Scientific conferences are leaving the US amid border fears

I must have completely missed those speeches. Looked it up,

   At a "Believers' Summit" event hosted by the conservative group Turning Point Action in West Palm Beach, Florida, on July 26, 2024, Donald Trump told an audience of Christian voters:
   "You gotta get out and vote. In four years, you don't have to vote again, we'll have it fixed so good you're not going to have to vote."
   He also said: "Christians get out and vote. Just this time. You won't have to do it anymore. Four more years. You know what? It'll be fixed. It'll be fine. You won't have to vote anymore my beautiful Christians."

As a European, I’d like to add that the impulse response on the collective memory will be multi-generational.

It is not just Trump. It is whole conservative project that is behind him. He truly represents the republican party and works towards its goals.

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This is part of why France lost status for large events and organisations in the early-mid 20th Century until now. Quite large political swings at regular intervals and fairly ready-to-protest population = not ideal for basing stability. And it doesn't matter that France was far more stable than most countries, it was simply much less stable than America, the UK and regrettably, Germany. Frances solution seems to be not to really compete for international industry or science, but to focus on French culture and language to fit their tourism strategy.

Several languages have idioms like these: "Trust arrives on foot, and leaves on a galloping horse"

60/40 feels very pessimistic to me (meaning I think the election is more than 60% likely to occur on Nov 7, 2028 and the results heeded more or less as usual).

If you think 60/40 is the right odds, you have some opportunities available - to make fake dollars, at least: https://manifold.markets/AndrewG/will-donald-trump-attempt-t...

I bet you could find more than a few people here to take the other side of 60/40 odds in a $100 bet.

There will definitely be elections, even Putin has elections. The question is whether those elections will be fair.

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I wonder how many foreign athletes will be barred from entry to that?

This is a red herring. There is no winning for any party that isnt the Republican party, because there is no actual mechanism for non right wing voices to be heard on the right wing information ecosystem.

The issues is that Dems must bring their A game, to compete against a clown squad that can and will fabricate issues that havent happened, and force the dems to debate on it.

This is also a thought experiment, not a real issue, because Americans do not have that long a time horizon.

The strongest, most unified, and capable you will be is now. By the time elections come around, you will be hounded, disorganized, isolated and unable to coordinate.

When the other option is a woman (a non white one at that), what choice do people have?

Why are you substituting words with random alphabet characters? Are you able to read the original post? Are you unable to grasp how it adds context and data point to the discussion?

> Something did something

This is a news website you know? It would be pretty uninteresting if nothing ever happened.

The system in the US is capable of running on nothing but hope because of the availability of lending and investment. "Unfortunately" that means the average person won't receive an impossible to ignore signal that something is going bad until bankers and investors lose hope. By that point, something would have had to have happened that can't be fixed in the short term by a reversal or a sudden period of sobriety.

For a concrete example, the stock market is going up and down every time the tariff threats change tone, but the layoffs that the tariffs will make inevitable won't be done until companies run out of financiers who can be convinced the setbacks are only temporary.

Do you have some statistics?

Because there really does seem to be a change in immigration enforcement lately and multiple universities have issued guidance accordingly.

It's far too early to say. You can't move a conference to a different country on a short notice. You can only hold it with whatever audience you can get, postpone it, or cancel it. For larger events, it's already too late to move events scheduled for 2026, and possibly even for 2027. Maybe there will be some data in a couple of years, but until then, anecdotes and informed guesses are the best you can have.

Conferences are organized months if not years in advance.

The fact that 6 of them found this a big enough issue to move their conferences out of the U.S. is a huge deal.

The real impact will be felt 2-3 years from now.

Here's another example [0]: "Hacker Conference HOPE Says U.S. Immigration Crackdown Caused Massive Crash in Ticket Sales". A quote: "“We are roughly 50 percent behind last year’s sales, based on being 3 months away from the event,” Greg Newby, one of HOPE’s organizers, told 404 Media in an email." No reason to think this conference is especially different from others like it.

[0] https://www.404media.co/hacker-conference-hope-says-fewer-pe... OR https://archive.is/QWmxO

An article from Nature, which is targetted at scientists, is the sign you are looking for. The fact that you are getting on HN, is indicating that you get to know of this before other people.

I can say that this is definitely an issue in converastions for me.

This, I was "randomly selected" way too often to risk it nowadays.

One thing you need to keep in mind is that in the US things are stacked against people who would want to protest or engage in any kind of activism.

Take a day off work to go to a rally or peaceful protest? “At will” employment means you can be fired the next day, no reason given. You got fired? Virtually all workers in the US get their health insurance through their employer, so now you and your family just lost access to medical care. It’s a really rough job market in many sectors, so it could take a few months to get a job. But since you got fired without cause, you can at least try to claim some unemployment benefits. In California, that maxes out at something like $450 a week.

Meanwhile in France if they want to fire you they have to give like 3 months notice (or pay you out for that time). Healthcare is socialized so no worries there. And if you still can’t find a job in a few months IIRC there’s fairly reasonable social benefits available.

I went to a protest. I was anxious about being photographed and added to some biometric database to be used for who knows what purposes. My wife and I had a serious discussion about whether to go, the possible risks, the possibility of violence, but I ultimately convinced her to go as our civic responsibility. I left our phones at home as a precaution so as to avoid being geolocated to the site.

What I found upon arriving was an unserious mob of hippies laughing and taking selfies to post on social media. I'd made signs supporting the rule of law. The signs of the other participants were an unfocused smattering of various political goals from "tax the rich" to banning Teslas. They included what I thought was an excessive about of profanity and crude insults. I think these are unserious people and what they're doing is performative and utterly pointless.

I do not see any viable action for individual citizens to take. Everyone out there clamoring for people to do something is just pushing their own political agenda. We had an election, one side won, that's how things go, ok. What's happened since however is a clear violation of the US Constitution in more ways than one can count, but it seems there is basically no one aware of or concerned about this. I feel like I'm at a football game where one side just took out a gun and shot the referee and while he lies on the floor bleeding to death both sides are still arguing over whether there was a foul or not.

Americans are doing stuff. I call my reps and their vms are full. I go to their offices and there are lots of other people there. There's been protests at state capitals, Bernie & AOC have been giving speeches and zoom meetings about organizing and canvasing. Lawyers are suing and judges are trying to use the system despite the supreme court gone mad. It's tough to get a big group photo, but people are doing stuff. I'm as angry and jaded as anybody, but I dislike this defeated "nobody is doing enough so fuck it" thing I keep seeing. It's laying the groundwork a self fulfilling prophecy.

It’s hard to protest. There’s no single movement, it’s just a bunch of different people. Stuff needs to get a lot worse.

>They don’t see the US public protest over global destabilization through our politics.

Then they're not looking.