant ancestor, blaming more recent immigrants for our problems is both nonsensical and destined to failure.
Absolutely right. However, the Democrats missed an opportunity by not acting a year or two earlier. It wasn't a forgone conclusion that Trump would be the nominee in 2022.
This is an issue that Democrats should work on because with abortion gone, immigration is MAGAs primary issue. The right wing has been beating the anti-immigrant drum for 40 years.
That bi-partisan bill should be brought back, time and time again. It should be front and center. Just like health care, the Republicans can see problems, but have no solutions. Most people don't like how Trump is handling immigration.
Biden issued an EO on his first day in office to have the federal government support “affirmative care” for transgender youth, including beta blockers and even surgery. He took over two years to do anything to close the southern border. And his quisling A-G Merrick Garland took over 30 months to get around to charging Trump over January 6th 2021. The Democrats are their own worst enemy.
The systematic stupidity of the Dem leadership is hard to explain. They repeatedly lose elections to some of the most vile characters ever to slither onto the American political stage.
How reasonable of you! Arguing that Trump is just another law-respecting president, trying to do right by the American people as his hatred of American values plays out via ICE and other abuses of power. Nothing that Biden did (or didn’t do) justifies this lawless assault on our major cities. Trump has done more damage to this country than the brown people who came here for the same reasons that my grandparents had a few short generations ago. We are all immigrants.
Do you advocate for asylum? We know that Biden vastly accelerated the problem, and only stopped his misdeeds because of political pressure with an upcoming election.
Even George W. Bush had a plan that was rejected. What we don't want to admit is that immigrants are a part of our nation's life blood. We need them, even if they do challenge notions of a white, English-speaking, "christian" nation.
Hey Aaron, look at Trump’s lawlessness and immorality in the Caribbean and violation of the emoluments clause. Look at the bribe taking of Ice leader Tom Homan. Look at what Trump is doing to weaken NATO and the disrespect of our allies. Look at what he is doing to Ukraine. Is all of that inevitable because of illegal immigration?
Look at the words you used. Your assumption that he did something wrong is right wing BS. He followed the law! You may not like the law but that doesn't mean what he did was illegal.
The right has a real problem distinguishing what they want to be illegal and what is actually illegal. Just like they can't distinguish the difference between opinions and facts.
So I need to ask you- are you aware that we have immigration laws? There is a legal process established by a duly elected congress that allows for people to enter legally into the country.
When you say Trump doesn’t respect laws- you actually don’t cite the laws he is breaking. Each of his actions have resulted in the courts being involved. He’s won about 90% of the cases ( so that makes his opponents obstructing legal actions) and in the cases he’s lost, he’s abided by the rulings.
Whereas when Biden illegally allowed millions in - they illegally changed definitions and processes of immigration.
The question is - do you despise presidents doing illegal things or only republicans? Because the idea here is - if a bar lets in 150 people under 21 and cops enter the bar and start making arrests - I believe the bar owner has culpability but I also understand that if the cops whose job it is to evict the minors, ends up evicting a 22 year old - they’re less responsible than the bar owner and the 150 minors. Enforce the law in 2021-2024 and most of what’s happening doesn’t. ( 2017-2020 Trump didn’t do this)
If I recall Biden was following the law and reverting policy away from the unlawful actions Trump had taken circumventing asylum claims and dividing families. However, it was Biden's fault denying this was that big of a political issue.
The underly problem is immigration law that desperately needs reform. But then that would deny Republicans the issue and Trump his reason for creating a storm trooper force at his command. They have repeatedly stopped bills that would help. We need a logical, consistent immigration policy.
Any evidence for the “illegally changed definitions and processes of immigration” by the Biden administration? The deliberately cruel actions of ICE are pretty well documented. I agree that every administration should enforce and follow laws of the country, including the president himself.
" If the law had been enforced consistently earlier, there would have been no need for a sudden crackdown later. The real failure wasn’t enforcement in 2025 — it was the decision to abandon enforcement years before."
Wow. You live in a impenetrable bubble don't you. Whether the law was or wasn't enforced previously is no excuse for what the Trump administration has been doing. Let's see, there is enforcement of immigration rules and there is blatant cruelty and what amounts to a form of terrorism. Rest assured, not that you care, the people ICE and the Border Patrol have been deporting are being terrorized. That is intentional. It is what Trump and Miller want.
Your comment is what I would characterize as deaf and blind, and that makes it really dumb. You ignore the fact that decent, law-abiding people, who are an asset to this country are being treated like animals with no rights. Obviously, it doesn't bother you that Trump/Miller/Homan/Noem are breaking laws. Obviously, it doesn't bother you that people are being deported to prison's that torture people. Of the more that 200 Venezuelans sent to CECOT, 75% had no criminal record at all and only 3% had been convicted of violent or sex crimes. Obviously, you don't care about "the worst of the worst" promise.
The real failure is a lawless administration that is using excessive force, traumatizing children, punishing people who may be deportable, but for whom there is no reason for them to be in prison. The real failure is pretending that there are national emergencies that require the militarization of American cities. In the case of Kilmar Obrega and others, the real problem is the adminstrations dishonest attempts at vindictive prosecution, which is simply persecution.
You are so out of touch with reality, that the only reason I can think of for you to comment here is your burning desire to be a troll. Okay, you're a troll. Since you have nothing positive to offer, you should go away now. Certain words occur to me in your case: "Why don't you go back where you came from?" (Which I don't doubt was in the United States, but not in any part of decent society that I can imagine.
The Biden Administration was far too lax. I think most “mainstream” Americans would admit that. But this was not their doing. Immigration reform had been needed for literal decades, through multiple administrations from both parties, so stop with the one sided accusations. Presidents have failed at pressing Congress for reform, certainly anything meaningful. Congress has been disinterested in doing hard work, not to mention losing a motivating voter issue. The Bipartisan Border Bill of 2024 was finally a step in the right direction…a BIPARTISAN bill that made actual progress. It would have passed had Trump not directly reached out to sitting Republican Congress members and threatened them with primaries and who knows what else if they didn’t kill it. He is a racist and WANTED to keep the hate alive. He was also a weak candidate with little else to offer and NEEDED the issue for his campaign.
It is also true that many people being snatched, SNATCHED is what is happening, are legal, are following the process. An overwhelming majority have zero offenses, let alone something violent. Their only “offense” is not being “white” Americans. One has to even add “American” to that as white Europeans and Canadians have also been detained.
The current immigration “crackdown” is nowhere near the realm of appropriate response. What is happening is not only illegal, as written by our laws, but it is horrifyingly inhumane for any country let alone “the greatest”. A country literally built by immigrants. A country with a giant statue that once symbolized a general welcome even though many “native” (white) Americans were (and still are) racists.
“Not like the brazen giant of Greek fame,
With conquering limbs astride from land to land;
Here at our sea-washed, sunset gates shall stand
A mighty woman with a torch, whose flame
Is the imprisoned lightning, and her name
Mother of Exiles. From her beacon-hand
Glows world-wide welcome; her mild eyes command
The air-bridged harbor that twin cities frame.
"Keep, ancient lands, your storied pomp!" cries she
With silent lips. "Give me your tired, your poor,
Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,
The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.
Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me,
I lift my lamp beside the golden door!"
Under the Trump Administration, we have a bunch of bigoted, power hungry, violent agents of a group of bigoted, power hungry, violent madmen ripping people from their homes, sidewalks, schools, cars - anyone, anywhere who doesn’t LOOK white enough is at risk. That is not immigration policy. That is hate. It is most certainly not deserved. It is inhumane. It is illegal. The point is the terror. The point is the violence. The point is the suffering. And anyone who tries to present any argument, any sort of excuse, to dismiss or condone such behavior should explore their own, personal true feelings about race.
Please stop with the fairy tale. It was created to provide political cover.
The proof is in the numbers. During the first three years of the Biden administration, immigration law was not faithfully enforced, and encounters rose by roughly 300%. Later, under political pressure, enforcement increased and encounters fell sharply. Under Trump, they have plummeted.
All of this happened without any significant change in the law. The variable wasn’t statutes or courts — it was enforcement. When the government signaled lax enforcement, crossings surged. When enforcement returned, crossings collapsed. Ignoring that cause-and-effect relationship isn’t thoughtful disagreement — it’s being obtuse.
Fairy tales?? You mean like the one about immigrants eating dogs and cats? Or my personal favorite about kids having transgender surgeries at recess. So many good ones to choose from!!
I’m not talking about the fairy tale of eating Spot or Whiskers. I’m talking about the fairy tale that, but for Trump’s intervention, Democrats would have handled illegal immigration better. That claim doesn’t survive even a basic look at the timeline.
The spike happened before the proposed law. The proposed law appeared in an election year. Biden never needed a new law in the first place, since he later reversed the surge without one. And Trump has now largely stopped the flow without passing a new law.
Same statutes. Very different outcomes. The difference wasn’t legislation — it was enforcement.
What fairytale did I tell? I said the Biden Administration was too lax. I also said it is not *solely* their fault. I also said we need reform, but this most certainly is not reform nor is it any kind of reasonable response or solution. That rankles you because it goes against the narrative (fairytale?) you are trying to tell yourself and others. Immigration issues are not new. To state again, they have been a struggle for decades, through administrations and Congresses held by both Rs and Ds. Very little has been done, probably DACA being the only real change. Maybe you don’t like that either? Should children who came here through no accord of their own be punished and expelled? I’m sorry that you seem to be having trouble reconciling an ugliness within yourself. It seems important for you to find a way to justify the cruel violence currently being perpetrated by ICE.
Waiting for you to explain 1) why Dear Leader felt compelled to kill the 2024 Border Bill and 2) the economic benefit of cutting immigration, legal or no, to zero. Otherwise, your argument amounts to "What about Biden?" who has about as much sway on policy now as I do.
It’s nice how you tell yourself this story to justify this clearly racist effort by the Trump Administration, who was going after “criminals”. You know, those who have IDS deny,deny, deny. Whatever it takes for you to live with your embedded racism.
Everyone is entitled to due process. If you make an exception for people who “look illegal”, you make the exception the rule. If the government’s claim that you are not a citizen cannot be challenged through due process how does anyone get their chance to prove their bona fides. When you assert that the constitution needs to be set aside just here or just there you have opened the door to tyranny.
Due process has never meant equality under the law.
I don’t look like an illegal immigrant, and neither do my neighbors. I raked my own leaves this year; many of my neighbors hired crews. Some of those workers looked like they might be immigrants. Let’s assume, for the sake of argument, that every one of them was here legally and could prove it.
Deporting a U.S. citizen is illegal under U.S. law. DHS has repeatedly said its policy does not include deporting U.S. citizens. That said, no policy eliminates the possibility of screw-ups.
My birth certificate is on file at Boston City Hall. If I ever needed to prove my citizenship, I could obtain a certified copy. Can anyone point to a case where a U.S. citizen presented clear proof of citizenship—such as a birth certificate—and DHS nonetheless persisted in deportation despite that evidence?
I agree with questioning authority. Governments sometimes lie, and more often they follow the path of least resistance. Everyone should remain alert to that. But that cuts both ways. Are we really going to argue that people who knowingly entered the country in violation of the law should simply be allowed to stay anyway?
That’s not due process. That’s abandoning enforcement altogether.
"The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized."
Piffle. The border was not wide open. Many had arrived years before and just now people could see them. Do not blame Biden for many years of companies recruiting and transporting workers in the USA. They did not walk across the desert. They rode by bus from Laredo and other cities in comfort.
Good idea, but false in this event. I lived in Laredo. Companies sent buses to Laredo, parked at a park, and recruited all who wanted to work (from Laredo and its much larger sister city Nuevo Laredo) and I never knew how they got past the further inland check points. Likely with money or deals. These were not legal people, and I wondered what ever happened to them.
Not what I meant. I drove I35 many times and every northbound vehicle was checked. How did these worker get past the check point. Many were just across the border as visitors and not authorized to go further inland.
What ICE is doing is NOT enforcement of any law; they are breaking the law repeatedly. They don’t even know or care who they are detaining- note percentage of “criminals” they have found- maybe 2%. You may like justifying this state-sanctioned terrorism, but I hope for your sake, you have lily white credentials going back to 1625. Oh, but wait, that would make you an immigrant!
If any administration was serious about immigration, they would write new functional immigration laws, then systematically prosecute CEOs and owners of corporations who hire illegal workers. This would instantly nearly stop illegal immigration. This approach is never implemented because immigration is a dog whistle issue for GOP racists and xenophobes. Trump isnt raiding agriculture or meatpacking firms. The ICE raids are reality TV shows for the MAGA cultists. Its pathetic that the US puts up with this sort of thing.
I seem to recall Trump spiking a bipartisan Immigration bill during Biden’s presidency…I can only imagine the purpose was to release his Brown Shirts with the blessing of the Dominionist GOP. So no, I believe the racism was the point.
Racism was the point of what, exactly — the Democrats’ bill? Are you calling Obama a racist, or are you claiming today’s Democrats suddenly discovered racism as a new governing principle?
One of the great luxuries of the modern left is never having to be accountable. The media will dutifully amplify whatever narrative flatters them, no matter how unserious.
What we actually know is this: Biden dramatically reduced illegal immigration without any new legislation. He did it once the politics became untenable and the issue started hurting him. That alone proves enforcement was always possible under existing law.
And now, under Trump, illegal immigration has dropped to a trickle.
So the obvious question remains unanswered: if enforcement works under current law, and has already been demonstrated to work, what exactly is the justification for passing a new law at all?
I don't think you know anything at all about Chicago. You are, of course, welcome to share your comments, however, the standards for comments that advance the discussion are higher on this blog that you might find elsewhere.
Aaron's comments are civil and respectful. It's good to hear opposing opinions, if for no other reason than to exercise your mind in framing good counter arguments.
I do think Krugman is reasonable.
The issue of amnesty has been tabled in the immigration debate as far as I can tell, though I think it should be brought up again.
What many people are finding objectionable is the deportation of people who've been in the US for decades, working people with families who are US citizens.
The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.
Due process means not being seized without a warrant by masked men in unmarked cars or being tear gassed if you document the "arrest" by video. I don't understand what you are all talking about
Then why did anti-immigrant sentiment disproportionately grow in places where immigrants did not go? The rhetoric came first, and people attached themselves to the policy because they we're herded along by their perceived in-group.
I believe Krugman is arguing the actions taken by Trump to enforce immigration laws are unwarranted, a point that you don't really address.
Otherwise, you make many claims about immigration enforcement and the effects of immigration without any supporting evidence or argument--as if they are undisputed--which they are not.
That begs the question of what is warranted. I think that the people who entered the country illegally should pack up and leave. We can give legal status to many of them, but we decide how many to admit and under what circumstances.
Doesn't that sound reasonable. Why is Krugman never reasonable. Why did he not argue for amnesty? Do you think he believes in amnesty. Do you think he believes in anything other than expanding the welfare state?
In case you haven’t noticed there is no Congress. It’s been neutered and dropped in the Supreme Court as a huge rubber stamp and I guess the Congress is too so two branches of our so-called government just sit around and rubberstamp fascism for this pimp and I don’t give a fuck what I say about.
I mostly agree. But silence is complicity. I copy and paste this to those who question reaching out to Congress (so it is above already) - I don’t think we’ll see many big waves (like a major MAGA Congress member changing their opinions), however I think we can cause little ripples. I’m thinking staff members who hear the same thing over and over via voicemail, phone calls, letter after letter, email after email - maybe they’ll be a little more receptive each time they hear from us. Maybe they’ll talk more about our talking points to friends and family, maybeeee they’ll vote differently. I think we can cause ripples to push news organizations to be more honest and maybe even a bit accusatory about what’s happening. As a collective, our volume matters. And, at the end of the day, if we just annoy and overwhelm some staffers working for people hurting the average American, I’m ok with that too 🙃
Exactly right. The discussion has to shift to what happens next: legal status based on clear criteria, paths to citizenship. Perhaps all the atrocities will generate support for change but otherwise it's just whistling in the wind. Yes this is a good column but Krugman and everyone else has to turn their policy chops towards solutions.
Solutions in line with with your wishes have been hashed over for at least the past 30 years, although they've kind of gone quiet during the last three administrations.
"Talk radio is running America"--Trent Lott, Republican Senate Leader, in frustration over his inability to move immigration reform bills (2006?)
Southwestern border encounters, which had been trending downward throughout the Obama administration, went up after Trump took office in 2017, and then came down after Trump stated worrying about reelection. Is your position is that both Trump and Biden failed to enforce immigration law? If not, it would seem that you don’t believe your own argument.
I met the legendary Von Braun when he came to Emporia State University in about 1965 to give a lecture on his rockets and space exploration! He was a very tall man and immaculately dressed in a double breasted dark blue suit!
His Saturn V moon rocket was 13-0 for successful launches! Crazy Elon Musk the ketamine addict is 1-11 in successful launches of his boondoggle Starship rocket while blowing up at least $5 billion of your taxpayer monies in his 1-11 atrocious attempts to orbit the Earth once!!!
Von Braun was a loyal Nazi Party member from 12 November 1937. In 1940 he joined the SS and was given the rank of Untersturmführer; he was later promoted by Himmler to SS-Sturmbannführer. He used slave labor at Peenemünde. More people died building the V-2 rockets than were killed by it as a weapon.
Von Braun may have dressed immaculately, but he was a nasty s.o.b.
I was in the 7th grade in 1965. I remember standing in a Kansas wheat field in 1957 at age 4 to see a small white dot move across the sky! That small white dot was the first satellite, the Russian Sputnik! We got to the Moon on the best of Germany rocketry! As crazy as the NAZIs were if Von Braun had not joined the NAZI party, would he have been killed for defying Der Leader???
Certainly he would have had no career. von Braun was an engineer who led the V-2 development team and had little role in its production. As to his attitude, he was once asked whether humans would ever get to the moon, and he replied "Yes, but you must tell Hitler that!"
It's impossible to satirize the current administration. No matter what level of outrageous, stupid, or inconceivable you come up with, reality turns out to be even more outrageous, stupid, and inconceivable. Dr Strangelove is probably not the ideal for a remake, especially given that the ending could still end up becoming a reality. I think Chaplin's "The Great Dictator" would be an excellent candidate for a remake though. Not in black and white, but black and orange, this time?
That’s a good suggestion, Turgut. But sadly, the cast you list is really doing all of the malicious & absurd things now through their fascist mafia state oligopolist owned matrix of bad fake reality teevee that passes for mainstream media news & infotainment, hate radio, the hate podcastersphere, and much of the AI controlled, clickbait driven social media swamp. We need to turn off the bullshit and bankrupt the dark enlightenment freaks into oblivion & maneuver the Christofascists “nationalists” back to the weird fringes they came from.
There is undoubtedly waste, fraud, and abuse in government (Trump’s million dollar golf vacations, for instance) but Musk’s efforts were overwhelmingly unsuccessful at eliminating fraud and were likely never actually meant to have that focus. They were an excuse to undermine the will of congress and to gain personal advantages.
That’s why we should give space exploration back to NASA! They had a continuing concern with safety. Musk’s crap explodes on the launchpad and spreads pollution everywhere! And of course we know that NASA had failures, but every time they did they went to great extents to figure out why, and then they told the American people. Not so with that drug-addled guy! He’s a moron who has fooled a whole bunch of people into thinking he’s a genius. He invented none of the shiny objects he sells. Other people invented them, then he bought out those people and pretended it was all his work. It was not. He’s a charlatan, a mountebank.
He put the team of actually qualified people together, that is the extent of his abilities, He is a strange, emotionally stunted man, who doesn't understand how to act like a decently empathetic human.
Excellent point you make the Germans almost won the war. It would’ve been very very different if they did not escape and build a rocket program or help too.
I agree the tactics of this administration’s immigration policy are wrong and in the future will be seen as shameful, but…immigration reform could/should replace illegal immigration with legal immigration (and all the associated vetting and data that would come with registered immigrants) so the true story of immigration on the U.S. can be told. I have no doubt that story is a positive one.
What resonated most with me in this piece is your insistence that what we are witnessing is not a bottom-up popular revolt, but a top-down narrative — a manufactured panic that has outlived the facts that supposedly justified it.
Like you, I genuinely believe that the majority of Americans do not endorse what is being done in their name. That belief is reinforced not only by data, but by voices of clarity and historical depth such as yours and that of Heather Cox Richardson. Her daily historical ledger of the Trump years has helped many of us see patterns rather than headlines, structures rather than slogans.
What strikes me is how fragile the narrative becomes when confronted with images instead of abstractions: families torn apart, women separated from their children, ICE agents waiting outside supermarkets or targeting street vendors — while the mythical “bad hombres” remain largely invisible. The gap between the rhetoric and the lived reality grows harder to ignore.
If panic was created through repetition and distortion, perhaps it can only be undone through persistence, evidence, and moral clarity. Authoritative voices matter precisely because they help restore proportion — and humanity — to a debate that has thrived on fear.
Thank you for continuing to insist on reality when unreality has proven politically convenient.
I hope you're right about this. Most Americans also get most if not all of their "information" from Faux Newspeak. They see only the spin, not the reality.
Thanks for engaging so thoughtfully. Just to clarify one thing I wasn’t offering this as a prediction or a reassurance, but as an attempt to describe the structure of what I’m seeing.
The point wasn’t “don’t worry,” but rather “look carefully at where this narrative is coming from and how it’s being sustained.” Manufactured panic doesn’t mean it’s harmless, only that it doesn’t arise organically from lived reality.
I share your concern about the information ecosystem. The distortion is real, and its effects are real too. That’s precisely why slowing down, naming the mechanism, and separating fear from fact feels so urgent right now.
Thanks go lajuD, well said! I agree with what you said in your 2 comments above relating to the top-down style of this trumpian fiasco we are confronting. We should be building on the important advances Joe Biden enabled our society to make during his administration. Some of the terms you have used here are the same terms that have become most important in my personal pursuit of the heart of understanding of humanity & the world, i.e. the concepts of clarity, structures, patterns, reality, depth of understanding history (with the aid of HCR & RR). I also think it's quite important to take the wider view of the total situation as much as we can. In that regard, it seems that the comment above this, from WSLO, was somewhat exaggerated about where Americans get "most if not all" of our information. Perhaps, from across the ocean in London, it seems that way - and I definitely agree that such phony sources are having a terrible effect. But I think that also very problematic is the fact that such a large percentage of our population do not want to put any effort into participating in the democratic process...
And the NYPost Murdoch's tabloid, and Sinclair right-wing television stations, as well as AM Hate radio for truckers, and commuters, the least informed people I have met mainline that effluent, oh and Joe Rogan for the young, extremely gullible gullible men. They have a vast propaganda machine and just added ABC to the stable.
Please. The wars in Gaza and Ukraine are not over, although they could be if the victims of genocide would just simply agree on caving to their torturers (so unreasonable!). Trade deals that favor the USA?? No, they favor the mad king, by design. Trump is “fighting crime?” Crime rates were already trending down and Trump will preside over very desperate times when his big beautiful bill gets real after the midterms (why would they do it that way?? ) but we’re getting a preview on that with the skirmishes over health insurance. Houthis stopped bombing ships?? Maybe they’re temporarily set back while we do that and more in the Caribbean, illegally. Yes, the stock market is up but it’s a very small consolation and I pulled out months ago anyway because Tariff Man is destroying American credibility.
Last, we could have had a border bill under Biden, but Trump ordered his pawns in congress to kill it. Why would he solve a problem when he’s so good at manipulating it for political advantage. You’re a Navy Seal and you can’t see that??
Wow, from your response it must have been pure uncut Russian propaganda! Glad it got the banhammer of loving correction. Thank you for correcting its lies.
If you like seeing violence by masked mercenaries on the streets of America, men and women tackled, children of color with hands zip tied—then you are missing grey matter — and a heart.
President Barack Obama deported 2 million WITH due process.
You're retired, so you can offer proof of your service now: Give us your BUD/S class number. Tell us a specific team assignment. After you prove you are what you say you are I'd be willing to engage with you by demonstrating the idiocy of the tariffs. Or you can do that on your own by reading about their effect on specific goods--like, say, soybeans. Ha ha.
Go fuck yourself, Asshole. It's people like you who are destroying this country, because it's easier to believe lies and propaganda than to actually research anything, "Navy seal?!" To repeat, you're delusional and racist. I have an MS degree, I wonder if you even managed to graduate high school.
Love when you take bullshit potshots at Biden regarding immigration. Your memory seems to be failing in your old age. Biden tried to address the illegal immigrant situation twice, once in the Building Back Better Bill in 2021-2022 and again in 2024. Both measures were squashed by republicans and Trump. You need to do better.
Plus it was not like Biden had nothing else on his plate - he was managing the covid pandemic, then a war in Ukraine. ... Though to be fair to Krugman the mention of Biden is not the point of the essay.
Krugman should have included those facts but it's not okay to insult him regarding his age. Repugs will never address immigration in any substantial manner because it's their constant go-to of bigotry and hate meant to inflame their maga cult.
PK presumably flew into JFK and Newark many times during the Biden administration. He should tell us when they just waved him through because Biden "opened" the border. I've gone through JFK a fair bit from 2017 to 2025 and I've never noticed any difference in the roughly one hour wait to clear the border.
Trump was not in office in 22 or 24. But can you recall how Joe manchin voted or Kristen sinema? They were in congress if you recall? Biden used executive orders to change the definition of asylum seekers to include “economic security”. So if you were poor but not in danger from gangs etc you were granted asylum ( since USA is among wealthiest - most of the 8b people on this planet qualified.
The bbb had no immigration element to it. If it did it would required cloture. Manchin defeated it because a simple majority was only needed when reconciliation is in play.
And now the pendulum has violently swung in the 180° opposite direction. True asylum seekers are being told to fuck off.
The Trump administration in 2025 is largely restricting, freezing, or rerouting access to asylum rather than expanding protection for asylum seekers. They have paused most refugee and many asylum processes, sharply limiting legal protection pathways that existed under prior policy.
Enforcement, detention, and deportations have increased, with parallel efforts to narrow who can even request asylum at the U.S. border. Proclamation 10888 suspends the right to seek asylum at the southern border for people caught between ports of entry, with no exception even for unaccompanied children or trafficking victims.
People are being pushed to apply for protection in a “first safe country” they transit through, rather than being allowed to seek asylum directly in the United States as before.
The administration has halted adjudication of all asylum applications for individuals, creating widespread interview cancellations and leaving over a million people in legal limbo.
On November 28, 2025, asylum decisions were paused for seekers from any country, and officials have signaled an intent to re‑review many or all asylum grants issued during the Biden years, reopening long‑settled cases.
An early‑2025 executive order by the Trump administration suspended the U.S. Refugee Admissions Program (USRAP), effectively stopping most new refugee resettlement to the United States for an extended period. Additional reviews and a 2025 “travel ban” for certain nationalities further slow or halt processing of refugee and other immigration benefits, compounding delays for people already granted protection.
New rules backed by legislation (often described as HR 1, the “Big Beautiful Bill”) introduce mandatory, non‑waivable filing and annual fees for asylum, plus steep penalties for people apprehended between ports of entry.
At the same time, immigration enforcement has expanded: more raids, longer detention in poor conditions, higher numbers of removals, and the shutdown of tools like the CBP One app that previously facilitated orderly presentation for asylum.
Standard asylum law remains on the books, but access is increasingly constrained by eligibility bars, procedural hurdles, and the broad use of public‑health or national‑security rationales to deny or block claims.
You should "Do better" and "learn". But you likely won't. 😟
This post is especially for a commenter on Dr. Krugman's Substack "Immigrant Derangement Syndrome" who identifies as a retired military person (and claims to be a "liberal"). One who insists that the BBB has nothing pertaining to immigration or legitimate asylum seekers. The 4th-from-last paragraph above puts that incorrect assumption to rest.
this is not correct. Biden did not change the definition of asylum; the criteria for asylum are in statute and did not change.
The original BBB framework did include path to citizenship, but it was dropped from the reconciliation package after the Senate Parliamentarian decided it violated the Byrd rule.
"JD Vance claims that immigrants are responsible for soaring housing costs. Yet academic studies of the link between immigration and rents — studies the Trump team itself cites! — show that such effects, if they exist, are small. And any reduction in housing demand caused by mass deportations is surely outweighed by the fall in housing supply as America loses foreign-born construction workers."
JD will say anything that he thinks will ad(Vance) his own agenda.
The real truth about housing costs is that private equity (which he is a part of) has bought up vast swaths of homes and apartment buildings and has systematically raised rents. The financial crisis of 2008 and the pandemic allowed PE to take advantage of the markets and buy up the housing stocks, and by using algorithmic models to "set" rental prices across the nation. I personally know of many younger people in my area that are paying 40-60% of their monthly income for rent. That is compounded by the MAGA carpetbaggers that have moved into the area, after selling homes in price inflated areas and getting into bidding wars for houses, sometimes offering 20-30% over asking and paying with cash. And I can guarantee that in my lily white section of the country it is not immigration but pure greed that has caused the housing shortage. Maybe JD should stick to something he knows, like couch fabrics.
I have my doubts about the basic decency of Americans because if we were a decent society we would not have elected that orange piece of shit TWICE, and we would not be sending louts like Tom Cotton, Mike Johnson, Jim Jordan, Ted Cruz, Paul Gosar, Clay Higgins and their like to Congress over and over again. WE ARE WHO OUR ELECTIONS RESULTS SAY WE ARE.
I fear you are entirely correct. It was the US electorate (or the majority of it that bothered to vote) who inflicted Trump and MAGA on America and on the rest of western civilisation. It’s all very well insisting “it wasn’t me, I didn’t vote for this”. The facts are that too many of the electorate who voted did, and not enough of them voted against it. Americans are the sole enablers of what we are all now suffering. The view from elsewhere of the US and its people is severely blighted.
Thank you for informing and reminding us of the antisocial hypocrisy of the current kleptocracy. The tide is turning. The 2026 midterms can’t come soon enough.
Yeah, almost like our Presidential Administration, were following the orders of the Kremlin, instead of serving the interests of the American people. Wait, I think Trump might be an FSB operative...
Actually, I'm 100% convinced he's an FSB thrall, and has been since the 1990's or earlier.
There's a mountain of circumstantial evidence that Donald was recruited by the then KGB, and is now an FSB thrall. But I didn't know that Witkoff also refuses to take his interpreter into meetings with Vlad.
Well, considering how he praises Putin, and believes him over his then functional intelligence agencies, and that slumping cosplay of the character "Reek" from Game of Thrones, at Helsinki...It's pretty obvious Putin is the top in that relationship.
Back in 2016, just after Trump won the GOP primary I read an article, "The Case for Donald Trump as a KGB Asset," or somesuch. I thought it was Slate or Politico, but can't find the damned article anymore.
Anyway, this was before he won the WH. Before Helsinki. Before the FSB Wikileaks dump. Before the FSB actively helped his presidential campaign. Before the Steele Dossier. Before the allegations that Deutsche Bank served as the conduit for Russian money to keep him from another, final bankruptcy.
But the article went into his first wife Ivana's relationship with Communist Czech Intelligence (StB)--including hundreds of pages of transcripts released post-independence. It went into the details of each of his Moscow trips, and the mechanics of how the then KGB recruited him. Anyway, it blew my mind.
The point is that there's now an even greater body of evidence to support the allegation that he's indeed an FSB (KGB) thrall and not just "a useful idiot."
I suspect he was willing enough, his stupid son blurted out that all their golf course money comes from Russia. It is too bad they succeeded in getting him elected, because I was rather looking forward to hearing about what they would have done to him when he defaulted on their “loans”. Something along the lines of dangling him from Mar-A Lago tower by his heels. (yes, I watch too many movies.)
Don Jr. also said that Russian money--which had also bought large numbers of apartments in Trump Tower--was keeping the entire Trump org from going into a final, terminal bankruptcy. Because NO banks will lend him money. Not even Deutsche Bank, that because of the Ukraine war sanctions can no longer be used to launder Kremlin "loans" to Trump.
Putin apparently instructed the dozen Oligarchs who, along with him, own most of Russia, to quietly buy up Trump condos and apartments through intermediaries and shell companies. Putin didn't have to spend a single ruble; and got a man he personally controls elected ruler of his greatest global adversary. The ultimate KGB wet dream.
Don’t forget the Russian “birther tourism” scheme, they rented his real estate to give birth to children so their offspring would have US citizenship. But he hates chain migration, even though the current future ex-wife, did it with her parents.
Wow! trump is a cancer on the body politic. His vision of national identity is racist, and your numbers are incorrect. (Easily refuted w/ a quick google search.)
White people in AZ scammed the school voucher program for hundreds of thousands of dollars. The voucher program still exists.
The statement that 7% of all hiring at NPR since 2019 was white is incorrect; publicly available data indicates a much higher percentage of white new hires and overall staff.
It's all too common that people who begin by claiming to be "liberal" promptly proceed to demonstrate that they are anything but... This seems to be, what, a couple dozen messages from Retired Seal with nary a single like. Go figure. 🤔
I get to rub up against a lot of conservatives, and they have told me that illegal immigrants:
Are greeted at the border by teams of Democrats who then hand those immigrants immense benefit packages that include free houses, free cars, free healthcare, free clothes, free phones, free appliances, and (depending on who you talk to) between $5,000 and $10,000 a week cash walking-around money. All of this is taxpayer-funded through the Deep State.
Immigrants don't work, they just live on welfare.
Immigrants take all the good jobs, leaving Americans unemployed.
Immigrants live like animals, packed 20 to a tiny hovel or ghetto tenement.
Immigrants are buying up all the housing stock, which is why Americans are homeless.
Any wonder why conservatives are deranged when it comes to immigration?
Oh, so sad. The immigrants I’ve met have mainly been folks working on construction or lawn maintenance. They are not only incredibly hard-working but they often do it with a smile. None seem to take for granted the work they have access to here.
😳 Well. That narrative certainly removes attention from the oligarchs buying up single family housing for investment… Just a tiny example:Jeff Bezos “arrived”- YOU, too, can become a real estate investor for only $100- yeahhhh-such a small price to steal home ownership & stable rent prices from your family, friends & neighbors.
I’m thinking this level of hate isn’t healthy for me, but I can’t seem to make it stop.
That & my persistent idea that if we can jail heroin addicts, WHY can’t we jail money addicts?
We don’t jail all heroin addicts. Some pull themselves up by their daddy’s bootstraps and get nominated and confirmed as Secretary of Health and Human Services.
So, how do immigrants take all the good jobs at the same time they are not working? And if they have all the good jobs and are buying up all the housing stock, why are they living packed 20 to a tiny hovel? Since Republicans control the White House, including the U.S. treasury, and Congress, where do Democrats get the taxpayer money to give immigrants freebees? These are questions conservatives need to answer.
For a conservative, holding two beliefs that directly contradict each other is just a normal part of thinking. Thus, Donald Trump can be the greatest president in history while simultaneously being utterly powerless to control the government he notionally runs. And immigrants can live in grinding poverty because they're lazy at the same time they take all the good jobs and live large off welfare.
For democrats the idea is the economy was great at 7% inflation- you just didn’t understand ( Krugman often said how great it was , just poor messaging). Now the 2.6% inflation fewer wars, 4.3% growth and record stocks are a bad economy.
Obviously Biden was sharp didn’t pardon his son and promised and there’s literally no fraud in government as democrats tell us.
It’s only republicans that are duplicitous and delusional. 7% inflation is something we need to return to and elect the people that denied it exists. Putin created price hikes. The fact Putin remains fighting in Ukraine? And prices dropping- guess we should not notice.
It’s great to mock. And obviously you’ve proven your case by citing unnamed conservatives saying inaccurate things.
But have you ever heard liberals say there’s no waste fraud and abuse and that Elon musk was not elected and he has no right to inspect gov agencies?
These aren’t random democrats. These are Chris Murphy senator, Nancy Pelosi aoc jasmine crockett. Tim Walz. Ilhan Omar believes that identifying fraud and the community that is perpetrating it is bigoted.
Elon indeed was not elected. 95% of the government was not elected. But looking for the type of fraud we see in Minnesota is being blocked by democrats. Why? Give me one reason ( other than it benefits them) that a public servant would try to prevent fraud from being discovered? ( don’t tell me “it’s how he’s doing it -without contrasting how government auditors enter businesses at present).
No doubt there’s misinformation on the right. But unless people on the left are honest about @their side” you should realize you’re no better than them.
On a positive note, the support and grace being shown for the Buddhist Monks on their Walk For Peace in small towns across the south is heartwarming. These monks started walking from their temple in Ft. Worth Texas and will end up in DC. They have been welcomed in Alabama, Georgia and soon will enter South Carolina. I hope to see them as they come near to my home. In videos I have seen, they often have local police escorts to keep,them safe from local traffic. The crowds out to see and welcome them are very large and like the monks, peaceful!
That’s wonderful to hear. I’m a member of a Buddhist sangha and we’ve spent a lot of time discussing the appropriate personal response, consistent with Buddhist principles, to what’s going on in our country. I will look for articles about these monks.
Republicans are unable to produce anything positive, so blaming Biden and/or brown-skinned people for everything bad (including problems which Republicans created) is how they survive.
I'm not sure if that says more about the electorate or those they elected.
It may be that so many people, who are fooled by the trumpian greedy servants, have been simply too busy - working overtime and/or multiple low-paying jobs & have received such a small amount of quality education - to investigate who's telling the truth...right?
This (now retired) former U.S. Army officer (who served as a Company Commander in a Combat Engineers Battalion in Vietnam - constructing roads with a good rock base that would not wash out during the rainy seasons) wishes, first of all, to sincerely thank you for your military service and for adding to this discussion.
However - allow me to respectively add that I find no implication in BTAM Master's comment that discriminating for, or against, any human simply and illegally based on the shade of their skin is acceptable - at all.
Besides - I feel certain that no valid count, or calculation of the percentage, of people who come here are any shade of "brown" or "white." And what degree of "brownness" or "whiteness" would be measurable by what sort of tool? And dependable statistics show there is not a large percentage of immigrants who are guilty of criminal activity.
Some of us are now trying to construct public policy "roads" with a "rock-solid" base that won't wash out in the "political storms" caused by illegal acts (done at the direction of a totally unethical, untruthful, incompetent "chief-executive" (convicted, so far, 34 times for felonies) who is obviously only interested in profiting from shady deals with Putin, and other such - sometimes deadly -despicable acts)...right?
As Professor Krugman points out illegal immigration fell dramatically towards the end of Biden’s administration. I believe this is because he and his administration took a long view of the problem. Getting people to register before reaching the border brought organization to a chaotic situation and potential immigrants the belief that there was a better answer than sneaking into the US. We all need to understand that big problems take time to resolve. Expecting overnight changes only results in poorly thought out answers and poor results.
Just one look at the opening picture should be enough to ruin your NYE. Masked sanctioned criminals cosplaying like army men in their "combat gear" rounding up nannies, roofers, and gardeners, with 4-5 masked gang members per "criminal". When this nightmare is over, I can only hope that the next administration indicts these real criminals and sends them to CECOT.
Thanks, Dr. K, as always. This time, especially, for the words "corrupt Supreme Court." They and the supine GOP politicians, have enabled this wanton destruction of our norms and procedures, of our Constitution and the law, itself.
There will be justice. People are taking names and taking note. I am trying to not engage with the trolls online, the apologists for fascism who have invested so much of themselves into supporting this criminal regime that they only way out is some kind of re-education that probably won't happen.
Decent, patriotic Americans are in the majority, though, and we will re-take the power. I have no time for the defeatists, either, who are too depressed or too resigned to their supposed fates. I'm not planning to lay down and die in the fact of grift, corruption, intimidation and authoritarianism.
Keep speaking up about the horrendous behavior by ICE! We deserve better. Demand accountability.
There’s a calendar on my spreadsheet so we can target our calls/letters/emails/faxes to flood offices in an organized manner.
Use/share this spreadsheet (bit.ly/Nokings) as a resource to contact members of Congress, the Cabinet and news organizations. Call. Write. Email. Protest. Unrelentingly.
Reach out (beyond your own) to as many in the Senate and House as you can. All of this is bigger than “I only represent my constituents” issues.
And I email senators that are not in my state by finding a school in their state, and using its address, zip code and phone number so I can give them a piece of my mind.
It works, and I get lots of emails back from "my" Republican senators. At the very least, their staffers are forced to hear some legitimate criticism of their abdications of their authority.
That's ingenious, to use an authentic Red-state contact! Well done, indeed.
Brilliant! We have to be creative. Not only are they blaming for everything bad on Brown and Black people, they’re erasing everything good. A U.S. military cemetery in the Netherlands removed two displays recognizing more than 8,000 Black troops who helped to liberate Europe from the Nazis. This occurred after 47 issued a series of executive orders ending diversity, equity and inclusion programs. “Our country will be woke no longer,” he said in an address to Congress in March. https://apnews.com/article/netherlands-american-cemetery-black-liberators-trump-06d7a64d11a29736e999664054d29419
Yeah, 47 isn't "woke", he's brain dead.
And he is not about to wake up.
Evil to his rotten core .
Yes. He's in an intellectual coma.
No, I think he IS an intellectual coma. Suggesting he is in an intellectual coma, means there must have been a time when he was better - there wasn't, and it wouldn't explain the infectiousness of it.
I stand corrected.😁
Trump's unqualified ambassador to the Netherlands defended this shameful
action.
For now. As Ida B Wells said, “the way to right wrongs is to turn the light of truth upon them.”
I still don't know how to pierce the media bubbles of Trump supporters. No message from the Dems will matter if it never reaches them.
Saw that and it makes me sick to my stomach.
He dishonors the veterans at every turn.
You got that right. This countries morons have their president.
I didn't know this. Shameful !
I can assure you your letters are not read.
Step into reality. You’re being answered in chat gpt style from a 23 year old staffer making 39,000 a year who graduated from George Washington u in 2024.
My kids have friends whose job is to pluck words from letters and hit send on a pre-fab letter.
Hold on…according to reporting I heard on my local PBS radio station the reason republicans voted for the the release of the Epstein files was because of the number of calls, letters, and emails they received from their constituents. It does work.
We should never stop making our voices heard.
You mean NPR. PBS is television.
The wonderful Tom Lehrer. MAGA would have hated him.
Its brown people now and it will be Jews before too long. The anti-semitism is already showing.
As it has always been the case with the far Right. Like the frog and the scorpion, its just in their nature.
"First they came for the socialists, and I did not speak out — because I was not a socialist.
Then they came for the trade unionists, and I did not speak out — because I was not a trade unionist.
Then they came for the Jews, and I did not speak out — because I was not a Jew.
Then they came for me — and there was no one left to speak for me.”
— German pastor Martin Niemöller
“I never thought leopards would eat MY face,” sobs woman who voted for the Leopards Eating People’s Faces Party.
Prof. Krugman quotes Vance as saying: "JD Vance claims that immigrants are responsible for soaring housing costs." He, and incredibly Trump during the debate with Harris, also said "They are eating the dogs. They are eating the cats. They are eating the pets of the people that live there".
Ironically, Trumps paternal grandfather would never have been allowed into the U.S. legally, if immigration laws were as they currently are. He fled Germany in order to avoid service in the German armed forces. When he tried to return to Germany with his newly married German wife, the government rejected his return! He then came back to NYC and settled.
Trump supporters aren't capable of thinking past their own noses. I dream that one day leopards will come and eat their faces?
Good ol' JD Vance. Someone who converted to Catholicism in 2019 somehow missed out on that whole "Thou shalt not bear false witness" thing. Not only did he knowingly accuse immigrants of eating pets, he →doubled down← on it after acknowledging that it wasn't true.
He's one of those converts attracted by the throwback attitudes of the Catholic Church.
CF they're eating...
https://youtu.be/3BrCvZmSnKA?si=fSGtuHF1-a_n1OL_
Someone should remind Stephen Miller that as a Jewish person by family history, he is not considered to be white. So much for being part of a white nationalism movement -- So, go ahead and eat your "Own".
After the Jews, it will be Black Citizens. SCOTIS is already setting the presidents for that with their dismantling of the Voting Rights Act, DEI, and sponsorship of people like Nick Fuentes and other Neo-Nazis. SCOTIS has been laying the ground rules for Fascism to take hold in this Country for a long time! Democrats blindness to the importance of power of the Supreme Court and ownership of the Press was so short cited.
Hopefully they are at least counting them and assigning thr correct category-against hate!
Pam, that's actually a job requirement for the lower-level Hill staffers: to tally the responses by constituents and pass that upward so the Member of Congress is informed. Of course, my (Republican) Members of Congress completely ignore everything their constituents say, but at least we've tried.
I don't think most of them completely ignore their constituents, though I'm sure some are such ideological hardliners that they do.
It's not worth making an impassioned, well thought out letter, because your opinion is just going to be tallied by a staffer. Still, those tallies are important. Everyone who writes a letter, even a short one is worth a lot of votes.
People in government care about fundraising and elections. That’s a broad statement I know. But congresspeople don’t read letters. They look at polls. Make ads to tell you things will get bad unless you send money- and then wait till the 12th hour to grandstand and move the country further in debt. The idea they care about anything other than power is not supported.
Look at Tim Walz. Loves kids. Wants kids to get needed funds to make their lives better. He apparently never visited a single day care or relief station to see his beloved kids. If I’m in charge of kids getting what they need- I’d go to see if the kids are being fed. Or if not me - someone I trust. This is a years-long problem. He doesn’t care. A nun overseeing daycare would check on the daycare ( if you know what I mean). It doesn’t happen because they’re not good people.
Please define "people in government ". Do you mean elected members of Congress?
I'm a retired federal employee. My job and my colleagues' jobs did NOT focus on fundraising and elections.
I think it would have been illegal for you to have worked on campaigns. If people look at the emails they receive, they can tell the difference between campaign offices (Jones. for Senate) and official office (Senator Jones)
Actually the letters to legislators are read. I was notified that one of mine was given to Lindsey Graham to read. That said, I am told that phone calls are more effective. I'm not so sure. But do both. Call your state legislators too. They are more likely to answer the phone themselves. I convinced one Republican in my state to change his vote on end-of-life matters that affect unmarried life partners who might not be allowed to make decisions for their loved ones, even when family members are estranged. As a result, the bill failed to pass.
What you would have done is exactly what happened. The woman in charge of the department was a carry-over appointment from a previous administration and a ya, you betcha Minnesotan who was no doubt thought to be trusted and competent. It was a shock that she hadn’t verified the food distribution and she’s spending time in jail for her neglect.
A 23 yo raking in 39,000 in a red state? That's a pretty damned good deal.
If they went to GWU, they should be raking in a lot more. They either have rich parents or tons of student debt that $39k/yr. won't make much of a dent in for a very long time.
If they landed a job with a member of congress, they most likely have rich parents.
So if they have rich parents, that means your letters to congress matter?
The point is - they’re read and responded to by lower level staffers.
It’s kind of remarkable you want to figure a way whereby other people are bad.
What if they are from Nigeria, attended gw on a scholarship and lost their parents to violence? Then their jobs are more respectable? The obsession with identity is absurd.
Please tell me your opinion of people whose parents make 171,000 combined. The fact you make these statements doesn’t flatter you. The fact there’s more than one of you making similarly ridiculous comments doesn’t bode well for krugman readers.
Don’t think you understand- these congressional aids work in DC
No, they don't all work in DC. Every member of Congress has at least one office in their home state or district. Why are you posting stuff on here that is easily disproved by a quick Google to find the websites of members of Congress?
Nobody here is claiming that the members themselves read every letter or write the replies themselves. That is totally not the point.
But if you have any experience at all in communicating with congresscritters, you have got to know that they routinely say stuff like "my mail is running 65% in favor of ... [xyz]." Maybe the absolute worst of the privileged denizens of Capitol Hill are just making that up -- some of them are perfectly capable of that level of lying. But one of the main reasons they have staffers at all is to tally the gist of communications from their constituents. It does have something to do with their getting reelected, after all.
Even for them, $39,000 for a 23 yo is a pretty damned good deal. How many 23 yo's make that kind of money, especially these days?
I deem $23K a very low salary even in my poor state of SC, where a first year social worker makes over $43K. Skilled tradespeople and others all make more than this, which is less than $20/hr.
I don’t think we’ll see many big waves (like a major MAGA Congress member changing their opinions), however I think we can cause little ripples. I’m thinking staff members who hear the same thing over and over via voicemail, phone calls, letter after letter, email after email - maybe they’ll be a little more receptive each time they hear from us. Maybe they’ll talk more about our talking points to friends and family, maybeeee they’ll vote differently. I think we can cause ripples to push news organizations to be more honest and maybe even a bit accusatory about what’s happening. As a collective, our volume matters. And, at the end of the day, if we just annoy and overwhelm some staffers working for people hurting the average American, I’m ok with that too 🙃
They keep track of numbers received by topic though.
Maybe some letters will get through. Nasty group you described paid off with $40k.
And do your kids also just sit on the sidelines and criticize?
My Republican Ohio Senators send the same form letter in response to every topic of my emails. It demonstrates their inability to perform their jobs. They seem incapable of considering another point of view. November can't come soon enough.
I hope as too. Many times Substack columnists at least in some cases, point out that such pressure on politicians causes actions. Not enough but sometimes!
Pam and others, my local NPR station reported that the reason republicans changed their vote to release the Epstein files was because of hearing from their constituents.
Don’t let anyone tell you that they don’t work. Keep using your voice!
They're read - by low paid staffers.
It doesn't matter the pay rate as long as they are tallied correctly as for or against.
I would imagine that in most cases the letters are tallied by issues, and occasionally (depending on the politician) one or more is read.
If they receive 1000 letters, I would be surprised if many are read by the politician.
Great tip on using school info to write senators! I’m a D.C. voter with no voting representation in congress so will try this method.
Another thing Democrats let slip through the cracks. DC should have had a voting Representative years ago, rather than one with no vote.
I also just use one of their own in state office addresses (listed on the spreadsheet) - just to help so you don’t have to look up schools in each area you’re emailing about
I also use your spreadsheet...downloaded it a few months ago. THANK YOU for all the time and effort you put into that! Keep spreading it around.
Cheers!
I use faxzero to send 5 free faxes a day to gop senators. I have ChatGPT follow some basic parameters on the controversy du jour, edit it the way I like it and then customize per senator’s state. I have a basic maga sounding email (eg americabest@gmail.com) and use a phone number from that state. Not abusive faxes but pointed.
Seems effective
I mean, it’s not vomiting out evidence free right wing talking points debunked by everyone on here, but it’s something positive.
That’s part of why I started collecting in state office addresses and listing them on the spreadsheet. I’ve used some of their own addresses and they don’t notice 🤣
I think it’s more effective to call.
Except that your phone’s area code will instantly show that you aren’t in that state.
Calls work well if you’re calling your own senators and representatives. I’m a Minnesota resident and showed up with a group to a Minnesota State Representative’s office to protest. We had to sign in and those who lived outside the representative’s district were ignored and stopped from speaking.
People have cell phones with all kinds of area codes. They move with their numbers.
Argh!
This piece mistakes effect for cause. The 2025 crackdown didn’t come out of nowhere; it was the predictable result of the prior administration’s failure to enforce immigration law. For years, policy signals encouraged illegal entry, release into the interior, and non-removal, producing record crossings and overwhelming cities that already had the largest unauthorized populations — New York City, Los Angeles, and Chicago.
Once that breakdown occurred, enforcement was inevitable. You can criticize tactics without denying reality. Aggressive enforcement looks ugly when the backlog is massive, but that ugliness is the downstream cost of years of non-enforcement.
Labeling all concern as racism is a dodge. Large-scale, rapid inflows strain housing, schools, and local budgets even if legal immigration is beneficial in the long run. If the law had been enforced consistently earlier, there would have been no need for a sudden crackdown later. The real failure wasn’t enforcement in 2025 — it was the decision to abandon enforcement years before.
Recall that in the spring of 2024 there was an excellent bipartisan immigration bill led by a Republican senator, Lankford of Oklahoma, that was ready for passage until Trump ordered the Republicans to vote it down since it presented an excellent immigration/border policy to the American people. The bill would have removed one of his main campaign talking points.
That bill should have come sooner. If it had been brought up in 2022 when Trump wasn't nearly as powerful, it would have stood a far bigger chance of passing. It almost passed in 2024, but by then Trump had enough power to kill it.
Democrat leaders were stupid for not realizing that immigration would be a major issue in 2024. It's always an issue for the FOX right. They bang on about immigrant rapists and murderers almost everyday. The magas voted for the deportation of all of those criminals, not the guy at the carwash or at Home Depot doing day labor.
I think this misses the point that the bill Trump gave the thumbs down to was a bipartisan GOP/Dem effort. A Dem only sponsored bill would never have gained the necessary approval by the Senate during the Biden administration.
Its perhaps more telling that Trump has done nothing to enact immigration reform in 2025, which suggests he has no real interest in meaningful reform and instead, as is becoming increasingly clear, his real intent is to rid the US of all non-white residents, whether citizen or non-citizen. Passing meaningful immigration reform at this point would only undercut his efforts to achieve this goal.
Trump's approach to immigration is a classic case of blaming the "other" for all of our political, social and economic ills. Given that most of us in this country can trace our roots to some immigrant ancestor, blaming more recent immigrants for our problems is both nonsensical and destined to failure.
Absolutely right. However, the Democrats missed an opportunity by not acting a year or two earlier. It wasn't a forgone conclusion that Trump would be the nominee in 2022.
This is an issue that Democrats should work on because with abortion gone, immigration is MAGAs primary issue. The right wing has been beating the anti-immigrant drum for 40 years.
That bi-partisan bill should be brought back, time and time again. It should be front and center. Just like health care, the Republicans can see problems, but have no solutions. Most people don't like how Trump is handling immigration.
Biden issued an EO on his first day in office to have the federal government support “affirmative care” for transgender youth, including beta blockers and even surgery. He took over two years to do anything to close the southern border. And his quisling A-G Merrick Garland took over 30 months to get around to charging Trump over January 6th 2021. The Democrats are their own worst enemy.
The systematic stupidity of the Dem leadership is hard to explain. They repeatedly lose elections to some of the most vile characters ever to slither onto the American political stage.
Oh, the MAGAs certainly did vote for it. And they voted for a rapist and a tax cheat to get it.
How reasonable of you! Arguing that Trump is just another law-respecting president, trying to do right by the American people as his hatred of American values plays out via ICE and other abuses of power. Nothing that Biden did (or didn’t do) justifies this lawless assault on our major cities. Trump has done more damage to this country than the brown people who came here for the same reasons that my grandparents had a few short generations ago. We are all immigrants.
Do you advocate for asylum? We know that Biden vastly accelerated the problem, and only stopped his misdeeds because of political pressure with an upcoming election.
There was bipartisan legislation for immigration reform in the works. Trump leaned on Republicans and they killed it.
Even George W. Bush had a plan that was rejected. What we don't want to admit is that immigrants are a part of our nation's life blood. We need them, even if they do challenge notions of a white, English-speaking, "christian" nation.
Hey Aaron, look at Trump’s lawlessness and immorality in the Caribbean and violation of the emoluments clause. Look at the bribe taking of Ice leader Tom Homan. Look at what Trump is doing to weaken NATO and the disrespect of our allies. Look at what he is doing to Ukraine. Is all of that inevitable because of illegal immigration?
Get real!
"only stopped his misdeeds"
Look at the words you used. Your assumption that he did something wrong is right wing BS. He followed the law! You may not like the law but that doesn't mean what he did was illegal.
The right has a real problem distinguishing what they want to be illegal and what is actually illegal. Just like they can't distinguish the difference between opinions and facts.
The right has created a cult, and you are in it.
You lie.
So I need to ask you- are you aware that we have immigration laws? There is a legal process established by a duly elected congress that allows for people to enter legally into the country.
When you say Trump doesn’t respect laws- you actually don’t cite the laws he is breaking. Each of his actions have resulted in the courts being involved. He’s won about 90% of the cases ( so that makes his opponents obstructing legal actions) and in the cases he’s lost, he’s abided by the rulings.
Whereas when Biden illegally allowed millions in - they illegally changed definitions and processes of immigration.
The question is - do you despise presidents doing illegal things or only republicans? Because the idea here is - if a bar lets in 150 people under 21 and cops enter the bar and start making arrests - I believe the bar owner has culpability but I also understand that if the cops whose job it is to evict the minors, ends up evicting a 22 year old - they’re less responsible than the bar owner and the 150 minors. Enforce the law in 2021-2024 and most of what’s happening doesn’t. ( 2017-2020 Trump didn’t do this)
If I recall Biden was following the law and reverting policy away from the unlawful actions Trump had taken circumventing asylum claims and dividing families. However, it was Biden's fault denying this was that big of a political issue.
The underly problem is immigration law that desperately needs reform. But then that would deny Republicans the issue and Trump his reason for creating a storm trooper force at his command. They have repeatedly stopped bills that would help. We need a logical, consistent immigration policy.
Any evidence for the “illegally changed definitions and processes of immigration” by the Biden administration? The deliberately cruel actions of ICE are pretty well documented. I agree that every administration should enforce and follow laws of the country, including the president himself.
You have a serious case of whataboutitis.
" If the law had been enforced consistently earlier, there would have been no need for a sudden crackdown later. The real failure wasn’t enforcement in 2025 — it was the decision to abandon enforcement years before."
Wow. You live in a impenetrable bubble don't you. Whether the law was or wasn't enforced previously is no excuse for what the Trump administration has been doing. Let's see, there is enforcement of immigration rules and there is blatant cruelty and what amounts to a form of terrorism. Rest assured, not that you care, the people ICE and the Border Patrol have been deporting are being terrorized. That is intentional. It is what Trump and Miller want.
Your comment is what I would characterize as deaf and blind, and that makes it really dumb. You ignore the fact that decent, law-abiding people, who are an asset to this country are being treated like animals with no rights. Obviously, it doesn't bother you that Trump/Miller/Homan/Noem are breaking laws. Obviously, it doesn't bother you that people are being deported to prison's that torture people. Of the more that 200 Venezuelans sent to CECOT, 75% had no criminal record at all and only 3% had been convicted of violent or sex crimes. Obviously, you don't care about "the worst of the worst" promise.
The real failure is a lawless administration that is using excessive force, traumatizing children, punishing people who may be deportable, but for whom there is no reason for them to be in prison. The real failure is pretending that there are national emergencies that require the militarization of American cities. In the case of Kilmar Obrega and others, the real problem is the adminstrations dishonest attempts at vindictive prosecution, which is simply persecution.
You are so out of touch with reality, that the only reason I can think of for you to comment here is your burning desire to be a troll. Okay, you're a troll. Since you have nothing positive to offer, you should go away now. Certain words occur to me in your case: "Why don't you go back where you came from?" (Which I don't doubt was in the United States, but not in any part of decent society that I can imagine.
I suggest we block him and not respond to him.
He’s a troll, best blocked or ignored.
The Biden Administration was far too lax. I think most “mainstream” Americans would admit that. But this was not their doing. Immigration reform had been needed for literal decades, through multiple administrations from both parties, so stop with the one sided accusations. Presidents have failed at pressing Congress for reform, certainly anything meaningful. Congress has been disinterested in doing hard work, not to mention losing a motivating voter issue. The Bipartisan Border Bill of 2024 was finally a step in the right direction…a BIPARTISAN bill that made actual progress. It would have passed had Trump not directly reached out to sitting Republican Congress members and threatened them with primaries and who knows what else if they didn’t kill it. He is a racist and WANTED to keep the hate alive. He was also a weak candidate with little else to offer and NEEDED the issue for his campaign.
It is also true that many people being snatched, SNATCHED is what is happening, are legal, are following the process. An overwhelming majority have zero offenses, let alone something violent. Their only “offense” is not being “white” Americans. One has to even add “American” to that as white Europeans and Canadians have also been detained.
The current immigration “crackdown” is nowhere near the realm of appropriate response. What is happening is not only illegal, as written by our laws, but it is horrifyingly inhumane for any country let alone “the greatest”. A country literally built by immigrants. A country with a giant statue that once symbolized a general welcome even though many “native” (white) Americans were (and still are) racists.
“Not like the brazen giant of Greek fame,
With conquering limbs astride from land to land;
Here at our sea-washed, sunset gates shall stand
A mighty woman with a torch, whose flame
Is the imprisoned lightning, and her name
Mother of Exiles. From her beacon-hand
Glows world-wide welcome; her mild eyes command
The air-bridged harbor that twin cities frame.
"Keep, ancient lands, your storied pomp!" cries she
With silent lips. "Give me your tired, your poor,
Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,
The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.
Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me,
I lift my lamp beside the golden door!"
Under the Trump Administration, we have a bunch of bigoted, power hungry, violent agents of a group of bigoted, power hungry, violent madmen ripping people from their homes, sidewalks, schools, cars - anyone, anywhere who doesn’t LOOK white enough is at risk. That is not immigration policy. That is hate. It is most certainly not deserved. It is inhumane. It is illegal. The point is the terror. The point is the violence. The point is the suffering. And anyone who tries to present any argument, any sort of excuse, to dismiss or condone such behavior should explore their own, personal true feelings about race.
Please stop with the fairy tale. It was created to provide political cover.
The proof is in the numbers. During the first three years of the Biden administration, immigration law was not faithfully enforced, and encounters rose by roughly 300%. Later, under political pressure, enforcement increased and encounters fell sharply. Under Trump, they have plummeted.
All of this happened without any significant change in the law. The variable wasn’t statutes or courts — it was enforcement. When the government signaled lax enforcement, crossings surged. When enforcement returned, crossings collapsed. Ignoring that cause-and-effect relationship isn’t thoughtful disagreement — it’s being obtuse.
Fairy tales?? You mean like the one about immigrants eating dogs and cats? Or my personal favorite about kids having transgender surgeries at recess. So many good ones to choose from!!
I’m not talking about the fairy tale of eating Spot or Whiskers. I’m talking about the fairy tale that, but for Trump’s intervention, Democrats would have handled illegal immigration better. That claim doesn’t survive even a basic look at the timeline.
The spike happened before the proposed law. The proposed law appeared in an election year. Biden never needed a new law in the first place, since he later reversed the surge without one. And Trump has now largely stopped the flow without passing a new law.
Same statutes. Very different outcomes. The difference wasn’t legislation — it was enforcement.
You are picking and choosing your fairy tales, no?
What fairytale did I tell? I said the Biden Administration was too lax. I also said it is not *solely* their fault. I also said we need reform, but this most certainly is not reform nor is it any kind of reasonable response or solution. That rankles you because it goes against the narrative (fairytale?) you are trying to tell yourself and others. Immigration issues are not new. To state again, they have been a struggle for decades, through administrations and Congresses held by both Rs and Ds. Very little has been done, probably DACA being the only real change. Maybe you don’t like that either? Should children who came here through no accord of their own be punished and expelled? I’m sorry that you seem to be having trouble reconciling an ugliness within yourself. It seems important for you to find a way to justify the cruel violence currently being perpetrated by ICE.
Waiting for you to explain 1) why Dear Leader felt compelled to kill the 2024 Border Bill and 2) the economic benefit of cutting immigration, legal or no, to zero. Otherwise, your argument amounts to "What about Biden?" who has about as much sway on policy now as I do.
"[I]mmigration law was not faithfully enforced, and encounters rose by roughly 300%." You don't see the problem with that assertion, do you?
Yes. It points to the fact that Biden was not faithfully enforcing the law. That was the problem.
So, no, you don't see it.
It’s nice how you tell yourself this story to justify this clearly racist effort by the Trump Administration, who was going after “criminals”. You know, those who have IDS deny,deny, deny. Whatever it takes for you to live with your embedded racism.
You’re an apologist
for tyranny - for actions that can’t be justified. Go back to Breitbart.
I'm not apologizing, I'm blaming your guys.
Everyone is entitled to due process. If you make an exception for people who “look illegal”, you make the exception the rule. If the government’s claim that you are not a citizen cannot be challenged through due process how does anyone get their chance to prove their bona fides. When you assert that the constitution needs to be set aside just here or just there you have opened the door to tyranny.
Due process has never meant equality under the law.
I don’t look like an illegal immigrant, and neither do my neighbors. I raked my own leaves this year; many of my neighbors hired crews. Some of those workers looked like they might be immigrants. Let’s assume, for the sake of argument, that every one of them was here legally and could prove it.
Deporting a U.S. citizen is illegal under U.S. law. DHS has repeatedly said its policy does not include deporting U.S. citizens. That said, no policy eliminates the possibility of screw-ups.
My birth certificate is on file at Boston City Hall. If I ever needed to prove my citizenship, I could obtain a certified copy. Can anyone point to a case where a U.S. citizen presented clear proof of citizenship—such as a birth certificate—and DHS nonetheless persisted in deportation despite that evidence?
I agree with questioning authority. Governments sometimes lie, and more often they follow the path of least resistance. Everyone should remain alert to that. But that cuts both ways. Are we really going to argue that people who knowingly entered the country in violation of the law should simply be allowed to stay anyway?
That’s not due process. That’s abandoning enforcement altogether.
Fourth amendment:
"The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized."
Aaron is a troll
Projection.
Piffle. The border was not wide open. Many had arrived years before and just now people could see them. Do not blame Biden for many years of companies recruiting and transporting workers in the USA. They did not walk across the desert. They rode by bus from Laredo and other cities in comfort.
I think you are conflating legal immigration with encounters, which do not include people entering the U.S. Legally or on a bus lawfully admitted.
Good idea, but false in this event. I lived in Laredo. Companies sent buses to Laredo, parked at a park, and recruited all who wanted to work (from Laredo and its much larger sister city Nuevo Laredo) and I never knew how they got past the further inland check points. Likely with money or deals. These were not legal people, and I wondered what ever happened to them.
What happened to them? They went to work.
Not what I meant. I drove I35 many times and every northbound vehicle was checked. How did these worker get past the check point. Many were just across the border as visitors and not authorized to go further inland.
What ICE is doing is NOT enforcement of any law; they are breaking the law repeatedly. They don’t even know or care who they are detaining- note percentage of “criminals” they have found- maybe 2%. You may like justifying this state-sanctioned terrorism, but I hope for your sake, you have lily white credentials going back to 1625. Oh, but wait, that would make you an immigrant!
If any administration was serious about immigration, they would write new functional immigration laws, then systematically prosecute CEOs and owners of corporations who hire illegal workers. This would instantly nearly stop illegal immigration. This approach is never implemented because immigration is a dog whistle issue for GOP racists and xenophobes. Trump isnt raiding agriculture or meatpacking firms. The ICE raids are reality TV shows for the MAGA cultists. Its pathetic that the US puts up with this sort of thing.
I seem to recall Trump spiking a bipartisan Immigration bill during Biden’s presidency…I can only imagine the purpose was to release his Brown Shirts with the blessing of the Dominionist GOP. So no, I believe the racism was the point.
Racism was the point of what, exactly — the Democrats’ bill? Are you calling Obama a racist, or are you claiming today’s Democrats suddenly discovered racism as a new governing principle?
One of the great luxuries of the modern left is never having to be accountable. The media will dutifully amplify whatever narrative flatters them, no matter how unserious.
What we actually know is this: Biden dramatically reduced illegal immigration without any new legislation. He did it once the politics became untenable and the issue started hurting him. That alone proves enforcement was always possible under existing law.
And now, under Trump, illegal immigration has dropped to a trickle.
So the obvious question remains unanswered: if enforcement works under current law, and has already been demonstrated to work, what exactly is the justification for passing a new law at all?
I don't think you know anything at all about Chicago. You are, of course, welcome to share your comments, however, the standards for comments that advance the discussion are higher on this blog that you might find elsewhere.
Aaron's comments are civil and respectful. It's good to hear opposing opinions, if for no other reason than to exercise your mind in framing good counter arguments.
I do think Krugman is reasonable.
The issue of amnesty has been tabled in the immigration debate as far as I can tell, though I think it should be brought up again.
What many people are finding objectionable is the deportation of people who've been in the US for decades, working people with families who are US citizens.
Fourth amendment
The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.
Due process means not being seized without a warrant by masked men in unmarked cars or being tear gassed if you document the "arrest" by video. I don't understand what you are all talking about
Then why did anti-immigrant sentiment disproportionately grow in places where immigrants did not go? The rhetoric came first, and people attached themselves to the policy because they we're herded along by their perceived in-group.
I believe Krugman is arguing the actions taken by Trump to enforce immigration laws are unwarranted, a point that you don't really address.
Otherwise, you make many claims about immigration enforcement and the effects of immigration without any supporting evidence or argument--as if they are undisputed--which they are not.
That begs the question of what is warranted. I think that the people who entered the country illegally should pack up and leave. We can give legal status to many of them, but we decide how many to admit and under what circumstances.
Doesn't that sound reasonable. Why is Krugman never reasonable. Why did he not argue for amnesty? Do you think he believes in amnesty. Do you think he believes in anything other than expanding the welfare state?
Why are you even here, paid subscriber no less? You won’t find much here you like. There are other sites you’d find more congenial.
That doesn’t excuse the means dude. Biden inherited a shit system. Trump killed the immigration bill. So, nope.
Blah blah blah.
Great response.
If the "Navy Seal Retired" handle is even accurate
Thank you Prof. Krugman. Very powerful piece. Especially the beginning paragraphs. One of the best year-end summaries. Please keep writing about IDS.
Another worthwhile endeavor is former Congressman Joe Walsh's "paxis" app. He's seeking donations for it at paxis.app.
Thank you for posting this!
Over and over in different areas on social media platforms! The louder we are, the better! ✊
In case you haven’t noticed there is no Congress. It’s been neutered and dropped in the Supreme Court as a huge rubber stamp and I guess the Congress is too so two branches of our so-called government just sit around and rubberstamp fascism for this pimp and I don’t give a fuck what I say about.
I mostly agree. But silence is complicity. I copy and paste this to those who question reaching out to Congress (so it is above already) - I don’t think we’ll see many big waves (like a major MAGA Congress member changing their opinions), however I think we can cause little ripples. I’m thinking staff members who hear the same thing over and over via voicemail, phone calls, letter after letter, email after email - maybe they’ll be a little more receptive each time they hear from us. Maybe they’ll talk more about our talking points to friends and family, maybeeee they’ll vote differently. I think we can cause ripples to push news organizations to be more honest and maybe even a bit accusatory about what’s happening. As a collective, our volume matters. And, at the end of the day, if we just annoy and overwhelm some staffers working for people hurting the average American, I’m ok with that too 🙃
I suggest you try a different writer. You will never be happy here.
Exactly right. The discussion has to shift to what happens next: legal status based on clear criteria, paths to citizenship. Perhaps all the atrocities will generate support for change but otherwise it's just whistling in the wind. Yes this is a good column but Krugman and everyone else has to turn their policy chops towards solutions.
Solutions in line with with your wishes have been hashed over for at least the past 30 years, although they've kind of gone quiet during the last three administrations.
"Talk radio is running America"--Trent Lott, Republican Senate Leader, in frustration over his inability to move immigration reform bills (2006?)
🎯
Correlation is not causation.
Southwestern border encounters, which had been trending downward throughout the Obama administration, went up after Trump took office in 2017, and then came down after Trump stated worrying about reelection. Is your position is that both Trump and Biden failed to enforce immigration law? If not, it would seem that you don’t believe your own argument.
I met the legendary Von Braun when he came to Emporia State University in about 1965 to give a lecture on his rockets and space exploration! He was a very tall man and immaculately dressed in a double breasted dark blue suit!
His Saturn V moon rocket was 13-0 for successful launches! Crazy Elon Musk the ketamine addict is 1-11 in successful launches of his boondoggle Starship rocket while blowing up at least $5 billion of your taxpayer monies in his 1-11 atrocious attempts to orbit the Earth once!!!
Von Braun was a loyal Nazi Party member from 12 November 1937. In 1940 he joined the SS and was given the rank of Untersturmführer; he was later promoted by Himmler to SS-Sturmbannführer. He used slave labor at Peenemünde. More people died building the V-2 rockets than were killed by it as a weapon.
Von Braun may have dressed immaculately, but he was a nasty s.o.b.
I was in the 7th grade in 1965. I remember standing in a Kansas wheat field in 1957 at age 4 to see a small white dot move across the sky! That small white dot was the first satellite, the Russian Sputnik! We got to the Moon on the best of Germany rocketry! As crazy as the NAZIs were if Von Braun had not joined the NAZI party, would he have been killed for defying Der Leader???
Certainly he would have had no career. von Braun was an engineer who led the V-2 development team and had little role in its production. As to his attitude, he was once asked whether humans would ever get to the moon, and he replied "Yes, but you must tell Hitler that!"
The space race was our Nazis vs the Russian Nazis.
Elon Musk is a bad copy of Dr Merkwuerdigliebe :)
You mean because there’s literally no waste fraud or abuse?
I was referring to Dr Strangelove's right arm spasm making an involuntary "Heil Hitler" and Musk's apparently making the same sign voluntarily.
I hope some director will make an adaptation of that great movie, with the comic figures of Trump, Hesgeth, Musk, RFK playing war games.
Thanks for the Dr Strangelove reference because the characters in that movie fit the characters in the white house perfectly.
Not the President - the Sellers version of the President was sort of rational.
Instead of Herr Strangelove i see some similarities in general "precious bodily fluents" Jack Reaper - paranoia, "they fluoridize our water" etc
So many differences in any case. the list is pages long .Starts with imbecility.
That would make for a great South Park episode.
It's impossible to satirize the current administration. No matter what level of outrageous, stupid, or inconceivable you come up with, reality turns out to be even more outrageous, stupid, and inconceivable. Dr Strangelove is probably not the ideal for a remake, especially given that the ending could still end up becoming a reality. I think Chaplin's "The Great Dictator" would be an excellent candidate for a remake though. Not in black and white, but black and orange, this time?
The naked king. See already some close-ups. Horse-head episode from Godfather redone in Mara Lago.... So much matrrial
That’s a good suggestion, Turgut. But sadly, the cast you list is really doing all of the malicious & absurd things now through their fascist mafia state oligopolist owned matrix of bad fake reality teevee that passes for mainstream media news & infotainment, hate radio, the hate podcastersphere, and much of the AI controlled, clickbait driven social media swamp. We need to turn off the bullshit and bankrupt the dark enlightenment freaks into oblivion & maneuver the Christofascists “nationalists” back to the weird fringes they came from.
The only waste, fraud or abuse is coming directly from the corrupt trump regime and his cabal of lawless Nazis.
Well reasoned and very original. Never see this anywhere.
Stop trolling, moron. There has NEVER been a more corrupt regime in the history of this country. You've probably read or heard that somewhere.
There is undoubtedly waste, fraud, and abuse in government (Trump’s million dollar golf vacations, for instance) but Musk’s efforts were overwhelmingly unsuccessful at eliminating fraud and were likely never actually meant to have that focus. They were an excuse to undermine the will of congress and to gain personal advantages.
Ex-Nazis are high up on the MAGA "desirable immigrant" list, plus an Aryan to boot!
Did he say "That's not my department!"?
Yes, he literally said "Once the rockets go up, who cares where they come down. That's not my department".
That’s why we should give space exploration back to NASA! They had a continuing concern with safety. Musk’s crap explodes on the launchpad and spreads pollution everywhere! And of course we know that NASA had failures, but every time they did they went to great extents to figure out why, and then they told the American people. Not so with that drug-addled guy! He’s a moron who has fooled a whole bunch of people into thinking he’s a genius. He invented none of the shiny objects he sells. Other people invented them, then he bought out those people and pretended it was all his work. It was not. He’s a charlatan, a mountebank.
He put the team of actually qualified people together, that is the extent of his abilities, He is a strange, emotionally stunted man, who doesn't understand how to act like a decently empathetic human.
He could have boosted his reputation if he hadn't given that BS cop-out answer "I don't care who I work for as long as I get to work with my rockets".
Excellent point you make the Germans almost won the war. It would’ve been very very different if they did not escape and build a rocket program or help too.
I taught at ESU from 2000 to 2015. Didn’t know about his visit! Thanks for sharing.
Talk to Dr. DeWayne Backhus as he was at ESU and went to Von Braun’s lecture as well.
You sure are full of misinformation.
My first block of 2026 asshole!
I agree the tactics of this administration’s immigration policy are wrong and in the future will be seen as shameful, but…immigration reform could/should replace illegal immigration with legal immigration (and all the associated vetting and data that would come with registered immigrants) so the true story of immigration on the U.S. can be told. I have no doubt that story is a positive one.
All of NASA’s rockets and U.S. ICBMs were descended from his V2 designs, including Musk’s Falcon if I’m not mistaken.
He was an SS officer and loyal NAZI
What resonated most with me in this piece is your insistence that what we are witnessing is not a bottom-up popular revolt, but a top-down narrative — a manufactured panic that has outlived the facts that supposedly justified it.
Like you, I genuinely believe that the majority of Americans do not endorse what is being done in their name. That belief is reinforced not only by data, but by voices of clarity and historical depth such as yours and that of Heather Cox Richardson. Her daily historical ledger of the Trump years has helped many of us see patterns rather than headlines, structures rather than slogans.
What strikes me is how fragile the narrative becomes when confronted with images instead of abstractions: families torn apart, women separated from their children, ICE agents waiting outside supermarkets or targeting street vendors — while the mythical “bad hombres” remain largely invisible. The gap between the rhetoric and the lived reality grows harder to ignore.
If panic was created through repetition and distortion, perhaps it can only be undone through persistence, evidence, and moral clarity. Authoritative voices matter precisely because they help restore proportion — and humanity — to a debate that has thrived on fear.
Thank you for continuing to insist on reality when unreality has proven politically convenient.
I hope you're right about this. Most Americans also get most if not all of their "information" from Faux Newspeak. They see only the spin, not the reality.
Thanks for engaging so thoughtfully. Just to clarify one thing I wasn’t offering this as a prediction or a reassurance, but as an attempt to describe the structure of what I’m seeing.
The point wasn’t “don’t worry,” but rather “look carefully at where this narrative is coming from and how it’s being sustained.” Manufactured panic doesn’t mean it’s harmless, only that it doesn’t arise organically from lived reality.
I share your concern about the information ecosystem. The distortion is real, and its effects are real too. That’s precisely why slowing down, naming the mechanism, and separating fear from fact feels so urgent right now.
Thanks go lajuD, well said! I agree with what you said in your 2 comments above relating to the top-down style of this trumpian fiasco we are confronting. We should be building on the important advances Joe Biden enabled our society to make during his administration. Some of the terms you have used here are the same terms that have become most important in my personal pursuit of the heart of understanding of humanity & the world, i.e. the concepts of clarity, structures, patterns, reality, depth of understanding history (with the aid of HCR & RR). I also think it's quite important to take the wider view of the total situation as much as we can. In that regard, it seems that the comment above this, from WSLO, was somewhat exaggerated about where Americans get "most if not all" of our information. Perhaps, from across the ocean in London, it seems that way - and I definitely agree that such phony sources are having a terrible effect. But I think that also very problematic is the fact that such a large percentage of our population do not want to put any effort into participating in the democratic process...
And the NYPost Murdoch's tabloid, and Sinclair right-wing television stations, as well as AM Hate radio for truckers, and commuters, the least informed people I have met mainline that effluent, oh and Joe Rogan for the young, extremely gullible gullible men. They have a vast propaganda machine and just added ABC to the stable.
What "made up numbers" are you referring to? I didn't cite any specific numbers.
In any case, Faux dominates the news:
https://www.adweek.com/tvnewser/here-are-the-2nd-quarter-of-2025-cable-news-ratings/
In my eighty-one years there have been a number of sad ones, but none as sad as this year.
This 79-year-old sadly agrees 100%...
Please. The wars in Gaza and Ukraine are not over, although they could be if the victims of genocide would just simply agree on caving to their torturers (so unreasonable!). Trade deals that favor the USA?? No, they favor the mad king, by design. Trump is “fighting crime?” Crime rates were already trending down and Trump will preside over very desperate times when his big beautiful bill gets real after the midterms (why would they do it that way?? ) but we’re getting a preview on that with the skirmishes over health insurance. Houthis stopped bombing ships?? Maybe they’re temporarily set back while we do that and more in the Caribbean, illegally. Yes, the stock market is up but it’s a very small consolation and I pulled out months ago anyway because Tariff Man is destroying American credibility.
Last, we could have had a border bill under Biden, but Trump ordered his pawns in congress to kill it. Why would he solve a problem when he’s so good at manipulating it for political advantage. You’re a Navy Seal and you can’t see that??
Really? $20 billion was saved by killing that bill? The bug beautiful bill has $170 billion for ice and immigration enforcement— 8.5 times 20!
Too bad, with all our resources, we can’t solve a problem ethically.
Reality is that we’re a nation of immigrants
Why spend $20 billion on the border when you can give it away to Argentina?? I totally get your point.
Wow, from your response it must have been pure uncut Russian propaganda! Glad it got the banhammer of loving correction. Thank you for correcting its lies.
If you like seeing violence by masked mercenaries on the streets of America, men and women tackled, children of color with hands zip tied—then you are missing grey matter — and a heart.
President Barack Obama deported 2 million WITH due process.
You're retired, so you can offer proof of your service now: Give us your BUD/S class number. Tell us a specific team assignment. After you prove you are what you say you are I'd be willing to engage with you by demonstrating the idiocy of the tariffs. Or you can do that on your own by reading about their effect on specific goods--like, say, soybeans. Ha ha.
You really should try being a comedian, you're hilarious, (and delusional.)
Go fuck yourself, Asshole. It's people like you who are destroying this country, because it's easier to believe lies and propaganda than to actually research anything, "Navy seal?!" To repeat, you're delusional and racist. I have an MS degree, I wonder if you even managed to graduate high school.
Sir, the war in Gaza hasn't ended. There is a fragile ceasefire and over 300 Palestinians hsve been killed.
Are we missing a few zeroes in the number of dead in Gaza, or are we talking just since the “ceasefire?”
I should have added since the
"ceasefire" .
Love when you take bullshit potshots at Biden regarding immigration. Your memory seems to be failing in your old age. Biden tried to address the illegal immigrant situation twice, once in the Building Back Better Bill in 2021-2022 and again in 2024. Both measures were squashed by republicans and Trump. You need to do better.
Exactly… Trump wanted the ‘problem’ and threatened his pawns in congress not to do anything about it
Plus it was not like Biden had nothing else on his plate - he was managing the covid pandemic, then a war in Ukraine. ... Though to be fair to Krugman the mention of Biden is not the point of the essay.
Krugman should have included those facts but it's not okay to insult him regarding his age. Repugs will never address immigration in any substantial manner because it's their constant go-to of bigotry and hate meant to inflame their maga cult.
Not to mention that those Repugs who own their own businesses love to exploit the cheap labor, pay below minimum wage and violate other labor laws.
Rs have loved illegal migration for decades because they can pay them low wages.
PK presumably flew into JFK and Newark many times during the Biden administration. He should tell us when they just waved him through because Biden "opened" the border. I've gone through JFK a fair bit from 2017 to 2025 and I've never noticed any difference in the roughly one hour wait to clear the border.
Trump was not in office in 22 or 24. But can you recall how Joe manchin voted or Kristen sinema? They were in congress if you recall? Biden used executive orders to change the definition of asylum seekers to include “economic security”. So if you were poor but not in danger from gangs etc you were granted asylum ( since USA is among wealthiest - most of the 8b people on this planet qualified.
The bbb had no immigration element to it. If it did it would required cloture. Manchin defeated it because a simple majority was only needed when reconciliation is in play.
Do better. Learn before criticizing.
And now the pendulum has violently swung in the 180° opposite direction. True asylum seekers are being told to fuck off.
The Trump administration in 2025 is largely restricting, freezing, or rerouting access to asylum rather than expanding protection for asylum seekers. They have paused most refugee and many asylum processes, sharply limiting legal protection pathways that existed under prior policy.
Enforcement, detention, and deportations have increased, with parallel efforts to narrow who can even request asylum at the U.S. border. Proclamation 10888 suspends the right to seek asylum at the southern border for people caught between ports of entry, with no exception even for unaccompanied children or trafficking victims.
People are being pushed to apply for protection in a “first safe country” they transit through, rather than being allowed to seek asylum directly in the United States as before.
The administration has halted adjudication of all asylum applications for individuals, creating widespread interview cancellations and leaving over a million people in legal limbo.
On November 28, 2025, asylum decisions were paused for seekers from any country, and officials have signaled an intent to re‑review many or all asylum grants issued during the Biden years, reopening long‑settled cases.
An early‑2025 executive order by the Trump administration suspended the U.S. Refugee Admissions Program (USRAP), effectively stopping most new refugee resettlement to the United States for an extended period. Additional reviews and a 2025 “travel ban” for certain nationalities further slow or halt processing of refugee and other immigration benefits, compounding delays for people already granted protection.
New rules backed by legislation (often described as HR 1, the “Big Beautiful Bill”) introduce mandatory, non‑waivable filing and annual fees for asylum, plus steep penalties for people apprehended between ports of entry.
At the same time, immigration enforcement has expanded: more raids, longer detention in poor conditions, higher numbers of removals, and the shutdown of tools like the CBP One app that previously facilitated orderly presentation for asylum.
Standard asylum law remains on the books, but access is increasingly constrained by eligibility bars, procedural hurdles, and the broad use of public‑health or national‑security rationales to deny or block claims.
You should "Do better" and "learn". But you likely won't. 😟
This post is especially for a commenter on Dr. Krugman's Substack "Immigrant Derangement Syndrome" who identifies as a retired military person (and claims to be a "liberal"). One who insists that the BBB has nothing pertaining to immigration or legitimate asylum seekers. The 4th-from-last paragraph above puts that incorrect assumption to rest.
this is not correct. Biden did not change the definition of asylum; the criteria for asylum are in statute and did not change.
The original BBB framework did include path to citizenship, but it was dropped from the reconciliation package after the Senate Parliamentarian decided it violated the Byrd rule.
it's not correct. the asylum criteria are in statute. biden did not change the definition of an asylum seeker.
"JD Vance claims that immigrants are responsible for soaring housing costs. Yet academic studies of the link between immigration and rents — studies the Trump team itself cites! — show that such effects, if they exist, are small. And any reduction in housing demand caused by mass deportations is surely outweighed by the fall in housing supply as America loses foreign-born construction workers."
JD will say anything that he thinks will ad(Vance) his own agenda.
The real truth about housing costs is that private equity (which he is a part of) has bought up vast swaths of homes and apartment buildings and has systematically raised rents. The financial crisis of 2008 and the pandemic allowed PE to take advantage of the markets and buy up the housing stocks, and by using algorithmic models to "set" rental prices across the nation. I personally know of many younger people in my area that are paying 40-60% of their monthly income for rent. That is compounded by the MAGA carpetbaggers that have moved into the area, after selling homes in price inflated areas and getting into bidding wars for houses, sometimes offering 20-30% over asking and paying with cash. And I can guarantee that in my lily white section of the country it is not immigration but pure greed that has caused the housing shortage. Maybe JD should stick to something he knows, like couch fabrics.
They also are buying one and 2 family houses, adding a few "luxury" finishes and raising rents.
I have my doubts about the basic decency of Americans because if we were a decent society we would not have elected that orange piece of shit TWICE, and we would not be sending louts like Tom Cotton, Mike Johnson, Jim Jordan, Ted Cruz, Paul Gosar, Clay Higgins and their like to Congress over and over again. WE ARE WHO OUR ELECTIONS RESULTS SAY WE ARE.
I fear you are entirely correct. It was the US electorate (or the majority of it that bothered to vote) who inflicted Trump and MAGA on America and on the rest of western civilisation. It’s all very well insisting “it wasn’t me, I didn’t vote for this”. The facts are that too many of the electorate who voted did, and not enough of them voted against it. Americans are the sole enablers of what we are all now suffering. The view from elsewhere of the US and its people is severely blighted.
Hopefully, more millions of non-voters will soon wake up and help our sane efforts to stop criminal insanity!
Thank you for informing and reminding us of the antisocial hypocrisy of the current kleptocracy. The tide is turning. The 2026 midterms can’t come soon enough.
It’s almost like this administration is systematically destroying what made this country thrive. Hmmm…
Yeah, almost like our Presidential Administration, were following the orders of the Kremlin, instead of serving the interests of the American people. Wait, I think Trump might be an FSB operative...
Actually, I'm 100% convinced he's an FSB thrall, and has been since the 1990's or earlier.
Well, when Trump and Witkoff blow off taking their own interpreters into meetings with Donnie 's master Vlad
I think we know that both men are there to get marching orders from Trump's Russian masters.
This.
There's a mountain of circumstantial evidence that Donald was recruited by the then KGB, and is now an FSB thrall. But I didn't know that Witkoff also refuses to take his interpreter into meetings with Vlad.
Well, considering how he praises Putin, and believes him over his then functional intelligence agencies, and that slumping cosplay of the character "Reek" from Game of Thrones, at Helsinki...It's pretty obvious Putin is the top in that relationship.
Back in 2016, just after Trump won the GOP primary I read an article, "The Case for Donald Trump as a KGB Asset," or somesuch. I thought it was Slate or Politico, but can't find the damned article anymore.
Anyway, this was before he won the WH. Before Helsinki. Before the FSB Wikileaks dump. Before the FSB actively helped his presidential campaign. Before the Steele Dossier. Before the allegations that Deutsche Bank served as the conduit for Russian money to keep him from another, final bankruptcy.
But the article went into his first wife Ivana's relationship with Communist Czech Intelligence (StB)--including hundreds of pages of transcripts released post-independence. It went into the details of each of his Moscow trips, and the mechanics of how the then KGB recruited him. Anyway, it blew my mind.
The point is that there's now an even greater body of evidence to support the allegation that he's indeed an FSB (KGB) thrall and not just "a useful idiot."
I suspect he was willing enough, his stupid son blurted out that all their golf course money comes from Russia. It is too bad they succeeded in getting him elected, because I was rather looking forward to hearing about what they would have done to him when he defaulted on their “loans”. Something along the lines of dangling him from Mar-A Lago tower by his heels. (yes, I watch too many movies.)
Don Jr. also said that Russian money--which had also bought large numbers of apartments in Trump Tower--was keeping the entire Trump org from going into a final, terminal bankruptcy. Because NO banks will lend him money. Not even Deutsche Bank, that because of the Ukraine war sanctions can no longer be used to launder Kremlin "loans" to Trump.
Putin apparently instructed the dozen Oligarchs who, along with him, own most of Russia, to quietly buy up Trump condos and apartments through intermediaries and shell companies. Putin didn't have to spend a single ruble; and got a man he personally controls elected ruler of his greatest global adversary. The ultimate KGB wet dream.
Don’t forget the Russian “birther tourism” scheme, they rented his real estate to give birth to children so their offspring would have US citizenship. But he hates chain migration, even though the current future ex-wife, did it with her parents.
https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/birth-tourism-brings-russian-baby-boom-miami-n836121
Actually he’s protecting it from the destruction.
To clarify......trump is "protecting the country from the destruction.?
Wow! trump is a cancer on the body politic. His vision of national identity is racist, and your numbers are incorrect. (Easily refuted w/ a quick google search.)
White people in AZ scammed the school voucher program for hundreds of thousands of dollars. The voucher program still exists.
Both good and bad people come in all colors.
My numbers are always accurate.
https://www.aaup.org/academe/issues/fall-2025/data-snapshot-women-faculty-and-faculty-color-fall-2023
The statement that 7% of all hiring at NPR since 2019 was white is incorrect; publicly available data indicates a much higher percentage of white new hires and overall staff.
https://current.org/2024/11/npr-data-shows-staff-diversity-holding-steady-as-voluntary-turnover-improves/?wallit_nosession=1
Thank you for your service. But where exactly do you get your information?
Also: do you believe that Donald Trump is an FSB intelligence thrall, or not? And if not, assuming you've examined the arguments pro & con, why not?
You're A Racist. Stop calling yourself a "liberal."
It's all too common that people who begin by claiming to be "liberal" promptly proceed to demonstrate that they are anything but... This seems to be, what, a couple dozen messages from Retired Seal with nary a single like. Go figure. 🤔
Hahaha Awesome. You’re a genius
Thank you for the important work you do. Here's to 2026 bringing happy surprises to us all.
I get to rub up against a lot of conservatives, and they have told me that illegal immigrants:
Are greeted at the border by teams of Democrats who then hand those immigrants immense benefit packages that include free houses, free cars, free healthcare, free clothes, free phones, free appliances, and (depending on who you talk to) between $5,000 and $10,000 a week cash walking-around money. All of this is taxpayer-funded through the Deep State.
Immigrants don't work, they just live on welfare.
Immigrants take all the good jobs, leaving Americans unemployed.
Immigrants live like animals, packed 20 to a tiny hovel or ghetto tenement.
Immigrants are buying up all the housing stock, which is why Americans are homeless.
Any wonder why conservatives are deranged when it comes to immigration?
Oh, so sad. The immigrants I’ve met have mainly been folks working on construction or lawn maintenance. They are not only incredibly hard-working but they often do it with a smile. None seem to take for granted the work they have access to here.
You probably visit the barrios in California often? Right?
😳 Well. That narrative certainly removes attention from the oligarchs buying up single family housing for investment… Just a tiny example:Jeff Bezos “arrived”- YOU, too, can become a real estate investor for only $100- yeahhhh-such a small price to steal home ownership & stable rent prices from your family, friends & neighbors.
I’m thinking this level of hate isn’t healthy for me, but I can’t seem to make it stop.
That & my persistent idea that if we can jail heroin addicts, WHY can’t we jail money addicts?
We don’t jail all heroin addicts. Some pull themselves up by their daddy’s bootstraps and get nominated and confirmed as Secretary of Health and Human Services.
Yeah- there is this!!!
Correction: white collar criminals were charged and tried dor financial crimes.
Trump is now issuing pardons to criminals who have stolen millions.
So, how do immigrants take all the good jobs at the same time they are not working? And if they have all the good jobs and are buying up all the housing stock, why are they living packed 20 to a tiny hovel? Since Republicans control the White House, including the U.S. treasury, and Congress, where do Democrats get the taxpayer money to give immigrants freebees? These are questions conservatives need to answer.
For a conservative, holding two beliefs that directly contradict each other is just a normal part of thinking. Thus, Donald Trump can be the greatest president in history while simultaneously being utterly powerless to control the government he notionally runs. And immigrants can live in grinding poverty because they're lazy at the same time they take all the good jobs and live large off welfare.
Masters of cognitive dissonance??
For democrats the idea is the economy was great at 7% inflation- you just didn’t understand ( Krugman often said how great it was , just poor messaging). Now the 2.6% inflation fewer wars, 4.3% growth and record stocks are a bad economy.
Obviously Biden was sharp didn’t pardon his son and promised and there’s literally no fraud in government as democrats tell us.
It’s only republicans that are duplicitous and delusional. 7% inflation is something we need to return to and elect the people that denied it exists. Putin created price hikes. The fact Putin remains fighting in Ukraine? And prices dropping- guess we should not notice.
It’s great to mock. And obviously you’ve proven your case by citing unnamed conservatives saying inaccurate things.
But have you ever heard liberals say there’s no waste fraud and abuse and that Elon musk was not elected and he has no right to inspect gov agencies?
These aren’t random democrats. These are Chris Murphy senator, Nancy Pelosi aoc jasmine crockett. Tim Walz. Ilhan Omar believes that identifying fraud and the community that is perpetrating it is bigoted.
Elon indeed was not elected. 95% of the government was not elected. But looking for the type of fraud we see in Minnesota is being blocked by democrats. Why? Give me one reason ( other than it benefits them) that a public servant would try to prevent fraud from being discovered? ( don’t tell me “it’s how he’s doing it -without contrasting how government auditors enter businesses at present).
No doubt there’s misinformation on the right. But unless people on the left are honest about @their side” you should realize you’re no better than them.
If you're so worried about Somali immigrant fraud in Minnesota why did you vote for a convicted tax fraudster?
On a positive note, the support and grace being shown for the Buddhist Monks on their Walk For Peace in small towns across the south is heartwarming. These monks started walking from their temple in Ft. Worth Texas and will end up in DC. They have been welcomed in Alabama, Georgia and soon will enter South Carolina. I hope to see them as they come near to my home. In videos I have seen, they often have local police escorts to keep,them safe from local traffic. The crowds out to see and welcome them are very large and like the monks, peaceful!
That’s wonderful to hear. I’m a member of a Buddhist sangha and we’ve spent a lot of time discussing the appropriate personal response, consistent with Buddhist principles, to what’s going on in our country. I will look for articles about these monks.
If you are on Facebook, you can follow Walk For Peace. They post daily updates and the daily map of their walk.
Also on Instagram.
Republicans are unable to produce anything positive, so blaming Biden and/or brown-skinned people for everything bad (including problems which Republicans created) is how they survive.
I'm not sure if that says more about the electorate or those they elected.
It may be that so many people, who are fooled by the trumpian greedy servants, have been simply too busy - working overtime and/or multiple low-paying jobs & have received such a small amount of quality education - to investigate who's telling the truth...right?
The electorate, for sure. A good number barely pay attention to the world around them.
This (now retired) former U.S. Army officer (who served as a Company Commander in a Combat Engineers Battalion in Vietnam - constructing roads with a good rock base that would not wash out during the rainy seasons) wishes, first of all, to sincerely thank you for your military service and for adding to this discussion.
However - allow me to respectively add that I find no implication in BTAM Master's comment that discriminating for, or against, any human simply and illegally based on the shade of their skin is acceptable - at all.
Besides - I feel certain that no valid count, or calculation of the percentage, of people who come here are any shade of "brown" or "white." And what degree of "brownness" or "whiteness" would be measurable by what sort of tool? And dependable statistics show there is not a large percentage of immigrants who are guilty of criminal activity.
Some of us are now trying to construct public policy "roads" with a "rock-solid" base that won't wash out in the "political storms" caused by illegal acts (done at the direction of a totally unethical, untruthful, incompetent "chief-executive" (convicted, so far, 34 times for felonies) who is obviously only interested in profiting from shady deals with Putin, and other such - sometimes deadly -despicable acts)...right?
Thank you!!! I could not have said it better.
BTM
As Professor Krugman points out illegal immigration fell dramatically towards the end of Biden’s administration. I believe this is because he and his administration took a long view of the problem. Getting people to register before reaching the border brought organization to a chaotic situation and potential immigrants the belief that there was a better answer than sneaking into the US. We all need to understand that big problems take time to resolve. Expecting overnight changes only results in poorly thought out answers and poor results.
Just one look at the opening picture should be enough to ruin your NYE. Masked sanctioned criminals cosplaying like army men in their "combat gear" rounding up nannies, roofers, and gardeners, with 4-5 masked gang members per "criminal". When this nightmare is over, I can only hope that the next administration indicts these real criminals and sends them to CECOT.
Thanks, Dr. K, as always. This time, especially, for the words "corrupt Supreme Court." They and the supine GOP politicians, have enabled this wanton destruction of our norms and procedures, of our Constitution and the law, itself.
There will be justice. People are taking names and taking note. I am trying to not engage with the trolls online, the apologists for fascism who have invested so much of themselves into supporting this criminal regime that they only way out is some kind of re-education that probably won't happen.
Decent, patriotic Americans are in the majority, though, and we will re-take the power. I have no time for the defeatists, either, who are too depressed or too resigned to their supposed fates. I'm not planning to lay down and die in the fact of grift, corruption, intimidation and authoritarianism.