<![CDATA[WDIV ClickOnDetroit]]>https://www.clickondetroit.comMon, 11 Nov 2024 09:34:19 +0000en1hourly1<![CDATA[Round 2 in the Trump-vs-Mexico matchup looks ominous for Mexico]]>https://www.clickondetroit.com/news/world/2024/11/11/round-2-in-the-trump-vs-mexico-matchup-looks-ominous-for-mexico/https://www.clickondetroit.com/news/world/2024/11/11/round-2-in-the-trump-vs-mexico-matchup-looks-ominous-for-mexico/Mon, 11 Nov 2024 06:05:33 +0000Mexico is facing a second Donald Trump presidency, and few countries can match its experience as a target of Trump's rhetoric: There have been threats to close the border, impose tariffs and even send U.S. forces to fight Mexican drug cartels if the country doesn’t do more to stem the flow of migrants and drugs.

That’s not to mention what mass deportations of migrants who are in the U.S. illegally could do to remittances — the money sent home by migrants — that have become one of Mexico’s main sources of income.

But as much as this second round looks like the first round — when Mexico pacified Trump by quietly ceding to his immigration demands — circumstances have changed, and not necessarily for the better. Today, Mexico has in Claudia Sheinbaum a somewhat stern leftist ideologue as president, and Trump is not known for handling such relations well.

Back in 2019, Mexico’s then-President Andrés Manuel Lopez Obrador was a charismatic, plain-spoken, folksy leader who seemed to understand Trump, because both had a transactional view of politics: You give me what I want, I’ll give you what you want. The two went on to form a chummy relationship.

But while López Obrador was forged in the give-and-take politics of the often-corrupt former ruling party, the Institutional Revolutionary Party, or PRI, Sheinbaum grew up in a family of leftist activists and got her political experience in radical university student movements.

“Claudia is more ideological than López Obrador, and so the problem is that I see her potentially responding to Trumpian policies, whether it’s, you know, organized crime or immigration or tariffs with a much more nationalistic, jingoistic view of the relationship,” said Arturo Sarukhan, Mexico’s former ambassador to the U.S. from 2007 to 2013.

Sheinbaum made a point of being one of the first world leaders to call Trump on Thursday to congratulate him after the election, but during the call Trump did two things that may say a lot about how things will go.

First, Sheinbaum said, Trump quickly brought up the border to remind her there were issues there. Then he asked Sheinbaum to send his greetings to López Obrador, with whom Trump said he had “a very good relationship.” That might suggest that Trump believes that López Obrador — the new president's political mentor — is still in charge, a view shared by some analysts.

Sarukhan said he believes the fact that Sheinbaum is a woman and is from Mexico will be "a very important challenge, an issue out there as both of them get going in their relationship.”

Not everything has changed for the worse: C ross-border trade has topped $800 billion per year and U.S. companies are more dependent than ever on Mexican plants.

But the U.S.-Mexico-Canada trade agreement, or USMCA, is coming up for review, and Mexico has made legal changes that Trump could seize on to demand a re-negotiation of parts of the deal.

Sheinbaum has suggested Mexico won't give in even if backed into a corner, saying “we obviously are going to address any problems that come up with dialogue, as a collaborative process, and if not, we are going to stand up, we are prepared to do that with great unity.”

Standing up hasn’t worked particularly well before. In 2018, Marcelo Ebrard was Mexico’s top diplomat; former U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said Ebrard basically bent to U.S. demands to keep asylum seekers in Mexico and accept migrants back even if they weren’t Mexicans.

Ebrard just asked that the deal not be made public to avoid embarrassing López Obrador, Pompeo wrote. (Ebrard later claimed he had avoided signing a much worse ‘safe third country’ agreement.)

Today, Ebrard is Mexico’s economy secretary, and would lead Mexico’s delegation in the scheduled 2026 review of the U.S.-Mexico-Canada free trade agreement, something that Trump has greeted with mirth ("I've never seen anybody fold like that," Trump once said of Ebrard.)

Ebrard on Thursday downplayed any risks this time around, saying e conomic ties between the two countries would keep Trump from closing borders or imposing tariffs.

“I am optimistic. Unlike other countries, we are the largest trading partner (of the U.S.), so, if you put up a tariff, that will have repercussions in the United States,” Ebrard said. “I’m not saying it is going to be easy, because it is not at all easy, but the relationship with President Trump will be good because, what unites us? These numbers, this gigantic economy.”

But some former diplomats say any argument that Mexico can avoid friction with the Trump administration is overconfident, and that 2025 is not necessarily going to be like 2019.

Martha Bárcena, Mexico’s ambassador to the U.S. from 2018 to 2021, said she doesn't think Trump would back away from campaign promises to deport migrants who are in the country illegally. She said Mexican officials who believe Trump might temper his “campaign promises because Mexican migrants are necessary for the U.S. economy” are being overly optimistic.

“Mexico is looking at it through the lens of economic logic. The logic that the Trump campaign applies on immigration is a logic of national security and cultural identity issues," Bárcena said.

Some of Trump's biggest policy concerns – restoring U.S. jobs and the increasing rivalry with China — also run through Mexico.

U.S. and foreign automakers have set up dozens of plants in Mexico, and some in the U.S. worry that Chinese companies could do the same to take advantage of existing trade rules to export Chinese cars or auto parts to the United States.

It doesn’t help that Sheinbaum has pushed through López Obrador’s policies aimed at eliminating independent regulatory and oversight bodies, and laws the U.S. government says could reduce the independence of the judiciary, both of which are required under the USMCA trade agreement.

“If they go ahead with the elimination of independent regulators and autonomous bodies, that’s going to be a further violation of the USMCA,” Sarukhan said. “And then that’s going to make things even worse. Obviously, the big piece is going to be China and the Chinese footprint in Mexico.”

That could lead Trump to demand the re-negotiation of all auto industry agreements under the trade pact.

As far as efforts to jointly combat the illegal drug trade — such cooperation fell to historic lows in 2019 and 2020 — there have been some modestly encouraging signs. Last week, Mexico announced the seizure in Tijuana of over 300,000 fentanyl pills after months when t he country’s entire seizures had amounted to as little as 50 grams — a couple of ounces — per week.

Sheinbaum, who took office on Oct. 1, also appears to be tacitly abandoning López Obrador’s strategy of not confronting drug cartels. But neither she nor her predecessor and political mentor could ever accept any Trump plan to send U.S. forces to operate independently on Mexican soil.

It remains to see how far Trump might go; he often makes only token gestures to carry through on threats. But Sarukhan noted, “I do think that he will talk loudly and carry a big stick.”

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<![CDATA[Trump announces Tom Homan, former director of immigration enforcement, will serve as 'border czar']]>https://www.clickondetroit.com/news/politics/2024/11/11/trump-announces-tom-homan-former-director-of-immigration-enforcement-will-serve-as-border-czar/https://www.clickondetroit.com/news/politics/2024/11/11/trump-announces-tom-homan-former-director-of-immigration-enforcement-will-serve-as-border-czar/Mon, 11 Nov 2024 04:44:20 +0000President-elect Donald Trump says that Tom Homan, his former acting U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement director, will serve as “border czar” in his incoming administration.

“I am pleased to announce that the Former ICE Director, and stalwart on Border Control, Tom Homan, will be joining the Trump Administration, in charge of our Nation’s Borders," he wrote late Sunday on his Truth Social site.

Homan was widely expected to be offered a position related to the border and Trump’s pledge to launch the largest deportation operation in the country's history.

In addition to overseeing the southern and northern borders and “maritime, and aviation security,” Trump said Homan “will be in charge of all Deportation of Illegal Aliens back to their Country of Origin,” a central part of his agenda.

He says he had “no doubt” Homan “will do a fantastic, and long awaited for, job.”

Such a role does not require Senate confirmation.

In an interview on Fox News Channel’s “Sunday Morning Futures,” Homan said the military would not be rounding up and arresting immigrants in the country illegally and that ICE would move to implement Trump's plans in a “humane manner.”

“It’s going to be a well-targeted, planned operation conducted by the men of ICE. The men and women of ICE do this daily. They’re good at it,” he said. “When we go out there, we’re going to know who we’re looking for. We most likely know where they’re going to be, and it’s going to be done in a humane manner."

Earlier this year at the National Conservatism Conference in Washington, Homan expressed frustration at the news coverage of a mass deportation operation.

“Wait until 2025,” he said, adding that, while he thinks the government needed to prioritize national security threats, “no one’s off the table. If you’re here illegally, you better be looking over your shoulder.”

He also said: “you’ve got my word. Trump comes back in January, I’ll be in his heels coming back, and I will run the biggest deportation operation this country’s ever seen.”

___

Associated Press writer Adriana Gomez Licon in Fort Lauderdale, Florida, contributed to this report.

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<![CDATA[Will Trump's hush money conviction stand? A judge will rule on the president-elect's immunity claim]]>https://www.clickondetroit.com/news/politics/2024/11/11/will-trumps-hush-money-conviction-stand-a-judge-will-rule-on-the-president-elects-immunity-claim/https://www.clickondetroit.com/news/politics/2024/11/11/will-trumps-hush-money-conviction-stand-a-judge-will-rule-on-the-president-elects-immunity-claim/Mon, 11 Nov 2024 05:23:37 +0000A gut punch for most defendants, Donald Trump turned his criminal conviction into a rallying cry. His supporters put “I’m Voting for the Felon” on T-shirts, hats and lawn signs.

“The real verdict is going to be Nov. 5 by the people,” Trump proclaimed after his conviction in New York last spring on 34 counts of falsifying business records.

Now, just a week after Trump's resounding election victory, a Manhattan judge is poised to decide whether to uphold the hush money verdict or dismiss it because of a U.S. Supreme Court decision in July that gave presidents broad immunity from criminal prosecution.

Judge Juan M. Merchan has said he will issue a written opinion Tuesday on Trump's request to toss his conviction and either order a new trial or dismiss the indictment entirely.

Merchan had been expected to rule in September, but put it off “to avoid any appearance” he was trying to sway the election. His decision could be on ice again if Trump takes other steps to delay or end the case.

If the judge upholds the verdict, the case would be on track for sentencing Nov. 26 — though that could shift or vanish depending on appeals or other legal maneuvers.

Trump's lawyers have been fighting for months to reverse his conviction, which involved efforts to conceal a $130,000 payment to porn actor Stormy Daniels, whose affair allegations threatened to disrupt his 2016 campaign.

Trump denies her claim, maintains he did nothing wrong and has decried the verdict as a “rigged, disgraceful” result of a politically motivated “witch hunt” meant to harm his campaign.

The Supreme Court’s ruling gives former presidents immunity from prosecution for official acts — things they do as part of their job as president — and bars prosecutors from using evidence of official acts in trying to prove that purely personal conduct violated the law.

Trump was a private citizen — campaigning for president, but neither elected nor sworn in — when his then-lawyer Michael Cohen paid Daniels in October 2016.

But Trump was president when Cohen was reimbursed, and Cohen testified that they discussed the repayment arrangement in the Oval Office. Those reimbursements, jurors found, were falsely logged in Trump’s records as legal expenses.

Trump’s lawyers contend the Manhattan district attorney's office “tainted” the case with evidence — including testimony about Trump’s first term as president — that shouldn’t have been allowed.

Prosecutors maintain that the high court's ruling provides “no basis for disturbing the jury’s verdict.” Trump's conviction, they said, involved unofficial acts — personal conduct for which he is not immune.

The Supreme Court didn't define an official act, leaving that to lower courts. Nor did it make clear how its ruling — which arose from one of Trump's two federal criminal cases — pertains to state-level cases like Trump's hush money prosecution.

“There are several murky aspects of the court’s ruling, but one that is particularly relevant to this case is the issue of what counts as an official act," said George Mason University law professor Ilya Somin. “And I think it’s extremely difficult to argue that this payoff to this woman does qualify as an official act, for a number of fairly obvious reasons.”

Trump’s efforts to erase the verdict have taken on new urgency since his election, with a sentencing date looming at the end of the month and possible punishments ranging from a fine or probation to up to four years in prison.

Presidents-elect don't typically enjoy the same legal protections as presidents, but Trump and his lawyers could try to leverage his unique status as a former and future commander-in-chief into something of a “Get Out of Jail Free” card.

One likely argument: Trump wouldn't just be saving himself from a potential prison sentence, he'd be sparing the nation from the calamity of its leader behind bars — however remote that possibility is.

“He’ll ask every court in the world to intervene if he can, including the Supreme Court, so that could drag things out a bit,” said Syracuse University law professor David Driesen, author of the book, “The Specter of Dictatorship: Judicial Enabling of Presidential Power.”

At the same time, Trump has been attempting to again move the case from state court to federal court, where he could also assert immunity. His lawyers have asked the 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals to reverse a judge’s September ruling denying the transfer.

If Merchan orders a new trial, it seems unlikely that could happen while Trump is in office.

Trump’s lawyers argued in court papers that, given the Supreme Court ruling, jurors shouldn’t have been allowed to hear about matters including his conversations with then-White House communications director Hope Hicks, nor another aide's testimony about his work practices.

Also verboten, they said, was prosecutors’ use of Trump’s 2018 financial disclosure report, which he was required as president to file. A footnote mentioned that Trump reimbursed Cohen in 2017 for unspecified expenses the year before.

Trump lawyers Todd Blanche and Emil Bove argued that prosecutors were trying “to assign a criminal motive” to some of Trump’s actions in office to “unfairly prejudice” him. For example, they wrote, prosecutors pushed the “dubious theory" that some of Trump's 2018 tweets were part of a “pressure campaign” to keep Cohen from turning on him.

The immunity decision “forecloses inquiry into those motives,” Blanche and Bove wrote.

Prosecutors countered that the ruling doesn’t apply to the evidence in question, and that regardless, it’s “only a sliver of the mountains of testimony and documentary proof” the jury considered.

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<![CDATA[Trump breaks GOP losing streak in nation's largest majority-Arab city with a pivotal final week]]>https://www.clickondetroit.com/news/politics/2024/11/11/trump-breaks-gop-losing-streak-in-nations-largest-majority-arab-city-with-a-pivotal-final-week/https://www.clickondetroit.com/news/politics/2024/11/11/trump-breaks-gop-losing-streak-in-nations-largest-majority-arab-city-with-a-pivotal-final-week/Mon, 11 Nov 2024 05:15:09 +0000Faced with two choices she didn't like, Suehaila Amen chose neither.

Instead, the longtime Democrat from the Arab American stronghold of Dearborn, Michigan, backed a third-party candidate for president, adding her voice to a remarkable turnaround that helped Donald Trump reclaim Michigan and the presidency.

In Dearborn, where nearly half of the 110,000 residents are of Arab descent, Vice President Kamala Harris received over 2,500 fewer votes than Trump, who became the first Republican presidential candidate since former President George W. Bush in 2000 to win the city. Harris also lost neighboring Dearborn Heights to Trump, who in his previous term as president banned travel from several mostly-Muslim countries.

Harris lost the presidential vote in two Detroit-area cities with large Arab American populations after months of warnings from local Democrats about the Biden-Harris administration’s unwavering support for Israel in the war in Gaza. Some said they backed Trump after he visited a few days before the election, mingling with customers and staff at a Lebanese-owned restaurant and reassuring people that he would find a way to end the violence in the Middle East.

Others, including Amen, were unable to persuade themselves to back the former president. She said many Arab Americans felt Harris got what she deserved but aren’t “jubilant about Trump.”

“Whether it’s Trump himself or the people who are around him, it does pose a great deal of concern for me,” Amen said. “But at the end of the day when you have two evils running, what are you left with?”

As it became clear late Tuesday into early Wednesday that Trump would not only win the presidency but likely prevail in Dearborn, the mood in metro Detroit’s Arab American communities was described by Dearborn City Council member Mustapha Hammoud as “somber.” And yet, he said, the result was “not surprising at all.”

The shift in Dearborn — where Trump received nearly 18,000 votes compared with Harris' 15,000 — marks a startling change from just four years ago when Joe Biden won in the city by a nearly 3-to-1 margin.

No one should be surprised

The results didn't come out of nowhere. For months, in phone calls and meetings with top Democratic officials, local leaders warned, in blunt terms, that Arab American voters would turn against them if the administration’s handling of the Israel-Hamas war didn’t change.

The Biden-Harris administration has remained a staunch ally of Israel since the brutal Oct. 7, 2023, attack by Hamas, which killed 1,200 Israelis and took over 200 hostages. The war between Israel and Hamas has killed more than 43,000 people in Gaza, Palestinian health officials say. They do not distinguish between civilians and combatants.

While Harris softened her rhetoric on the war, she didn't propose concrete policies toward Israel or the war in Gaza that varied from the administration’s position. And even if she had, that might not have made much of a difference in places like Dearborn.

“All she had to do was stop the war in Lebanon and Gaza and she would receive everyone’s votes here,” said Hammoud.

More voters thought Trump would be better able to handle the situation in the Middle East than Harris, according to AP VoteCast, a survey of more than 120,000 voters nationwide. About half of voters named Trump as better suited, compared with about a third who said Harris.

Among those who opposed more aid for Israel, 58% backed Harris in the presidential election; 39% supported Trump.

Even some Harris voters had their doubts. About three-quarters of Harris voters in Michigan said she was the better candidate to handle the situation. Few preferred Trump, but about 2 in 10 Harris voters said they were equivalent or neither would be better.

In the absence of support for Harris in the Arab American community, Trump and his allies stepped in.

A key part of Michigan’s electorate — a state Trump won by nearly 11,000 votes in 2016 before he lost it by nearly 154,000 to Biden in 2020 — Arab Americans spent months meeting with Trump allies, who encouraged community leaders to endorse him.

Things began to move in September, when Amer Ghalib, the Democratic Muslim mayor of the city of Hamtramck, endorsed Trump. Shortly after, Trump visited a campaign office there.

That was a turning point, said Massad Boulos, the father of Trump’s son-in-law who led his outreach with Arab Americans.

“They very, very much appreciated the president’s visit and the respect that they felt,” said Boulos. “That was the first big achievement, so to speak. After that, I started getting endorsements from imams and Muslim leaders.”

An apparent shift toward Trump in final week

While support for Harris had been declining for months — especially after her campaign did not allow a pro-Palestinian speaker to take the stage at August’s Democratic National Convention — some voters say the last week of the campaign was pivotal.

At an Oct. 30 rally in Michigan, former President Bill Clinton said Hamas uses civilians as shields and will “force you to kill civilians if you want to defend yourself.”

“Hamas did not care about a homeland for the Palestinians, they wanted to kill Israelis and make Israel uninhabitable," he said. "Well, I got news for them, they were there first, before their faith existed, they were there.”

The Harris campaign wanted Clinton to visit Dearborn to speak in the days following the rally, according to two sources with direct knowledge of the discussions who were not authorized to speak on them. The potential visit never materialized after backlash over Clinton’s comments.

“That comment was the talk of the town. It hurt many like me, who loved him,” said Amin Hashmi, who was born in Pakistan and lives in suburban Detroit. A self-proclaimed “die-hard Dem,” Hashmi said casting a ballot for Trump “was a seismic move” that came after he stood in the voting booth for 25 minutes.

On the Friday before the election, Trump visited The Great Commoner in Dearborn, the Lebanese-owned restaurant. That stood in sharp contrast with Harris, who met with Dearborn’s Democratic mayor, Abdullah Hammoud — who didn’t endorse in the race — but never came to Dearborn herself.

“He came up to Dearborn. He spoke with residents. Whether some people say it wasn’t genuine, he still made the effort. He did reach out and try to work with them, at least listen to them,” said Samia Hamid, a Dearborn resident.

Amen said that at polling places in Dearborn on Tuesday, “people were coming out and saying they were either voting third party or they were voting for Trump.” When she asked what led them to support Trump, “they said, at least he came out here and he talked to us, he acknowledged our community.”

Although Arab American support didn’t propel him to the White House, Trump has made several promises that stuck in voters' minds. Mainly, they'll be watching to see if he’ll follow through on his vow to end the war.

They also hope his next term will differ from his first, when he enacted the travel ban targeting Muslim-majority countries. His rhetoric on that score has been mixed — he even pledged to expand the ban to refugees from Gaza.

Osama Siblani, publisher of Arab American News based in Dearborn, said people will “hold him accountable." Regardless, Siblani added, the community “survived the first four years” of Trump.

“We will survive the next four,” he said.

___

Cappelletti reported from Detroit. Associated Press journalist Hannah Fingerhut in Washington contributed to this report.

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<![CDATA[Trump on Day 1: Begin deportation push, pardon Jan. 6 rioters and make his criminal cases vanish]]>https://www.clickondetroit.com/news/politics/2024/11/10/trump-on-day-1-begin-deportation-push-pardon-jan-6-rioters-and-make-his-criminal-cases-vanish/https://www.clickondetroit.com/news/politics/2024/11/10/trump-on-day-1-begin-deportation-push-pardon-jan-6-rioters-and-make-his-criminal-cases-vanish/Sun, 10 Nov 2024 13:05:23 +0000Donald Trump has said he wouldn’t be a dictator — “except for Day 1." According to his own statements, he's got a lot to do on that first day in the White House.

His list includes starting up the mass deportation of migrants, rolling back Biden administration policies on education, reshaping the federal government by firing potentially thousands of federal employees he believes are secretly working against him, and pardoning people who were arrested for their role in the riot at the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021.

“I want to close the border, and I want to drill, drill, drill," he said of his Day 1 plans.

When he took office in 2017, he had a long list, too, including immediately renegotiating trade deals, deporting migrants and putting in place measures to root out government corruption. Those things didn't happen all at once.

How many executive orders in the first week? “There will be tens of them. I can assure you of that," Trump’s national press secretary, Karoline Leavitt, told Fox News on Sunday.

Here's a look at what Trump has said he will do in his second term and whether he can do it the moment he steps into the White House:

Make most of his criminal cases go away, at least the federal ones

Trump has said that “within two seconds" of taking office that he would fire Jack Smith, the special counsel who has been prosecuting two federal cases against him. Smith is already evaluating how to wind down the cases because of long-standing Justice Department policy that says sitting presidents cannot be prosecuted.

Smith charged Trump last year with plotting to overturn the results of the 2020 presidential election and illegally hoarding classified documents at his Mar-a-Lago estate in Florida.

Trump cannot pardon himself when it comes to his state conviction in New York in a hush money case, but he could seek to leverage his status as president-elect in an effort to set aside or expunge his felony conviction and stave off a potential prison sentence.

A case in Georgia, where Trump was charged with election interference, will likely be the only criminal case left standing. It would probably be put on hold until at least 2029, at the end of his presidential term. The Georgia prosecutor on the case just won reelection.

Pardon supporters who attacked the Capitol

More than 1,500 people have been charged since a mob of Trump supporters spun up by the outgoing president attacked the Capitol almost nearly four years ago.

Trump launched his general election campaign in March by not merely trying to rewrite the history of that riot, but positioning the violent siege and failed attempt to overturn the 2020 election as a cornerstone of his bid to return to the White House. As part of that, he called the rioters “unbelievable patriots” and promised to help them “the first day we get into office.”

As president, Trump can pardon anyone convicted in federal court, District of Columbia Superior Court or in a military court-martial. He can stop the continued prosecution of rioters by telling his attorney general to stand down.

“I am inclined to pardon many of them," Trump said on his social media platform in March when announcing the promise. “I can’t say for every single one, because a couple of them, probably they got out of control.”

Dismantle the ‘deep state’ of government workers

Trump could begin the process of stripping tens of thousands of career employees of their civil service protections, so they could be more easily fired.

He wants to do two things: drastically reduce the federal workforce, which he has long said is an unnecessary drain, and to “totally obliterate the deep state” — perceived enemies who, he believes, are hiding in government jobs.

Within the government, there are hundreds of politically appointed professionals who come and go with administrations. There also are tens of thousands of “career” officials, who work under Democratic and Republican presidents. They are considered apolitical workers whose expertise and experience help keep the government functioning, particularly through transitions.

Trump wants the ability to convert some of those career people into political jobs, making them easier to dismiss and replace with loyalists. He would try to accomplish that by reviving a 2020 executive order known as “Schedule F.” The idea behind the order was to strip job protections from federal workers and create a new class of political employees. It could affect roughly 50,000 of 2.2 million civilian federal employees.

Democratic President Joe Biden rescinded the order when he took office in January 2021. But Congress failed to pass a bill protecting federal employees. The Office of Personnel Management, the federal government’s chief human resources agency, finalized a rule last spring against reclassifying workers, so Trump might have to spend months — or even years — unwinding it.

Trump has said he has a particular focus on “corrupt bureaucrats who have weaponized our justice system” and “corrupt actors in our national security and intelligence apparatus.”

Beyond the firings, Trump wants to crack down on government officials who leak to reporters. He also wants to require that federal employees pass a new civil service test.

Impose tariffs on imported goods, especially those from China

Trump promised throughout the campaign to impose tariffs on imported goods, particularly those from China. He argued that such import taxes would keep manufacturing jobs in the United States, shrink the federal deficit and help lower food prices. He also cast them as central to his national security agenda.

“Tariffs are the greatest thing ever invented," Trump said during a September rally in Flint, Michigan.

The size of his pledged tariffs varied. He proposed at least a 10% across-the-board tariff on imported goods, a 60% import tax on goods from China and a 25% tariff on all goods from Mexico — if not more.

Trump would likely not need Congress to impose these tariffs, as was clear in 2018, when he imposed them on steel and aluminum imports without going through lawmakers by citing Section 232 of the Trade Expansion Act of 1962. That law, according to the Congressional Research Service, gives a president the power to adjust tariffs on imports that could affect U.S. national security, an argument Trump has made.

“We’re being invaded by Mexico,” Trump said at a rally in North Carolina this month. Speaking about the new president of Mexico, Claudia Sheinbaum, Trump said: “I’m going to inform her on Day 1 or sooner that if they don’t stop this onslaught of criminals and drugs coming into our country, I’m going to immediately impose a 25% tariff on everything they send into the United States of America.”

Roll back protections for transgender students

Trump said during the campaign that he would roll back Biden administration action seeking to protect transgender students from discrimination in schools on the first day of his new administration.

Opposition to transgender rights was central to the Trump campaign’s closing argument. His campaign ran an ad in the final days of the race against Vice President Kamala Harris in which a narrator said: “Kamala is for they/them. President Trump is for you.”

The Biden administration announced new Title IX protections in April that made clear treating transgender students differently from their classmates is discrimination. Trump responded by saying he would roll back those changes, pledging to do some on the first day of his new administration and specifically noting he has the power to act without Congress.

“We’re going to end it on Day 1,” Trump said in May. “Don’t forget, that was done as an order from the president. That came down as an executive order. And we’re going to change it — on Day 1 it’s going to be changed.”

It is unlikely Trump will stop there.

Speaking at a Wisconsin rally in June, Trump said “on Day 1" he would “sign a new executive order” that would cut federal money for any school “pushing critical race theory, transgender insanity and other inappropriate racial, sexual or political content onto the lives of our children.”

Trump hasn’t said how he would try to cut schools’ federal money, and any widespread rollback would require action from Congress.

Drill, drill, drill

Trump is looking to reverse climate policies aimed at reducing planet-warming greenhouse gas emissions.

With an executive order on Day 1, he can roll back environmental protections, halt wind projects, scuttle the Biden administration's targets that encourage the switch to electric cars and abolish standards for companies to become more environmentally friendly.

He has pledged to increase production of U.S. fossil fuels, promising to “drill, drill, drill," when he gets into office on Day 1 and seeking to open the Arctic wilderness to oil drilling, which he claims would lower energy costs.

Settle the war between Russia and Ukraine

Trump has repeatedly said he could settle the war between Russia and Ukraine in one day.

When asked to respond to the claim, Russia’s U.N. ambassador, Vassily Nebenzia, said “the Ukrainian crisis cannot be solved in one day.”

Leavitt, the Trump press secretary, told Fox News after Trump on Wednesday was declared the winner of the election that he would now be able to “negotiate a peace deal between Russia and Ukraine.” She later said, “It includes, on Day 1, bringing Ukraine and Russia to the negotiating table to end this war.”

Russia invaded Ukraine nearly three years ago. Trump, who makes no secret of his admiration for Russian President Vladimir Putin, has criticized the Biden administration for giving money to Ukraine to fight the war.

At a CNN town hall in May 2023, Trump said: “They’re dying, Russians and Ukrainians. I want them to stop dying. And I’ll have that done — I’ll have that done in 24 hours.” He said that would happen after he met with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy and Putin.

Begin mass deportations of migrants in the US

Speaking last month at his Madison Square Garden rally in New York, Trump said: “On Day 1, I will launch the largest deportation program in American history to get the criminals out. I will rescue every city and town that has been invaded and conquered, and we will put these vicious and bloodthirsty criminals in jail, then kick them the hell out of our country as fast as possible.”

In one of his first personnel announcements, Trump announced via social media late Sunday that he would put Tom Homan, his former acting Immigration and Customs Enforcement director, “in charge of all Deportation of Illegal Aliens back to their Country of Origin,” a central part of his agenda.

Trump can direct his administration to begin the effort the minute he arrives in office, but it's much more complicated to actually deport the nearly 11 million people who are believed to be in the United States illegally. That would require a huge, trained law enforcement force, massive detention facilities, airplanes to move people and nations willing to accept them.

Trump has said he would invoke the Alien Enemies Act. That rarely used 1798 law allows the president to deport anyone who is not an American citizen and is from a country with which there is a “declared war” or a threatened or attempted “invasion or predatory incursion.”

He has spoken about deploying the National Guard, which can be activated on orders from a governor. Stephen Miller, a top Trump adviser, said sympathetic Republican governors could send troops to nearby states that refuse to participate.

Asked about the cost of his plan, he told NBC News: “It’s not a question of a price tag. It’s not — really, we have no choice. When people have killed and murdered, when drug lords have destroyed countries, and now they’re going to go back to those countries because they’re not staying here. There is no price tag.”

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This story corrects the reference to Title IX.

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<![CDATA[Biden's White House invitation to Trump continues a tradition Trump shunned in 2020]]>https://www.clickondetroit.com/news/politics/2024/11/11/bidens-white-house-invitation-to-trump-continues-a-tradition-trump-shunned-in-2020/https://www.clickondetroit.com/news/politics/2024/11/11/bidens-white-house-invitation-to-trump-continues-a-tradition-trump-shunned-in-2020/Mon, 11 Nov 2024 05:02:51 +0000Before he comes back for good on Inauguration Day, Donald Trump will return to the White House briefly at the invitation of Democratic President Joe Biden, who had hoped to defeat his Republican predecessor a second time and reside there for four more years.

That may make for an awkward encounter, especially given that, after Biden ousted Trump in 2020, Trump offered no such White House invitation to Biden. Trump even left Washington before the Jan. 20, 2021, inauguration, becoming the first president to do so since since Andrew Johnson skipped the 1869 swearing-in of Ulysses S. Grant.

Biden also has the unusual distinction of having beaten Trump in one cycle and run against him for about 15 months during this year’s campaign. As he sought reelection, Biden constantly decried Trump as a threat to democracy and the nation’s core values before leaving the race in July and endorsing Vice President Kamala Harris, who took on her own campaign and lost on Election Day.

When the two meet in the Oval Office on Wednesday, it’ll technically be the first time since 1992 that an outgoing president sits down with an incoming one he competed against in a campaign. Back then, Republican President George H.W. Bush met with Democrat and President-elect Bill Clinton about two weeks after they squared off on Election Day.

Bush and Clinton talked policy before going together to the Roosevelt Room to meet with their transition staff. Clinton later called the meeting “terrific” and said Bush was “very helpful.”

Over the decades, such handoff meetings between outgoing presidents and their replacements have been by turns friendly, tense and somewhere in between.

This time, Biden has vowed to ensure a smooth transition and emphasized the importance of working with Trump, who is both his presidential predecessor and successor, to bring the country together. Biden’s White House invitation to Trump includes his wife, the former and now incoming first lady, Melania Trump.

“I assured him that I’d direct my entire administration to work with his team,” Biden said of the call with Trump when he made the invitation. The president-elect “looks forward to the meeting," spokesman Steven Cheung said.

Jim Bendat, a historian and author of “Democracy’s Big Day: The Inauguration of Our President,” called face-to-face chats between outgoing and incoming presidents “healthy for democracy.”

“I’m pleased to see that the Democrats have chosen to take the high road and returned to the traditions that really do make America great,” Bendat said.

Trump has done this before

This year's meeting won't be uncharted territory for Trump.

He and then-Democratic President Barack Obama held a longer-than-scheduled 90-minute Oval Office discussion days after the 2016 election. White House chief of staff Denis McDonough also showed Trump's son-in-law Jared Kushner around the West Wing.

“We now are going to want to do everything we can to help you succeed. Because, if you succeed, then the country succeeds,” Obama told Trump, despite the president-elect being fresh off a victory that dented the outgoing president’s legacy.

Trump appeared nervous and was unusually subdued, calling Obama “a good man” and the meeting “a great honor.” He said he had “great respect” for Obama and that they “discussed a lot of different situations, some wonderful and some difficulties.”

“I very much look forward to dealing with the president in the future, including counsel,” Trump said. Obama White House press secretary Josh Earnest described the meeting as “at least a little less awkward than some might have expected,” and he noted that the two “did not relitigate their differences in the Oval Office.”

In fact, that encounter went smoothly enough to reassure a few Trump critics that he might grow into the job and become more presidential in temperament and action — an assessment quickly subsumed by Trump’s unique relish of bombast and political conflict once his administration began, particularly when it came to his predecessor.

Only about four months later, Trump accused Obama – without evidence – of having his “wires tapped” in Trump Tower before the 2016 election. On social media, he blasted the former president for engaging in “McCarthyism” and decrying it as “Nixon/Watergate. Bad (or sick) guy!”

Obama aides now say that while the 2016 Trump-Obama meeting went well publicly, the incoming president's team ignored most of the transition process and did not have the same reverence for the White House and federal institutions that they or Republican President George W. Bush’s team had.

One recalled that the only question Trump counterparts asked at the time was not about the coming workload or responsibilities, but how best to find an apartment in Washington.

A tradition, but not a requirement

The official transition process does not mandate that presidents invite their successors to face-to-face meetings, though it can feel that way.

“The psychological transfer occurs then," former Vice President Walter Mondale once said.

There's no record of George Washington scheduling a formal meeting with the nation's second president, John Adams, before leaving the then-capital city of New York. And Adams, after moving into the White House during his term, never invited his political rival and successor, Thomas Jefferson, over before leaving without attending Jefferson's inauguration in 1801.

Still, by 1841, President Martin Van Buren hosted President-elect William Henry Harrison — who had soundly beaten him on Election Day — for dinner at the White House. He even later offered to leave the official residence early to make room for his successor after Washington's National Hotel, where Harrison had been staying, became overcrowded. Harrison instead made a brief, preinaugural trip to Virginia.

More recently, Republican George W. Bush welcomed Obama to the White House in 2008 after calling the election of the nation's first Black president a “triumph of the American story.”

And eight years prior, Bush himself was the newcomer when he met with the outgoing Clinton, who had denied his father a second term. Their chat came just eight days after the Supreme Court resolved the disputed 2000 election, and Bush also later headed to the vice presidential residence to briefly talk with the man he defeated, Al Gore.

Bush and Gore didn't say what they discussed, though vice presidential press aide Jim Kennedy described the conversation as meant to ″demonstrate that this is a country where we put aside our differences after a long and difficult campaign.″

Trump and Harris spoke by phone this past week but don't have a face-to-face meeting planned.

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<![CDATA[Republican David Schweikert wins reelection in affluent Arizona congressional district]]>https://www.clickondetroit.com/news/politics/2024/11/11/republican-david-schweikert-wins-reelection-in-affluent-arizona-congressional-district/https://www.clickondetroit.com/news/politics/2024/11/11/republican-david-schweikert-wins-reelection-in-affluent-arizona-congressional-district/Mon, 11 Nov 2024 03:15:43 +0000Republican David Schweikert has won an eighth term in an affluent congressional district in the Phoenix area by fending off a challenge from a Democratic former state lawmaker.

Schweikert defeated Amish Shah, an emergency room doctor, Sunday in Arizona’s 1st Congressional District that includes north Phoenix, Scottsdale, Fountain Hills and Paradise Valley.

While Republicans hold a voter registration advantage in the district, it started to trend toward the center after Donald Trump’s 2016 victory as some voters who historically backed Republicans reluctantly voted for Democrats or left their ballots blank.

Redistricting ahead of the 2022 midterms accelerated the trend, fueling hopes among Democrats that Schweikert could be defeated and the district flipped. Schweikert is known for railing against government debt.

The Associated Press left email messages Sunday for the campaigns of Schweikert and Shah seeking comment.

Schweikert has been in close races before. He won reelection in 2022 by just 3,200 votes against a relatively unknown Democrat who received minimal support from national Democrats.

Schweikert’s reputation has been tarnished in recent years by ethics scandals. In 2022, he received a $125,000 fine by the Federal Election Commission for misappropriating campaign funds. Two years prior, he agreed to pay a $50,000 fine and accept 11 campaign finance violations after an investigation by the U.S. House Committee on Ethics.

Shah, who had emerged as the primary winner among a field of six Democrats, had campaigned on reducing the prices for housing and health care.

Earlier Sunday, Democratic Rep. Greg Stanton won reelection against Republican Kelly Cooper in the 4th District, which includes the cities of Tempe, Mesa and Chandler outside of Phoenix. Stanton, a former Phoenix mayor, has served in Congress since 2019.

In the 6th Congressional District, Republican Rep. Juan Ciscomani remained locked in a tight race with Democrat Kirsten Engel, whom he narrowly beat two years ago. The district runs from Tucson east to the New Mexico state line and includes a stretch of the Arizona-Mexico border.

The U.S. Senate race between Republican Kari Lake, a well-known former television news anchor and staunch Trump ally, and Democratic Rep. Ruben Gallego, an Iraq War veteran, also hasn't been decided.

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<![CDATA[California voters reject proposed ban on forced prison labor in any form]]>https://www.clickondetroit.com/news/politics/2024/11/11/california-voters-reject-proposed-ban-on-forced-prison-labor-in-any-form/https://www.clickondetroit.com/news/politics/2024/11/11/california-voters-reject-proposed-ban-on-forced-prison-labor-in-any-form/Mon, 11 Nov 2024 02:19:49 +0000California voters have rejected a measure amending the state Constitution to ban forced labor in any form. The constitution currently bans it except as punishment for crime.

That exemption became a target of criminal justice advocates who are concerned about prison labor conditions. People who are incarcerated are often paid less than $1 an hour to fight fires, clean cells and do landscaping work at cemeteries.

The initiative was included in a package of reparations proposals introduced by lawmakers as part of an effort to atone and offer redress for a history of racism and discrimination against Black Californians.

Several other states, including Alabama, Oregon, Tennessee and Vermont, have in recent years approved constitutional amendments removing slavery and involuntary servitude exceptions.

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<![CDATA[Arizona Supreme Court declines emergency request to extend ballot 'curing' deadline]]>https://www.clickondetroit.com/news/politics/2024/11/11/arizona-supreme-court-declines-emergency-request-to-extend-ballot-curing-deadline/https://www.clickondetroit.com/news/politics/2024/11/11/arizona-supreme-court-declines-emergency-request-to-extend-ballot-curing-deadline/Mon, 11 Nov 2024 02:35:53 +0000The Arizona Supreme Court declined Sunday to extend the deadline for voters to fix problems with mail-in ballots, a day after voter rights groups cited reports of delays in vote counting and in notification of voters with problem signatures.

The court said Sunday that election officials in eight of the state's 15 counties reported that all voters with “inconsistent signatures” had been properly notified and given an opportunity to respond.

Arizona law calls for people who vote by mail to receive notice of problems such as a ballot signature that doesn’t match one on file and get a “reasonable” chance to correct it in a process known as “curing.”

“The Court has no information to establish in fact that any such individuals did not have the benefit of ‘reasonable efforts’ to cure their ballots,” wrote Justice Bill Montgomery, who served as duty judge for the seven-member court. He noted that no responding county requested a time extension.

"In short, there is no evidence of disenfranchisement before the Court,” the court order said.

The American Civil Liberties Union and the Campaign Legal Center on Saturday named registrars including Stephen Richer in Maricopa County in a petition asking for an emergency court order to extend the original 5 p.m. MST Sunday deadline by up to four days. Maricopa is the state’s most populous county and includes Phoenix.

The groups said that as of Friday evening, more than 250,000 mail-in ballots had not yet been verified by signature, with the bulk of those in Maricopa County. They argued that tens of thousands of Arizona voters could be disenfranchised.

Montgomery, a Republican appointed to the state high court in 2019 by GOP former Gov. Doug Ducey, said the eight counties that responded — including Maricopa — said “all such affected voters” received at least one telephone call “along with other messages by emails, text messages or mail.”

He noted, however, that the Navajo Nation advised the court that the list of tribe members in Apache County who needed to cure their ballots on Saturday was more than 182 people.

Maricopa County reported early Sunday that it had about 202,000 ballots yet to be counted. The Arizona Secretary of State reported that more than 3 million ballots were cast in the election.

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<![CDATA[Trump pressures candidates for Senate GOP leader to fill his Cabinet right away]]>https://www.clickondetroit.com/news/politics/2024/11/11/trump-pressures-candidates-for-senate-gop-leader-to-fill-his-cabinet-right-away/https://www.clickondetroit.com/news/politics/2024/11/11/trump-pressures-candidates-for-senate-gop-leader-to-fill-his-cabinet-right-away/Mon, 11 Nov 2024 00:03:04 +0000Days before Senate Republicans pick their new leader, President-elect Donald Trump is pressuring the candidates to change the rules and empower him to appoint some nominees without a Senate vote.

Republican Sens. John Thune of South Dakota, John Cornyn of Texas and Rick Scott of Florida are running in a secret ballot election Wednesday to lead the GOP conference and replace longtime GOP leader Mitch McConnell, who is stepping aside from the job after almost two decades. All three have courted Trump's support in the race, vying to show who is the closest to the president-elect as they campaign to become majority leader.

Trump has not endorsed in the race, but on Sunday he made clear that he expects the new leader to go around regular Senate order, if necessary, to allow him to fill his Cabinet quickly. In a statement on X and Truth Social, Trump said that the next leader “must agree” to allow him to make appointments when the chamber is on recess, bypassing a confirmation vote.

“Any Republican Senator seeking the coveted LEADERSHIP position in the United States Senate must agree to Recess Appointments (in the Senate!), without which we will not be able to get people confirmed in a timely manner,” Trump posted, adding that positions should be filled “IMMEDIATELY!”

The Senate has not allowed presidents to make so-called recess appointments since a 2014 Supreme Court ruling limited the president’s power to do so. Since then, the Senate has held brief “pro-forma” sessions when it is out of town for more than 10 days so that a president cannot take advantage of the absence and start filling posts that have not been confirmed.

But with Trump’s approval paramount in the race, all three candidates quickly suggested that they might be willing to reconsider the practice. Scott replied to Trump, “100% agree. I will do whatever it takes to get your nominations through as quickly as possible.” And Thune said in a statement that they must “quickly and decisively” act to get nominees in place and that “all options are on the table to make that happen, including recess appointments.”

Cornyn said that “It is unacceptable for Senate Ds to blockade President @realDonaldTrump ’s cabinet appointments. If they do, we will stay in session, including weekends, until they relent.” He noted that recess appointments are allowed under the Constitution.

The social media exchange on Sunday became a first test for the three candidates since Trump was decisively elected last week to a second term.

Trump’s relationship with Congress — especially the advice and consent role afforded to the Senate when it comes to nominations — was tumultuous in his first term as he chafed at resistance to his selections and sought ways to work around lawmakers. With Trump now entering a second term emboldened by his sweeping election victory, he is already signaling that he expects Senate Republicans, and by extension, their new leader, to fall in line behind his Cabinet selections.

Trump also posted on Sunday that the Senate should not approve any judges in the weeks before Republicans take power next year — a more difficult demand to fulfill as Democrats will control the floor, and hold the majority of votes, until the new Congress is sworn in on Jan. 3. Trump posted that “Democrats are looking to ram through their Judges as the Republicans fight over Leadership. THIS IS NOT ACCEPTABLE.”

With days to go, the race for Senate Republican leader is deeply in flux.

Thune and Cornyn are both well-liked, longtime senators who have served as deputies to McConnell and have been seen as the front-runners, despite past statements criticizing Trump. Scott — a longtime friend of Trump’s and fierce ally — has been seen as more of a longshot, but he has mounted an aggressive campaign in recent days on social media and elsewhere with the aim of getting Trump’s endorsement.

Senators who are close to Trump, such as Mike Lee of Utah and Marco Rubio of Florida, have endorsed Scott, as have tech mogul Elon Musk and other people who have Trump’s ear.

“We have to be the change,” Scott said on Fox News’ “Sunday Morning Futures." “That’s what Donald Trump got elected to do, to be the change.”

All three candidates are promising that they will be more open and transparent than McConnell was and that they would give senators more power to get their priorities to the floor. They have also tried to make clear that they would have a much different relationship with Trump than McConnell, who once called the former president a “despicable human being” behind closed doors.

As the Senate haggles over how to fill Trump’s Cabinet, many of his allies are campaigning for the nominations. Former GOP presidential candidate Vivek Ramaswamy said on ABC’s “This Week” that there are “a couple of great options on the table.” Sen. Bill Hagerty, a Republican from Tennessee who served as U.S. ambassador to Japan between 2017 and 2019, said on CBS’s “Face the Nation” that one of his greatest honors was to represent the Trump administration overseas. He said he would advance “the positions that President Trump has articulated.”

“I’ll do that in whatever role necessary,” said Hagerty, who has endorsed Scott in the leadership race.

While Trump has made only one personnel move public so far, naming Susie Wiles his chief of staff, he has already ruled out two names for top positions.

Trump said Saturday that he would not be inviting Mike Pompeo, his former U.S. Secretary of State and CIA chief, and Nikki Haley, a former South Carolina governor who served as his U.N. ambassador and challenged him for the GOP nomination. Pompeo rallied with Trump on the night before Election Day.

“I very much enjoyed and appreciated working with them previously, and would like to thank them for their service to our Country,” Trump posted on his network Truth Social.

Trump’s son, Donald Trump Jr., reposted on X a message by podcaster Dave Smith suggesting to put pressure to “keep all neocons and war hawks out of the Trump administration.”

“The ‘stop Pompeo’ movement is great, but it’s not enough,” Smith posted on X. “America First: screw the war machine!”

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Gomez Licon reported from Miami.

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