#Federation for American Immigration Reform

[justinspoliticalcorner]

John Knefel at MMFA:

Several right-wing organizations known mostly for opposing abortion, immigration, and trans rights are also involved in supporting and funding election denial groups, a sign of the issue’s centrality to the MAGA movement.

Following former President Donald Trump’s loss in 2020 and subsequent attempts to remain in power, a complicated and sprawling web of organizations emerged to sow doubt about future elections and spread debunked and baseless allegations of widespread voter fraud. Stringing these overlapping efforts together is the Only Citizens Vote Coalition, an umbrella organization connecting state and national election denial efforts with the broader right-wing policy ecosystem. These groups also significantly overlap with Project 2025, an effort organized by The Heritage Foundation to provide the next Republican presidential administration with staffing and policy recommendations.  Even as early as March 2021, mere months after Trump’s multifaceted effort to reverse the 2020 election, socially conservative groups began pouring money into election denial initiatives. That trend has only accelerated in the intervening years, with a host of anti-civil rights groups — often euphemistically characterized as engaged in the “culture wars” — having expanded their operations to include so-called election integrity.

These groups include the anti-abortion Susan B. Anthony Pro-Life America, the anti-trans American Principles Project, a fund run by Hobby Lobby founder David Green, and high-profile right-wing charities National Christian Charitable Foundation and Christian Community Foundation, among others.  One of the primary myths that the election denial movement has spread this cycle concerns noncitizen voting, which experts agree is exceedingly rare. This manufactured scandal synthesizes two key pillars of the MAGA movement — demonizing immigrants and claiming that elections are rigged against right-wing candidates. The partners listed in the Only Citizens Vote Coalition include anti-immigrant groups the Federation for American Immigration Reform and the Immigration Accountability Project, illustrating how election denial groups have incorporated nativism into their movement. Both FAIR and IAP have strong links to the Tanton network, named after John Tanton, whom the Southern Poverty Law Center refers to as the “the racist architect of the modern anti-immigrant movement.”

Right-wing anti-civil rights organizations are going all-in on pushing the nonexistent “noncitizen voter” canard.

[minnesotafollower]

Biden Administration’s New Restrictions on U.S. Asylum Law Being Challenged in Federal Courts 

This year has seen many developments regarding the Biden Administration’s attempts to cope with the large numbers of migrants illegally crossing the U.S.-Mexico border. Here is a review of some of those developments. Biden’s New Asylum Regulation[1] On February 21, the Biden Administration announced a proposed rule that would  require rapid deportation of an immigrant at the U.S. border who had…

[elumish]

Part 1/? of How to Deal With the Next Four(ish) Years

Learn how to tell the difference between "their policies/rhetoric actively target me/a marginalized group" and "they have not been as successful as I hoped in protecting me/a marginalized group." I saw the rhetoric a fair amount pre-election that the Democratic Party and its policies were transphobic, that Biden failed queer people, etc. as a reason not to vote for Harris or for Democrats, and the reality is that the Democratic Party and Joe Biden have actually been pretty steadily implementing laws and policies to support and protect queer (including trans) people, and Republicans want queer/trans people to die.

If you want to protect marginalized groups, whether they're ones you're part of or not, you really need to start actively working on distinguishing between the two. And if you keep hearing that the Democrats are just as bad about a marginalized group in the US as the Republicans, actually look into that. What is the evidence? What laws have been introduced or passed by one party versus the other? What rhetoric do they use? What policies and regulations are being put in place?

And is the problem that the Democratic Party is "just as bad" or that they have not managed to stop Republican laws in red states?

None of this is to say that the Democratic Party is perfect, but in most cases only one party is actively working to harm or kill marginalized people, and it's not the Dems.

Understand the government structure that directly impacts you. Not every state or locality operates the same way, and you may have more or fewer layers of government over you with different levels of power. Do you have a town/city government and a county government, or just one or the other? How many officials are elected in your state versus appointed?

Part of that is also understanding what is controlled at the local, state, and federal level. If you're mad about a law or policy and want it to change, whose law or policy is it? Chances are, if it's about how things work for you, it's a state or local law rather than a federal one. Once you understand that, you can target any organizing efforts in the right direction.

Pick your battles. This is not to say that you shouldn't care about a lot of things, but trying to personally organize around everything will probably just make you ineffective and burn you out. Is it Palestine? Ukraine? Sudan? Environmental justice? Climate change? Immigration? Abortion? Queer rights and protections? Education? Native American rights? Criminal justice reform?

Understanding your own priorities can also help you determine what candidates you support and where you draw your red lines. I care a lot about public schools, but support for charter schools is not a red line for me in a politician. Being pro-life is.

But I'm also pragmatic--if my choice is a pro-life person who also wants all queer people to die and a pro-life person who wants to protect queer people, I will hold my nose vote for the latter rather than risk the former winning.

Start identifying what protections you and your loved ones might need that you can access now. Is it an IUD, a tubal ligation, or a vasectomy? Is it getting your legal name changed now? Is it establishing other legal protections such as power of attorney even if you're married?

Vote in every election. If you are an eligible voter, you should be a registered voter, and you should vote every single time. I think the only election I've missed in the last 5 years is the 2024 Democratic primary, and that's 50% because it was basically an uncontested race and 50% because I forgot when it was.

Primaries are where you get to have a say in who your candidate is--at all levels. Look at the policies of who is running and vote for who you want to win--whether because of policy, temperment, or any other reason.

But state and local elections are incredibly important, because they have a huge impact on your actual quality of life. Show up and vote. Vote on off years. Vote when it's just local. Vote for Board of Education, for water commissioner, for sheriff, for judges.

Voting is cheap, it's easy, and it does make a difference.

[tanadrin]

Imagine that a century or two from now, the eastern half of the United States is conquered by the Canadian Empire, its intelligentsia deported, its land colonized by Canadian immigrants, and its remaining people mostly gradually absorbed into a Neo-Canadian identity. The West reorganizes, developing a new political and cultural center, and comes to regard itself as the "true" United States, with the remnant culture of the East (by now much changed by Canadian rule) as representing an unchanged tradition stretching back to the time of George Washington. The holdout western half is subsequently conquered by the Reformed Mexican Empire, and while most of the population remains in situ, its elite is taken to Mexico City. There, for three or four generations, they do their best to maintain their distinct American identity, focusing on the American "civil religion," the distinctive political ideals and cultural features that mark them out as Americans, and come up with a new way of interpreting their history that allows America to be a perennial idea, something not directly physically tied to the territory of the United States, which no longer exists. They compose a body of historical works based on Washington Irving's rather fabulistic approach to early American history, the half-remembered popular versions of the stories of Columbus and the Pilgrims, the First Thanksgiving, even the Revolutionary War. They don't have access to the original texts anymore--let's say this is all taking place in a post-Collapse North America where long-range travel and communication is difficult and a lot of history has been lost--but they do their best. They append to these books, or include in their text, of history a copy of the Constitution, big chunks of the United States Code, and Robert's Rules of Order.

Subsequently, the Empire of Gran Columbia invades, conquers southern and central Mexico, and its Emperor lets the captive Americans go home. They return north, mostly to California, find that the version of American history and civics that is remembered there isn't the same as the version they have (not that the Californian one is correct--the Mexican Empire has suppressed English-language education and high culture in its Aztlani provinces), and set about reforming and reorganizing the Western States (as they're now called) to be more in line with the forms they brought back from the exile. In the meantime, other bits of important literature start being kept in libraries next to copies of the received histories: some bits of early American literature, like Hawthorne, the Song of Hiawatha, some highly abridged Herman Melville, Thomas Paine--heck, even some John Locke, and quotes or fragments from Shakespeare. Some traditionalists now argue the capital of the United States has always been located in San Francisco, and that Washington, D.C. only because the capital later, under the influence of Eastern heretics.

In the following centuries, the Western States retain their independence for a time, but eventually become a secondary battleground for a lot of other empires--the Mexicans, the Canadians, the Pan-Pacific Federation, and so forth. American culture remains distinctive, insulted in part by its unique traditions, though now everybody speaks Future Spanish, and only learns English to read the old texts. In this period additional material, including later compositions, continues to accrete, forming a distinct body of sacred American scripture, although it does not exist in a single canonical form. Attempts to reconcile distinct sources, like more literal and historically-grounded accounts versus the simplified narratives of figures like Irving, produce hybrid texts that sometimes are full of internal conflicts.

Oh, and through all this, some institutions of American government like the Supreme Court still function, although their rulings only apply to Americans, and there isn't much in the way of a federal bureaucracy.

Finally the Great and Sublime Brazilian Potentate conquers most of the Americas, sets up an American client state that roughly coincides with the heartland of the old Western States (California, Oregon, most of Washington and Nevada), and allows the Americans to elect their own President (subject, of course, to Brazilian approval). During this period, an apocalyptic street preacher from Los Angeles claims to have inherited the authority and power of George Washington, and is executed by the Brazilians; his later followers point to the prophecies of Emperor Norton, and out-of-context bits of a Quebecois translation of Moby-Dick and some Mark Twain stories to say no, really, he was George Washington. Inexplicably, a version of this religion becomes the dominant faith of the Brazilian Empire before it collapses. But long before then the American state in California fails, crushed when it tries to revolt against Brazilian rule; the remnant Easterners likewise dwindle down to only a few hundred souls living in a village in Alexandria, Virginia. Centuries from now, as the descendants of the descendants of the Brazilians colonize Mars, they will point to the sacred Americanist scriptures, the Neo-Americanist narratives of their prophet's life, and the letters written by the early leaders of Neo-Americanism, and say, "all of this was written by the spirit of George Washington, and is free from contradictions." Meanwhile the remnant Americanists, who have been writing about Americanism and how it applies to their everyday lives in the centuries since, and whose commentary has formed around the copies of the last editions of the U.S. Supreme Court Reporter (SCOTUS managed to outlast the final American state by a hundred years or so) plus the thoughts of the remaining Americanist community in Mexico, continue to regard their traditions as the unbroken and unaltered practice of American culture, politics, and ideals as they existed since the Revolutionary War.

This is, as far as I can tell, approximately how the Bible was composed.

[insert-witty-user-name-here]

One more thing, if you have capacity, please consider donating to advocacy organizations working to protect our rights.

Sorry to be the bearer of bad news on an already bad news day, progressive advocacy organizations have seen their funding slashed since the election.

Lots of folks know about big orgs like the ACLU, HRC, BLM, Planned Parenthood, Amnesty International, and Trevor Project. These are incredible orgs doing good work.

Here are some smaller national orgs that don’t always get attention but are doing important work and could use some extra money:

Arab American Institute

Asian Americans Advancing Justice| AAJC

Autistic Self Advocacy Network

Black Alliance for Just Immigration

Black Voters Matter

Equality Federation (specifically donate to your local chapter! Organization serving LGBTQ+ people)

Immigrant Defense Project

Lambda Legal (legal agency for LGBTQ+ individuals)

Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights Under Law

League of Conservation Voters (environmental protection organization)

Mexican American Legal Defense Fund

Advocates for Trans Equality

National Council of Jewish Women

National Disability Rights Network

National Immigration Law Center

National Women’s Law Center

Native American Rights Fund

REFORM alliance (justice reform organization)

Reproductive Freedom for All (formerly NARAL Pro-Choice)

Sierra Club (environmental protection organization)

Advocacy organizations could really use your support to fight these upcoming attacks.

Where we saw an outpouring of rage and support in 2016 from big political donors, that sadly hasn’t happened this time.

Last, noting local organizations are always best to donate to though can be harder to find.

If you’ve got time, I’d do some research and type into a search engine your state or city+ issue you care about+ advocacy organization. Browse their website and social media and see if they fit your vibe!

Wait there are even more awesome orgs doing awesome work if you have a specific interest! Give these groups a follow.

American Atheists

American Humanist Association

CASA (specifically donate to your local chapter! Organization serving immigrants)

Common Cause (multi-issue)

GLSEN (formerly Gay, Lesbian & Straight Education Network)

Interfaith Alliance

Jewish Council for Public Affairs

LatinoJusticePRLDEF

League of Woman Voters (specifically your local chapter)

MomsRising (multi-issue, just moms who want to protect their families 🩷)

PGLAG (formerly Parents, Families, and Friends of Lesbians and Gays)

Public Citizen (multi-issue)

Red, Wine, and Blue (group of moms who fight book bans locally)

Sikh Coalition

The Arc (organization that serves the disability community)

The Innocence Project (justice reform organization)

The Sentencing project (Justice reform organization)

Voto Latino

YWCA (specifically donate to your local chapter, organization that serves women)

Unite Against Book Bans

United We Dream (organization to protect DACA)

Union of Concerned Scientists (environmental protection)

Zinn Education Project (organization that supports an accurate teaching of history)

I hope this massive list also helps shed some light on how many brilliant people there are in this movement ready to fight for the rights of everyone.

Onwards. ❤️

[mostlylemonbased]

An Open Letter to (soon to be) Former President Biden.

President Biden,

Back in 2022 you told transgender Americans: “Your president has your back.” Apparently, rather than meaning that you would protect us, you meant instead to stab us. It must be disappointing for you, who claimed to fight for civil rights, that likely the one legacy of your presidency that will be left intact after you proprietously hand power to a fascist, will be your implementation of the first piece of federal anti-LGBTQIA legislation in nearly 30 years. And while it’s disappointing for you, it’s deadly for my brothers and sisters.

It always feels deeply ironic to me that the Democrats attempt to claim the high ground on LGBTQIA issues. While advancements have pretty much invariably come from Democrats, Democrats have also rarely defended those polices, and have also been happy to vote to remove them. It was a Democratic President that passed the last piece of federal anti-queer legislation enacted in the US – The Defense of Marriage Act. And today it was a Democratic president that stripped healthcare from trans kids.

At the end of the day it seems the Democratic position is the same as with virtually every other significant minority issue. Democrats avow themselves protectors of minority groups until the moment when they’re challenged from the right. At that point the majority of the Democratic Party will, instead of defending policy positions, lurch violently in the direction of the criticism.

The Democrats have done little to undo Republican’s horrific actions on the border and deportation. If anything, both yourself and President Obama legitimized right-wing anti-immigrant acts: funding internment camps and border actions that have horrific impacts for those fleeing violence. And it is the Democrats who have continued to fund the militarization and built the power of a deeply racist police force which has shown utter unwillingness to reform.

And at the end of your presidency we find ourselves here: We know that more than forty percent of trans youth will attempt suicide. We know that states that passed anti-trans legislation have seen increases in suicidality of, in some cases, more than 70 percent. And yet just two years after you promised you had our back your legacy is increasing the number of trans kids and adults who’ll attempt to kill themselves. Your legacy is politely rolling out the red carpet to a fascist who would and will attempt to legislate us out of public life, and whose policy platforms are encouraging our deaths. Policies where the cruelty and divisiveness is the point. And that’s the policy you signed into law on December 22nd.

124 Democrats had sufficient strength to stand up against these attacks in the house, just ten in the senate, and apparently you lack the strength or willingness to defend us.

So it seems fitting that your abject failure will be your legacy.

[odinsblog]

It was something that really began to happen when the United States decided that it would interlock the immigration system with the criminal legal system. So some people call it the criminal immigration system, which is not a term that I coined. It's something that immigration law experts coined.

But when Congress passed a certain series of laws in the 1980s and 90s, what they wanted to do was create a system in which people who were accused of crimes, particularly at the time, drug crimes, would be able to be immediately deported in a way that was basically faster. So they didn't have to be convicted. So normally, if you're accused of a crime, you have a right to a trial, then you might be convicted or acquitted, or you might plea out.

But if you are determined to be undocumented, you can actually be put into deportation proceedings before anyone brings you to trial. So you just are arrested and charged, and you can go immediately into deportation proceedings. And it turned out that this was a pretty effective way for police to interact with the immigration system.

And sheriffs became a lynch point originally because they run county jails.

So county jails are kind of the first stop if you're arrested. If you are unfortunate enough to be arrested, you will go through the county jail, at which point they take your ID, your fingerprints, right?

They take a variety of information. And sheriffs kind of became really useful because they were in the jail already, so they could interview people, ask them where they were from, ask them if they had proof of citizenship, and then help ICE put them into deportation proceedings. And alongside that, sheriffs were also able to make some money by housing people awaiting deportation in their jails.

That's also the benefit for them. The federal government houses about 25% of immigrants in detention in county jails right now. And they pay these sheriffs a per diem.

So they get paid sort of per day to keep people in their jails. And it's one of the ways that sheriffs are able to use that jail kind of as a political tool, right, to make money for their county.

So under Trump, two things happened. One was that anti-immigration groups, so I mentioned the Federation for American Immigration Reform, or FAIR. That was a group that was already in existence.

They are an anti-immigrant group. And they began to email sheriffs, especially sheriffs that they knew were kind of constitutional sheriffs or in the far right sheriff atmosphere and say, hey, would you like to help the Trump administration deport more people? And many of them said, sure.

And so using this anti-immigrant group, the Trump administration recruited more sheriffs to join a program called 287G. And 287G is a federal program that essentially deputizes sheriffs and their deputies to act as immigration agents. So under Trump, many, many more sheriffs joined this 287G program.

Now, the 287G program is a bit interesting because it doesn't include any funding for the sheriffs, but it is something that sheriffs used to say that they were tough on immigration.

-Jessica Pishko, The Unchecked Power Of Sheriffs

[dreaminginthedeepsouth]

Matt Wuerker, Politico

* * * * *

LETTERS FROM AN AMERICAN

October 30, 2024

Heather Cox Richardson

Oct 31, 2024

On Friday, October 25, at a town hall held on his social media platform X, Elon Musk told the audience that if Trump wins, he expects to work in a Cabinet-level position to cut the federal government.

He told people to expect “temporary hardship” but that cuts would “ensure long-term prosperity.” At the Trump rally at New York City’s Madison Square Garden on Sunday, Musk said he plans to cut $2 trillion from the government. Economists point out that current discretionary spending in the budget is $1.7 trillion, meaning his promise would eliminate virtually all discretionary spending, which includes transportation, education, housing, and environmental programs.

Economists agree that Trump’s plans to place a high tariff wall around the U.S., replacing income taxes on high earners with tariffs paid for by middle-class Americans, and to deport as many as 20 million immigrants would crash the booming economy. Now Trump’s financial backer Musk is factoring in the loss of entire sectors of the government to the economy under Trump.  

Trump has promised to appoint Musk to be the government’s “chief efficiency officer.” “Everyone’s going to have to take a haircut.… We can’t be a wastrel.… We need to live honestly,” Musk said on Friday. Rob Wile and Lora Kolodny of CNBC point out that Musk’s SpaceX aerospace venture has received $19 billion from the U.S. government since 2008.

An X user wrote: “I]f Trump succeeds in forcing through mass deportations, combined with Elon hacking away at the government, firing people and reducing the deficit—there will be an initial severe overreaction in the economy…. Markets will tumble. But when the storm passes and everyone realizes we are on sounder footing, there will be a rapid recovery to a healthier, sustainable economy. History could be made in the coming two years.”

Musk commented: “Sounds about right[.]”

This exchange echoes the prescription of Treasury Secretary Andrew Mellon, whose theories had done much to create the Great Crash of 1929, for restoring a healthy economy. “Liquidate labor, liquidate stocks, liquidate the farmers, liquidate real estate,” he told President Herbert Hoover. “It will purge the rottenness out of the system. High costs of living and high living

will come down. People will work harder, live a more moral life. Values will be adjusted, and enterprising people will pick up the wrecks from less competent people.” 

Mellon, at least, was reacting to an economic crisis thrust upon an administration. Musk is seeking to create one. 

Today the Commerce Department reported that from July through September, the nation’s economy grew at a solid 2.8%. Consumer spending is up, as is investment in business. The country added 254,000 jobs in September, and inflation has fallen back almost to the Federal Reserve’s target of 2%. 

It is extraordinarily rare for a country to be able to reduce inflation without creating a recession, but the Biden administration has managed to do so, producing what economists call a “soft landing,” rather like catching an egg on a plate. As Bryan Mena of CNN wrote today: “The US economy seems to have pulled off a remarkable and historic achievement.” 

Both President Joe Biden and Democratic presidential nominee Vice President Kamala Harris have called for reducing the deficit not by slashing the government, as Musk proposes, but by restoring taxes on the wealthy and corporations. 

As part of the Republicans’ plan to take the country back to the era before the 1930s ushered in a government that regulated business and provided a basic social safety net, House speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA) expects to get rid of the Affordable Care Act. 

At a closed-door campaign event on Monday in Pennsylvania for a Republican House candidate, Johnson told supporters that Republicans will propose “massive reform” to the Affordable Care Act, also known as “Obamacare,” if they take control of both the House and the Senate in November. “Health-care reform’s going to be a big part of the agenda,” Johnson said. Their plan is to take a “blowtorch to the regulatory state,” which he says is “crushing the free market.” “Trump’s going to go big,” he said.” When an attendee asked, “No Obamacare?” he laughed and agreed: “No Obamacare…. The ACA is so deeply ingrained, we need massive reform to make this work, and we got a lot of ideas on how to do that.” 

Ending a campaign with a promise to crash a booming economy and end the Affordable Care Act, which ended insurance companies’ ability to reject people with preexisting conditions, is an unusual strategy.

A post from Trump last night and another this morning suggest his internal polls are worrying him. Last night he claimed there was cheating in Pennsylvania’s York and Lancaster counties. Today he posted: “Pennsylvania is cheating, and getting caught, at large scale levels rarely seen before. REPORT CHEATING TO AUTHORITIES. Law Enforcement must act, NOW!” 

Trump appears to be setting up the argument he used in 2020, that he can lose only if he has been cheated. But it is increasingly apparent that the get-out-the-vote, or GOTV, efforts of the Trump campaign have been weak. When Trump’s daughter-in-law Lara Trump and loyalist Michael Whatley became the co-chairs of the Republican National Committee in March 2024, they stopped the GOTV efforts underway and used the money instead for litigation. They outsourced GOTV efforts to super PACs, including Musk’s America PAC.

In Wired today, Jake Lahut reported that door-knockers for Musk’s PAC were driven around in the back of a U-Haul without seats and threatened with having to pay their own hotel bills if they didn’t meet high canvassing quotas. One of the canvassers told Lahut that they thought they were being hired to ask people who they would be voting for when they flew into Michigan, and was surprised to learn their actual role. The workers spoke to Lahut anonymously because they had signed a nondisclosure agreement (a practice the Biden administration has tried to stop).

Trump’s boast that he is responsible for the Supreme Court’s overturning of the 1973 Roe v. Wade decision recognizing the constitutional right to abortion is one of the reasons his support is soft. In addition to popular dislike of the idea that the state, rather than a woman and her doctor, should make decisions about her healthcare, the Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization decision is now over two years old, and state examinations of maternal deaths are showing that women are dying from lack of reproductive healthcare. 

Cassandra Jaramillo and Kavitha Surana of ProPublica reported today that at least two pregnant women have died in Texas when doctors delayed emergency care after a miscarriage until the fetal heartbeat stopped. The woman they highlighted today, Josseli Barnica, left behind a husband and a toddler. 

At a rally this evening near Green Bay, Wisconsin, Trump said his team had advised him to stop talking about how he was going to protect women by ending crime and making sure they don’t have to be “thinking about abortion.” But Trump, who has boasted of sexual assault and been found liable for it, did not stop there. He went on to say that he had told his advisors, “I’m going to do it whether the women like it or not. I am going to protect them.” 

The Trump campaign remains concerned about the damage caused by the extraordinarily racist, sexist, and violent Sunday night rally at Madison Square Garden. Today the campaign seized on a misstatement President Biden made when condemning the statement from the Madison Square Garden event that referred to Puerto Rico as a “floating island of garbage.” They tried to turn the tables to suggest that Biden was calling Trump supporters garbage, although the president has always been very careful to focus his condemnation on Trump alone. 

In Wisconsin today, when he disembarked from his plane, Trump put on an orange reflective vest and had someone drive him around the tarmac in a garbage truck with TRUMP painted on the side. He complained about Biden to reporters from the cab of the truck but still refused to apologize for Sunday’s slur of Puerto Rico, saying he knew nothing about the comedian who appeared at his rally. 

This, too, was an unusual strategy. Like his visit to McDonalds, where he wore an apron, the image of Trump in a sanitation truck was likely intended to show him as a man of the people. But his power has always rested not in his promise to be one of the people, but rather to lead them. The pictures of him in a bright orange vest and unusually dark makeup are quite different from his usual portrayal of himself.

Indeed, media captured a video of Trump’s stunt, and it did not convey strength. MSNBC’s Katie Phang watched him try to get into the truck and noted: “Trump stumbles, drags his right leg, almost falls over, and tries at least three times to open the door…. Some transparency with Trump’s medical records would be nice.” 

The Las Vegas Sun today ran an editorial that detailed Trump’s increasingly obvious mental lapses and concluded that Trump is “crippled cognitively and showing clear signs of mental illness.” It noted that Trump now depends “on enablers who show a disturbing willingness to indulge his delusions, amplify his paranoia or steer his feeble mind toward their own goals.” It noted that if Trump cannot fulfill the duties of the presidency, they would fall to his running mate, J.D. Vance, who has suggested “he would subordinate constitutional principles for personal profit and power.”

LETTERS FROM AN AMERICAN

HEATHER COX RICHARDSON

[mariacallous]

WASHINGTON, D.C. — Building Back Together Communications Director Blake Goodman released the following statement on the 30th anniversary of the signing of the Violence Against Women Act (VAWA):

“Today, we celebrate three decades of the Violence Against Women Act, a transformative piece of legislation that has saved countless women’s lives from dangerous, potentially deadly situations. “President Biden’s laser-focus commitment to ending domestic and intimate partner violence is nothing new. Thirty years ago, then-Senator Biden authored the original bill that would become the VAWA — pushing our nation’s representatives to recognize and finally deal with the scourge that is domestic and intimate partner violence. Now, he and Vice President Harris continue to lead the most pro-survivor administration in our nation’s history. Their unwavering dedication to strengthening and expanding the VAWA has resulted in groundbreaking protections for underserved communities, increased funding for life-saving services and a renewed national focus on preventing violence before it occurs. “From President Biden’s authorship of the original bill as a Senator to Vice President Harris’s tireless advocacy for women and survivors throughout her career, this administration’s commitment to ending gender-based violence is not just good policy — it’s personal. At Building Back Together, we stand proudly with President Biden, Vice President Harris and survivors across the nation in celebrating this anniversary. We recognize that while we’ve made tremendous strides, we remain committed to supporting the Biden-Harris Administration’s bold vision for a future free from gender-based violence — a future where every individual can live, work and thrive without fear.”

Thirty years on, VAWA has seen many significant successes in the fight against domestic and intimate partner violence:

VAWA has helped reduce intimate partner violence by 64% between 1993 and 2010.

Over $9 billion in federal grants have been awarded to support community-based organizations working to end violence against women.

The National Domestic Violence Hotline, established under VAWA, has answered over 7 million calls, texts, and chats since its inception.

The 2022 reauthorization expanded protections for BIPOC women, LGBTQ+ individuals and immigrant survivors.

The Biden-Harris Administration continues to build on VAWA’s legacy by:

Ending forced arbitration for sexual assault and harassment through the signing of the Ending Forced Arbitration of Sexual Assault and Sexual Harassment Act of 2021.

Signing the Bipartisan Safer Communities Act, which narrows the “boyfriend loophole” by helping to keep guns out of the hands of domestic abusers by prohibiting people convicted of misdemeanor domestic violence crimes from possessing guns for 5 years.

Reforming the military justice system to address sexual assault, harrassment, and related crimes through the National Defense Authorization Act.

Strengthening regional leadership to prioritize the crisis of Missing or Murdered Indigenous people, including gender-based violence.

Supporting multinational efforts to address online harassment and abuse through the Global Partnership for Action on Gender-Based Online Harassment and Abuse.

Expanding national programs to combat human trafficking through the Department of Health and Human Services Innovation Challenge to Prevent Human Trafficking and the new National Human Trafficking Prevention Framework.

For more information on steps the Biden-Harris Administration has taken to prevent and respond to gender-based violence at home and abroad, see the White House’s Fact Sheet here.

[humanrightsupdates]

US: Drug-Linked Deportations Soar Despite State Reforms

(Washington, DC, July 15, 2024) – Thousands of people in the United States are being deported every year for drug offenses that in many cases no longer exist under state laws, harming and separating immigrant families, Human Rights Watch and the Drug Policy Alliance said today.

The 91-page report, “Disrupt and Vilify,” shows that the failure to reform disproportionately harsh federal immigration law has resulted in enormous numbers of deportations, splitting families apart, disrupting communities, and destabilizing people well-established in the US. For example, federal immigration law that treats some types of marijuana use as a deportable offense is at odds with many states’ recreational marijuana laws, penalizing immigrants and non-citizens for activities that are legal for citizens at the state level. The groups found that 500,000 people whose most serious offense was for drugs were deported between 2002 and 2020.

“The uniquely American combination of the drug war and deportation machine work hand in hand to target, exclude, and punish noncitizens for minor offenses—or in some states legal activity—such as marijuana possession,” said Maritza Perez Medina, director of federal affairs at the Drug Policy Alliance (DPA). “This report underscores that punitive federal drug laws separate families, destabilize communities, and terrorize non-citizens, all while overdose deaths have risen and drugs have become more potent and available. It’s imperative that the US government revises federal law to match current state-based drug policy reforms to end and prevent the immense human suffering being inflicted in the name of the drug war.”

Human Rights Watch and the Drug Policy Alliance interviewed 42 people affected by the deportations, including immigrants, families, and attorneys. The groups also analyzed new federal government data from 2002 to 2020 and found that 500,000 people have been deported whose most serious offense was drug-related. A previous Human Rights Watch report showed that from 2002 to 2012, 260,000 people were deported for drug-related offenses. This report updates that figure with an additional 240,000 people deported between 2013 and 2020, amounting to about one of every five deportations of immigrants with a criminal conviction during this period.

Overdose numbers have drastically increased, even as the US has engaged in massive numbers of deportations over this period, underscoring the ineffectiveness of such policies and of approaches that vilify immigrants in connection with drugs.

[saddiedotdk]

Kamala Harris accomplishments as VP:

Cast tie-breaking vote for the American Rescue Plan of 2021.

Passed the American Rescue Plan, resulting in $1.9 trillion in economic stimulus.

Extended the Child Tax Credit through the American Rescue Plan.

Extended unemployment benefits through the American Rescue Plan.

Passed the $1 trillion bipartisan infrastructure bill.

Secured funding for electric school buses in the infrastructure bill.

Secured funding to combat wildfires and droughts in the infrastructure bill.

Secured funding for replacing lead water service lines.

Engaged with lawmakers at least 150 times for infrastructure investment.

Led diplomatic mission to Guatemala and Mexico to address migration issues.

Launched the "Central America Forward" initiative.

Secured $4.2 billion in private sector commitments for Central America.

Visited Paris to strengthen US-France relations.

Visited Singapore and Vietnam to bolster economic and strategic ties.

Visited Poland to support NATO allies during the Russia-Ukraine conflict.

Visited Romania to support NATO allies during the Russia-Ukraine conflict.

Launched the "Fight for Reproductive Freedoms" tour.

Visited a Planned Parenthood clinic in Minnesota.

Passed the COVID-19 Hate Crimes Act.

Promoted racial equity in pandemic response through specific initiatives.

Chaired the National Space Council.

Visited NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center to promote space policies.

Passed the Freedom to Vote Act in the House.

Passed the John Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act in the House.

Built coalitions for voting rights protections.

Supported the Affordable Care Act through specific policy measures.

Expanded healthcare coverage through policy initiatives.

Passed initiatives for debt-free college education.

Hosted a STEM event for women and girls at the White House.

Championed criminal justice reform through specific legislation.

Secured passage of the bipartisan assault weapons ban.

Expanded background checks for gun purchases through legislation.

Increased the minimum wage through specific policy actions.

Implemented economic justice policies.

Expanded healthcare coverage through policy initiatives.

Secured funding for affordable housing.

Secured funding for affordable education initiatives.

Launched the "Justice is Coming Home" campaign for veterans' mental health.

Proposed legislation for easier legal actions against financial institutions.

Strengthened the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau.

Secured investment in early childhood education.

Launched maternal health initiatives.

Launched the "Call to Action to Reduce Maternal Mortality and Morbidity".

Made Black maternal health a national priority through policy actions.

Increased diversity in government appointments.

Passed legislation for renewable energy production.

Secured funding for combating climate change.

Passed infrastructure development initiatives.

Secured transportation funding through the infrastructure bill.

Developed a plan to combat climate change.

Reduced illegal immigration through policy actions.

Equitable vaccine distribution through specific policy measures.

Supported small businesses through pandemic recovery funds.

Secured educational resources during the pandemic.

Promoted international cooperation on climate initiatives.

Secured international agreements on climate change.

Passed economic policies benefiting the middle class.

Criticized policies benefiting the wealthy at the expense of the working class.

Promoted racial equity in healthcare through specific actions.

Promoted racial equity in economic policies.

Reduced racial disparities in education through specific initiatives.

Increased mental health resources for underserved communities.

Secured funding for affordable childcare.

Secured federal funding for community colleges.

Increased funding for HBCUs.

Increased vaccinations during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Secured policies for pandemic preparedness.

Ensured equitable vaccine distribution through policy actions.

Secured international cooperation for COVID-19 responses.

Reduced economic disparities exacerbated by the pandemic.

Passed digital equity initiatives for broadband access.

Expanded rural broadband through specific policies.

Secured cybersecurity policies through legislation.

Protected election integrity through specific actions.

Secured fair and secure elections through policy measures.

Strengthened international alliances through diplomacy.

Supported the Paris Climate Agreement through policy actions.

Led U.S. climate negotiations through international initiatives.

Passed initiatives for clean energy jobs.

Secured policies for energy efficiency.

Reduced carbon emissions through specific legislation.

Secured international climate finance.

Promoted public health policies through specific initiatives.

Passed reproductive health services policies.

Supported LGBTQ+ rights through specific actions.

Secured initiatives to reduce homelessness.

Increased veterans' benefits through legislation.

Secured affordable healthcare for veterans.

Passed policies to support military families.

Secured initiatives for veteran employment.

Increased mental health resources for veterans.

Passed disability rights legislation.

Secured policies for accessible infrastructure.

Increased funding for workforce development.

Implemented economic mobility policies.

Secured consumer protection policies through legislation.

Engaged in community outreach through public events.

Organized public engagement efforts.

Participated in over 720 official events, averaging three per day since taking office.

Supported efforts to modernize public health data systems.

[bananapancakewithcondensedmilk]

The Truth About Donald Trump’s Return to Power: What It Means for America, Its Systems, and the World

Donald Trump’s return to the U.S. presidency has sent shockwaves through political, social, and economic spheres, both domestically and globally. His recent actions, policies, and rhetoric reflect deep systemic fractures within the United States—fractures that have been long in the making but are now being fully exploited. The truth is stark: Trump’s resurgence is not merely about a political comeback; it is a symptom of deeper systemic issues that threaten democracy, global stability, and the future of governance as we know it.

What’s Happening Right Now: Key Actions and Their Immediate Impact

Since his return to office, Trump has wasted no time in enacting sweeping changes that directly challenge the foundations of U.S. institutions. His administration’s key actions include:

1. Pardoning January 6 Insurrectionists

• Trump’s mass pardon of those convicted for their roles in the Capitol riot signals a normalization of political violence. It undermines the judiciary, emboldens extremist groups, and sets a dangerous precedent where those who act violently in support of a political agenda face no consequences.

• Meaning: This action effectively rewrites history, framing insurrectionists as “patriots,” which legitimizes further extremist actions and weakens faith in the rule of law. It suggests that political loyalty can override justice.

2. Aggressive Nationalist Immigration Policies

• Declaring a “national emergency” at the southern border, deploying military forces, and revoking protections for migrants have created an environment of fear and hostility. The move caters to Trump’s base but also exacerbates human rights concerns and diplomatic tensions with neighboring countries.

• Meaning: This policy reveals systemic failures in immigration reform, highlighting how fear-mongering and xenophobia can be weaponized for political gain while ignoring the root causes of migration.

3. Dismantling Climate Commitments

• Withdrawing from the Paris Climate Agreement and promoting fossil fuel expansion places short-term economic interests over long-term environmental sustainability.

• Meaning: It highlights how corporate influence and short-sighted economic policies take precedence over scientific consensus and global responsibility, reinforcing the failure of capitalism to address existential crises like climate change.

4. Attacking Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) Initiatives

• Trump’s executive orders to eliminate DEI programs within federal agencies and universities reflect a cultural backlash against progress in social justice.

• Meaning: The move signals a larger societal shift towards exclusion and inequality, reflecting the systemic resistance to addressing historical injustices and a desire to maintain existing power structures.

5. Media and Information Control

• Trump has intensified his influence over conservative media outlets, while allies such as Elon Musk have reshaped social media platforms to favor right-wing narratives, restricting dissenting voices.

• Meaning: This further erodes public trust in information sources, exacerbating polarization and creating a society vulnerable to propaganda and misinformation.

What It Really Means for America: The Systemic Failures at Play

Trump’s return is not an anomaly—it is a manifestation of several deep-rooted systemic issues that have gone unaddressed for decades. These include:

1. The Collapse of Institutional Trust

• From Congress to the judiciary to the media, Americans have lost faith in the institutions meant to serve them. Trump’s populist rhetoric exploits this distrust, offering simple, authoritarian solutions to complex problems.

• The Reality: Decades of corporate influence, partisan deadlock, and economic inequality have eroded democracy’s credibility, paving the way for authoritarian figures like Trump to flourish.

2. Economic Desperation and Inequality

• Wealth disparity in the U.S. has reached extreme levels, with middle and lower-income Americans feeling left behind. Trump’s policies appeal to those who feel economically marginalized, promising prosperity through nationalism and deregulation.

• The Reality: Neoliberal capitalism has failed to create economic equity, leading many to support leaders who scapegoat minorities and globalization rather than addressing systemic economic reform.

3. The Weaponization of Fear and Identity Politics

• Trump’s strategy hinges on deepening cultural divides, using fear to mobilize support. Immigration, race, and gender issues are framed as existential threats, distracting from more pressing systemic challenges.

• The Reality: America’s unresolved racial and cultural tensions create a fertile ground for authoritarian politics, showing a failure to achieve true social cohesion.

4. Democratic Fragility and Legal Loopholes

• The U.S. Constitution, designed centuries ago, is struggling to contain modern threats like disinformation, corporate influence, and partisan radicalism. Trump’s actions highlight how easily democratic guardrails can be eroded when unchecked.

• The Reality: Without systemic reforms—such as electoral integrity measures and campaign finance regulation—democracy remains vulnerable to demagogues.

What It Means for the Rest of the World

Trump’s policies and actions do not occur in isolation. They have far-reaching global consequences, including:

1. The Erosion of Global Democratic Norms

• As the U.S. retreats from leadership in global democracy, autocratic regimes in countries like Russia, China, and Hungary find justification to further suppress dissent and expand authoritarian control.

• Global Impact: The decline of American democratic leadership emboldens anti-democratic forces worldwide.

2. Geopolitical Instability and Isolationism

• Trump’s withdrawal from international agreements and his aggressive “America First” policies create diplomatic rifts with allies, weakening collective responses to issues such as climate change and global security threats.

• Global Impact: The world becomes more fragmented, with rising nationalism leading to trade wars, resource competition, and diplomatic tensions.

3. The Global Far-Right Resurgence

• Trump’s influence transcends borders, inspiring right-wing movements across Europe and Latin America that adopt similar nationalist, anti-immigrant, and anti-globalization rhetoric.

• Global Impact: A rising tide of authoritarian leaders threatens human rights, media freedom, and multilateral cooperation.

4. Climate Catastrophe Acceleration

• Trump’s reversal of environmental policies impacts the global climate effort, making it more difficult to meet international targets and worsening the already severe climate crisis.

• Global Impact: Developing nations bear the brunt, facing more frequent natural disasters and economic instability.

What Can Be Done: Individual and Collective Action

The situation is dire but not irreversible. Addressing the systemic issues that have enabled Trump’s return requires:

1. Strengthening Grassroots Movements

• Local community organizing can counter top-down authoritarian policies by fostering inclusive, democratic participation.

2. Pushing for Systemic Reforms

• Electoral reforms, economic justice measures, and climate policies must be prioritized to prevent further authoritarian creep.

3. Holding Media Accountable

• Combating misinformation requires strengthening independent media and pushing for responsible regulation of social media platforms.

4. Global Solidarity

• International cooperation and activism can counter nationalist isolationism, promoting collaborative solutions to shared global challenges.

Conclusion: A Defining Moment for America and the World

Trump’s resurgence signals a defining moment, not just for the U.S. but for the global order. It forces us to confront the deep failures of democracy, capitalism, and governance. Recognizing this moment as both a warning and an opportunity is crucial. Society must collectively decide whether to address these systemic failures or allow them to spiral into irreversible authoritarianism.

The fight for democracy is not over—but it requires awareness, action, and an unwavering commitment to systemic transformation.

[minnesotafollower]

Biden Administration Announces Proposed Restrictions on Asylum Applications

On February 21, the Biden Administration announced a proposed rule that would  require rapid deportation of an immigrant at the U.S. border who had failed to request protection from another country while en route to the U.S. or who had not previously notified the U.S. via a mobile app of their plan to seek asylum in the U.S. or who had applied for the new U.S. humanitarian parole programs for…

[jaydendoodles]

summary of what these new executive orders will do for those who don't feel like reading all that shit. (source: https://www.wbaltv.com/article/track-the-executive-orders-president-donald-trump-signed-on-day-1/63458999)

all of the subtitles representing each order are shortened to 2 words based on the full order's title because i originally wrote this for something with a short character limit.

RESTORING NAMES: renames the mountain of Denali to Mt Mckinley. the Gulf of Mexico becomes Gulf of America (super cringe and i am never calling them that)

DESIGNATING CARTELS: cartels and foreign gangs are classified as terror groups, trump will use "Alien Enemies Act" to deport immigrants who were born in nations the gangs are from

REFORMING THE: no more diversity/equity rules for fed hiring. new guys must uphold "ideals of our american republic"

which most likely just means they are trump dickriders and other such fascists…

ENDING RADICAL: eliminates DEI and environmental justice requirements for hiring, as well as positions related to that, as well as any money going to diversity

DEFENDING WOMEN: trans people are no longer legally recognized by the state. redefines sex and gender to exclude trans people. he wants to undo any sex change on legal documents(?) ban the gov from supporting trans people. ban trans people from using preferred and they will require prisons to forcefully detransition trans people.

ESTABLISHING AND: creates "DOGE", also known as elon musk's position in trump's white house. to make the gov more "efficient".

AMERICA FIRST: prioritize USA and Trump's interests in america's global politics and actions.

PROTECTING UNITED: stricter screening and visas for new immigrants. will possibly ban people from certain countries from attempting to immigrate at all. they will try to deport a bunch of people.

UNLEASHING ALASKA: basically revokes any previous regulations that said that you can't drill for oil and gas in environmentally protected regions in Alaska

PROTECTING AGAINST (#10): gonna be stricter on immigration laws. make it a priority to deal with illegal immigrants. additionally will create Homeland Security Task Forces in every state. They want to try to identify every unregistered immigrant and announce it. Trump wants to make detention facilities (concentration camps) for holding the people who are apprehended. he wants state and local cops to be allowed to act as immigration officers. will undo most of the biden admin's actions regarding immigration. will prohibit federal funding from going to any city/state that refuses to comply with this/acting as sanctuary for these undocumented people. ban any money from going to things that he finds to be benefitting undocumented migrants. he's also gonna be hiring a lot more immigration cops...

tl;dr for PROTECTING AGAINST… increase the police state so that they can deport or detain as many undocumented migrants in concentration camps as possible

REEVALUATING AID: all foreign aid must align with donald trump's foreign policy and it'll be paused for 90 days for him to evaluate it all.

DECLARING ENERGY: declare a national energy emergency and allow energy resource collection on federal lands. allow agencies or governors to possibly be exempt from the regulations of the endangered species act. in other words, reckless oil drilling.

RESTORING DEATH: the AG must now pursue the death penalty for all crimes that are severe enough. he wants to try to reimprison the people on death row that biden let go. attempt to overrule supreme court precedents that make it harder to execute someone.

SECURING BORDER: build a wall. try to punish those who violate immigration laws and any citizen who may aid those people. deport more people. arrest and deport more migrants.

VALUE CITIZENSHIP: no more birthright citizenship… you're not a citizen if your mom wasn't documented (or if both your parents just weren't citizens even if they were legally here) at the time of your birth.

REFUGEE ADMISSIONS: revokes biden admin rulings about refugees being allowed to seek refuge in the USA. entry via the US Refugee Admissions Program is suspended and any refugee attempting to come in will only be allowed case-by-case until homeland security says it is in the so-called national interest to allow USRAP.

AMERICAN ENERGY: no EV requirement anymore. freedom of gas stoves lmao. encourage oil drilling and other energy collection much more domestically. revokes 12 biden climate change executive orders- (good strat if we want to all die.) sigh. abolishes American Climate Corps. abolishes any agency created by the revoked executive orders.-

-yknow what? just assume if it's a climate regulation, it just got shot in the back of the head. new interstate oil pipelines. bye bye Green New Deal. aghhhhh!!!

MILITARY ROLE: have the military at the borders to seal them and prevent 'invasion' by illegal migrants.

HOLDING FORMER: 50 people have their security clearance terminated.

RESTORING ACCOUNTABILITY (20): reinstates a 1st term trump order with some amendments. basically just says he can fire people in the executive branch if they disobey him or his higher-up underlings that also have to obey him.

WITHDRAWING FROM: we are no longer part of the World Health Organization and won't follow its rules.

APPLICATION OF: TikTok must follow trump's rules about national security if it wants to not be banned in the USA.

INITIAL RESCISSIONS: he revokes 67 other biden executive orders (which trump summarizes as "radical DEI ideology")

it would just be easier to link to the document than send screenshots of the list of all 67 orders so https://www.whitehouse.gov/presidential-actions/2025/01/initial-rescissions-of-harmful-executive-orders-and-actions/

notable ones he revoked include "Tackling the Climate Crisis at Home and Abroad" and "Promoting Access to Voting" and "Advancing Racial Equity and Support for Underserved Communities Through the Federal Government" or "Protecting Worker Health and Safety" as well as "Advancing Equality for Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender, Queer, and Intersex Individuals" because he totally really loves the working class and minorities ( :/ )

RESTORING FREEDOM: he wants to investigate the executive branch's activities during biden's term to determine if they violated the first amendment particularly about alleged censorship of protected speech on social media.

ENDING THE: trump admin appears to want to free the jan 6 rioters. the fed totally isn't allowed to go after political opponents anymore. anyway, this is going to be used to go after political opponents for supposedly violating this order during the biden admin and remedying what violations they find.

PUTTING AMERICA (26): leaving the Paris Agreement. leaving any agreements made under the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change. revoking the US International Climate Finance Plan. this will somehow make the US a leader in climate and energy.

[justinspoliticalcorner]

Rachel Leingang at The Guardian:

Despite disavowing Project 2025 on the campaign trail and the people involved with creating it, Donald Trump has now tapped numerous people tied to the project for key roles in his administration as he prepares to advance some of its main goals. He acknowledged in December that he agreed with some parts of the project, but didn’t say which, claiming he didn’t read it and didn’t have any part in it. “They have some things that are very conservative and very good. They have other things that I don’t like,” he told Time magazine. He also said he thought it was “inappropriate” that the project was released ahead of the election and could have derailed his win because “they had some pretty ridiculous things in there”.

The project is an effort by the Heritage Foundation, a prominent rightwing thinktank, and more than 100 other conservative organizations. It constitutes a 900-plus page manifesto that details how an incoming president should dismantle features of the government it believes conflict with conservative ideology. The people behind it also put together a database of thousands of potential employees who could staff the next Trump administration and a training program that taught these staffers how to work in the federal government. The first steps of the plan involve amassing more power for the top executive, driving out dissenting voices and stretching the law to favor Trump. Those plans are expected to begin immediately and Trump will also use the justice department to go after his enemies soon after taking office.

That power shift enables the other elements of the project, which calls for policies that overhaul immigration, restrict abortion access, remove LGTBQ+ and diversity protections, end climate work, alter employment practices and ramp up deregulation. “A lot of it’s going to be Trump daring Congress and the courts to stop him,” said Christopher Bosso, a professor of public policy and politics at Northeastern University. The extensive planning by the Heritage Foundation and other conservative groups for a second Trump administration stands in contrast to Trump’s first win, when the president wasn’t as ready to quickly install his loyalists and launch his policies. This time, the conservative movement is poised to pounce immediately on a pent-up demand of rightwing dreams – and so is Trump. “Project 2025 said the quiet parts out loud,” said Ben Olinsky, senior vice-president of structural reform and governance at the Center for American Progress, a left-leaning thinktank. The project didn’t just say what it wanted to do, but how it wanted to achieve its goals, he said. “It lays out a path to either ignore or flout the law, or to bend the law through its will, and change how things work so that they can get all of these things done. And that’s what makes it even scarier.”

What Trump’s appointments signal

Trump nominated Russell Vought, an architect of the project and the founder of the Center for Renewing America, as the director of the US office of management and budget, the same role Vought had in Trump’s first administration. Vought wrote a chapter for the project that talks about how the president can consolidate power and use the budget process to make agencies fall in line with his agenda. Both he and Trump rail against the so-called “deep state” and federal civil servants who staff much of the government.

That goal is a major part of Project 2025 and a top priority for Trump: making more federal jobs political appointments. Only about 4,000 federal employees are now political appointees. The rest of the more than 2 million civil servants hold their jobs regardless of party control and develop expertise that keeps critical services functioning. “Schedule F” would classify far more roles as policy-related – about 50,000 more – giving Trump a huge amount of power to roll out his agenda. Vought attacked the civil service as overly liberal and unaccountable to the people, saying that “a President today assumes office to find a sprawling federal bureaucracy that all too often is carrying out its own policy plans and preferences — or, worse yet, the policy plans and preferences of a radical, supposedly ‘woke’ faction of the country”.

[...]

The first dominoes

Expanding political appointments will be an early step for the Trump administration, a key way that will allow him to carry out the rest of his plans. “The ones to watch are the second tier, the ones right below the cabinet-grade people,” Bosso said. “And if you get a bunch of folks who are competent, who know what they’re doing, and they’re ready to go, and they believe in the project, that’s what’s going to be important.” Trump will also seek to end or undermine the independence of independent agencies. With the FCC, for example, he could try to bully them to go after broadcasters’ licenses because he doesn’t like their coverage, Olinsky said. Brendan Carr, Trump’s nominee to chair the Federal Communications Commission, wrote the Project 2025 chapter suggesting ways to change the FCC, including by reining in big tech. “I think they plan to run a hardball effort that, I would argue, just ignores or breaks the law, and then forces others to challenge them in the courts,” Olinsky said. While the justice department isn’t an independent agency, it has in effect been able to independently undertake investigations – which Trump could stop. Kevin Roberts, the Heritage Foundation president, has said “we just disagree wholly that the Department of Justice is independent of the president or the executive branch”. Project 2025 suggests stocking the department with far more political appointees because it has been “captured by an unaccountable bureaucratic managerial class and radical Left ideologues”. Immigration is a day-one priority for Trump, who has vowed a campaign of mass deportation and a raft of policy changes to block people from entering the country. Project 2025 doesn’t detail how a mass deportation would work, but it does call for stopping migration, halting waitlists for visa programs, ending some visas altogether, raiding worksites and going after cities and states that don’t play along.

Presidents have a lot of latitude on immigration policy, Olinsky said. “We should expect that Trump will exercise every lever at his disposal to limit legal immigration, to deport folks who have been here for years and to try to end birthright citizenship,” he said. Culture-war policy areas, like protections for LGBTQ+ people and efforts to improve diversity, will probably be reversed quickly once Trump takes office. Project 2025 makes suggestions in nearly every chapter of programs to get rid of these goals, some of which can be done away with by the internal directives. Deregulating industry is another key feature of the project where Trump aligns. Project 2025 includes a raft of deregulation plans and ways government functions can be privatized. This includes minimizing overtime pay for companies, making it harder to regulate toxic chemicals and weakening unions.

Donald Trump, despite purporting to “disavow” Project 2025 while on the campaign trail, has tapped numerous people involved with the project to key posts, such as Russ Vought.

With those moves, the first Project 2025 goal of the Trump Misadministration’s 2nd ride will be to extend power for him and his allies and silence dissent from his critics.

[plethoraworldatlas]

The ACLU on Tuesday vowed to launch a legal challenge to U.S. President Joe Biden's executive order barring migrants who cross the southern border without authorization from receiving asylum.

Biden's executive action invokes Section 212(f) of the Immigration and Nationality Act—previously used by the administration of former Republican President Donald Trump to deny migrants asylum—"when the southern border is overwhelmed."

Under the policy, asylum requests will be shut down when the average number of daily migrant encounters between ports of entry hits 2,500. Border entry points would reopen to asylum-seekers when that number dips below 1,500.

The president said he was acting, in part, because "Republicans in Congress chose to put partisan politics ahead of our national security, twice voting against the toughest and fairest set of reforms in decades."

On Tuesday, the ACLU said Biden's policy will "rush vulnerable people through already fast-tracked deportation proceedings, sending people in need of protection to their deaths."

"We intend to challenge this order in court," Lee Gelernt, deputy director of the ACLU Immigrants' Rights Project, said in a statement. "It was illegal when Trump did it, and it is no less illegal now."

In July 2020 a federal judge in Washington, D.C. struck down the Trump administration's ban on most Central Americans and migrants from other countries.

ACLU chief political and advocacy officer Deirdre Schifeling said that "we need solutions to address the challenges at the border, but the administration's planned executive actions will put thousands of lives at risk."

"They will not meet the needs at the border, nor will they fix our broken immigration system," Schifeling added. "We urge the administration to uphold its campaign promise to restore asylum and mobilize the necessary resources to address the challenges at the border. It's not just the morally sound thing to do—it's good politics."

The ACLU pointed to polling showing that "voters nationwide and in battleground states largely reject enforcement-only policies that put vulnerable people in danger."

The group is advocating "balanced and humane solutions" including "improving processing at ports of entry and addressing the immigration case backlog by investing in immigration court judges and legal representation."