Silver lining: future work conferences I go to will mean visiting cool cities in Canada and Mexico, the new North American hubs of medical research. Just kidding! According to the White House's proposed budget, there won't be any more chronic disease prevention programs. So my federally-funded position will be gone.
If the gov 1) shows that it's willing to take extreme action that is outside the bounds of the law or at the least accepted practice, and 2) makes it clear that it's not afraid of getting sued and is even willing to ignore the courts, then 3) threats of the type described in the article are very effective because you have to assume that the government will take things to the next level if you don't comply, regardless of the legality of their threats.
That is how authoritarianism works. It's been very effective in China where companies and institutions are cowed into compliance. For example, censoring by social media companies. Companies self-sensor their users' content so the government doesn't have to. Why? Because if they don't, they know they will get in trouble in some way, and it may on the surface be completely unrelated (like these veiled threats about tax status).
> I wonder what arguments we'll see in this thread from their supporters who will have to twist reality immensely to invalidate our concerns. Will it be the "technically they didn't break the law" or perhaps the "we can't judge them until we see what they do with it" or maybe the good old "liberals/leftists did the same things under biden/obama/hillary"?
Let’s not poison a thread by invoking imagined arguments from opponents in order to pre-emptively attack them. We can wait for real comments to show up before responding.
Always quoting the rules to those who care about democracy in America, never allowing this type of discussion because it's "not for HN". Well, when does it get so bad politically that anyone here cares? This place is overrun by reactionaries, even mods are clearly biased, there isn't even a mod log you can point to for evidence you are not. I am afraid HN could be becoming the "nazi bar" by modern standards, because everyone is so hung up on technicalities and ignoring the reality of the world right now.
> everyone is so hung up on technicalities and ignoring the reality of the world right now
HN is not ignoring the reality of the world right now. There are heavily voted/commented stories about U.S. politics all the time here.
Sentiment here is overwhelmingly against the U.S. administration, which is is probably why there are more anti-administration comments to moderate. Still, I’ve written in response to comments from the other side of the spectrum in the past couple of hours and several times in recent days.
But we never moderate in favour of a side or specific agenda. We moderate the comments that are flagged, clearly bad, or pointed out to us for being against the guidelines.
The topic of bias has been covered here for years.
This isn’t the first article about serious wrongdoings of the current administration, and apologists show up in every single one of the threads. Why should we pretend we were born this morning, rather than learning from what has happened before and use that to predict what will happen now?
These kinds of "predictions" are really a signal that the story doesn't belong on Hacker News. Predictability and repetition is exactly what we don't want on HN, and is the main reason why politics-related stories are generally discouraged (the comments tend to be the same even if the specific story is different).
If we're going to have politics-related stories on the front page of HN, the stories need to have something new about them that at least have a chance of cultivating curious conversation.
When the top comment is this kind of pre-emptive attack, it starts the discussion by breaking the guidelines from the get-go, and from there things can only go downhill further. The relevant guidelines are:
Comments should get more thoughtful and substantive, not less, as a topic gets more divisive.
Please don't fulminate. Please don't sneer, including at the rest of the community.
Eschew flamebait. Avoid generic tangents. Omit internet tropes.
Please don't use Hacker News for political or ideological battle. It tramples curiosity.
Please don't pick the most provocative thing in an article or post to complain about in the thread. Find something interesting to respond to instead.
Please don't post insinuations about astroturfing, shilling, brigading, foreign agents, and the like. It degrades discussion and is usually mistaken. If you're worried about abuse, email [email protected] and we'll look at the data.
> These kinds of "predictions" are really a signal that the story doesn't belong on Hacker News.
Maybe, but we’ve had articles for years posted on HN claiming any minor slight is an attack on free speech. And now that we have actual attacks on free speech occurring, there’s no way I’d accept HN closing their eyes. Sorry if you don’t like reading these kind of stories, but that’s too damn bad.
Or those supporters will vote down unflattering comments, like they did with mine. It's at -2 now and not visible. Trump is an existential threat to democracy and the free flow of ideas. Hiding from that won't help anyone.
https://www.whitehouse.gov/wp-content/uploads/2025/05/Fiscal...
(Page 11 for the CDC)
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