Two days after an ICE agent shot and killed Renée Good in Minneapolis, Rep. Roger Williams issued an ultimatum to the Trump administration’s critics in Minnesota and beyond.
“People need to quit demonstrating, quit yelling at law enforcement, challenging law enforcement, and begin to get civil,” the Texas Republican told NewsNation. “And until we do that, I guess we’re going to have it this way. And the people that are staying in their homes or doing the right thing need to be protected.”
That’s a pretty clear encapsulation of MAGA-world’s views on dissent these days. You aren’t supposed to protest. You aren’t supposed to “yell at” or “challenge” the militarized federal agents occupying your city. And anyone who wants to be “protected” should probably just stay “in their homes.” Williams isn’t some fringe backbencher; he’s a seven-term congressman who chairs the House Small Business Committee. He is announcing de facto government policy.
For nearly a year, President Donald Trump and his allies have been engaged in an escalating assault on the First Amendment. The administration has systematically targeted or threatened many of Trump’s most prominent critics: massive law firms, Jimmy Kimmel, even, at one point, Elon Musk. But it’s worth keeping in mind that some of the earliest victims of the president’s second-term war on speech were far less powerful.
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MAGA Rep Roger Williams, TX, got it.
We really should stop showing up. Stop showing up to work. Stop showing up to buy things. Stop showing up to sign up for the military. Stop reproducing.
Or we could all just be a bunch of “tourist” visiting a city - just like all the “tourist” that “just visited” the capitol on January 6th 2021.
I have seriously been thinking about taking all my PTO and getting a bus to just stand in front of the white house protesting. No plan, no organizing, just a hope that I could get people to join me. I’d probably lose my job though.
If the Americans had the same amount of holiday and paid vacation time as the 1st World European countries, there would be larger and more frequent protests. Especially now! Roger can F-OFF! ICE is not law enforcement, just a bunch of fucking uneducated thugs that would burn the US Constitution,
I don’t think they actually want us to quit demonstrating. I think they like the chaos and fear mongering about “radical leftists” and “leftist domestic terrorists”
“Just submit to our will! Trust us.”
Conservatism consists of exactly one proposition, to wit: There must be in-groups whom the law protects but does not bind, alongside out-groups whom the law binds but does not protect.
-Frank Wilhoit
Well yeah, by its roots, conservatism is about not rocking the boat. Those who keep their mouths shut are not targetted. My mom kinda has that mindset of just following the authority no matter what. She would be more on the right if it weren’t for my father tempering her.
It’s bully tactics. Bullies push and push and push with plausible deniability, then when they get a reaction they play the victim.
It’s not just a kids’ problem. It happens all the time in adult life too. Someone can do the most rotten shit to you, but as long as they don’t swear, you’re the bad guy when you finally lose it on them.
Fuck these bullies. Grow the fuck up you pieces of shit.
This is actually a good sign. It’s proof that the demonstration is working. The people that need to be are beginning to become exasperated with the situation.
Press on, press harder. They will do more violence before this is over, but they must be given no ground. No safe haven. They must never feel as though they’ve secured any small victory.
Just stay in your homes, huh? I thought they hated that.
“…go to your homes. Stay in your home and lock your doors. Above all, do not panic. Repeat: go to your homes. Stay in your homes and lock your doors. The situation can be kept under control provided our defense forces are given complete freedom of movement.”
And that was planet of the apes…
Coincidentally, a lot of .world mods would like us to stop complaining about ICE.
Stop, really? That’s my home instance but I haven’t seen that on my feed! I hate that if its true and I’ll never stop bitching about ICE!
Chinga La Migra!
Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.
Get fucked Roger.
petition the Government
If money is speech then bricks can be petitions.
“Well, you see, the first amendment prevents congress from passing laws, but under the unitary executive principle, the president doesn’t need authority via congress to suppress free speech” — Stephen Miller, probably.
Congress shall make no law…
Or else, what?
And I’m sure they will argue that since it says ‘shall’ and not ‘must’ then it’s just a suggestion.
In government parlance, “will”, “shall”, and “must” are all mandatory actions. In other words, Congress is explicitly forbidden from making a law that limits freedom of speech.
However, it doesn’t seem this administration puts much stock in following the law.
Or else the law is challenged and the supreme court strikes it down. Except we all know how that will go
We could exercise our 2nd amendment right and start killing Nazis again.
Sugar in a gas tank is very effective at neutralizing a vehicle. They can’t get there if they can’t drive, because they are fat and out of shape.
It’s actually not that effective. A car can drive for dozens if not hundreds of miles with sugar in the tank. Most of the sugar would get picked up by the fuel filter, and the small amount that gets through would probably not be enough to brick an engine. It’d drive like shit after a while, and they’d have to swap out the fuel filter, but the car would still drive.
Yeah. Better to use Portland cement.
Might need to organize a little to make that anywhere near effective, instead of simply lighting any one of the powder kegs these fucknuts’re endlessly sandbagging everywhere they can… 🤌🏼🤷🏼♂️
Eh, he didn’t make a law. Just a loud complaint. Totally free speech. I agree that he should get fucked though.
I really wish some court would rule that “political statements from office carry outsized consequences for the electorate by way of latitude within their authority, and so carry a similar weight as law thereby violating the 1st”. I really want this legal equivalence because this kind of grandstanding has got to stop. But with the SCOTUS we have right now, I may as well be petitioning from the surface of Mars. One day, perhaps.
Any free speech absolutist who would like to weigh in?
Forgive me, this is the first time I’m encountering that term in a way that challenges how I understand it.
Would you mind elaborating on why we don’t expect to hear from them in this case?
It looks like a reference to Elon Musk to me. Around the time of his take over of Twitter, Musk claimed that he was a “free speech absolutist”. Once statistics came in, it turned out that Musk’s twitter had a practically 100% compliance rate with censorship requests from authoritarian states, far higher than it was before the take over.
USA conservatives also do frequent calls for violence and claim freedom of speech when called out + then turn around and try to censor other peoples free speech when they don’t like the message. The last bit was especially noticable after Charlie Kirk’s murder. People who quoted Kirk to show what a vile person he was, were harassed and some even lost their jobs.
The slogan for conservative free speech absolutism might as well be “free speech for me, but my rules for thee”.
🦗
[grasshopper sounds]
A smart man once said, “Fuck you, I won’t do what you tell me.”
And he said it a lot so you’d remember it. Practically yelled it.
If the 90s taught me anything, it’s definitely “Fuck you I won’t do what you tell me”
"[…]And the people that are staying in their homes or doing the right thing need to be protected.”
So about those people staying in their home, ‘doing the right thing’ getting illegally broken into by ICE without the appropriate warrant…
“People” means straight white people only
Get civil? You first.
Just because you’re getting murdered on the streets by us, doesn’t mean you should make a scene.
- Nazi scum, probably.
