Jan 23, 2025
(AP) — Donald Trump is redrawing Washington’s classic borders, issuing unprecedented executive orders and boldly to prevent it.
Here’s the latest:
Lawsuits challenging President Donald Trump’s immigration policies are piling up
The American Civil Liberties Union sued to overturn expedited deportations after the Trump administration announced it would expand immigration officials’ powers to deport other people without an immigration trial at hand.
The “expedited removal” force has been in place for other people apprehended at the border since 2004. Trump is expanding it nationally for up to two years in the country.
The lawsuit filed in federal court in Washington claims that other people can be wrongfully deported if they do not have documentation showing that they have been in the United States frequently for more than two years. They can apply for asylum, but the ACLU says it requires a screening interview that it considers insufficient.
Head of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau still waiting to see if he has a job
Consumer Financial Protection Bureau Director Rohit Chopra is waiting for a phone call, a letter, an email, a text message (anything) from Trump management that can tell him if he’s going to be fired.
His continued presence on the job speaks to how Trump’s desire to move quickly in taking control of the government can lead to some oversights. It also reflects the challenge of fully merging Trump’s populism with his pro-business calls to cut regulations.
The CFPB has the ability, if Trump chooses, to enforce his promise to cap credit card fees. But for some banks and corporations it is too competitive a regulator.
House gives final passage to immigrant detention bill, sending Trump the first law he can sign
The House on Wednesday gave final approval to a bill requiring the detention of illegal immigrants accused of theft and violent crimes, marking the first law President Donald Trump can pass while Congress, with some support bipartisan, has temporarily moved forward along with its plans. crack down on illegal immigration.
The passage of the Laken Riley Act, named after a Georgia nursing student murdered last year by a Venezuelan, shows the extent to which the political debate over immigration has shifted to the right following Trump’s election victory. Immigration policy has been one of the most entrenched problems in Congress, however, a very important faction of politically vulnerable Democrats joined with Republicans to lift the strict adoption proposal after a count of 263 votes to 156.
Nonetheless, the bill would require a major capacity building for U. S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, but it comes with new funding.
Oath Keepers founder Stewart Rhodes visits Capitol Hill after Trump’s pardon
Oath Keepers founder Stewart Rhodes, the leader of a far-right organization convicted of seditious conspiracy in the Jan. 6, 2021, attack, visited the Capitol on Wednesday after President Donald Trump commuted his 18-year sentence.
Rhodes’ appearance came the day after he was released from prison as a result of Trump’s order of clemency benefitting the more than 1,500 people charged with federal crimes in the Jan. 6 attack.
Rhodes convicted in one of the most serious instances processed by the Department of Justice after the insurrection that left more than a hundred police officers injured.
Immigrant families worry about sending their kids to school amid Trump crackdown
As Trump attacks illegal immigrants in the United States, some families wonder if it is to send their children to school.
In many districts, educators have tried to assure immigrant parents that schools are places for their children, despite the president’s crusading promise to provoke mass expulsions. But fears intensified for some when the Trump administration announced Tuesday that it would allow federal immigration agencies to make arrests at schools, churches and hospitals.
“What helped calm my nerves is knowing that the school is on our side and has promised to let us know if the protective situations at the school are not respected,” said Carmen, a Mexican immigrant who brought her two grandchildren, ages 6 and 4, to school. Wednesday in the San Francisco Bay Area. She spoke on the condition that only her first call be used, for fear of being attacked by immigration officials.
“Drain the swamp”? Instead, Trump rolls back ethics regulations
Trum pledged eight years ago to “drain the swamp” and end the dominance of Washington influence peddlers.
Today, he begins his second term by repealing the ban on executive branch workers accepting giant gifts from lobbyists and removing the ban on lobbyists working in the executive branch, or vice versa, for at least two years.
The new president also took advantage of the run-up to his inauguration by launching a new cryptocurrency whose price is skyrocketing, while his wife, first daughter Melania Trump, signed a deal to make a documentary with Amazon.
Trump leadership suspended U. S. resettlement of ‘Afghan allies,’ regaining control
Republican Rep. Brian Mast of Florida, the new chairman of the House Foreign Affairs Committee and a military veteran, told the AP that the Trump leadership had deliberately suspended the planned arrival to the United States of more than 1,600 Afghans already They were to resettle in the United States. States.
Mas cited “issues about the vetting of those people. ”
The Trump administration announced in its early days that it would postpone all admissions of U. S. refugees for at least three months, while it evaluates the resumption or termination of the program.
The pause includes trips to the United States via remaining Afghans who served alongside U. S. infantry soldiers during the two decades of the U. S. war in Afghanistan, as well as family members and active-duty U. S. military personnel.
“Not everyone in Afghanistan who is a user needs to come to the United States of America” and “just because they claim something doesn’t necessarily mean it’s true,” Mast said Wednesday. “So for management and in an effort to be judicious, for our number one responsibility, to protect Americans, there is a pause on this until there is assurance that the proper review has been conducted. “
The White House says that with 1,500 soldiers Trump fulfills his promise
“This is something President Trump campaigned on. Other Americans have been waiting for a moment like this, for our Department of Defense to enforce national security,” said press secretary Karoline Leavitt.
U.S. officials confirmed earlier Wednesday that the Pentagon will begin deploying as many as 1,500 active duty troops to help secure the southern border in the coming days, putting in motion plans Trump laid out in executive orders shortly after he took office to crack down on immigration.
The active-duty forces would join the roughly 2,500 U. S. National Guard and Reserve forces already present.
Trump monitors Nashville shooting
President Donald Trump and his team are monitoring the deadly shooting at a school in Nashville, Tennessee.
“The White House offers its utmost attention and prayers to those affected by this senseless tragedy and thanks the brave first responders who responded to the incident. “
Police say a 17-year-old shooter killed a female student in the before turning the gun on himself.
Musk questions the viability of Trump’s big AI project
Elon Musk openly questioned the viability of an early AI project championed by Donald Trump, a rare public break with the president.
Trump announced Tuesday that the AI joint venture Project Stargate plans to spend up to $500 billion over four years to build knowledge centers in hopes of securing U. S. leadership in the new technology. Trump promised to clear the regulatory path so that the corporations involved, Softbank, OpenAI and Oracle, can act quickly.
Musk criticized the deal in a public forum.
“They don’t have the money,” the Tesla CEO and self-proclaimed “first friend” of the president posted on his social media platform X. “They gave Softbank much less than $10 billion. I have it with intelligent authority.
Musk, founder of OpenAI, has since parted ways with his CEO, Sam Altman, and sued the company and its executive for antitrust violations. Since then, he created his own AI company, xAI.
Altman responded Wednesday by saying Musk is “wrong, as you know” and invited Musk to come and stop at the first site already under construction.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu will travel to Washington to meet with Trump in a few weeks
Israel’s ambassador to the UN, Danny Danon, said he believed Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu would travel to Washington to meet with newly elected President Donald Trump “in a few weeks. “
He told a briefing for invited reporters Wednesday: “I’m sure he would be one of the first foreign leaders invited to the White House.”
Danon said he expects their discussions to include the current ceasefire between Israel and Hamas in Gaza and the release of hostages taken during Hamas’ Oct. 7, 2023 attack in southern Israel.
Israeli President Isaac Herzog will attend the United Nations on Monday to attend the commemoration of International Holocaust Remembrance Day, which marks the liberation of the Auschwitz concentration camp on Jan. 27, 1945, 80 years ago, Danon said. He will meet with Secretary-General Antonio Guterres/
Trump introduced a wide range of policy measures to reorient the US government from the first days of his presidency.
His executive orders cover issues ranging from trade, immigration and U. S. foreign aid to demographic diversity, civil rights and the hiring of federal workers. Some have an immediate political impact. Others are more symbolic. And some are already being challenged through federal lawsuits.
Republican Sen. Lisa Murkowski: ‘I strongly denounce’ Trump’s sweeping Jan. 6 pardons
In an article about
“I strongly denounce the blanket pardons granted to violent criminals who assaulted those brave and uniformed men,” Murkowski wrote.
Murkowski is one of the few Republicans who has criticized Trump’s pardons for more than 1,500 rioters who attacked the Capitol and disrupted the certification of former President Joe Biden’s presidential victory in 2020. More than two hundred other people have pleaded guilty to assaulting the police
On Tuesday, Murkowski pointed to a police officer as she told reporters she fears “the message that is sent to these great men and women that stood by us.”
Judge says Trump’s Jan. 6 pardons ‘won’t replace the fact of what happened’
President Donald Trump’s mass pardons for rioters who stormed the U. S. Capitol “will not replace the fact of what happened” in the nation’s capital four years ago, a federal ruling wrote Wednesday, ignoring one of nearly 1,600 cases arising from mob attack. Trump supporters.
U. S. District Judge Colleen Kollar-Kotelly said evidence of the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol is preserved through the “neutral lens” of videos, trial transcripts, jury verdicts and court opinions.
“These records are immutable and constitute the truth, regardless of how the events of January 6 are described by the defendants or their allies,” he wrote.
Kollar-Kotelly is one of more than 20 judges tasked with handling the massive caseload of the largest investigation in the Justice Department’s history. She published her written comments in an order dismissing the case against Dominic Box, a Georgian who was among the first organization of rioters to enter the Capitol on January 6, 2021.
Trump’s top adviser, Stephen Miller, talks about deportations, at a Republican Senate luncheon
Miller briefed Republican senators during their closed-door lunch on Capitol Hill on the next steps, adding pressure from the administration to invoke so-called Title 42 authority to close the U. S. -Mexico border to new arrivals, once they have figured out a legal justification to help the project. action, the senators said.
“We talked about some evictions, what would happen . . . what management is going to do next,” said Sen. Josh Hawley, R-Mo.
Miller also described in more detail other moves through Trump related to domestic energy production, the senators said.
Trump’s supposed enemies fear squandering their pensions, being audited and paying high legal bills.
It’s not just the felons’ fees that worry those who have crossed paths with President Donald Trump. There are more prosaic types of retaliation: having trouble renewing your passport, being audited by the IRS, and wasting your federal pension.
For the many people who’ve made an enemy of Trump, his return to the presidency this week sparked anxiety. Some are concerned they could go bankrupt trying to clear their names.
Less than 24 hours after taking office, Trump fired the first shot, ordering the revocation of the security clearances of dozens of former intelligence officials he said sided with Joe Biden in the 2020 crusade or opposed him. Losing those authorizations can prove costly for former government officials who work for defense contractors and want continued access to classified data to do their jobs in the personal sector.
“Anybody who ever disagrees with Trump has to worry about retribution,” said John Bolton, who served as Trump’s national security adviser and has become a vocal critic of the president. “It’s a pretty long list. I think there are a lot of people who are very worried.”
Does the language about “fetal personality” in the executive order offer clues about Trump’s technique for abortion?
Abortion was largely absent from dozens of executive moves adopted during Trump’s first days in office. This includes common abortion policy moves that Republican presidents make after taking office, such as reinstating the global gag rule, which limits investment by family members planning services, said law professor Mary Ruth Ziegler. at the University of California, Davis School of Law. Law.
But there still may be more to come in terms of actions on abortion, Ziegler said. And there have already been quieter moves, including slipping the phrase “at conception” into an executive order rolling back protections for transgender people. This language is reminiscent of “fetal personhood” laws passed in some conservative states that declare a fetus should have the same rights as a person.
While the inclusion of this word probably wouldn’t directly affect abortion rights, it could have a long-term effect on legal cases like fetal personhood by “setting a precedent for anti-abortion groups to say, ‘Look how many are put in the law already recognizes that ‘life begins at conception,'” Ziegler said.
The word may simply be an attempt by the Trump administration to “throw a bone to parties in conflict on abortion” without affecting abortion policy, or it may simply foreshadow bigger decisions to come, Ziegler said.
Trump’s Threats of Price Lists and Sanctions Against Russia Over Ukraine Threat Fail
President Donald Trump’s risk of imposing harsh taxes, price lists and sanctions on Russia if a deal is not reached to end the war in Ukraine will likely fall on the Kremlin’s deaf ears, because virtually all Russian goods are already banned. importation into the United States. . and the country has faced US and European sanctions since the invasion began almost 3 years ago.
In a Wednesday post on his Truth Social website, Trump suggested Russian President Vladimir Putin “get settled now and avoid this ridiculous war. “
He said he had no preference for harming Russia and had smart relations with Putin, but warned of sanctions if the war ends soon.
“If we don’t reach a ‘deal’ soon, I still have no choice but to impose taxes, price lists and sanctions on everything sold through Russia to the United States and other participating countries through Russia. “
The problem with the threat is that other than a small amount of fertilizer, animal feed and machinery, Russia currently exports almost no goods to the U.S. And, Russia is one of the world’s most heavily sanctioned nations. Many of those sanctions relate to Russia’s Feb. 2022 invasion of Ukraine and were imposed by the Biden administration, but others predate Biden and some were imposed during Trump’s first term in office.
Anti-Racism Defense Lawyers Working Group Chair Says DEI Is Vital in Criminal Justice System
Kobie Flowers is a Washington, D.C., defense lawyer and co-chair of the National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers’ Anti-Racism Task Force.
Flowers said diversity among attorneys is necessary in the criminal justice system. In an email, Flowers said anti-discrimination legislation offers safeguards, but that “equal justice for all requires more than the simple absence of overt prejudice. DEI within the criminal defense bar is not just about compliance; it’s about cultivating a culture where each and every voice, regardless of origin, is heard, valued and empowered.
Flowers said diversity promotes greater understanding of clients and is helping build a more powerful criminal justice formula. “The DEI and similar formulas are created to end discrimination. Ending discrimination is the right thing to do, in the criminal justice system in particular and in our country in general.
In note, Joe Biden the prosperity, peace and grace of the country under Trump
The former president expressed his wish in a classic note addressed to his successor.
Fox News was first to report on the contents of the hand-written note. It says:
“Dear President Trump,
“As I bid farewell to this sacred office, I wish you and your family all the best for the next four years. The American people – and the people of the world – look to this space for stability in the face of the inevitable storms of history, and my prayer is that the coming years will be a time of prosperity, peace and grace for our nation. May God bless you and consult you as he has done with our beloved country since our founding.
Fox News says he signed “Joe Biden 01/20/2025. “
ESCANABA — The Bay College Alumni Association is seeking nominations for the 2025 Distinguished Alumni of the …
LAKE LINDEN — Police arrested a retired Lake Linden public works worker who they say stole more than $28,000. . .
HOUGHTON — At approximately 7:48 p.m. Tuesday, troopers from the Michigan State Police Calumet post responded to …
(AP) — Donald Trump is redrawing Washington’s borders, unleashing an unprecedented executive. . .