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Weekly US politics news and updates thread - week of February 2
This thread is posted weekly - please try to post all relevant US political content in here, such as news, updates, opinion articles, etc. Extremely significant events may warrant a separate topic, but almost all should be posted in here.
This is an inherently political thread; please try to avoid antagonistic arguments and bickering matches. Comment threads that devolve into unproductive arguments may be removed so that the overall topic is able to continue.
Prosecutor Fired After Voicing Frustration With Immigration Caseload
Tbh it sounds like she's a good attorney who hated her (temp) job and was trying to do right and realized she couldn't. But oh boy do I relate to the "please give me a break even if it's in jail, thanks," feeling. So I may be projecting
Why Isn’t News of Trump Building Vast Concentration Camps Being Treated as a National Emergency? (Common Dreams)
I agree, apart from Epstein this is what needs to be on the lips of every American right now. As we speak, DHS is rushing through a plan to acquire 23 warehouses for conversion into concentration camps. I posted this link containing details about each of them in a comment on another thread a few days ago, but it really deserves more visibility.
The good news is, despite their efforts to keep this hush-hush, several locations have mustered enough pushback to get them to back down. Of course DHS will just be finding other acquisition targets and trying again in other towns, so vigilance will be needed at every turn.
I think we would do well to spread awareness of what’s happening as widely as we can. And don’t fall into the trap of describing these places as “internment facilities” or “processing centers” or “family detainment camps” or whatever other euphemisms are proffered to sanitize what they’re doing. They are, without being coy about it, concentration camps. If there was ever a time comparison to actual nazism was warranted, this is unreservedly it. This is not a time for pretending something else is occurring.
Even with those "euphemisms", we can literally raise the conditions of Japanese internment camps as a counterpoint to how "they won't be that bad". Or hell, the forced relocation of indigenous Aleuts to internment camps after the Japanese invaded the Aleutian Islands in WWII. They evacuated them for safety, and the conditions were awful enough that ten percent of the evacuees died in those camps.
And that's how the US treated citizens who weren't even considered a "threat". There is absolutely no reason to believe Trump's camps will be any better.
I keep flashing back to my previous conversations over the past 14 months or so and how many times condescending voices told me I was overreacting and not to demean the horrors of Auschwitz by saying they were creating concentration camps.
I really hope they've changed their mind, not because I am petty and want their contrition but because I do not know how else to tell people at this point.
I don't doubt that they're horrible places in a lot of ways. But if you're going to go there by comparing to Auschwitz: how many people have died in these prisons?
I reject the premise that in order to compare them to Auschwitz, people have to die in them or in any specific quantity. If we as a country are hurtling toward a cliff, I'm not willing to wait until we're hanging in midair to confirm that the cliff is in fact as fatal of a fall as the people yelling are saying it is. Stop the car.
As I said. I called them concentration camps. Auschwitz was a death/extermination camp as well as a concentration camp. The camps for Japanese nationals and Japanese-Americans in the US were concentration camps. Many types of horrible concentration camps exist.
I didn't compare them to Auschwitz specifically. I didn't say I did. I said I called them concentration camps.
And I'm not inclined to be charitable on the topic towards anyone with a tendency towards Just Asking Questions or playing devils advocate or making up things I didn't say or any other permutation of whatever this could continue as. So let's not. Don't try to scold me for something I did not do.
ETA, I could @ the people on this site who argued over and misrepresented definitions, told myself and others we were overreacting and the like and I'm not doing that. Because it's not about being petty and wanting contrition, it's about people changing their minds.
I misunderstood your post. Thanks for clarifying.
Everyone else has explained why bringing up Auschwitz in this conversation isn't helpful.
But you did get me curious, so: at least 30 people died in ICE custody in 2025. At least, since the site mentions two more deaths had been confirmed due to a lag between detainees dying and publishing a notice of deaths online. Of note, two of the deaths were at the hands of a sniper and NOT due to ICE or conditions. The rest are due to medical issues or suicide. (I really doubt health care is a priority for the people running these places.)
There have also already been at least four deaths this year according to the above source (though Google's AI mentioned six deaths this year). Given there's a 30 day deadline to publish a noticiation of any death... Chances are there are even more.
In comparison, the chart shows 11 deaths in 2024. So the death count almost tripled in just one year. That absolutely does NOT bode well for the future, especially since I sincerely doubt the Trump administration and officials will care about things like humane conditions or access to basic facilities like adequate plumbing. Again, look at the history of Japanese internment camps or the Aleut internment camps I mentioned in my other comment.
If there's an outbreak of some disease like Covid at one of these facilities... I don't even want to imagine the death toll.
Measles
I would expect deaths from unrelated medical issues to go up proportionately because there are more people in custody, so we would have to adjust for that before concluding anything much.
But I’m not going to bother since I just want to see it all shut down. The amount of immigration enforcement the US needs is probably not zero, but at this point abolishing the ICE and making enforcement a state responsibility is looking pretty good.
It was people known to @DefinitelyNotAFae who jumped from concentration camps to Auschwitz.
A concentration camp doesn't need to be an industrial death camp to be brutal to most and deadly to many.
There were people here. There were people IRL. It was done by people in a number of places. But yes, they scolded me and others for saying concentration camps and being alarmist.
It's like the guy on Reddit who told me not to overreact with the Roe v Wade overthrow leak and six months later post-decision when I asked if I was allowed to be pissed now or if I was still being hysterical he apologized and said he had a daughter and didn't want this for her.
I don't want people to have to learn this way. But I hope at a minimum they do.
On the media, I think Medhi Hasan summarized it well in his recent piece on NBC's softball interview with Donald Trump.
I am bothered by the articles lack of counterarguments.
E.g. America interned Japanese during WW2, and after the crisis, those internment camps were removed.
When it came to Italian and German internment in the United States. It was mostly limited to foreign nationals. But they expanded it to Japanese American citizens much more broadly. They also did not only intern them but took their land and their businesses. Simply the internment of Japanese Americans en masse was already an expansion of what was done to other perceived enemy foreign nationals.
Only a Supreme Court ruling stopped it from continuing, although contemporary opposition highlighted the same thing - that if the internment of Japanese American citizens was legal, the internment of any American citizen could be made just as legal. And in fact, the Supreme Court ruled that detaining foreign nationals was entirely legal. It was only them saying that detaining you as citizens was not that ended things.
Also, the Alien Enemies Act, which was used as justification for the internment has already been used and cited by the current administration in an attempt to create other registries.
And quite simply right now at least one of those former Japanese internment camps is being used for immigration detainees. So it's very hard for me not to see us as expanding from the initial law to much broader and more harmful actions. Fort Bliss is right there for all of us to see.
Edited for some clarity and typos. Probably still missed a few but I'm at the hospital with my partner and this is just shit I know.
The Supreme Court lets California use its new, Democratic-friendly congressional map
This actually surprised me.
(I have an extremely low opinion of the Supreme Court in the USA.)
MTG talks about why she turned on Trump, and she is incredibly articulate...
MAGA ‘Was All A Lie’: Marjorie Taylor Greene Torches Trump In Scathing New Interview
MEGA - making everywhere great again.... except America.
I remember when she was elected, she stood out because unlike most of the other Republican congress members, she actually believed their messages. The rest seemed aware most of their rhetoric was just empty words to appeal to the masses, spouting the points that seemed to get the most voter support or keeps them in line with the rest of the party regardless of whether they themselves believe that. But she was part of the regular masses who bought into it. I recall chuckling about how uncomfortable the others must have felt when they'd realize "Oh, she's not pretending, she's ACTUALLY crazy and believes this stuff".
In retrospect, it makes sense that she'd be the one to speak out. The other politicians have political motivations to continue backing him up and keep silent, but MTG was one of the very few in politics because of her specific faith in the messaging. She's not after personal power, she genuinely wants a better future. I don't agree with her idea of what constitutes that better future, but I now realize that aspect at least makes her a lot more honest and genuine than the rest.
Weird as it is to say, politics might be better if it had more people with that mindset. No complicated agenda, just whatever they themselves think is best for the country. At the very least, they'd be more willing to speak out when they disagree.
I think it’s dangerous to buy into this narrative that she’s just a true believer.
She’s a very shrewd operator and I think realized she’d ridden the Trump train to the end of her power gains and is now trying to be the “wait this isn’t being republican/conservative” candidate to ride that farther and co-opt it.
I think she’s just a Trump that’s not totally incompetent and that’s very very dangerous
Eh... I'm not trying to say she isn't shrewd or has zero interest in power whatsoever. She wouldn't have gotten into politics if she wasn't. Again, I don't like her or her views, and she absolutely DID advance her own interests. I am very glad she is out of office right now.
That said, I'm pretty sure she is a somewhat crazy person who first got into politics due to actually believing a bunch of the rhetoric compared to her colleagues. She didn't initially hop on the Trump bandwagon as a path to power, she hopped on it because she actually believed it.
That one thing does, shockingly, give her a modicum more credibility compared to other Republican politicians, because that means she DOES have a line when it comes to his lies. It doesn't make her a good person by a long shot, nor would I say it makes her totally honest. She absolutely does spout lies to benefit herself. Again, I do NOT want her in office.
But I do believe her departure is fueled by actual frustration with Trump breaking his promises, particularly in regards to the Epstein files.
And that one, singular aspect is what I think Congress needs more of: people who enter politics because they actually care about something besides just amassing power. In her case her "causes" were unfortunately all conspiracies and/or Trump's BS, but when someone has an issue they actually care about? They'll be more willing to throw away their own power and take a stand for the sake of that issue. Which would be infinitely better than the horde of yes men currently in power.
Let me put it this way, why do you think that's true? Because she and people around her say so?
I can't give an exact reason or source, because I got that impression way back when she first entered office so I can't remember an exact source or reason. At most, I can offer up the fact her social media prior to being elected made it clear she (or someone managing her social media pages, according to her claims after media noticed) repeated, if not believed, a LOT of conspiracies.
Again, I am not saying she's incompetent or anything of the sort. I'm saying that my impression her initial reasons for running for office are because she did, in fact, genuinely buy into Trump's BS.
I feel like you're missing a key point though since you're focused on criticizing her. I'm not praising her specifically or trying to defend her in any way (again, I do not like her and want her out of office), but I stand by what I said: we need more politicians who run for office because they have issues they actually care about, and will choose those issues over personal or party power.
That specific trait is something we desperately need in the current political landscape. There's something seriously wrong if Marjorie Taylor Greene of all people might be one of the only people in Congress with that trait.
While I'm always glad to see the right fragment, it's helpful to remember that Greene hasn't magically become a friend to anyone on the left just because she was the first one to so publicly break with Trump. She's focusing on the economic issues, which are real, but at the same time is happy to claim that what's happening in Minnesota is "practically civil war."
And she's also doing this from a position where she's specifically and intentionally stepped down from a position where she could be expected to do something about her rhetoric. She was a congressperson, and chose to stop being so. To me that speaks louder than words possibly could that she doesn't want to actually do anything about Trump, she just wants to talk, and maybe do more fundraising on the backs of the hopes that someone will do something about Trump.
I think everyone now agrees she is a horrible person.
But I think she is putting her finger on why Rehmet flipped the Texas seat... by focusing on costs, education, and jobs.
Off year elections aren't won by fragmention, they are won by demotivating one side and motivating another side to actually turn up and vote.
Sure, she's saying something that's reasonable in this case; but so are other people. Centering her as a "true believer" when she bailed out of Congress at the most profitable moment as opposed to her staying and fighting for what she says she believes in is what makes me skeptical.
I think "articulate" is strong words to use for someone like her, especially when she's still a isolationist hypernationalist who's breaking with Trump for... well, there is no possibility here that's actually good. Either she's doing it for the reasons she said, which implies that she doesn't care about people in other countries, making her callous at best, or she's doing it because she didn't get backing on a political campaign, making her just as much of a power-hungry bastard as the rest of them. And these words are practically boilerplate for the latter scenario.
I'm happy to hear right-wingers are getting infighting now. But giving MTG the benefit of the doubt is not even remotely something I'm willing to entertain. With the amount of harm she's helped cause, she's got one hell of a lot of atoning to do before that's on the table.
This is a warning about some "fake news" that I saw online the other day.
I was using Youtube (actually, FreeTube) and there was a recommended video. The title was something about a Supreme Court ruling against Melania Trump. I clicked on the video, and it was George Will explaining a ruling that had just come in. It was slightly complex, but something about how Melania gave up her right to not be forced to testify against her husband in court. The implication of the video is that very soon Melania would be testifying that Trump committed bank fraud and tax fraud.
Except when I searched for more info on this, there were only a few youtube videos and facebook posts. I believe the whole thing was fake, and the George Will who was speaking in the video was AI generated.
It's odd that google doesn't detect this kind of fraud quickly but videos that have 10 seconds of Led Zeppelin music are brought down right away.
One of them is a unique set of visual and audio data where the production method is concerning, the other is a strong audio match for something they have on record. It's not odd that one of these is more easily identified.
ICE chief counsel in Minnesota leaves his job amid burnout and dissent
Slotkin presses intelligence chiefs for assurances that spy agencies are not targeting Americans
This comes on the heels of Sen. Wyden's "canary" letter to the CIA.