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Matthew Yglesias continues to say that talking about ICE and excessive force in immigration enforcement helps Republicans. He is obviously wrong about this and refuses to acknowledge the data. Way past time for everyone to update their priors on this.

It might be true that “Democrats shouldn’t talk about border security.” I don’t think that’s true, but let’s grant it’s true for the sake of the argument. It does not follow from that that ”Democrats shouldn’t talk about ICE shooting people or sending them to foreign gulags“ (paraphrasing)

Adding one more thing here: We did a survey experiment in May 2025 that showed that when people heard more about ICE overreach, they moved against the president on deportations. Then the news coverage of the Kilmar Abrego Garcia story verified this finding www.gelliottmorris.com/p/kilmar-abr...

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Priming is a standard technique to reach a desired more extreme position and it’s exactly what has been consistently done by the administration with respect to immigration. Every arrested person is a dangerous criminal, drug trafficker or person trafficker. If you control the narrative you win

Has the relative ranking of these issues changed at all under the Trump administration? It seems like on nearly every issue except the economy there hasn't been a shift in the slope on the issues just the intercept.

You can hear focus group respondents talking about this in the Ezra Klein w/Sarah Longwell discussion today in NYT. People want violent offenders deported, not ICE masked at school bus stops deporting people who have been in the country for decades paying taxes.

They all falsely believe there’s a huge population of violent criminals awaiting deportation… they never thought it would be there neighbors. A consistently infuriating part of Longwell’s focus group returns.

Hard to believe the woman who spent 14 years at the right side of Richard “Dr Evil” Berman, the inspiration for Thank You For Smoking and hated father of the late David Berman might be associated with scammy unreliable public opinion operations