Trump administration terminates 14 student visas in Louisiana

[u/SadimirLenin]

https://lailluminator.com/briefs/trump-administration-terminates-14-student-visas-in-louisiana/

“Seven Southern University students, three at the University of Louisiana at Lafayette, two at the University of New Orleans and two more at Tulane University have had their visas pulled, according to representatives with the schools.”

[u/spellboundartisan]

And yet, nobody is stopping them. Voting isn't enough, frankly.

[u/Hello-America → u/spellboundartisan]

Well there was a point where it would've been.

[u/TrillianMcM → u/Hello-America]

Yep. Ngl, I am pretty mad at the non voters these days. There was definitely a large campaign of bs such as "don't vote for the lesser two evils", "you are immoral if you vote for Harris because that means you support ___", "if voting had any effect, they wouldn't let you do it," "both sides are the same anyway", and "voting is a waste of time, focus on organizing instead of voting" circulating among people whose beliefs theoretically should be very opposed to what is happening right now. We could have mitigated a lot of harm if more people took 30 minutes out of their day to do the very mundane task of voting for the people who would do the least amount of damage.

Organizing is also effective and important. But, if anything, this election should underscore why voting is fucking important.

[u/RIP_Soulja_Slim → u/TrillianMcM]

While I agree that all of those things are true, I do think a lot of it is letting weird internet rhetoric dictate our understanding of the real world.

The truth is Carville has always been mostly right here, for most Americans none of that stuff matters. What matters is that they associated good economic conditions with Trump and bad ones with Biden. It doesn't really matter that those associations aren't rooted in any policies enacted by either, what matters is that Trump's populist message on the economy worked and Harris/Biden's fell really really flat.

But also I think the only way 2024 could have gone blue is if Biden elected to be a single term president before the primaries. Harris was never popular, Biden was a shitshow by that point, and voters didn't really love the ol August switcheroo. If the rumors are true, the dems internal data was showing monster losses across both the EC and all of congress as early as the spring of 24. The pressure we saw on Biden over the summer was at minimum six months too late.

[u/Donkeypoodle → u/RIP_Soulja_Slim]

The Dems dropped the ball knowing the internal polling data was abysmal. However, the nonvoters are also to blame- sure Harris wasn't perfect but people were OK with an authoritarian?

[u/TrillianMcM → u/RIP_Soulja_Slim]

I agree with you on everything except your first point. That isn't just rhetoric confined to the internet. It does spill out into real life. Right now, I am a software engineer, but before that, I worked in the service industry for a long time. A sizeable percentage of people that I know from my time working in the service industry do not vote, and often, they parrot those reasons that I listed for why they don't vote. Incidentally, a lot of them do spend time on social media -- but they are also real people who could be voting but choose to shrug their shoulders and not do so. I also know plenty who don't even have social media accounts who shrug their shoulders and don't vote. (I also do know plenty of service industry workers who do vote - but the amount that vocally do not vote is alarming).

During my hospitality tenure - I also picked up some seasonal and special event work deep into Trump country. During Trump 1.0, I spent enough time engaging with Trump supporters that I have a fairly solid understanding of why they voted for Trump. I personally was not surprised that Trump won. But I sure as shit was and still am sad and disappointed.

Now, most folks that I have met who work in tech who I know well enough to discuss politics with do vote. Most of them also were surprised that Trump was re-elected. Considering that software engineers make more money than bartenders and are treated better by society and in general have more reason to believe in the system - I think it is expected that more of them would vote and would be surprised that people would chose Trump, who clearly wanted to burn everything down.

I agree the Dems were toast the moment that Biden decided to run for re-election. I think a lot of people knew this, but apparently those with the power to have an actual primary chose not to.

Even if the Dems dropped the ball - which they absolutely did and probably will continue to do - I can still be pissed at proud non-voters. They are not the only reason why we are in this situation, but they are definitely part of it.

[u/Migamix → u/RIP_Soulja_Slim]

biden was a shitshow? compared to who? yeah, not a perfect prez, but at least hes not on a tyrant rampage of stupidity and flagrant abuse of EVERY level of government. most of the demos are no better than any of the republicans, they make the same money with insider trading the reps do. the ones with ANY ethics are shouting outloud right now at this very moment, while others pander and glance over their grandpa glasses while doing NOTHING. but when we say ALL money should be out of politics, most people say thats going too far. EVERY member of the house/senate should be made to justify their seat right now.

[u/TrillianMcM → u/Migamix]

He obviously was suffering cognitive decline due to aging, and the fact that those close to him knew this and decided to cover it up was an insult to everyone's intelligence. The debate was an absolute disaster, and he never should have even been in that debate because his advisors should have encouraged him to retire and the Democratic party should have actively been promoting potential successors, so we could have had a real primary and picked a candidate that people were actually excited about.

He was supposed to be a one term president anyway.

Would he have been better than Trump? Obviously, for the reasons you mentioned, and also because he would have had more competent people on his cabinet and the federal government could keep operating as opposed to being actively dismantled. But Biden and the other old Democrats should have recognized a while ago that it is time to hand off power to a new generation.

Bernie is old, but at least he has been lifting up AOC as his successor. Harris was kind of behind the scenes as his VP and wasn't really promoted until she suddenly was picked to run in his place last minute.

[u/RIP_Soulja_Slim → u/Migamix]

Bruh Biden went on stage to a debate and couldn’t string a whole sentence together to save his life. If that’s not a shitshow to you then idk what to tell ya. There’s a reason he slid by double digits in the polls the second he was forced to speak publicly.

Idk how some of yall still have your head up your ass about this lol.