> If you claim to be changing your life in any way in response to this then you're just putting a fig leaf on decisions that you've already made.

How insulting. Bad faith arguments have become way too prevalent on this site.

If someone sees the world around them getting worse, I think it's pretty logical to not bring a child into that society.

You link to an October 2025 article documenting 9 "Kavanaugh stops" to somehow claim that they don't happen?

You link to an article that is "We Found That More Than 170 U.S. Citizens Have Been Held by Immigration Agents. They’ve Been Kicked, Dragged and Detained for Days." and which has reporting inside that describes the 170 cases of ICE detaining citizens.

Note that detainment is more severe and different from the harassment of the 9 that you somehow claim refute Kavanaugh stops.

But even if the article were as you incorrectly describe it, it would be fallacious to say that because a single article doesn't describe something, it doesn't exist! That's a critical thinking and logic 101 error. And far far below the standards of HN comments.

> They menace and threaten "people just out and about in the neighborhood"? It is hard to engage in good faith when you are baldly making statements that are completely unsupported.

There are no shortage of videos showing ICE agents on roaming patrols in Minnesota -- and elsewhere -- menacing anyone they come across who appears undesirable. All you have to do is not look away.

https://www.thisamericanlife.org/880/what-is-your-emergency

For anybody looking on, this sort of Big Lie behavior is extremely common in the US these days. All that crazy stuff Europeans are seeing with JD Vance and Trump's Greenland behvaior is what everyday Americans experience on a wide range of topics.

Having somebody link to a source that directly refutes their own claims, while acting indignant, is something I've experienced multiple times in the past week! It's quite shocking.

When the Trump administration went so hard on open lies that are directly contradicted by videos we all saw of ICE events, it was vice-signaling that started even greater amounts of bearing false witness. Openly lying seems to signal "in-group" status these days, like the sign in the green grocer's shop[1]. Get people to lie about the evidence they see with their eyes, and the become completely controlled, because to do so is to have total subservience to their master. No more eyes or ears except for those of their master. People that used to have values slowly abandon them, all in service to the lie that they are living. "The party told you to reject the evidence of your eyes and ears. It was their final, most essential command."

That is the state of the US at the moment. I have hope that we can return to our former sanity, or at least ensure that the reigns of power are in the hands of normal, centrist people instead of the extreme fringes, but it is in no way certain.

[1] As Carney recently referenced from Vaclav Havel; here's a recentish essay on it: https://hac.bard.edu/amor-mundi/the-power-of-the-powerless-v...