As most have predicted and feared, the US Administration appears to now be testing if they can push one step further towards enforcing an authoritarian ethno-state: threatening a full-on US citizen by-birth with detainment and deportation (to where, exactly, if they are a born US citizen?). Someone who, “coincidentally”, is an immigration lawyer, someone who might defend other targets of their deportation agenda.
First they came for …
EDIT: a thread indicating this has been a mass email to others https://bsky.app/profile/reichlinmelnick.bsky.social/post/3lmljpkrdj22h
True. Here in Australia the rapid progression of the Trump administration has definitely resulted in some last-minute policy changes by our major conservative party. I don’t believe they will honour their new campaign promises for a moment if they get into power, based on their previous behaviour, but it has been nice to see a bit of a reality check.
Do you mean they’re backing down from a ∀פ∀W agenda?
In Canada, the conservative party was basically MAGA, Northern Branch. The same kinds of anti-immigrant rhetoric, the same culture war BS, the same “government can’t do anything right” stance, etc. US Republican politicians were publicly supporting Canadian conservatives and vice-versa. Their support reached its peak on Jan 20th 2025, the same day Trump took office.
Since then, support from the Liberals has gone from 20.1% to 43.9%, while the conservatives have dropped from 44.8% to 38.0%. The conservative ties to the MAGAs has really hurt them, while the Liberal government fighting back against the MAGAs has given them a massive boost.
If Trump hasn’t picked a fight with Canada, or had just delayed it a few months, he’d have had a friendly conservative government in power who could have legitimized him and been a partner. Instead he decided to attack, causing a huge “rally round the flag” effect and basically guaranteeing the Liberals will win the election.
The LNP has appeared to back down from MAGA-esque policies, but I don’t believe they are being honest with their “change of heart”. Their established behviour and lack of support for workers’ rights, etc., almost guarantees that if they were to get into power, they’d eventually go back to their original policies of ending WFH, gutting the federal government, etc.
I always forget how Aussie politics is weird. Your liberal party is Labour but without the ‘u’, and your mainstream conservatives are the Liberals. Canada doesn’t have a “Labour” party, so our Liberals are the left wing (our “Labour” party is spelled NDP). And then there’s the UK where they don’t really have a “Liberal” party so their extremes are Labour and Conservative.
Yeah, it took a bit of getting used to when I started following politics and everyone was referring to “liberals” as left-leaning! The Liberal/National Party (LNP or Coalition) is more libertarian than liberal.
Labor (the ALP) is centrist. The biggest left-leaning party are the Greens. There are a host of smaller parties and independents that usually get a handful of seats too.