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Meg's avatar

Please discuss 13th amendment that prohibits slave labor except for punishment for a crime. This is the future for many immigrants now detained by ICE instead of deportation. Brown people will be the new slaves. Farmers don't have enough labor to harvest crops which affects our food supply. Current gov is so evil and mean with deep ulterior motives that most Americans aren't aware of. Wake up Americans!

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rlritt's avatar

Elon realized his Tesla business was circling the bowl because he forgot who his customers were. He probably is attacking Trump, with a wink, to build back his customer base.

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Victoria Hellman's avatar

I love the bullwark so much. I’m lefty social democrat and appreciate the information and viewpoints. It helps me broaden my thinking.

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Jeff Biss's avatar

The fact is that the GOP has been working for this since Reagan. It's all posturing. However, the GOP voters have been supporting this because they saw the cuts as affecting those that they don't like, like black and brown people, far worse than it would affect them. Republican voters are that bad. Also, regardless of what Sarah hears, they support these deportations of people who are essentially American.

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Audrey R Wagner's avatar

I'm glad to hear the Bulwark reads Mike Brock; I love when my substacks cross streams.

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Geraldine Moyle's avatar

So Douthat asks Peter Thiel, "you would prefer the human race to endure, right?" What alarmed me about the hesitation, ums & ahs etc. before the "Yeah" is that he treats the question as if his answer actually matters *beyond* the exigencies of the interview. What a hugely inflated sense of self.

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Migs's avatar

Moderate republicans like myself lost a long time ago. The question is why does moderate republicanism is such a deadly political ideology

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Judy Zaunbrecher's avatar

This bill will harm the US military readiness. How? By cutting food aid to children.

A vast majority of Americans, and clearly the GOP Senators and Reps, don't realize that the National School Lunch Act of 1946 was enacted because the US found many young men were not fit for military service in WWII because of malnutrition. It was seen as an important way to ensure the US had a sufficinet pool of healthy young men to serve in the armed services.

Malnutrition and hunger in the US is a real problem and was so especially so during the Great Depression. So now we have MAHA--Make America Hungery Again.

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Sylvia Street's avatar

If you do the subtraction, Donna Kashanian left Iran the year of the revolution. The fact that she wanted to stay here means she fled, making the ICE arrest even more grotesque!!!

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Judy Zaunbrecher's avatar

Bill and Tim hit the nail on the head when they pointed out that the DHS (ICE in particular) could end up as an internal federal police force just like the NVKD was in the USSR. Once they have built all of those prisons supposedly to house the immigrants that will be arrested and deported, they will want to keep them full. How? By arresting US citizens who don't conform to the Party line or are the wrong cultural or ethnic group.

Also, we should be aware of what our government has done in the past to "protect" the homeland. I did not know about the US program to kidnap people of Japanese, Italian, and German descent in South American countries and bring them to the US as enemy aliens during WWII. These innocent families were swapped for POW's during the war and sent back to Japan, Italy, and Germany during the war to suffer bombings, starvation, etc. in countries many of them never lived in. You can learn more about this at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crystal_City_Internment_Camp and https://www.npr.org/2025/06/27/nx-s1-5431719/immigration-deported-wwii-internment. Plus, there are books written about this.

Now is a good time to remember the Vassily Grossman quote: "Human history is not the battle of good struggling to overcome evil. It is the battle fought by a great evil struggling to crush a small kernel of human kindness. But if what is human in human beings has not been destroyed even now, then evil will never overcome."

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Lenora's avatar

Bill is gracious. I don’t buy Thiel is smart. Peter Thiel is an idiot who has never evolved intellectually from being stoned sophomore in his dorm room marinating in wacky ideas cobbled together from misinterpreting science fiction novels.

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Sharon L. James's avatar

Thanks very much for telling Donna Kashanian’s story! Where’s the outrage?

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Jeff Biss's avatar

I remember meeting those Iranian students when the Shah fell. They were happy to be here and now we're proving just how horrible the American people are and that we can't be trusted, just like when we supported the coup in 1953 to remove a democratically elected president who dared to nationalize the oil industry for the benefit of the Iranian people. Really, such is capitalism.

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Joy Barnitz's avatar

Tim nailed it: if it’s good for Alaska, why isn’t it good for the other 49 states and all territories? The Senate got the even BIGGER (and uglier) “big ugly betrayal bill” act (BUBBA) passed … Murkowski got what she wanted and voted yes; Collins’ concern turned into a “no” (lower case).

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cinders0905's avatar

Don't forget the United States Coast Guard is DHS - the only military branch that is. It's because they can't be under DOD.

Proof that there's always an exception to prove the rule.

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MelissaF's avatar

Tim and Bill, I appreciate you both so much. I’m horrified by how immigrants are being treated in this country. Most Americans have families who emigrated to this country. And so many of our relatives probably would be deported under this administration. The diversity of this country makes it great. Immigrants built and continue to build this country and we are treating them inhumanly.

Where is the outrage? I feel like we are sleepwalking into an authoritative state. I’m so sick about it all. Thanks for somehow making me laugh during the podcast. But I’m so worried…as Adam Serwer said, the cruelty is the point.

And I know things are about to get crueler with all of the new $ for ICE. My immigrant relatives are rolling over in their graves. This country has become a place I do not recognize when it used to be a beacon for so many around the world.

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Beth's avatar

I had to chuckle when Tim said "it's been 24 years and we're still taking off our shoes" (at the airport). I constantly say "it's been 24 years...." (generally in my best 'elderly Rose' voice) about God Bless America (with required standing, hat off, hand on heart) at every single ballpark every single Sunday, and the networks can't even go to commercial during it.

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