plus it might divert eyeballs from all the truly critical news about which AI startup got how much in funding to do something 100 other companies are doing.
If that were the case there would never be any topics on HN about housing, healthcare, education, elections, war or tariffs, yet the "/best" page says otherwise.
This is a discussion forum for intellectual curiosity operated from the investment exhaust of a capital market participant. A recent, adjacent analogy is Jeff Lawson taking his Twilio winnings to buy and operate The Onion. The economic mechanizations are usually underpinnings to something more valuable. HN would still be valuable if YC closed up shop tomorrow (and I personally argue, of greater value than the accelerator; value is subjective of course, so opinions will differ on this). Stay curious.
Meanwhile palantir is training AI models that assassinate journalist. Ethics are a major part of tech, we can make decisions that distribute billions in relief or execute millions.
Out of curiosity, is there a way we can request a mod to manually unflag this? I see comments in this thread have been killed, so I'm not sure why this is still flagged 3 hours later when it seems clearly relevant to HN?
A military deploying to the capital of the richest country on earth where most tech giants reside is important for tech.
Email them via the contact link at the bottom of the page. They're pretty responsive, though for political topics they're reluctant to unflag them because the discussions are often fruitless (just a bunch of people shouting at each other).
It's flagged for the same reason that posts describing the genocide Israel is doing in Palestine get flagged: the absolute intolerance of those in power to any dissenting opinions.
I spend a fair amount of time flagging stuff in those threads that's outright anti-Semitic or propaganda, and if that goes on too long I just flag the whole post and move on. It's one thing to have an in-depth discussion about colonialism, the history of the surrounding Arab states and early Zionism, ongoing Israeli politics, the Jewish diaspora, etc. It's quite another to engage in a fruitless moral oneupsmanship (neither the Palestinians nor the Israelis will wake up suddenly and say "Oh, HN has decided we're to blame; I guess we'll call the whole thing off"), or to reckon not at all with the fact that the destruction of Israel (through boycott, invasion, or minority democratic status) leads to the murder of horrifying numbers of Israeli Jews. As with pretty much all war I'm disgusted by what Israel is doing. I don't see that as a reason to drum up anti-semitism or casually imply the destruction of Israel and the attendant murder of millions of people would be a net good.
So, that's why I flag that stuff. I also think it's pretty absurd to think that HN censors opinions. I and others constantly criticize SV bigwigs like Marc Andreessen (can somebody ask ChatGPT how many goddamn 'e's are in his name, Jesus Christ) and Paul Graham, lots of tech-skeptic stuff gets posted here and makes it to the front page.
I am sorry you experience antisemitism, this bs should have disappeared long long long ago.
> As with pretty much all war I'm disgusted by what Israel is doing
We are too! The same way we decried the despicable genocidal actions Germany did on the Jewish population during WW2, we now decry the despicable genocidal actions of the state of Israel on the population of Palestine.
> (neither the Palestinians nor the Israelis will wake up suddenly and say "Oh, HN has decided we're to blame; I guess we'll call the whole thing off"
Only one side is actually doing genocide at the moment, and that's Israel. Israel should stop the genocide and either engage in a war without war crimes, or better yet, stop annexing foreign territories and stop the war altogether. I appreciate your "there are two sides to every conflict" point, but there is only one side currently shooting at civilians at aid sites, stopping food from reaching the civilian population, and killing journalists.
The mods time and time again will tell you with a straight face that everything is going just fine and there is absolutely no coordinated campaign by anyone to flag anything and you should only ever assume that everyone is acting with pure motives at all times.
By some of the top commenters no less. It's absolutely insane to me that people that have zero excuse not to be informed chose to willfully ignore the evidence in front of their own eyes just because the bullshit resonates with their fears.
One way to now a chess match is about to begin is to see people place pieces on a chessboard. There is no thread of our possible history that is colored 'good' for the next couple of years that starts off with deploying the NG in Washington, D.C. As a pre-emptive move it is an overt threat and as a response to something that is actually happening it is complete overkill. Either way, trouble is brewing.
A staged "carjacking" that the police got lucky enough to "stumble upon" — the "victim" of which just so happened to be the DOGE employee known as "Big Balls" — isn't enough justification for the presence of the National Guard for you?
I don't know if it was staged, but i am skeptical. The reason why is the photograph of the guy covered in blood. It's obvious that he has suffered a bloody nose and maybe been punched in the mouth, but that all the blood on his body is smeared over him rather than being from multiple injuries. I have been in a lot of fist fights in my life, including groups rather than 1 on 1, and had a good few bloody noses. Such an injury doesn't leave you covered in blood like that. All the blood on his body is smeared, and so is all the blood on his pants - note there aren't any tears in the fabric. A bloody nose bleeds a lot but it doesn't spray all over the place.
It's conceivable this his shirt got pulled off during the fight, but equally conceivable that he took it off and wiped blood on himself. I've seen people fake injuries at political demonstrations, using the old pro wrestling trick of making a small cut in the hairline with a sharp blade (scalp wounds bleed a lot because there are so many capillaries on the head). I can't say this is what's happened here, but it just doesn't look consistent with real violence.
Another reason I'm skeptical of the reported account is that there's no mention of injuries to his female companion. If it were a regular mugging or carjacking, you'd expect to read the woman was pushed to the ground and her bag taken. This could be poor quality reporting, but stories like this generally include a catalogue of all victims' injuries.
If the NG (or ideally another federal LE agency) demonstrably reduces crime in DC, without engaging in particularly political actions, will raise some interesting questions about why things have been so bad for for long.
Aside from street protests and rallies (which NG should scrupulously facilitate for 1A reasons; DC itself has been fairly bad about this in the past, too), I don't think most local policing is highly political. Yes, DC residents are losing some democratic control over their local policing, which is bad, but DC has also done a bad job with local policing for a long time.
(I'm broadly in favor of shrinking DC to the federal areas themselves; the parts where people live generally should be returned to the States.)
For me it doesn't really raise any interesting questions at all: things are statistically not 'bad' per se, besides, you could trade your democracy for an autocracy or a dictatorship and end up 'safe' from small crime but meanwhile have your whole country looted.
Maybe some people prefer that but I would rather have garden variety criminals and a trustworthy government fighting them than some kind of re-invention of the USSR, which didn't really bother with collecting crime statistics, and where crime was - so they claimed - very low (this really wasn't the case, especially not if you consider the behavior of lots of highly placed individuals, who could get away with just about anything, except of course stealing from their bosses).
As with the parent, I prefer civil liberties and small amounts of crime to any alternative.
Which is why the playbook for authoritarianism traditionally starts with lying about how much crime there actually is, thus justifying a crackdown.
If Trump wants to cite excessive crime as his reasoning, then he should provide statistics, not the unsubstantiated off-the-cuff insults he has thus far.
> If the NG (or ideally another federal LE agency) demonstrably reduces crime in DC
I don't know how you could measure this, since DC saw a very significant reduction in crime last year without any interference from the National Guard. If there are further reductions this year, that would be a continuation of a trend, not a new phenomenon.
If you don't trust the stats, then again, how would you know what effect the National Guard has? I can give you my subjective assessment as a DC resident, which is that crime is pretty low and it's a great place to live, but that isn't very useful to anyone who doesn't know me personally.
If you don't trust the stats then the Guard is being sent in for no reason and there will be no way to determine what impact they have. That is a terrible situation for everyone.
> It’s nice to be data driven but that isn’t really possible in our low trust society.
I don't think these concepts (interpersonal trust vs. accuracy of government statistics) are very related. For example China has one of the highest levels of interpersonal trust in the world (https://ourworldindata.org/trust), but notoriously unreliable government statistics.
DC has incredibly strict gun laws. I doubt many of the weapons used in crimes are legal. I don't think you will be truly any less free having national guard soldiers walking around. Actually seems better than the usual dystopian tech solutions people come up with. Maybe they will try it for thirty days and people will like it.
It's not terrible for everyone. It's great for people who control the National Guard as well as has the ability to control what people are told about their impact.
I agree, there’s no way to tell how bad things are without trust.
Im a former DC resident who left years ago due to hearing gunshots near my home multiple times a year as well as regular car break ins right in front of our house (not too far from Columbia heights metro).
I wouldn’t say they’re being sent in for no reason. The violence has to stop. Though, I think this is more trump looking to get publicity as opposed to actually fixing anything (he’s squarely on the criminal side of society).
You needn't use your real name, of course, but for HN to be a community, users need some identity for other users to relate to. Otherwise we may as well have no usernames and no community, and that would be a different kind of forum. https://hn.algolia.com/?sort=byDate&dateRange=all&type=comme...
(This is not related to the content of your post - I just needed a place to put this reply.)
> If the NG (or ideally another federal LE agency) demonstrably reduces crime in DC, without engaging in particularly political actions, will raise some interesting questions about why things have been so bad for for long.
Though I guess the loop hole here is that the National Guard would in this case be acting under "state authority" given that typically state-like actions for DC are deferred to Congress. The open question being whether the Executive branch could act independently, or whether they still need explicit authorization from Congress.
Suffice to say that before this morning I had only a vague idea about how legally complicated this could get. For instance, there's an opinion from the Department of Justice (albeit an old one) that concluded that the President can use the DC National Guard for law enforcement purposes (in that case, drug interdiction) without running afoul of the Posse Comitatus Act.
"The Act does not prevent the Army National Guard or the Air National Guard under state authority from acting in a law enforcement capacity within its home state or in an adjacent state if invited by that state's governor. The United States Coast Guard (under the Department of Homeland Security) is not covered by the Act either, primarily because although it is an armed service, it also has a maritime law enforcement mission."
It's confusing because DC does not have a governor so it looks like an edge case that has not been tested before.
the DC national guard is under the direct command of the president. The law may use the words "state" and "governor" but I'd take the other side of any bet that says that will be interpreted to mean that the president doesn't have the authority to deploy the DC guard in DC because of the posse comitatus act.
"One set of troops, the District of Columbia National Guard, has historically operated as the equivalent of a state militia (under Title 32 of the United States Code) not subject to Posse Comitatus Act restrictions, even though it is a federal entity under the command of the President and the Secretary of the Army."
This ruling has been widely misinterpreted. It does not mean that the president can make an unlawful declaration and that the National Guard, for example, must follow it even though the declaration is inconsistent with the law.
That said, it’s not immediately clear to me that this would be illegal. The National Guard and the District of Columbia is a unique edge case because D.C. is not a state.
To be clear I don’t like this move nor where it is going. I’m not endorsing it, only trying to understand the legal basis.
You're right, but if someone down the chain of command refuses to obey a declaration they consider illegal, the president can (and will) just repeatedly fire people until someone does what he wants.
We're talking about the military. In the worst case he can do a lot more than fire people for their disobedience. He's already indicated publicly that he believes General Mark Milley ought to be hung, although to date his efforts to end the general have not gone further than removing his security detail. (the general is believed to be an assassination target of Iran...)
And to go back to the original comment, the president cannot be prosecuted for doing any of this since it's part of his "official duties." I'd expect this Supreme Court to walk back the specifics of this ruling the moment a Democratic president starts pushing the limits, however.
Any administration member can be pardoned by Trump for following illegal instructions, and Trump cannot be charged for a crime if it’s ‘related to the official duties of being the President.’
How is that not a blank check to do whatever you want? Anyone that breaks the law can be pardoned later and Trump has immunity.
I'm not sure what exactly the orders were, but Calley, one of the My Lai massacre war criminals was in fact convicted. But many others who should have been convicted were not.
Calley claimed he was following orders from Medina (his SO) but Medina denied giving them.
Trump has pardoned several people who attempted to breach the capital and murder elected representatives to stop the ratification of a democratic presidential election.
All he needs is a single paper that says "All members of the military following the orders of President Trump are pardoned for all crimes past and future related to said orders" and - boom - accountability gone!
For now. But there is no reason why a future government of the USA would not see that in an entirely different light. After all, those that went to trial after WWII also argued that their actions were legal and it turned out not to be the case.
There is no legal mechanism for unpardoning someone, the constitution only allows it to go one way. It would require an amendment, and we can't even pass laws with this legislature.
And for good reason, mind you. Same reason as dismissal without prejudice gets some flak as easily abused for corrupt leverage.
A future government is not necessarily bound to the one the preceded it depending on the way the one government changed into the other. And the way things are going right now there is a non-zero chance that the USA will see a reboot of its system of government, if it doesn't actually fall apart into multiple different countries.
Even if Trump isn’t the one, this means we are ready for our Caesar and fall of the Republic.
Of course I think we’ve been sliding toward our decadent imperial phase for quite some time. This did not materialize out of nowhere. The Executive long ago took the power to declare war from Congress, at least in practice, and that was one of the first huge steps.
Personally I think Trump will die, there will be a power struggle, and it will be one of the next few. There’s even some chance it could be a left-populist authoritarian. Political winds can shift fast in an environment like this.
Rome, for all its might was puny in comparison to the United States. The downfall and/or breakup of the USA will leave the world in pieces. If it happens - which I really hope it will not, though I don't see how at this point it is still unavoidable - millions of people will die the world over. Every two bit dictator will see their chance and grab it knowing the next opportunity to do so will be at least a century away. The number of democracies and the number of people living in an (actual) democracy is already a minority. Democracy may well soon become an endangered species in the zoo of possible governments.
China will probably rise up in our place, which is why I think MAGA just handed the world to China.
In that first state of the union when he talked about a golden age I was like “yeah, this is the Chinese century. He’s gonna burn it down.” Literally gilding the White House is a caricature of how you’d depict the fall of an empire in bad fiction. An editor would say that was cliche.
China is going through its own issues at the moment. Larger numbers of people are rising up against the CCP and recent events are becoming more and more frequent. Their government is predictably cracking down harder on its citizens. But you could be right, just not with the CCP but rather whatever government takes its place soon. The riots have not yet reached their precipice but it's getting nasty.
> Larger numbers of people are rising up against the CCP and recent events are becoming more and more frequent.
Do you have a source on that, preferably one that's not quoting a cult like the chinese version of scientology, not uploading daily china-will-collaspse-soon videos, not a tankie, or other random type of propaganda/fanboy outlet?
Just videos that leak out of China. Be sure to save what you find if yt-dlp [1] supports it as YT are taking them down or flagging them as adult. I put them in my 4chan collection.
As a side note, if you are really part of Antifa and if they are really under the control of who I think they are then just get your handler to reach out and have your team assigned to China. Are you proficient in Mandarin? They who shall not be named should already have loads of videos. Be safe.
A more liberal and open Chinese government would be exactly what they need if they want to take the place of the USA on the world stage. Of course a revolution is not guaranteed to produce that. Revolutions often end with a new boss worse than the old boss. But it could. It's a dice roll, a high risk thing, which is why people have to be pushed really hard to do it.
It helps the US for China to have its own "make China great again" revanchist authoritarian CCP. It slows their overall growth and keeps them from engaging with the world. Walls are for losers. Global mercantile empires must be porous and outward facing. This porosity becomes the main source of their soft power and causes them to export their culture globally.
If China starts allowing a little more immigration that would turbocharge their rise, since every immigrant community inside China becomes the terminal end of a line of influence reaching back to wherever they came from.
If they don't liberalize then who knows. Maybe the US will decide to remove the shot gun from its mouth, in which case the window will close.
For what it's worth it will probably be quite a while before China reaches the Make China Great Again phase. At the moment they have not even reached the Stop Bludgeoning Citizens Again.
I don’t mean to be mean or maliciously or anything, but just as I tell every commoner, regardless of what team they think they are on; if at this point you still have to ask that question you are willfully ignorant or have no business thinking about anything related to politics or government and should stick to whatever you may do well.
The information is all available. What is your excuse for not knowing it?
Law as something distinct from the immediate whim of the executive backed by military force is under (both figurative and literal) attack in the US right now.
It directs the executive agencies to seek to loosen any restrictions on non-consentual admission to psychiatric facilities and to force homeless (and people with mental illness) into them.
It also aims to end drug abuse recovery programs and says that not having physical space for patients shouldn't stop them, IIRC.
That is not wise. (I'm ignoring the question of whether it's legal or constitutional or justified. Those are important questions. They matter. But for this comment, I'm ignoring them.)
Trump just made himself owner of the crime rate in DC. Every crime that occurs there is now Trump's failure. That is not something that he's going to want.
As if that matters. He never takes responsibility for literally anything. Blames other people for his appointees and laws. All negative consequences are always someone else's fault.
For anyone who disobeys the order, it's the end of their career; and every person with a conscience who leaves now will be replaced by someone who will gleefully follow much worse orders in due time. Everyone at the top levels whose job is to actually take a stand against these acts, to serve as a rallying point for others to know when the time to resist has come, have abdicated their duty. If the authoritarians are smart, they will never create a situation where we are backed into a corner, where the time to fight is obvious; we will be convinced that our best course of action is to continue in lockstep with the system in the hopes of fixing it, right up until the slaughter.
> every person with a conscience who leaves now will be replaced by someone who will gleefully follow much worse orders in due time.
Is that any better than people with a conscience staying and reluctantly following much worse orders in due time? At least when they leave, they send a message of resistance instead of silently capitulating.
Thank goodness somebody flagged this. All this commentary on the collapse of our democracy was really harshing my mellow.
I have been promoting the use of the active front page to my tech-minded friends and acquaintances that use this site.
https://news.ycombinator.com/active
Can someone explain what 'active' stories are? It isn't described in the FAQ
IIRC ranked on interactions instead of score, includes flagged.
I have this as my bookmark. Haven't visited the front page for months.
Oh very nice thank you.
or just use https://hckrnews.com/
Been using it ever since another user mentioned it, the difference has been stark.
plus it might divert eyeballs from all the truly critical news about which AI startup got how much in funding to do something 100 other companies are doing.
This is literally a news site for startup funding
If that were the case there would never be any topics on HN about housing, healthcare, education, elections, war or tariffs, yet the "/best" page says otherwise.
This is a discussion forum for intellectual curiosity operated from the investment exhaust of a capital market participant. A recent, adjacent analogy is Jeff Lawson taking his Twilio winnings to buy and operate The Onion. The economic mechanizations are usually underpinnings to something more valuable. HN would still be valuable if YC closed up shop tomorrow (and I personally argue, of greater value than the accelerator; value is subjective of course, so opinions will differ on this). Stay curious.
https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&qu...
you do understand that start-ups are a thing for liberal, democratic, capitalist, free-market folks?
That's not the context that we are in politically or socially right now.
Meanwhile palantir is training AI models that assassinate journalist. Ethics are a major part of tech, we can make decisions that distribute billions in relief or execute millions.
Therac-25 feels downright quaint these days.
Out of curiosity, is there a way we can request a mod to manually unflag this? I see comments in this thread have been killed, so I'm not sure why this is still flagged 3 hours later when it seems clearly relevant to HN?
A military deploying to the capital of the richest country on earth where most tech giants reside is important for tech.
Email them via the contact link at the bottom of the page. They're pretty responsive, though for political topics they're reluctant to unflag them because the discussions are often fruitless (just a bunch of people shouting at each other).
They will happily unflag tech-irrelevant fulff such as an article about Hulk Hogan dying.
Whereas extensively researched political articles like this one? Mum: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44816165
It's flagged for the same reason that posts describing the genocide Israel is doing in Palestine get flagged: the absolute intolerance of those in power to any dissenting opinions.
I spend a fair amount of time flagging stuff in those threads that's outright anti-Semitic or propaganda, and if that goes on too long I just flag the whole post and move on. It's one thing to have an in-depth discussion about colonialism, the history of the surrounding Arab states and early Zionism, ongoing Israeli politics, the Jewish diaspora, etc. It's quite another to engage in a fruitless moral oneupsmanship (neither the Palestinians nor the Israelis will wake up suddenly and say "Oh, HN has decided we're to blame; I guess we'll call the whole thing off"), or to reckon not at all with the fact that the destruction of Israel (through boycott, invasion, or minority democratic status) leads to the murder of horrifying numbers of Israeli Jews. As with pretty much all war I'm disgusted by what Israel is doing. I don't see that as a reason to drum up anti-semitism or casually imply the destruction of Israel and the attendant murder of millions of people would be a net good.
So, that's why I flag that stuff. I also think it's pretty absurd to think that HN censors opinions. I and others constantly criticize SV bigwigs like Marc Andreessen (can somebody ask ChatGPT how many goddamn 'e's are in his name, Jesus Christ) and Paul Graham, lots of tech-skeptic stuff gets posted here and makes it to the front page.
I am sorry you experience antisemitism, this bs should have disappeared long long long ago.
> As with pretty much all war I'm disgusted by what Israel is doing
We are too! The same way we decried the despicable genocidal actions Germany did on the Jewish population during WW2, we now decry the despicable genocidal actions of the state of Israel on the population of Palestine.
> (neither the Palestinians nor the Israelis will wake up suddenly and say "Oh, HN has decided we're to blame; I guess we'll call the whole thing off"
Only one side is actually doing genocide at the moment, and that's Israel. Israel should stop the genocide and either engage in a war without war crimes, or better yet, stop annexing foreign territories and stop the war altogether. I appreciate your "there are two sides to every conflict" point, but there is only one side currently shooting at civilians at aid sites, stopping food from reaching the civilian population, and killing journalists.
The mods time and time again will tell you with a straight face that everything is going just fine and there is absolutely no coordinated campaign by anyone to flag anything and you should only ever assume that everyone is acting with pure motives at all times.
The Trump support here in Hacker News is shameful and disgusting.
By some of the top commenters no less. It's absolutely insane to me that people that have zero excuse not to be informed chose to willfully ignore the evidence in front of their own eyes just because the bullshit resonates with their fears.
One way to now a chess match is about to begin is to see people place pieces on a chessboard. There is no thread of our possible history that is colored 'good' for the next couple of years that starts off with deploying the NG in Washington, D.C. As a pre-emptive move it is an overt threat and as a response to something that is actually happening it is complete overkill. Either way, trouble is brewing.
A staged "carjacking" that the police got lucky enough to "stumble upon" — the "victim" of which just so happened to be the DOGE employee known as "Big Balls" — isn't enough justification for the presence of the National Guard for you?
Wait this seriously happened? Wtf is going on in the US :D
Yes, Big Balls allegedly got his ass beat by a couple of 15 year olds.
https://abcnews.go.com/US/19-year-former-doge-worker-assault...
I'd like to see your evidence that it was staged. So far I have not seen anything that indicated that it was.
I don't know if it was staged, but i am skeptical. The reason why is the photograph of the guy covered in blood. It's obvious that he has suffered a bloody nose and maybe been punched in the mouth, but that all the blood on his body is smeared over him rather than being from multiple injuries. I have been in a lot of fist fights in my life, including groups rather than 1 on 1, and had a good few bloody noses. Such an injury doesn't leave you covered in blood like that. All the blood on his body is smeared, and so is all the blood on his pants - note there aren't any tears in the fabric. A bloody nose bleeds a lot but it doesn't spray all over the place.
It's conceivable this his shirt got pulled off during the fight, but equally conceivable that he took it off and wiped blood on himself. I've seen people fake injuries at political demonstrations, using the old pro wrestling trick of making a small cut in the hairline with a sharp blade (scalp wounds bleed a lot because there are so many capillaries on the head). I can't say this is what's happened here, but it just doesn't look consistent with real violence.
Another reason I'm skeptical of the reported account is that there's no mention of injuries to his female companion. If it were a regular mugging or carjacking, you'd expect to read the woman was pushed to the ground and her bag taken. This could be poor quality reporting, but stories like this generally include a catalogue of all victims' injuries.
Article including the photo I'm describing: https://abcnews.go.com/US/19-year-former-doge-worker-assault...
So that's your issue. That someone said it was staged. The rest is ok though...
If the NG (or ideally another federal LE agency) demonstrably reduces crime in DC, without engaging in particularly political actions, will raise some interesting questions about why things have been so bad for for long.
Aside from street protests and rallies (which NG should scrupulously facilitate for 1A reasons; DC itself has been fairly bad about this in the past, too), I don't think most local policing is highly political. Yes, DC residents are losing some democratic control over their local policing, which is bad, but DC has also done a bad job with local policing for a long time.
(I'm broadly in favor of shrinking DC to the federal areas themselves; the parts where people live generally should be returned to the States.)
For me it doesn't really raise any interesting questions at all: things are statistically not 'bad' per se, besides, you could trade your democracy for an autocracy or a dictatorship and end up 'safe' from small crime but meanwhile have your whole country looted.
Maybe some people prefer that but I would rather have garden variety criminals and a trustworthy government fighting them than some kind of re-invention of the USSR, which didn't really bother with collecting crime statistics, and where crime was - so they claimed - very low (this really wasn't the case, especially not if you consider the behavior of lots of highly placed individuals, who could get away with just about anything, except of course stealing from their bosses).
[flagged]
As with the parent, I prefer civil liberties and small amounts of crime to any alternative.
Which is why the playbook for authoritarianism traditionally starts with lying about how much crime there actually is, thus justifying a crackdown.
If Trump wants to cite excessive crime as his reasoning, then he should provide statistics, not the unsubstantiated off-the-cuff insults he has thus far.
[flagged]
> If the NG (or ideally another federal LE agency) demonstrably reduces crime in DC
I don't know how you could measure this, since DC saw a very significant reduction in crime last year without any interference from the National Guard. If there are further reductions this year, that would be a continuation of a trend, not a new phenomenon.
I’m not sure it did. As with many crime stats over the years, they change the criteria (or outright lie): https://www.nbcwashington.com/news/local/dc-police-commander...
It’s nice to be data driven but that isn’t really possible in our low trust society.
If you don't trust the stats, then again, how would you know what effect the National Guard has? I can give you my subjective assessment as a DC resident, which is that crime is pretty low and it's a great place to live, but that isn't very useful to anyone who doesn't know me personally.
If you don't trust the stats then the Guard is being sent in for no reason and there will be no way to determine what impact they have. That is a terrible situation for everyone.
> It’s nice to be data driven but that isn’t really possible in our low trust society.
I don't think these concepts (interpersonal trust vs. accuracy of government statistics) are very related. For example China has one of the highest levels of interpersonal trust in the world (https://ourworldindata.org/trust), but notoriously unreliable government statistics.
DC seems to have more murders than the netherlands each year despite being 25 times smaller. I guess what one considers safe is very subjective.
Ah, but you're not free in the Netherlands because you don't have a second amendment. /s
DC has incredibly strict gun laws. I doubt many of the weapons used in crimes are legal. I don't think you will be truly any less free having national guard soldiers walking around. Actually seems better than the usual dystopian tech solutions people come up with. Maybe they will try it for thirty days and people will like it.
That is a terrible situation for everyone.
It's not terrible for everyone. It's great for people who control the National Guard as well as has the ability to control what people are told about their impact.
I agree, there’s no way to tell how bad things are without trust.
Im a former DC resident who left years ago due to hearing gunshots near my home multiple times a year as well as regular car break ins right in front of our house (not too far from Columbia heights metro).
I wouldn’t say they’re being sent in for no reason. The violence has to stop. Though, I think this is more trump looking to get publicity as opposed to actually fixing anything (he’s squarely on the criminal side of society).
Could you please stop creating accounts for every few comments you post? We ban accounts that do that. This is in the site guidelines: https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html.
You needn't use your real name, of course, but for HN to be a community, users need some identity for other users to relate to. Otherwise we may as well have no usernames and no community, and that would be a different kind of forum. https://hn.algolia.com/?sort=byDate&dateRange=all&type=comme...
(This is not related to the content of your post - I just needed a place to put this reply.)
> (I'm broadly in favor of shrinking DC to the federal areas themselves; the parts where people live generally should be returned to the States.)
Alternatively, we could just make DC a state, which I'm broadly in favor of.
> If the NG (or ideally another federal LE agency) demonstrably reduces crime in DC, without engaging in particularly political actions, will raise some interesting questions about why things have been so bad for for long.
Trump says crime in D.C. is out of control. Here’s what the data shows. - https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2025/08/10/trump-cri... - August 10th, 2025
Violent Crime in D.C. Hits 30 Year Low - https://www.justice.gov/usao-dc/pr/violent-crime-dc-hits-30-... - January 3rd, 2025 (My note: Published by this admin's DoJ in January of this year)
DC Metro Police 2025 Year-to-Date Crime Comparison - https://mpdc.dc.gov/page/district-crime-data-glance
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Posse_Comitatus_Act
Though I guess the loop hole here is that the National Guard would in this case be acting under "state authority" given that typically state-like actions for DC are deferred to Congress. The open question being whether the Executive branch could act independently, or whether they still need explicit authorization from Congress.
Suffice to say that before this morning I had only a vague idea about how legally complicated this could get. For instance, there's an opinion from the Department of Justice (albeit an old one) that concluded that the President can use the DC National Guard for law enforcement purposes (in that case, drug interdiction) without running afoul of the Posse Comitatus Act.
Source: https://www.justice.gov/olc/opinion/use-national-guard-suppo...
From the Wiki Page:
"The Act does not prevent the Army National Guard or the Air National Guard under state authority from acting in a law enforcement capacity within its home state or in an adjacent state if invited by that state's governor. The United States Coast Guard (under the Department of Homeland Security) is not covered by the Act either, primarily because although it is an armed service, it also has a maritime law enforcement mission."
It's confusing because DC does not have a governor so it looks like an edge case that has not been tested before.
the DC national guard is under the direct command of the president. The law may use the words "state" and "governor" but I'd take the other side of any bet that says that will be interpreted to mean that the president doesn't have the authority to deploy the DC guard in DC because of the posse comitatus act.
"One set of troops, the District of Columbia National Guard, has historically operated as the equivalent of a state militia (under Title 32 of the United States Code) not subject to Posse Comitatus Act restrictions, even though it is a federal entity under the command of the President and the Secretary of the Army."
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This ruling has been widely misinterpreted. It does not mean that the president can make an unlawful declaration and that the National Guard, for example, must follow it even though the declaration is inconsistent with the law.
That said, it’s not immediately clear to me that this would be illegal. The National Guard and the District of Columbia is a unique edge case because D.C. is not a state.
To be clear I don’t like this move nor where it is going. I’m not endorsing it, only trying to understand the legal basis.
You're right, but if someone down the chain of command refuses to obey a declaration they consider illegal, the president can (and will) just repeatedly fire people until someone does what he wants.
We're talking about the military. In the worst case he can do a lot more than fire people for their disobedience. He's already indicated publicly that he believes General Mark Milley ought to be hung, although to date his efforts to end the general have not gone further than removing his security detail. (the general is believed to be an assassination target of Iran...)
And to go back to the original comment, the president cannot be prosecuted for doing any of this since it's part of his "official duties." I'd expect this Supreme Court to walk back the specifics of this ruling the moment a Democratic president starts pushing the limits, however.
No, I think we all have a pretty clear interpretation of that ruling.
If no-one is going to uphold the legality, or lack there of, then there is no rule of law.
SCOTUS is not going to hold POTUS accountable.
Therefore, Trump is above the law.
Any administration member can be pardoned by Trump for following illegal instructions, and Trump cannot be charged for a crime if it’s ‘related to the official duties of being the President.’
How is that not a blank check to do whatever you want? Anyone that breaks the law can be pardoned later and Trump has immunity.
That protects Trump, not his henchmen.
And soldiers are expected to refuse orders that are manifestly illegal
True. Has an American soldier ever been prosecuted for obeying an illegal order?
I'm not sure what exactly the orders were, but Calley, one of the My Lai massacre war criminals was in fact convicted. But many others who should have been convicted were not.
Calley claimed he was following orders from Medina (his SO) but Medina denied giving them.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Calley only served 5 months behind bars, the other 35 were under house arrest.
https://time.com/archive/6878225/the-military-galley-paroled...
For the cold blooded murder of many civilians. Insanity, and one of those moments that humanity will judge its past by.
Trump has pardoned several people who attempted to breach the capital and murder elected representatives to stop the ratification of a democratic presidential election.
All he needs is a single paper that says "All members of the military following the orders of President Trump are pardoned for all crimes past and future related to said orders" and - boom - accountability gone!
For now. But there is no reason why a future government of the USA would not see that in an entirely different light. After all, those that went to trial after WWII also argued that their actions were legal and it turned out not to be the case.
There is no legal mechanism for unpardoning someone, the constitution only allows it to go one way. It would require an amendment, and we can't even pass laws with this legislature.
And for good reason, mind you. Same reason as dismissal without prejudice gets some flak as easily abused for corrupt leverage.
A future government is not necessarily bound to the one the preceded it depending on the way the one government changed into the other. And the way things are going right now there is a non-zero chance that the USA will see a reboot of its system of government, if it doesn't actually fall apart into multiple different countries.
His henchmen are implicitly protected because he'll pardon them.
Biden set a good precedent...
Don't forget about Bengasi and the emails!
Trump topped that easily by pardoning the January 6th rioters even those attacked police officers.
Similar examples for the same by Biden?
This protects Trump, and Trump protects his henchmen. Look at the J6 pardons.
Even if Trump isn’t the one, this means we are ready for our Caesar and fall of the Republic.
Of course I think we’ve been sliding toward our decadent imperial phase for quite some time. This did not materialize out of nowhere. The Executive long ago took the power to declare war from Congress, at least in practice, and that was one of the first huge steps.
Personally I think Trump will die, there will be a power struggle, and it will be one of the next few. There’s even some chance it could be a left-populist authoritarian. Political winds can shift fast in an environment like this.
Speed running the fall of Rome.
Rome, for all its might was puny in comparison to the United States. The downfall and/or breakup of the USA will leave the world in pieces. If it happens - which I really hope it will not, though I don't see how at this point it is still unavoidable - millions of people will die the world over. Every two bit dictator will see their chance and grab it knowing the next opportunity to do so will be at least a century away. The number of democracies and the number of people living in an (actual) democracy is already a minority. Democracy may well soon become an endangered species in the zoo of possible governments.
China will probably rise up in our place, which is why I think MAGA just handed the world to China.
In that first state of the union when he talked about a golden age I was like “yeah, this is the Chinese century. He’s gonna burn it down.” Literally gilding the White House is a caricature of how you’d depict the fall of an empire in bad fiction. An editor would say that was cliche.
China is going through its own issues at the moment. Larger numbers of people are rising up against the CCP and recent events are becoming more and more frequent. Their government is predictably cracking down harder on its citizens. But you could be right, just not with the CCP but rather whatever government takes its place soon. The riots have not yet reached their precipice but it's getting nasty.
> Larger numbers of people are rising up against the CCP and recent events are becoming more and more frequent.
Do you have a source on that, preferably one that's not quoting a cult like the chinese version of scientology, not uploading daily china-will-collaspse-soon videos, not a tankie, or other random type of propaganda/fanboy outlet?
Just videos that leak out of China. Be sure to save what you find if yt-dlp [1] supports it as YT are taking them down or flagging them as adult. I put them in my 4chan collection.
As a side note, if you are really part of Antifa and if they are really under the control of who I think they are then just get your handler to reach out and have your team assigned to China. Are you proficient in Mandarin? They who shall not be named should already have loads of videos. Be safe.
[1] - https://github.com/yt-dlp/yt-dlp
A more liberal and open Chinese government would be exactly what they need if they want to take the place of the USA on the world stage. Of course a revolution is not guaranteed to produce that. Revolutions often end with a new boss worse than the old boss. But it could. It's a dice roll, a high risk thing, which is why people have to be pushed really hard to do it.
It helps the US for China to have its own "make China great again" revanchist authoritarian CCP. It slows their overall growth and keeps them from engaging with the world. Walls are for losers. Global mercantile empires must be porous and outward facing. This porosity becomes the main source of their soft power and causes them to export their culture globally.
If China starts allowing a little more immigration that would turbocharge their rise, since every immigrant community inside China becomes the terminal end of a line of influence reaching back to wherever they came from.
If they don't liberalize then who knows. Maybe the US will decide to remove the shot gun from its mouth, in which case the window will close.
For what it's worth it will probably be quite a while before China reaches the Make China Great Again phase. At the moment they have not even reached the Stop Bludgeoning Citizens Again.
There is a pretty good chance of that, I don't see any other contenders. Australia and NZ better watch their back.
To be fair, he's right. In a well-functioning judicial system, he'd be in a tiny jail cell right now.
We’re only ~1/7 of the way through this administration. There is so much more time left on the clock for shenanigans.
It’s hard to imagine three summers from now being anything other than a hellscape. I hope to God I’m wrong.
https://www.project2025.observer/en
Hope for the best, plan for the worst.
IIRC, the Guard was not called out on January 6, 2021:
* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/January_6_United_States_Capito...
Why is the current level of crime in DC worthy of deploying the National Guard, but January 6 wasn't?
"For my friends, everything; for my enemies, the law."
> "For my friends, everything; for my enemies, the law."
AFAICT, from Peru's General Óscar Benavides:
* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Óscar_R._Benavides
I don’t mean to be mean or maliciously or anything, but just as I tell every commoner, regardless of what team they think they are on; if at this point you still have to ask that question you are willfully ignorant or have no business thinking about anything related to politics or government and should stick to whatever you may do well.
The information is all available. What is your excuse for not knowing it?
"Only idiots answer a question with another question."
As a software engineer, I'm offended. I thought our only two options for answers were "what are you trying to do?" and "why do you want to do that?"
null statement
Washington DC should either be made a state or given to Maryland except for a small federal district. What a load of crap.
https://archive.ph/2025.08.11-145539/https://www.nytimes.com...
Can we do SF and Seattle next? The bums situation is insane, get them the hell out of here.
Can't wait for the to have no impact on crime in Southeast.
Almost a "Trump crossing the Potomac" (Caesar / Rubicon) moment, where the Army enters the Pomerium [1] of democracy.
Let's hope it doesn't have the same effect (ie the eventual fall of the republic)
[1] No military weapons were allowed inside this boundary of ancient Rome. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pomerium
For transparency: NYTimes live stories have dynamic headlines. I've updated the title to match the current headline as of ~12pm.
Is being homeless now a violation of federal law?
Law as something distinct from the immediate whim of the executive backed by military force is under (both figurative and literal) attack in the US right now.
Trump created an executive order on that too, so they're trying: https://www.whitehouse.gov/presidential-actions/2025/07/endi...
It directs the executive agencies to seek to loosen any restrictions on non-consentual admission to psychiatric facilities and to force homeless (and people with mental illness) into them.
It also aims to end drug abuse recovery programs and says that not having physical space for patients shouldn't stop them, IIRC.
This is an attempt to drum up the violence that this administration needs in order to justify further authoritarianism.
Creating problems that only you can solve is a proven way to justify authoritarianism.
These do not seem like the actions of a an administration that feels the need to justify anything.
They do need to justify it, just not to the people we usually consider to be authorities.
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Reminds me of the Gleiwitz incident.
That is not wise. (I'm ignoring the question of whether it's legal or constitutional or justified. Those are important questions. They matter. But for this comment, I'm ignoring them.)
Trump just made himself owner of the crime rate in DC. Every crime that occurs there is now Trump's failure. That is not something that he's going to want.
As if that matters. He never takes responsibility for literally anything. Blames other people for his appointees and laws. All negative consequences are always someone else's fault.
And his base gobbles it up.
Heck, even it did get attributed to him - it doesn't matter. 47% of conservatives said they'd still support Trump even if he raped children with Epstein: https://www.yahoo.com/news/articles/fact-check-47-republican...
Oh it's worse than 47%. 26% wouldn't say, so it's 47 out of 74, or about 2/3rds, of republicans who support raping children.
If crime is at a 30-year low, what is the purpose of this? Is it to bring media attention away from the Epstein controversy?
To continue the pattern of throwing the military into regions of the country that don't vote for the regime.
It's a threat. What surprises me is that these people are all still following orders. They know there is no emergency - yet.
For anyone who disobeys the order, it's the end of their career; and every person with a conscience who leaves now will be replaced by someone who will gleefully follow much worse orders in due time. Everyone at the top levels whose job is to actually take a stand against these acts, to serve as a rallying point for others to know when the time to resist has come, have abdicated their duty. If the authoritarians are smart, they will never create a situation where we are backed into a corner, where the time to fight is obvious; we will be convinced that our best course of action is to continue in lockstep with the system in the hopes of fixing it, right up until the slaughter.
> every person with a conscience who leaves now will be replaced by someone who will gleefully follow much worse orders in due time.
Is that any better than people with a conscience staying and reluctantly following much worse orders in due time? At least when they leave, they send a message of resistance instead of silently capitulating.
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It doesn't matter. What Trump believes (in his broken little mind) is all that matters. That and Plan 2025 or whatever it is.
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Pretty sure I saw that episode of The Wire.
Aside, this is a pretty useful comment, unlike your other one on this thread. More of this and less of that, please.
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For the wealthy not the poor