Comment by areoform
6 days ago
If you've read history, this rhymes with certain acts that have happened before under certain regimes. Under a non-authoritarian Government, this type of showboating can be dismissed, but when habeas corpus and the right to due process is suspended — such actions take on a very different cast indeed.
It's good that Harvard is fighting this. The more people accede, the more they will accelerate down a path where there is no coming back from.
Habeas corpus - still in effect unless you're already in El Salvador.
Just say "oops, sorry, that was a mistake but we can't get that person back" every time you want to disappear someone, and somehow you'll have people claiming that habeas corpus is still alive and well while people get disappeared.
Unless you're Stephen Miller, who insists that no mistake was made: https://bsky.app/profile/atrupar.com/post/3lmrobxubic23
And, more recently, Bukele and Trump insisted that they would not return a "terrorist" to the United States: https://bsky.app/profile/atrupar.com/post/3lmrwrrkbnf2e
It's clear that the administration does not consider collateral damage a bug, but a feature; it confirms that as long as they insist that they will not do anything, then nothing will be done.
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If they can decide someone is a migrant and deport them without due process and no recourse, they can decide anyone is a migrant and deport them without due process.
If a class of people don't have habeas corpus, no one does.
Although the president was caught on mic musing about deporting American citizens.
He didn't get caught doing anything; he said it, openly, during an interview: https://bsky.app/profile/atrupar.com/post/3lmrx6b2gxy2f
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> Although the president was caught on mic musing about deporting American citizens
The canaries in our coal mine are permanent residents. Anything that can legally be done to a permanent resident can basically be done to a "bad" citizen. Trump is trying to run roughshod over permanent residents' habeus corpus rights. Courts are currently pushing back; I expect he will defy them. That, for me, will be the line at which I'll start helping with civil disruption.
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Not caught, he held a press conference and announced that he was going to try to do it.
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It's not.
The rubicon has already been crossed. If you asked some of the framers of the US constitution - beyond all other factors, unelected powers etc - what was the one defining trait of the government structure they wished to avoid; they'd have replied with arbitrary imprisonment and the suspension of due process.
Please don't take my word for it, hear it from the Prosecutor's Prosecutor. The SCOTUS justice, former AG and former USSG who led the American prosecution against the Nazis at Nuremberg, Robert H. Jackson,
There is a reason why citizenship was not a requirement for receiving due process under the law. Citizenships are bestowed by the government. They can be taken away by the government. The framers held certain rights to be unalienable from human beings - something that no government can take away, and that was the right to not be unjustly detained for your beliefs, your behavior, your dress, your religion or composure.
Suspending due process for anyone is fundamentally un-American. But we have crossed that threshold. What comes next is fairly inevitable - if the process isn't stopped now.
The more fundamental corollary is that the US government does not grant any rights. We have them by default and cede limited power for the benefit of an orderly society. Within such a framework, it should be impossible to disenfranchise people by denying them due process.
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> The rubicon has already been crossed
So when would you consider the US crossed this threshold? Guantanamo Bay? The internment of ethnic Japanese in WW2? The Trail of Tears? Or is there something about the excesses of this particular administration that makes this an unprecedented and irreversible step, if I understand your metaphor correctly?
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> The framers held certain rights to be unalienable from human beings - something that no government can take away
Unless, of course, the government considers you to be 2/3 of a person
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the judge you are quoting literally worked in FDR's admin when they were deporting millions of Mexicans, regardless of whether they were born in the US. They didn't get due process
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Perhaps but "the framers of the US constitution" are almost always over idealized. It was the very early stages of democracy (even if you can call it that). When elected to office they regularly used they official powers to supress political opponents, partisan enmity was endemic and the levels of corruption were pretty extreme (of course there was only so much money to go around due to very low taxes). Trump is unhinged of course but some of the founders or early US politicians weren't too far off...
The constitution was more of an aspirational ideal than a binding document back then since there were very limited ways too enforce it (e.g. the only way to repeal the Alien and Sedition Acts was by electing a new president/congress). The First Amendment was also interpreted and viewed extremely different that it is now before the 1900s...
What's your take on the government drone striking American citizens without any sort of trial?
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the timeline of the first plane clearly shows that that is not the case (plane departed after the judge's stay). it would be helpful if people didn't cavalierly pronounce these kinds of things.
Habeas corpus doesn't seem to be working for Rümeysa Öztürk right now.
It's starting to like authoritarian is the wrong word.
Totalitarian? not yet, but....
So you acknowledge that it’s a race for the government to get permanent residents on flights as fast as they can to El Salvador before a petition is able to be filed?
Uh yeah, why wouldn't I?
I mean I don't know that it's their policy but it sure looks that way.
FYI habeas corpus has been under attack by GOP administrations for nearly a quarter of a century - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Habeas_corpus_in_the_United_St...
It was very depressing (if financially understandable) to see other institutions immediately caving in.
What institutions other than Columbia are caving in?
A long list of extremely large, well-heeled law firms
They will once the administration revokes the visas of half their grad students and shit-can all the international undergrad tuition income.
Every law firm.
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The point of no return is Trump getting a third term. The parallels are strong there.
I was just thinking this morning that we very much needed the USA's help fighting Nazi Germany, but who will we turn to when we're fighting fascists coming from the East _and_ West? (Russia and the USA)
The point of no return was January 6th 2021!
Once Americans pardoned an attempt by the sitting president to overthrow US democracy the game's over.
America desperately needs a huge revision to the powers conceded to individuals and should instead mature to a slower, maybe less effective at times, but stronger democracy that nurtures parliamentary debate and discourse.
It could have been water under the bridge if we simply did not re-elect him. But now we have a second term emboldened by de facto total immunity.
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> Once Americans pardoned an attempt by the sitting president to overthrow US democracy it's over already
By this logic it was “over already” at the end of the Civil War. Suspending habeus corpus, ignoring the courts and then meeting with public indifference will be the point of no return. Trump’s third term would just be the canary passing out.
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> who will we turn to when we're fighting fascists coming from the East _and_ West? (Russia and the USA)
Like a heart attack can be good for your health,perhaps this USA withdrawal will be good for Europe. (If Europe is what you mean)
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there's no need to defend any good things the nazis did to germany
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> At least the Nazi party created a strong economy in Germany
This is a myth. Wages of Destruction [1] details the Nazis’ autarkic economic incompetence.
[1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Wages_of_Destruction
It didn't even do that. The Nazi economy was a debt fuelled spending spree that needed war in an attempt to sustain itself.
Nope, it didn't. The Nazis started a war economy almost immediately and yes, they hiked employment, but the Nazi economy was boom or bust. They couldn't sustain it long term without the war.
The nazis just robbed minorities and used slave Labour to prop up their economy and rich certain people/ethnicities
Which, again, is a parallel to Trump. If the peoll,e he deports to El Salavdor start to have their assets taken by the state/their neighbours/the people that dobbed them in, good luck.
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There is no evidence Trump has dementia. That is something his detracted unfairly say as if it is true, but there is no reason to think it is.
I don't like him either, but that doesn't mean I will say unfair things about him.
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What is your definition of "fascists"?
Edit to explain my point, because I'm getting downvoted (which I don't care about, but I _do_ care if people don't understand my point): fascism was a specific ideology/movement in the 20th century that, other than being right-wing and authoritarian, doesn't bear much resemblance to right-wing authoritarianism today: they have different goals, different motives, promote different policies, etc.
It seems people just use "fascism" as a synonym for "destructive right-wing populism" or even just "bad". And I agree that things like the MAGA movement, or AfD in Germany, ARE bad, and one could even argue that they are just as bad as historical fascism.
But I don't think we should use "fascism" in this way, because it gives ammo to your opponents: the supporters of these right-wing movements can point out that indeed, they are not the same as historical fascism and make you look silly.
The opening passage of the Wikipedia article:
Fascism (/ˈfæʃɪzəm/ FASH-iz-əm) is a far-right [checks box], authoritarian [ignoring courts decisions, sending people to prisons without any due process; check], and ultranationalist [MAGA, american exceptionalism, etc; check] political ideology and movement, characterized by a dictatorial leader [do I really need to explain; check], centralized autocracy [feckless GOP congress, EOs left and right; check], militarism, forcible suppression of opposition [J6, anyone? also see Maine and TFA and the law firms being blacklisted and more; check], belief in a natural social hierarchy [pro-life, shrouded in "traditional family values", anti-gay, anti-trans, etc; check], subordination of individual interests for the perceived good of the nation or race [tariffs, massive deportations without due process, etc; check], and strong regimentation of society and the economy [bathroom bills, tariff policies with exceptions for those who bribe him with million dollar dinner purchases, etc; check].
Tell me how this doesn't fit?
I feel like most people that are using the term deliberately, are doing so based on reasoning close to Umberto Eco's "Ur-fascism" essay: https://theanarchistlibrary.org/library/umberto-eco-ur-fasci...
If you want something more modern, someone made a tracker: https://www.realtimefascism.com/
The tracker uses "the 14 characteristics of fascism identified by Dr. Lawrence Britt" (which is slightly different): https://osbcontent.s3-eu-west-1.amazonaws.com/PC-00466.pdf
I get what you mean, and I understand the frustration. We should be more careful with words for exactly the reason you say at the end.
Having said that, the reason I chose to use it here was because I felt it was time, i.e. it has finally become earned. I could defend the usage with anyone who brought that up (and someone's done a thorough job in one of the replies).
> historical fascism
I mean.. Mussolini's Italy or 30s Austria weren't exactly Nazi Germany. So while there still might be some way to go the comparison is not that extreme.
Equating Trump with Hitler is of course a stretch. Mussolini however? Well..
The point of no return is Trump getting a third term
That's a little alarmist. It's not going to happen.
Things are close to going off the rails and people are understandably troubled with the direction in which the US government is headed. I am as well. But we all need to start turning down the temperature a bit.
How did that work the last 10 times we said the things trump wants to do aren't gonna happen. He's saying he will so we should believe him
https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2025/04/trump-t...
https://www.foxnews.com/media/trump-going-run-third-term-ste...
None of the rest of the stuff happening was going to happen either, I’m sure.
Legal residents are being kidnapped and disappeared into foreign gulags but let’s turn down the temperature, right?
People keep saying this about everything the admin does before they do it. Pretending it won't happen won't stop it happening.
The real question is, who is left to stop it? The man is saying he's not joking about it. It's in line with his previous actions. They have actively refused to comply with court orders. They actively tried to reject the results of an election.
Why is it alarmist to say they may do the thing they want to do, and can do?
The number of times I've read people say "That's alarmist and will never happen", just to see that exact thing happen, is a lot.
If there was no track record of Trump doing things off the rails, we could turn down the temps. However, he very much does not, and quite the opposite. Him admitting they are "looking into it" on how to achieve a third term is quite unsettling. Especially with congress acquiescing to any whim he has as well as SCOTUS giving him permission to do whatevs. None of this instills confidence that there will be any push back.
The same people that came up with Project 2025 are the very people that would come up with plans for giving a third term. Those plans might seem ridiculous to some, but so did the alternate electors and the other things Trump has already tried before. The fact that no negative outcome came from any of those previous attempts just emboldens even further attempts.
It will definitely happen if everyone is as complacent as that. At this point this attitude is extremely hard to take serious: you're either not paying attention or you're not engaging in good faith.
> That's a little alarmist. It's not going to happen.
Serious question, when someone tells you what they want, why don't want you believe them?
It's openly being discussed and you think it's alarmist? No, we need to turn the temperature up and start taking people at their word.
We need to start turning the temperature up or this country will be completely lost
Steve Bannon went on Bill Maher recently saying they are working on finding a way to make it happen. He was not joking. When challenged, Bannon's response was that Trump was already flooding the courts with cases.
> That's a little alarmist. It's not going to happen.
For context, this is exactly what was said of _literally everything_ that has happened in Trump's current term.
Is it alarmist, or is it just alarming? And, if it is alarming, shouldn't we be taking it seriously, instead of hand-waving it away?
This is where I was at, but am believing less and less as the parallels stack up.
I used to tell people to look at Russia if they wanted to see the Nazi script play out, and that this could never happen in the USA. Now I'm reminded of others that weren't taken seriously early enough.
Why do you consider it alarmist? Trump has repeatedly said he would do it, and that he's "not joking" about it.
I have had to listen to people like you for almost 10 years talk about things Trump said that were never going to happen. At what point do you just accept the evidence of your eyes and ears?
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If you really believe that then I don't know what to tell you. You've been successfully brainwashed. I hope one day you're able to hold a 5 minutes conversation with an actual student and clear that bullshit out of your head.
Yeah, I must be hallucinating with "bullshit in my head".
https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-023-00240-9
https://www.thetimes.com/uk/education/article/black-lives-ma...
https://www.maths.ox.ac.uk/node/70845
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I agree, each UK citizen is infused with the original sin of being a colonizer and their opinion should be discarded until they purge this sin from their bodies through appropriate cleansing rituals.
Perhaps some form of self-flagelation or bloodletting?
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So you're fine with them arresting dissenters as long as you disagree with the dissenters? That's fairly antithetical to the ideas expressed in the US constitution.
I'm fine with stopping the flow of federal money to people who hate me in particular and who take a salary to convince others to do so too. Those who defend the conduct of universities need to pause and consider that the public has noticed the radicalization of academia, despises it, and will support state action to reverse it.
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Yes we all know what good defenders of truth and knowledge the Trump administration is. Surely the same people who seem to have made a habit of causing constitutional crises and have directly challenged the 1st, 5th and 14th amendment have our best interest at heart.
Did you read the letter sent from the government to Harvard?
I did; it explicitly demanding an audit of employees and students political views, the forced hiring of more professors who are sympathetic to the current administration's politics.
That doesn't sound authoritarian to you? Can you imagine if Obama had demanded that any university do an ideological purge of its conservative staff and students?
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Yes it does sound authoritarian. Thank you for answering my question in good faith.
I am noticing a pattern; whenever I ask clarifying questions on hacker news threads regarding politically charged topics, most people assume least-respectful interpretation of my questions and heavily downvote them. As someone who is curious and genuinely trying to understand what's going on (I am here instead of other social media because I am looking for nuance, analysis, details, etc), it's really frustrating and disappointing when I am attacked for asking questions.
So thank you, again, for engaging in my question constructively.
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> Can you imagine if Obama had demanded that any university do an ideological purge of its conservative staff and students?
Obama didn't need to demand it, the Universities went ahead and did it on their own.
https://unsafescience.substack.com/p/the-last-four-years-wer...
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Harvard can do whatever they want. They can also not get taxpayer funding for it.
> the more they will accelerate down a path where there is no coming back from.
Why do you say this? At practically every point in history where a government or dictator goes too far, we've come back from it.
> At practically every point in history where a government or dictator goes too far, we've come back from it.
Not everyone.
There are many points in history where a dictator made their country permanently worse. Argentina was once among the wealthiest democracies in the world, until a dictator seized power in 1930 - it took 53 years to restore democratic governance and their economy still isn't back on track.
This rings true for much of South America at one point or another. Lots of African nations. Several in SE Asia as well.
Heck, just in the last few years we've seen several countries regress by a decade or more because of military coups or similar.
Really, if you look at many countries that haven't been a world power, this has happened once or twice in recent memory.
According to Wikipedia, “in 1929, Argentina was wealthy by world standards, but the prosperity ended after 1929 with the worldwide Great Depression.” It was presumably the collapsing economy which caused the military coup, not the other way around.
Do you have a better example? Or is that it?
It can take a good long time though. It's Juche Year 114 in North Korea and the Kim dynasty remains firmly in control.
Everyone except those who died in the camps.
And under the bombs in Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
Everyone recovers from a sickness. Until they don't.
Sure... As a different government.
I assume parent is talking about the functional end of this iteration of the United States as a political entity.
> we've come back from it
We as a species have come back from it, yes. But generally after millions of victims are killed, and what is left over is very different than what existed prior.
these types of moves wouldn't be possible in the first place if these institutions hadn't spent decades burning their own credibility. They even mention Alzheimer's research in this post, something that has literally wasted billions of taxpayer dollars due to an academic cartel shutting down anybody trying to expose the fact that they were completely wrong about amyloid plaques
> if these institutions hadn't spent decades burning their own credibility
They burned their credibility among those with whom they never needed it in the first place. Harvard as a taxpayer-funded institution is oxymoronic. Return it to an elite institution that the President can commend in private and mock at a rally in rural Kentucky or whatnot.
>They burned their credibility among those with whom they never needed it in the first place.
I think universities should probably be concerned with their credibility among democratically elected political representatives if they are going to be accepting public funds. If the university wants to forgo federal grants, then yes, they don't require any credibility with anyone but academia and their donors, and more power to them.
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> wrong about amyloid plaques
Sorry... you think that Trump is doing this because of suppression of dissent about amyloid plaques?
no, but there would be much more push back against this type of action if Harvard and other universities didn't alienate a large chunk of the population. Why should the taxpayers fund places that openly admit to decades of racial discrimination in admissions
the institutions have already failed their intended purpose, as shown by the research fraud. Propping them up with tax dollars because of nostalgia over the name brand is pointless
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$9 billion dollars from the federal government to Harvard equates to nearly $30 per American, that is an ignorant amount of money for a single academic institution, surely the world isn't so black and white that we can have a conversation about how much money is leaking out of our tax dollars without it always coming back to "fascism"?
I would absolutely love to see my federal tax dollars doled out to schools and institutions where they would more directly benefit a wider set of people. If that was what was under discussion it would be great. The administration isn't proposing to redirect that money, simply rescind it, and they are very, extremely clearly attempting to use this to coerce institutions and punish people for their speech and associations.
If the entire budget was income taxes and everyone paid the same including babies then sure $30 dollars or it's 1/4 of the money the government gave to Musk over the last 20 years.
The 9 billion isn’t specifically just for Harvard “the university”.
The lion’s share of it appears to be NIH programs for area hospitals - all of which are associated with Harvard.
https://www.thecrimson.com/article/2025/4/4/funding-review-h...
We all benefit from that research.
> $9 billion dollars from the federal government to Harvard equates to nearly $30 per American…
Now do what it gets them.
given my comment got railroaded instantly, this is clearly what everyone thinks, but let's at least have that conversation rather than blindly pumping money into academia while local schools can't even afford books
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The dispute between Harvard and the Trump has nothing to do with fiscal responsibility. You can read the government letter and see for yourself, none of it is about Harvard spending research money irresponsibly. It is an attempt to assert deep government control over the institution's policies and ideologies. So your comment reads as an attempt to distract from the real issues at hand, which I (and I think many others here) consider existential for the survival of the rule of law in the U.S.
Maybe. Not sure. More explicitly the letter demands that tenured professors be given more decision making power than non academic activists.
The outright dismissal of the letter suggests that at least maybe non academic activists are calling the shots, and if that is true Harvard is destined to wither and die.
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Maybe there’s a conversation to be had about that but this isn’t it, this is attempted coercion, and yes, it is fascism.
Let's have a conversation about leaking tax dollars. How do you feel about our tax dollars directly enriching the sitting president? How do you feel about our tax dollars leaking into a military parade to celebrate the president's birthday? If you don't address those leaks, how can we be expected to take people like you seriously when you defend authoritarian policy as fiscally responsible?
You forgot the cost of his golf excursions. (there are a surprising number of Trump golf trackers LOL)
https://didtrumpgolftoday.com/
"Est. cost to taxpayers for golf since returning to office: $32,200,000"
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> that we can have a conversation about how much money is leaking out of our tax dollars
Of course. It's clear you didn't read the letter because Harvard addresses this specifically. The Trump admin is literally refusing to have a conversation. This is 100% politically motivated and it's obvious to anyone who is not in the Trump cult. This is particularly disgusting because their doing it under the guise of 'antisemitism', while Trump keeps friends with known white supremacists.
nope, just a random stranger trying to add some random noise into these often one sided conversations, I of course support public academic investment and Trump is bad for the country, but I worry we've fully mapped one to one trump and nazis, and it just doesn't resonate with me as much as it seems it does everyone else.
I'm from small town America, I know that the federal government doesn't care about my hometown, so when I hear things like Harvard gets billions while already having tens of billions in endowment, it's hard for me to not think that's crazy and why can't that money go to average americans, meanwhile here I am typing words into a screen connected to the internet so I fully acknowledge I've benefited from the institution
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Instead it will go straight to military contractors, yay!
Yeah, his reasoning is suspect to a lot of folks, but I’m not sure why everyone is so comfortable with the consolidation of wealth at these elite institutions.
There's definitely a conversation we can have about the cost and accessibility of higher education in this country. I don't think that conversation should include an administration that is unilaterally and arbitrarily canceling international student visas, threatening to withhold research funding that was already allocated by congress, and turning back foreign scientists at the border for things they said in private conversation that the government only knows about after a warrantless search.