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Culture War Roundup for the week of April 7, 2025

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Combined with this we might be seeing a major back-down on a lot of Trump's programs:

U.S. President Donald Trump suggested on Thursday that farmers will be able to petition the federal government to retain some farmworkers in the U.S. illegally, provided the workers leave the country and return with legal status.

"We're going to work with farmers that, if they have strong recommendations for their farms, for certain people, that we're going to let them stay in for a while and work with the farmers and then come back and go through a process, a legal process. We have to take care of our farmers and hotels and various places where they need the people," Trump said.

I'll note that personally I'm basically in favor of a policy by which migrants who are employed should be a much lower priority for deportation, and that ultimately a variably-sized fine is the best punishment.

But this fundamentally undermines any wignat hopes that this administration will seriously halt the melanation of America.

Pessimistically, the upshot of all this is that both Tariffs and Deportations are fundamentally unserious policies, which won't really help the headline numbers, while a few random unlucky individuals get caught up and destroyed in the gears of government.

Optimistically, this is the start of both a more restrained approach from the Trump admin and perhaps even an understanding that we need to restrain the imperial presidency.