The Weaponization of Travel Blacklists

US travel blacklists are now maintained by the TSC at FBI.

What the Trump admin did was political sleight of hand. Calculated specifically to please people who, because we make it intentionally complex, are unable to understand the full spectrum of our military, law enforcement, and intelligence infrastructure. Politically speaking, these kinds of people could be made to believe we got rid of travel blacklists. When in actuality, the lists today are even longer.

Slightly off topic, but this is one of the primary reasons independents will never win an election by the way. The liberals and conservatives can always say, "you're lying", and it would take longer than the average voter is willing to pay attention for an independent explain why they're not lying.

Depends on their respective impact.

The violent overthrow stuff is reference to current attempts to send the US military into blue states against court orders, to drum up the insurrection act, to the violent arrests of children in their underwear as a publicity stunt, to ICE officers / bounty hunters ramming cars into pedestrians without recourse, to the slamming of non-violent bystanders into the ground, arresting elected officials violently for no reason, to the psychological violence of the rhetoric being broadcast ("Russ Vought is the reaper") along with Stephen Miller's rhetoric in general but specifically about how many 10s of millions of people don't belong in this country in his mind. Brown people is who he's talking about. They want ethnic cleansing and are openly blatant about it if you open your ears to exactly what they're saying. Sure they'll also deny it at other times, opportunistically, but if you listen to what they're saying in full, not just to denials, they're spelling it out.

Go listen to the leaked Russ Vought interview about his strategy and tell me that's not incredibly violent. Listen to Stephen Miller's rhetoric.

These guys are itching to arrest elected officials and political critics, and to go as far as they can to hurt and punish people who push back against the state that they're hell bent on forcing into existence.

If you haven't seen these things I urge you to pay attention.

Do you mean besides January 6? (You know, all those people that were convicted but were pardoned when Trump return to office. Also: have you noticed that the Proud Boys and Oath Keepers have stopped marching ever since the ICE raids started?)

* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/January_6_United_States_Capito...

Or perhaps the fake electors?

* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trump_fake_electors_plot

Maybe later I'll compile a list of videos but at the moment I ask you to do a little research yourself. I gotta work.

Just wait a year or two and it will become totally normalized.

Remember those Cristie's stuffers which went to prison for closing bridge for several days in the city which went Democratic? It was just few years ago that such political retribution was considered a Bad Thing. Today it is just a new normal in politics.

This is what's happening now: https://www.kenklippenstein.com/p/trumps-nspm-7-labels-commo...

And this: https://cdn.bsky.app/img/feed_fullsize/plain/did:plc:4q6ctl7...

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Using the military against your political enemies, by the way, is a genie that you can never put back in the bottle.

I am very tired of people who are more concerned with scoring points about 'look, both sides!' while turning a blind eye to the actual we-went-through-a-phase-change insanity of what's going on.

The last two hundred years was built on a bargain of the military staying out of politics in exchange for the military not being used politically.

This year, MAGA sent a giant fucking wrecking ball through that.

Here's a good overview, please take a look at the sources if you don't trust Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Detention_and_deportation_of_A...

Tell that to yourself while in a holding cell for 24 hours waiting for your ID to be "verified". Police have long used temporary detention to intimidate and spite people, but at least there had to be reasonable suspicion to make an arrest in the first place, and theoretically victims have resort to a civil rights tort claim. But a recent SCOTUS emergency docket decision has effectively given ICE a pass to arrest people on a whim.[1] And it's much more difficult to press civil rights claims against Federal agents; in fact, it may even be impossible to sue ICE agents for false arrests, no matter how egregious.[2]

[1] See the Noem v. Vasquez Perdomo stay at https://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/24pdf/25a169_5h25.pdf. Note that in his concurrence Kavanaugh wantonly mischaracterizes the district court order, then in passing dicta lazily tries to cover his ass by suggesting the rule he just rejected is actually the existing rule. One can only hope the other justices in the majority had different rationales for their decision, and weren't as confused or malicious as Kavanaugh. Sotomayor's dissent is at page 11 (https://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/24pdf/25a169_5h25.pdf#...)

[2] See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Egbert_v._Boule.

"Quiet skies" pales in comparison to what they're cooking up: https://www.kenklippenstein.com/p/trumps-nspm-7-labels-commo...

And this: https://cdn.bsky.app/img/feed_fullsize/plain/did:plc:4q6ctl7...

https://cdn.bsky.app/img/feed_fullsize/plain/did:plc:4q6ctl7...

And this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WpXX8HPh6nQ

It's a takeover: https://climate-reporting.org/undercover-in-project-2025/

Literally from the article: "News reports, presumably based on DHS statements, described Quiet Skies as a “Biden-era” program even though its largest expansion came in 2018 during the first Trump administration. And according to the TSA’s press release last week:".

There's no way a program expanded during Trump1 just disappears in Trump2. Everything Trump2 is doing is just a continuation from Trump1.

Consider the whole FISA system [1].

> (Glenn Greenwald): When it is time for the NSA to obtain Fisa court approval, the agency does not tell the court whose calls and emails it intends to intercept. It instead merely provides the general guidelines which it claims are used by its analysts to determine which individuals they can target, and the Fisa court judge then issues a simple order approving those guidelines. The court endorses a one-paragraph form order stating that the NSA's process "'contains all the required elements' and that the revised NSA, FBI and CIA minimization procedures submitted with the amendment 'are consistent with the requirements of [50 U.S.C. § 1881a(e)] and with the fourth amendment to the Constitution of the United States'". As but one typical example, The Guardian has obtained an August 19, 2010, Fisa court approval from Judge John D. Bates which does nothing more than recite the statutory language in approving the NSA's guidelines. Once the NSA has this court approval, it can then target anyone chosen by their analysts, and can even order telecoms and internet companies to turn over to them the emails, chats and calls of those they target.

[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Foreign_Intellig...

>The Quiet Skies [sic] program assigned officers from the Federal Air Marshals Service (one of the police agencies within the Transportation Security Administration) to accompany and surveil pre-selected airline passengers on flights and in airports.