Social media can be an ugly place. But then again, so can politics.

No wonder the obsessively online world of political discourse resembles the ramblings of basement-dwelling trolls more than an intelligent discussion between adults about complex policy matters. 

For example, when the popular Broadacres Marketplace in North Las Vegas announced that it would be temporarily shutting down due to increasingly aggressive immigration enforcement efforts, it should have been easy for an ostensibly pro-business Republican Party to show a little concern for the community of Latino business owners impacted by the decision. 

Instead, the party coldly responded to the news on social media by saying, “If you can’t stay open without illegal aliens, you don’t deserve to be open at all.” 

That’s quite a heartless take on the real-world impact of current policies. It’s also fairly hypocritical, considering the degree to which our current president depended on undocumented workers in his past business endeavors. 

When a few Democratic state lawmakers predictably responded with indignation, the GOP’s online account doubled down on its social media buffoonery. The party even tagged immigration officials in another post, inviting the Trump administration to investigate a Democratic state senator who has undocumented family members. 

Thankfully, such absurdity isn’t representative of most Republicans in the real world. Republican Gov. Joe Lombardo, for example, rightly condemned the NV GOP’s statement and told the Las Vegas Review-Journal that “attacking people’s families should be off limits in politics.”  

However, the conduct of the Nevada Republican Party’s official social media account demonstrates just how childish, callous and contemptible political discourse has become online. After all, the party could have expressed concern for the countless entrepreneurs, citizens and legal residents who will suffer as a consequence of Broadacres’ closure — or maybe even (heaven forfend) reflect on why immigration enforcement has generated so much fear throughout the Latino community in the first place. 

Even immigration hardliners ought to be capable of recognizing that it’s not merely “the worst of the worst” who are now being targeted by the Trump administration’s overzealous immigration raids. Far from rooting out hardened criminals, recent enforcement efforts have been a Soviet-style rush of raids to satisfy arbitrary arrest quotas put in place by administration officials — quotas that have resulted in potentially unconstitutional racial profiling and the targeting of otherwise peaceful members of local communities. 

In San Diego, for example, the percentage of people without criminal convictions or charges who have been arrested by Immigrations and Customs Enforcement (ICE) has increased dramatically as officials scramble to satisfy White House expectations. In April, only 20 percent of those who were arrested by federal immigration authorities had no prior convictions or charges. By early June, that percentage had grown to a whopping 76 percent, according to federal data. 

Combined with the administration’s open contempt for due process, it would make sense that even those who are in this country legally might feel threatened by such aggressive enforcement efforts — a point that is underscored by the NV GOP’s casual request to have a political opponent’s family targeted for investigation. 

Understandably, even some Donald Trump supporters in the Latino community have grown weary with such tactics. Javier Barajas, the owner of the Mexican-Italian restaurant Il Toro E La Capra in Spring Valley that hosted Trump in 2024, told The Nevada Independent he’s concerned about how ICE is “messing with people who are working, who are doing good for this country.”

Even if the NV GOP can’t quite empathize with those who have such concerns, one would think the state party would at least have the decorum to restrain from trolling those whose lives are being upended by such policies. After all, aren’t political parties in swing states supposed to try to win over the hearts and minds of voters rather than merely pander to online echo chambers?  

The NV GOP’s trolling might play well with the hardline partisans whose social media feeds are littered with MAGA memes and right-wing influencers, but the real world is populated by far more politically independent voters — many of whom are routinely needed to win elections. And while some of those voters certainly helped push Trump over the finish line in the Silver State last year, Nevadans have proven to be notoriously independently minded in their voting habits. It's hard to believe such voters will look kindly at a party that openly mocks the struggles of an entire community merely for the sake of social media clout.  

Such boorish online behavior, however, is more than bad politicking — it is inherently inconducive to having civil or productive conversations about complex policy matters, such as immigration. Instead, it devolves such topics into the sort of clickbait partisan tripe that breeds contempt and division for the sake of likes and retweets from doomscrolling political junkies. 

Unfortunately, that engagement is the only thing that apparently matters to the clowns running certain political social media accounts — regardless of how ugly it turns our social discourse.  

Michael Schaus is a communications and branding expert based in Las Vegas, Nevada, and founder of Schaus Creative LLC — an agency dedicated to helping organizations, businesses and activists tell their story and motivate change. He has more than a decade of experience in public affairs commentary, having worked as a news director, columnist, political humorist, and most recently as the director of communications for a public policy think tank. Follow him on Twitter @schausmichael or on Substack @creativediscourse.