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      Donald Trump en campaña: estas son sus propuestas migratorias

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      El expresidente Donald Trump está planeando una expansión extrema de sus medidas represivas contra la migración aplicadas durante su primer mandato si logra regresar al poder en 2025, incluida la preparación de redadas a gran escala de personas que viven en Estados Unidos sin permiso legal y concentrarlas en campamentos cada vez más extensos mientras esperan a ser expulsados.Estos planes restringirían en gran medida tanto la inmigración legal como la ilegal de muchas maneras.Trump quiere revivir las políticas fronterizas de su primer periodo, entre ellas la prohibición del ingreso de personas de ciertas naciones con mayoría musulmana y la reinstauración de una política de la era de la COVID-19 de rechazar solicitudes de asilo, aunque en esta oportunidad basaría el rechazo en aseveraciones de que los migrantes portan otras enfermedades infecciosas como tuberculosis.Trump planea desalojar del país a inmigrantes que habitan aquí sin permiso legal y deportar a millones de personas cada año.Para ayudar a acelerar las deportaciones masivas, Trump está preparando una gran ampliación de una forma de remoción que no requiere de audiencias con el debido proceso. Para ayudar al Servicio de Inmigración y Control de Aduanas (ICE, por su sigla en inglés) a llevar a cabo redadas masivas, Trump planea reasignar otros agentes federales y sumar a la tarea a policías municipales y efectivos de la Guardia Nacional aportados voluntariamente por los estados gobernados por republicanos.Para aliviar la presión sobre los centros de detención del ICE, Trump desea construir campamentos enormes para detener personas mientras sus casos son procesados y esperan sus vuelos de deportación. Además, con el fin de sortear cualquier negativa del Congreso para apropiarse de los recursos necesarios, Trump redirigiría dinero del presupuesto del ejército, como lo hizo en su primer mandato para invertir más dinero en el muro fronterizo del que el Congreso había autorizado.“Trump desatará el vasto arsenal de poderes federales para implementar la represión migratoria más espectacular”, dijo Stephen Miller, el exasesor de Trump en la Casa Blanca, quien fue el principal arquitecto de sus esfuerzos de control fronterizo.Cooper Neill para The New York TimesEn una referencia pública a sus planes, Trump le dijo a una multitud en Iowa en septiembre: “Siguiendo el modelo de Eisenhower, llevaremos a cabo la operación de deportación nacional más grande en la historia de Estados Unidos”. La referencia en cuestión fue una campaña de 1954 para arrestar y expulsar a inmigrantes mexicanos que recibió su nombre de un insulto étnico: “Operación Espalda Mojada”.La gran cantidad de planes para 2025 de Trump equivale a un ataque a la migración a una escala nunca antes vista en la historia estadounidense moderna. Millones de migrantes que viven en Estados Unidos sin permiso legal tendrían prohibida la entrada al país o serían desarraigados después de años o incluso décadas de haberse establecido aquí.Tal escala de expulsiones planeadas generaría retos logísticos, financieros y diplomáticos y sería impugnada de manera enérgica en los tribunales. Sin embargo, no hay duda de la magnitud y ambición del cambio que Trump está contemplando.En una segunda presidencia de Trump, se cancelarían las visas de los estudiantes extranjeros que hayan participado en manifestaciones en contra de Israel o propalestinas. Los funcionarios consulares estadounidenses en el extranjero recibirían instrucciones de profundizar la revisión ideológica de los solicitantes de visa para bloquear a personas que el gobierno de Trump considere que tienen actitudes indeseables. A las personas con un estatus de protección temporal porque provienen de ciertos países considerados inseguros, lo que les permite vivir y trabajar legalmente en Estados Unidos, se les revocaría ese estatus.De forma similar, muchas personas a quienes se les ha permitido residir en el país temporalmente por razones humanitarias también perderían ese estatus y tendrían que abandonar el país, incluyendo a decenas de miles de afganos desalojados durante la toma del poder de los talibanes en 2021 a quienes se les permitió ingresar a Estados Unidos. Los afganos que poseen visas especiales concedidas a personas que ayudaron a las fuerzas estadounidenses serían investigados de nuevo para verificar que de verdad colaboraron.Además, Trump intentaría poner fin a la ciudadanía por nacimiento para los bebés nacidos en Estados Unidos de padres que viven en el país sin permiso legal mediante la proclamación de que esa política será la nueva posición del gobierno y la instrucción a las agencias de dejar de emitir documentos que comprueben la ciudadanía de esos bebés, como tarjetas de Seguridad Social y pasaportes. La legitimidad legal de esa política, como casi todos los planes de Trump, seguramente terminará debatiéndose en la Corte Suprema.En entrevistas con The New York Times, varios asesores de Trump dieron la descripción más amplia y detallada hasta la fecha de la agenda migratoria del expresidente para un posible segundo mandato. En particular, la campaña de Trump delegó las preguntas para este artículo a Stephen Miller, un arquitecto de las políticas migratorias del primer periodo de Trump que se mantiene cercano al exmandatario y que muy probablemente tendría un cargo importante en su segundo periodo.Miller afirmó en una entrevista que tocó múltiples temas que todos los pasos que los asesores de Trump se están preparando para dar se basan en estatutos existentes; aunque es posible que el equipo de Trump intente renovar las leyes de inmigración, el plan fue elaborado para no necesitar nueva legislación sustantiva. Además, aunque Miller reconoce que surgirían demandas para impugnar casi cada una de las medidas, describió la intimidante variedad de tácticas del equipo de Trump como un “ataque veloz” diseñado para abrumar a los abogados de derechos de los migrantes.“Cualquier activista que dude en lo más mínimo de la determinación del presidente Trump está cometiendo un error drástico: Trump desatará el vasto arsenal de poderes federales para implementar la represión migratoria más espectacular”, dijo Miller, quien agregó: “Los activistas legales de la inmigración no entenderán lo que estará pasando”.Todd Schulte, presidente de FWD.us, un grupo de defensa de la inmigración y la justicia penal que combatió repetidas veces al gobierno de Trump, dijo que los planes del equipo de Trump se basaban en una “demagogia xenófoba” que atrae a su base política más radical.“Los estadounidenses deben entender que estas propuestas políticas son parte de una agenda autoritaria, a menudo ilegal, que destrozaría casi todos los aspectos de la vida estadounidense: hundiría la economía y violaría los derechos civiles básicos de millones de inmigrantes y estadounidenses nativos por igual”, dijo Schulte.‘Envenenando la sangre’Migrantes se congregan frente al Hotel Roosevelt en Manhattan en agosto, esperando ser procesados.Jeenah Moon para The New York TimesDesde que Trump dejó el cargo, el ambiente político en lo referente a la inmigración se ha movido en su dirección. Ahora es más capaz de aprovechar ese entorno si es reelecto de lo que lo era cuando ganó la elección como un candidato recién llegado a la política.El retroceso de la pandemia de COVID-19 y la reanudación del flujo de los viajes han contribuido a generar una crisis migratoria global, con millones de venezolanos y centroamericanos que huyen de la convulsión en sus países y africanos que llegan a naciones latinoamericanas antes de continuar su viaje hacia el norte. A causa de las cifras récord de inmigrantes en la frontera sur y en ciudades como Nueva York y Chicago, los votantes están frustrados e incluso algunos demócratas piden medidas más duras contra los inmigrantes y presionan a la Casa Blanca para que maneje mejor la crisis.Trump y sus asesores han visto la oportunidad y ahora saben mejor cómo aprovecharla. Los asistentes en los que Trump confió en los caóticos primeros días de su primer mandato a veces estaban en desacuerdo y les faltaba experiencia acerca de cómo manipular las palancas del poder federal. Hacia el final de su primer mandato, los funcionarios del gabinete y los abogados que intentaron frenar algunas de sus acciones —como su secretario de Seguridad Nacional y jefe de personal John Kelly— habían sido despedidos y quienes permanecieron con él habían aprendido mucho.En un segundo mandato, Trump planea instalar un equipo que no lo restringirá.Desde que gran parte de la represión a la migración del primer mandato de Trump enfrentó problemas para avanzar en los tribunales, el entorno legal se ha inclinado a su favor: sus cuatro años de nombramientos judiciales dejaron tribunales federales de apelación y una Corte Suprema mucho más conservadores que los tribunales que escucharon las impugnaciones a las políticas de su primer mandato.La lucha contra la Acción Diferida para los Llegados en la Infancia (DACA, por su sigla en inglés) es un ejemplo de ello.DACA es un programa de la era de Obama que protege de la deportación y concede permisos de trabajo a personas que ingresaron a Estados Unidos de forma ilegal cuando eran niños. Trump trató de ponerle fin, pero la Corte Suprema lo bloqueó por motivos procesales en junio de 2020.Miller indicó que Trump intentaría de nuevo acabar con DACA. Además, la mayoría cinco a cuatro en la Corte Suprema que bloqueó el último intento ya no existe: algunos meses después del fallo sobre DACA, la magistrada Ruth Bader Ginsburg falleció y Trump la remplazó con un sexto miembro conservador, la magistrada Amy Coney Barrett.La retórica de Trump se ha mantenido bien sincronizada con su agenda cada vez más extrema en materia de inmigración.Su avivamiento del miedo y la ira hacia los inmigrantes —presionando por un muro fronterizo y llamando “violadores” a los mexicanos— impulsó su toma del poder del Partido Republicano en 2016. Como presidente, reflexionó en privado sobre la posibilidad de desarrollar una frontera militarizada como la de Israel, preguntó si los migrantes que cruzaban la frontera podrían recibir disparos en las piernas y apoyó un muro fronterizo propuesto rematado con púas desgarrantes y pintado de negro para quemar la piel de los migrantes.Mientras ha hecho campaña para la tercera nominación presidencial consecutiva del partido, su tono antiinmigrante no ha hecho más que volverse más duro. En una entrevista reciente con un sitio web de derecha, Trump afirmó, sin pruebas, que los líderes extranjeros estaban vaciando deliberadamente sus “manicomios” para enviar a los pacientes a través de la frontera sur de Estados Unidos como migrantes. Dijo que los inmigrantes estaban “envenenando la sangre de nuestro país”. En un mitin el miércoles en Florida, los comparó con el asesino en serie y caníbal ficticio Hannibal Lecter, diciendo: “Eso es lo que está entrando a nuestro país en este momento”.De manera similar, Trump había prometido llevar a cabo deportaciones masivas cuando se postuló para el cargo en 2016, pero el gobierno solo logró varios cientos de miles de deportaciones por año bajo su presidencia, a la par de otros gobiernos recientes. Si tienen otra oportunidad, Trump y su equipo están decididos a alcanzar cifras anuales de millones.Mantener fuera a la genteMigrantes esperan ser escoltados por agentes de la Patrulla Fronteriza a un área de procesamiento, en septiembre. El avivamiento del miedo y la ira hacia los inmigrantes causado por Trump impulsó su toma del poder del Partido Republicano en 2016. Mark Abramson para The New York TimesEl plan migratorio de Trump es continuar donde se quedó e ir mucho más lejos. No solo reviviría algunas de las políticas que fueron calificadas de draconianas durante su presidencia, muchas de las cuales eliminó la Casa Blanca de Joe Biden, sino que también las ampliaría y las haría más estrictas.Un ejemplo se centra en expandir las políticas del primer periodo dirigidas a mantener a personas extranjeras fuera del país. Trump planea suspender el programa de refugiados y volver a prohibir de manera categórica el ingreso de visitantes de países problemáticos poniendo de nuevo en marcha una versión de su prohibición a los viajes desde varios países principalmente de mayoría musulmana, lo que el presidente Biden calificó de discriminatorio y canceló en su primer día en el cargo.Miller señaló que Trump también utilizaría diplomacia coercitiva para inducir a otros países a colaborar, incluso haciendo de la cooperación una condición para cualquier otro compromiso bilateral. Por ejemplo, un segundo gobierno de Trump buscaría restablecer un acuerdo con México para que los solicitantes de asilo permanezcan en ese país mientras sus peticiones son procesadas (no hay certeza de que México lo acepte; un tribunal mexicano ha precisado que ese trato viola los derechos humanos).Trump también intentaría revivir los acuerdos de “tercer país seguro” con varios países de Centroamérica y establecer acuerdos similares en África, Asia y Sudamérica. En virtud de esos acuerdos, los países aceptan recibir a posibles solicitantes de asilo de otras naciones específicas y permitirles solicitar asilo ahí.Aunque estos acuerdos tradicionalmente solo han cubierto a los inmigrantes que pasaron previamente por un tercer país, la ley federal no exige ese límite y un segundo gobierno de Trump buscaría hacer esos acuerdos sin él, en parte como un disuasivo para los inmigrantes que hacen lo que el equipo de Trump considera solicitudes de asilo ilegítimas.Miller añadió que, al mismo tiempo, los Centros para el Control y la Prevención de Enfermedades de Estados Unidos (CDC, por su sigla en inglés) invocarían la ley de poderes de emergencia de salud pública conocida como Título 42 para rehusarse de nuevo a escuchar cualquier petición de asilo de personas que lleguen a la frontera sur. El gobierno de Trump había discutido internamente esa idea a principios del mandato de Trump, pero algunos secretarios del gabinete se opusieron con el argumento de que no había una emergencia de salud pública que la justificara legalmente. Al final, el gobierno la implementó durante la pandemia de coronavirus.Tras afirmar que desde entonces la idea ha ganado aceptación en la práctica —Biden inicialmente mantuvo la política— Miller aseguró que Trump invocaría el Título 42 y daría como razones “cepas graves de influenza, tuberculosis, sarna, otras enfermedades respiratorias como el virus respiratorio sincitial y más, o simplemente el problema general de que la migración masiva es una amenaza para la salud pública que trae una variedad de enfermedades transmisibles”.Trump y sus asistentes aún no han dicho si reimplementarían uno de los elementos disuasorios más polémicos a la inmigración no autorizada que impulsó como presidente: separar a los niños de sus padres, lo que provocó traumas entre los inmigrantes y dificultades para reunir a las familias. Cuando se le presionó, Trump se negó en repetidas ocasiones a descartar revivir la política. Después de muestras de indignación por la práctica, Trump le puso fin en 2018 y, más tarde, un juez impidió que el gobierno volviera a ponerla en efecto.Deportaciones masivasAgentes federales de inmigración concentrados para una operación de arresto en mayo en Pompano Beach, Florida.Saul Martinez para The New York TimesPoco después de que Trump anunció su campaña presidencial para 2024 en noviembre pasado, se reunió con Tom Homan, quien dirigió el ICE durante el primer año y medio del gobierno de Trump y fue uno de los primeros en proponer la separación de familias para disuadir a los inmigrantes.En una entrevista, Homan recordó que en esa reunión “aceptó regresar” para un segundo mandato y afirmó que “ayudaría a organizar y dirigir la operación de deportación más grande jamás vista en este país”.La visión de los asesores de Trump de deportaciones masivas abruptas llevaría a una convulsión social y económica, lo que perturbaría el mercado de la vivienda e industrias importantes como la agricultura y el sector de servicios.Miller presentó tal perturbación desde una perspectiva favorable.“La deportación masiva será una alteración del mercado laboral celebrada por los trabajadores estadounidenses, a quienes ahora se les ofrecerán salarios más altos con mejores beneficios para ocupar estos puestos de trabajo”, dijo. “Los estadounidenses también celebrarán el hecho de que las leyes de nuestra nación ahora se aplican por igual y que un grupo selecto ya no está mágicamente exento”.Un paso planeado para superar los obstáculos legales y logísticos sería incrementar de manera significativa una forma de deportaciones rápidas conocida como “remoción acelerada”. Esta les niega a los migrantes que viven en el país sin un permiso legal las audiencias habituales y la oportunidad de presentar apelaciones, las cuales pueden tardar meses o años (en especial cuando las personas no están en custodia) y han llevado a un atraso enorme en el procesamiento de los casos. Una ley de 1996 señala que las personas pueden ser sujetas a la remoción acelerada hasta dos años después de su llegada, pero, hasta el momento, el poder ejecutivo la ha usado con mayor cautela expulsando enseguida a personas descubiertas cerca de la frontera poco después de haber cruzado.El gobierno de Trump intentó ampliar el uso de la remoción acelerada, pero un tribunal la bloqueó y después el equipo de Biden canceló la ampliación. No se sabe si la Corte Suprema determinará que es constitucional utilizar la ley contra personas que han vivido durante un periodo significativo en Estados Unidos y expresan temor de persecución si son enviados a su país natal.Trump también ha mencionado que invocaría una ley arcaica, la Ley de Enemigos Extranjeros de 1798, para expulsar a sospechosos de ser miembros de los cárteles de droga y pandillas criminales sin debido proceso. La ley permite deportaciones sumarias de personas provenientes de países con los que Estados Unidos está en guerra, que han invadido Estados Unidos o que han participado en “incursiones predatorias”.Tom Homan, quien dirigió el ICE durante el primer año y medio del gobierno de Trump, afirmó que le dijo al expresidente que “ayudaría a organizar y dirigir la operación de deportación más grande jamás vista en este país”.Rebecca Noble para The New York TimesLa Corte Suprema ha permitido usos en el pasado de esa ley en tiempos de guerra. Sin embargo, su redacción parece requerir un vínculo con las acciones de un gobierno extranjero, así que no se sabe si los magistrados estarían de acuerdo en que un presidente la estire para que abarque la actividad de los cárteles de la droga.De manera más general, Miller manifestó que un nuevo gobierno de Trump pasaría de la práctica del ICE de arrestar a personas específicas a llevar a cabo redadas en lugares de trabajo y otros lugares públicos destinadas a arrestar de una sola vez a grandes cantidades de inmigrantes que viven en el país sin permiso legal.Miller comentó que para hacer que el proceso de encontrar y deportar a los inmigrantes que ya viven en del país sin permiso legal sea “radicalmente más rápido y eficiente”, el equipo de Trump incluiría a “los tipos correctos de abogados y de formuladores de políticas” dispuestos a llevar a cabo tales ideas.Además, debido a la magnitud de los arrestos y deportaciones que se contemplan, planean construir “enormes instalaciones de detención que funcionarían como centros de preparación” para inmigrantes mientras avanzan sus casos y esperan ser trasladados en avión a otros países.Miller declaró que es posible que los nuevos campamentos se construyan “en terrenos abiertos en Texas cerca de la frontera”.Relató que el ejército los construiría bajo la autoridad y control del Departamento de Seguridad Nacional. Aunque advirtió que aún no había planos específicos, dijo que los campamentos luicirían profesionales y similares a otras instalaciones para migrantes que se han construido cerca de la frontera.Estos campos también podrían permitirle al gobierno incrementar el ritmo y el volumen de las deportaciones de personas indocumentadas que han vivido en Estados Unidos durante años y por lo tanto no están sujetas a la expulsión por la vía rápida. Si realizar un esfuerzo a largo plazo para obtener un permiso para permanecer en el país significara permanecer encerrados mientras tanto, algunos podrían darse por vencidos y aceptar de forma voluntaria la expulsión sin pasar por el proceso completo.El uso de estos campamentos, dijo Miller, probablemente se centraría más en adultos solteros porque el gobierno no puede retener a niños de forma indefinida bajo una orden judicial de larga data conocida como el acuerdo Flores. Por lo tanto, cualquier familia llevada a las instalaciones tendría que entrar y salir más rápidamente, dijo.El gobierno de Trump intentó revocar el acuerdo Flores, pero la Corte Suprema no resolvió el asunto antes de que terminara el mandato de Trump. Miller afirmó que el equipo de Trump lo intentaría de nuevo.Miller añadió que para incrementar el número de agentes disponibles para las redadas del ICE, funcionarios de otras agencias federales del orden serían reasignados temporalmente y efectivos de la Guardia Nacional estatal y policías locales, al menos de estados liderados por republicanos dispuestos a hacerlo, serían sumados a los esfuerzos de control de la inmigración.Si bien una ley conocida como Ley Posse Comitatus generalmente prohíbe el uso de las fuerzas armadas con fines de mantenimiento del orden público, otra ley llamada Ley de Insurrección crea una excepción. Miller aseguró que Trump invocaría la Ley de Insurrección en la frontera, lo que permitiría el uso de tropas federales para detener a los inmigrantes.“En resumen”, concluyó Miller, “el presidente Trump hará lo que sea necesario”.Zolan Kanno-Youngs More

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      Trump’s Deportation Plans for Immigrants

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      More from our inbox:Shocked by Trump’s Vow to Root Out ‘Vermin’Women in China, Loath to Turn Back the ClockBillionaires, Invest in EarthDonald Trump quiere reimponer una política de la era de la COVID-19 de rechazar las solicitudes de asilo: esta vez basando ese rechazo en afirmaciones de que los migrantes son portadores de otras enfermedades infecciosas, como la tuberculosis.Doug Mills/The New York TimesTo the Editor:Re “Trump’s ’25 Immigration Plan: Giant Camps, Mass Deportation” (front page, Nov. 12):After choking on my coffee reading this excellent in-depth piece, I contemplated the America we will live in if these ambitious and aggressive ideas bear fruit.Do the architects of this plan really believe we will have a stronger, safer and more prosperous country by setting up giant immigrant camps and carrying out mass deportations?I am descended from “white” privilege and members of the Daughters of the American Revolution. My family has grown stronger in recent years by the blending of ethnic, cultural and religious origins through marriage and adoption — with Indonesian, Malaysian, Algerian, Romanian, Iranian and Danish heritages combined with Scot Irish and English ones.We have family members who are Jewish, Muslim, Sikh, Buddhist, atheist and agnostic as well as Episcopalian, Quaker and Catholic.The reality is that our economy and society thrive because of our diversity. For that reason, my license plate is framed with the slogan “Make America Great, Welcome Immigrants.”Cynthia MackieSilver Spring, Md.To the Editor:Stating that immigrants are “poisoning the blood of our country,” Donald Trump has offered a vision for another term that includes immediate mass deportations, ending DACA, an even more restrictive Muslim ban, relegating migrants to huge tent cities in Texas and more.I read this with the same dread I felt when articles were written about the possible overturning of Roe v. Wade. Many people thought, “Oh, that won’t happen here.” But it did. It did happen.Donald Trump and Stephen Miller will wreak havoc on everything our country stands for. It will be a daily dose of outrage and horror. Those who aren’t tuned in to this potential for disaster will realize what they were ignoring only when it is too late.The next election may be the most important in our history as a country. Sitting it out or voting third party is not an option. Our country’s future and our quality of life depend on showing up to vote.People need to understand that these are not offhand remarks. Mr. Trump does what he says he’s going to do. He has clearly shown us what he is and who he is: a wannabe dictator.Kathryn JanusChicagoTo the Editor:Donald Trump’s immigration restriction plans contain much that will be to the liking of the American people. As a lifelong Democrat and the son of immigrants who had to wait years for citizenship, I like it myself because 1) huge amounts of taxpayer dollars are going to the support of undocumented immigrants and 2) America faces a crisis of overpopulation, which is already straining our natural resources.I categorically reject the demonization of immigrants, and I also note that Mr. Trump’s policies generally favor the top 2 percent, not the average American. But if President Biden ignores this issue, or keeps doing what he is doing, it will cost him the election.Alan SalyBrooklynTo the Editor:It is worse than hypocritical that the man behind the dark menace of deportation — Stephen Miller — descends from a family of immigrants who escaped the pogroms in Eastern Europe and found refuge in America.As a Jew and the son of Holocaust survivors, I am frankly appalled by Mr. Miller’s harsh and seemingly uncompromising position.America is nothing if not a nation of immigrants. For Mr. Miller to foment an unrestrained assault against immigrants is, if I may use the term, “beyond the Pale.”Edwin S. RothschildMcLean, Va.Shocked by Trump’s Vow to Root Out ‘Vermin’Former President Donald Trump said his political opposition was the most pressing and pernicious threat facing America during a campaign event in New Hampshire on Saturday.Sophie Park for The New York TimesTo the Editor:Re “After Calling Foes ‘Vermin,’ Trump Campaign Warns Its Critics Will Be ‘Crushed’” (nytimes.com, Nov. 13):At a campaign event Saturday in New Hampshire, Donald Trump vowed to “root out the communists, Marxists, fascists and the radical left thugs that live like vermin within the confines of our country.”So often I have heard variations on the poem that begins, “First they came for the Communists …”Did the people attending a Veterans Day event not hear the echo from less than 100 years ago when they or their parents or grandparents went to war to protect democracy against fascists from Germany and Italy who voiced these same goals?It is shocking that a vast support network is prepared to put these plans into effect here if the former president is re-elected in 2024.Bob AdlerNew YorkTo the Editor:People are not vermin. Even the person who compares his political opponents to “vermin” is not vermin; he is a human being.Donald Trump’s despicable speech, however, should make every American recoil in horror that he would use such a dehumanizing tactic toward people who disagree with him. The Republican Party should immediately distance itself from Mr. Trump and his dangerous rhetoric.Anyone who believes that people are vermin should not be elected to any office, from local P.T.A. president on up. Certainly, the highest office in the land should never be in the hands of such a person.Justin Stormo GipsonNewman Lake, Wash.Women in China, Loath to Turn Back the Clock Gilles Sabrié for The New York TimesTo the Editor:Re “China’s Male Leaders Signal to Women That Their Place Is in the Home” (news article, Nov. 3):Although Mao Zedong proclaimed that “women hold up half the sky,” the weight of thousands of years of Chinese culture held back — and continues to hold back — many from attaining their full potential.My mother, born before the 1949 Communist takeover of the government, was prohibited from going to school by her father, but even decades later suffered limited choices, gender discrimination and the societal stigma of having only daughters.Now that Chinese women have tasted power, freedom and independence, they are not going to go back to being merely wives, mothers and caretakers any more than American women, as evidenced by the recent U.S. elections, are going to give up their hard-won reproductive rights to satisfy the wishes of right-wing conservatives.Men on both sides of the globe are going to find that turning back the clock is a lot harder than they thought.Qin Sun StubisBethesda, Md.The writer is a newspaper columnist and author of “Once Our Lives,” a historical saga about four generations of Chinese women.Billionaires, Invest in Earth George WylesolTo the Editor:Re “Space Billionaires Should Spend More Time Thinking About Sex,” by Kelly Weinersmith and Zach Weinersmith (Opinion guest essay, nytimes.com, Nov. 5):Doesn’t it make more sense to address challenges to our future on Earth, a very appealing home for humans, than to try to adapt to hostile, inhospitable planets? We’d likely be better off if Elon Musk and his fellow billionaires would invest their vast sums in things like wind turbines and infrastructure. They might also help advance the human race by promoting development of qualities like compassion, reconciliation and cooperation.Beyond that, the authors make great points about the difficulties of sex and procreation in space. Let’s not forget Earth’s sex appeal!Marjorie LeeWayland, Mass. More

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      Trump Wants Us to Know He Will Stop at Nothing in 2025

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      Over the past few weeks, we’ve gotten a pretty good idea of what Donald Trump would do if given a second chance in the White House. And it is neither exaggeration nor hyperbole to say that it looks an awful lot like a set of proposals meant to give the former president the power and unchecked authority of a strongman.Trump would purge the federal government of as many civil servants as possible. In their place, he would install an army of political and ideological loyalists whose fealty to Trump’s interests would stand far and above their commitment to either the rule of law or the Constitution.With the help of these unscrupulous allies, Trump plans to turn the Department of Justice against his political opponents, prosecuting his critics and rivals. He would use the military to crush protests under the Insurrection Act — which he hoped to do during the summer of 2020 — and turn the power of the federal government against his perceived enemies. “If I happen to be president and I see somebody who’s doing well and beating me very badly, I say, ‘Go down and indict them.’ They’d be out of business. They’d be out of the election,” Trump said in a recent interview on the Spanish-language network Univision.As the former president wrote in a disturbing and authoritarian-minded Veterans Day message to supporters (itself echoing a speech he delivered that same to day to supporters in New Hampshire): “We pledge to you that we will root out the Communists, Marxists, Fascists, and Radical Left Thugs that live like vermin within the confines of our country, lie, steal, and cheat on Elections, and will do anything possible, whether legally or illegally, to destroy America, and the American dream.”Trump has other plans as well. As several of my Times colleagues reported last week, he hopes to institute a program of mass detainment and deportation of undocumented immigrants. His aides have already drawn up plans for new detention centers at the U.S.-Mexico border, where anyone suspected of illegal entry would be held until authorities have settled the person’s immigration status. Given the former president’s rhetoric attacking political enemies and other supposedly undesirable groups like the homeless — Trump has said that the government should “remove” homeless Americans and put them in tents on “large parcels of inexpensive land in the outer reaches of the cities” — there’s little doubt that some American citizens would find themselves in these large and sprawling camps.Included in this effort to rid the United States of as many immigrants as possible is a proposal to target people here legally — like green-card holders or people on student visas — who harbor supposedly “jihadist sympathies” or espouse views deemed anti-American. Trump also intends to circumvent the 14th Amendment so that he can end birthright citizenship for the children of unauthorized immigrants.In the past, Trump has gestured at seeking a third term in office after serving a second four-year term in the White House. “We are going to win four more years,” Trump said during his 2020 campaign. “And then after that, we’ll go for another four years because they spied on my campaign. We should get a redo of four years.” This too would violate the Constitution, but then, in a world in which Trump gets his way on his authoritarian agenda, the Constitution — and the rule of law — would already be a dead letter.It might be tempting to dismiss the former president’s rhetoric and plans as either jokes or the ravings of a lunatic who may eventually find himself in jail. But to borrow an overused phrase, it is important to take the words of both presidents and presidential candidates seriously as well as literally.They may fail — in fact, they often do — but presidents try to keep their campaign promises and act on their campaign plans. In a rebuke to those who urged us not to take him literally in 2016, we saw Trump attempt to do what he said he would do during his first term in office. He said he would “build a wall,” and he tried to build a wall. He said he would try to keep Muslims out of the country, and he tried to keep Muslims out of the country. He said he would do as much as he could to restrict immigration from Mexico, and he did as much as he could, and then some, to restrict immigration from Mexico.He even suggested, in the lead-up to the 2016 presidential election, that he would reject an election defeat. Four years later, he lost his bid for re-election. We know what happened next.In addition to Trump’s words, which we should treat as a reliable guide to his actions, desires and preoccupations, we have his allies, who are as open in their contempt for democracy as Trump is. Ensconced at institutions like the Heritage Foundation and the Claremont Institute, Trump’s political and ideological allies have made no secret of their desire to install a reactionary Caesar at the head of the American state. As Damon Linker noted in his essay on these figures for the Opinion section, they exist to give “Republican elites permission and encouragement to do things that just a few years ago would have been considered unthinkable.”Americans are obsessed with hidden meanings and secret revelations. This is why many of us are taken with the tell-all memoirs of political operatives or historical materials like the Nixon tapes. We often pay the most attention to those things that have been hidden from view. But the mundane truth of American politics is that much of what we want to know is in plain view. You don’t have to search hard or seek it out; you just have to listen.And Donald Trump is telling us, loud and clear, that he wants to end American democracy as we know it.The Times is committed to publishing a diversity of letters to the editor. We’d like to hear what you think about this or any of our articles. Here are some tips. And here’s our email: letters@nytimes.com.Follow The New York Times Opinion section on Facebook, Twitter (@NYTopinion) and Instagram. More

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      Sweeping Raids and Mass Deportations: Inside Trump’s 2025 Immigration Plans

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      Former President Donald J. Trump is planning an extreme expansion of his first-term crackdown on immigration if he returns to power in 2025 — including preparing to round up undocumented people already in the United States on a vast scale and detain them in sprawling camps while they wait to be expelled.The plans would sharply restrict both legal and illegal immigration in a multitude of ways.Mr. Trump wants to revive his first-term border policies, including banning entry by people from certain Muslim-majority nations and reimposing a Covid 19-era policy of refusing asylum claims — though this time he would base that refusal on assertions that migrants carry other infectious diseases like tuberculosis.He plans to scour the country for unauthorized immigrants and deport people by the millions per year.To help speed mass deportations, Mr. Trump is preparing an enormous expansion of a form of removal that does not require due process hearings. To help Immigration and Customs Enforcement carry out sweeping raids, he plans to reassign other federal agents and deputize local police officers and National Guard soldiers voluntarily contributed by Republican-run states.To ease the strain on ICE detention facilities, Mr. Trump wants to build huge camps to detain people while their cases are processed and they await deportation flights. And to get around any refusal by Congress to appropriate the necessary funds, Mr. Trump would redirect money in the military budget, as he did in his first term to spend more on a border wall than Congress had authorized.“Trump will unleash the vast arsenal of federal powers to implement the most spectacular migration crackdown,” said Stephen Miller, Mr. Trump’s former White House aide who was the chief architect of his border control efforts.Cooper Neill for The New York TimesIn a public reference to his plans, Mr. Trump told a crowd in Iowa in September: “Following the Eisenhower model, we will carry out the largest domestic deportation operation in American history.” The reference was to a 1954 campaign to round up and expel Mexican immigrants that was named for an ethnic slur — “Operation Wetback.”The constellation of Mr. Trump’s 2025 plans amounts to an assault on immigration on a scale unseen in modern American history. Millions of undocumented immigrants would be barred from the country or uprooted from it years or even decades after settling here.Such a scale of planned removals would raise logistical, financial and diplomatic challenges and would be vigorously challenged in court. But there is no mistaking the breadth and ambition of the shift Mr. Trump is eyeing.In a second Trump presidency, the visas of foreign students who participated in anti-Israel or pro-Palestinian protests would be canceled. U.S. consular officials abroad will be directed to expand ideological screening of visa applicants to block people the Trump administration considers to have undesirable attitudes. People who were granted temporary protected status because they are from certain countries deemed unsafe, allowing them to lawfully live and work in the United States, would have that status revoked.Similarly, numerous people who have been allowed to live in the country temporarily for humanitarian reasons would also lose that status and be kicked out, including tens of thousands of the Afghans who were evacuated amid the 2021 Taliban takeover and allowed to enter the United States. Afghans holding special visas granted to people who helped U.S. forces would be revetted to see if they really did.And Mr. Trump would try to end birthright citizenship for babies born in the United States to undocumented parents — by proclaiming that policy to be the new position of the government and by ordering agencies to cease issuing citizenship-affirming documents like Social Security cards and passports to them. That policy’s legal legitimacy, like nearly all of Mr. Trump’s plans, would be virtually certain to end up before the Supreme Court.In interviews with The New York Times, several Trump advisers gave the most expansive and detailed description yet of Mr. Trump’s immigration agenda in a potential second term. In particular, Mr. Trump’s campaign referred questions for this article to Stephen Miller, an architect of Mr. Trump’s first-term immigration policies who remains close to him and is expected to serve in a senior role in a second administration.All of the steps Trump advisers are preparing, Mr. Miller contended in a wide-ranging interview, rely on existing statutes; while the Trump team would likely seek a revamp of immigration laws, the plan was crafted to need no new substantive legislation. And while acknowledging that lawsuits would arise to challenge nearly every one of them, he portrayed the Trump team’s daunting array of tactics as a “blitz” designed to overwhelm immigrant-rights lawyers.“Any activists who doubt President Trump’s resolve in the slightest are making a drastic error: Trump will unleash the vast arsenal of federal powers to implement the most spectacular migration crackdown,” Mr. Miller said, adding, “The immigration legal activists won’t know what’s happening.”Todd Schulte, the president of FWD.us, an immigration and criminal justice advocacy group that repeatedly fought the Trump administration, said the Trump team’s plans relied on “xenophobic demagoguery” that appeals to his hardest-core political base.“Americans should understand these policy proposals are an authoritarian, often illegal, agenda that would rip apart nearly every aspect of American life — tanking the economy, violating the basic civil rights of millions of immigrants and native-born Americans alike,” Mr. Schulte said.‘Poisoning the Blood’Migrants gather outside the Roosevelt Hotel in Midtown Manhattan in August, waiting to be processed.Jeenah Moon for The New York TimesSince Mr. Trump left office, the political environment on immigration has moved in his direction. He is also more capable now of exploiting that environment if he is re-elected than he was when he first won election as an outsider.The ebbing of the Covid-19 pandemic and resumption of travel flows have helped stir a global migrant crisis, with millions of Venezuelans and Central Americans fleeing turmoil and Africans arriving in Latin American countries before continuing their journey north. Amid the record numbers of migrants at the southern border and beyond it in cities like New York and Chicago, voters are frustrated and even some Democrats are calling for tougher action against immigrants and pressuring the White House to better manage the crisis.Mr. Trump and his advisers see the opening, and now know better how to seize it. The aides Mr. Trump relied upon in the chaotic early days of his first term were sometimes at odds and lacked experience in how to manipulate the levers of federal power. By the end of his first term, cabinet officials and lawyers who sought to restrain some of his actions — like his Homeland Security secretary and chief of staff, John F. Kelly — had been fired, and those who stuck with him had learned much.In a second term, Mr. Trump plans to install a team that will not restrain him.Since much of Mr. Trump’s first-term immigration crackdown was tied up in the courts, the legal environment has tilted in his favor: His four years of judicial appointments left behind federal appellate courts and a Supreme Court that are far more conservative than the courts that heard challenges to his first-term policies.The fight over Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals provides an illustration.DACA is an Obama-era program that shields from deportation and grants work permits to people who were brought unlawfully to the United States as children. Mr. Trump tried to end it, but the Supreme Court blocked him on procedural grounds in June 2020.Mr. Miller said Mr. Trump would try again to end DACA. And the 5-4 majority of the Supreme Court that blocked the last attempt no longer exists: A few months after the DACA ruling, Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg died and Mr. Trump replaced her with a sixth conservative, Justice Amy Coney Barrett.Mr. Trump’s rhetoric has more than kept up with his increasingly extreme agenda on immigration.His stoking of fear and anger toward immigrants — pushing for a border wall and calling Mexicans rapists — fueled his 2016 takeover of the Republican Party. As president, he privately mused about developing a militarized border like Israel’s, asked whether migrants crossing the border could be shot in the legs and wanted a proposed border wall topped with flesh-piercing spikes and painted black to burn migrants’ skin.As he has campaigned for the party’s third straight presidential nomination, his anti-immigrant tone has only grown harsher. In a recent interview with a right-wing website, Mr. Trump claimed without evidence that foreign leaders were deliberately emptying their “insane asylums” to send the patients across America’s southern border as migrants. He said migrants were “poisoning the blood of our country.” And at a rally on Wednesday in Florida, he compared them to the fictional serial killer and cannibal Hannibal Lecter, saying, “That’s what’s coming into our country right now.”Mr. Trump had similarly vowed to carry out mass deportations when running for office in 2016, but the government only managed several hundred thousand removals per year under his presidency, on par with other recent administrations. If they get another opportunity, Mr. Trump and his team are determined to achieve annual numbers in the millions.Keeping People OutMigrants wait to be escorted by Border Patrol agents to a processing area in September. Mr. Trump’s stoking of fear and anger toward immigrants fueled his 2016 takeover of the Republican Party. Mark Abramson for The New York TimesMr. Trump’s immigration plan is to pick up where he left off and then go much farther. He would not only revive some of the policies that were criticized as draconian during his presidency, many of which the Biden White House ended, but also expand and toughen them.One example centers on expanding first-term policies aimed at keeping people out of the country. Mr. Trump plans to suspend the nation’s refugee program and once again categorically bar visitors from troubled countries, reinstating a version of his ban on travel from several mostly Muslim-majority countries, which President Biden called discriminatory and ended on his first day in office.Mr. Trump would also use coercive diplomacy to induce other nations to help, including by making cooperation a condition of any other bilateral engagement, Mr. Miller said. For example, a second Trump administration would seek to re-establish an agreement with Mexico that asylum seekers remain there while their claims are processed. (It is not clear that Mexico would agree; a Mexican court has said that deal violated human rights.)Mr. Trump would also push to revive “safe third country” agreements with several nations in Central America, and try to expand them to Africa, Asia and South America. Under such deals, countries agree to take would-be asylum seekers from specific other nations and let them apply for asylum there instead.While such arrangements have traditionally only covered migrants who had previously passed through a third country, federal law does not require that limit and a second Trump administration would seek to make those deals without it, in part as a deterrent to migrants making what the Trump team views as illegitimate asylum claims.At the same time, Mr. Miller said, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention would invoke the public health emergency powers law known as Title 42 to again refuse to hear any asylum claims by people arriving at the southern border. The Trump administration had internally discussed that idea early in Mr. Trump’s term, but some cabinet secretaries pushed back, arguing that there was no public health emergency that would legally justify it. The administration ultimately implemented it during the coronavirus pandemic.Saying the idea has since gained acceptance in practice — Mr. Biden initially kept the policy — Mr. Miller said Mr. Trump would invoke Title 42, citing “severe strains of the flu, tuberculosis, scabies, other respiratory illnesses like R.S.V. and so on, or just a general issue of mass migration being a public health threat and conveying a variety of communicable diseases.”Mr. Trump and his aides have not yet said whether they would re-enact one of the most contentious deterrents to unauthorized immigration that he pursued as president: separating children from their parents, which led to trauma among migrants and difficulties in reuniting families. When pressed, Mr. Trump has repeatedly declined to rule out reviving the policy. After an outcry over the practice, Mr. Trump ended it in 2018 and a judge later blocked the government from putting it back into effect.Mass DeportationsFederal immigration-enforcement officers gathered for an arrest operation in May in Pompano Beach, Fla.Saul Martinez for The New York TimesSoon after Mr. Trump announced his 2024 campaign for president last November, he met with Tom Homan, who ran ICE for the first year and a half of the Trump administration and was an early proponent of separating families to deter migrants.In an interview, Mr. Homan recalled that in that meeting, he “agreed to come back” in a second term and would “help to organize and run the largest deportation operation this country’s ever seen.”Trump advisers’ vision of abrupt mass deportations would be a recipe for social and economic turmoil, disrupting the housing market and major industries including agriculture and the service sector.Mr. Miller cast such disruption in a favorable light.“Mass deportation will be a labor-market disruption celebrated by American workers, who will now be offered higher wages with better benefits to fill these jobs,” he said. “Americans will also celebrate the fact that our nation’s laws are now being applied equally, and that one select group is no longer magically exempt.”One planned step to overcome the legal and logistical hurdles would be to significantly expand a form of fast-track deportations known as “expedited removal.” It denies undocumented immigrants the opportunity to seek asylum hearings and file appeals, which can take months or years — especially when people are not in custody — and has led to a large backlog. A 1996 law says people can be subject to expedited removal for up to two years after arriving, but to date the executive branch has used it more cautiously, swiftly expelling people picked up near the border soon after crossing.The Trump administration tried to expand the use of expedited removal, but a court blocked it and then the Biden team canceled the expansion. It remains unclear whether the Supreme Court will rule that it is constitutional to use the law against people who have been living for a significant period in the United States and express fear of persecution if sent home.Mr. Trump has also said he would invoke an archaic law, the Alien Enemies Act of 1798, to expel suspected members of drug cartels and criminal gangs without due process. That law allows for summary deportation of people from countries with which the United States is at war, that have invaded the United States or that have engaged in “predatory incursions.”Tom Homan, who ran ICE for the first year and a half of the Trump administration, said he told Mr. Trump he would “help to organize and run the largest deportation operation this country’s ever seen.”Rebecca Noble for The New York TimesThe Supreme Court has upheld past uses of that law in wartime. But its text seems to require a link to the actions of a foreign government, so it is not clear whether the justices will allow a president to stretch it to encompass drug cartel activity.More broadly, Mr. Miller said a new Trump administration would shift from the ICE practice of arresting specific people to carrying out workplace raids and other sweeps in public places aimed at arresting scores of unauthorized immigrants at once. While every administration has used detention facilities, because of the magnitude of deportations being contemplated, the Trump team plans to build “vast holding facilities that would function as staging centers” for migrants waiting to be flown to other countries, Mr. Miller said. Such an undertaking would be fast-tracked, he said, “by bringing in the right kinds of attorneys and the right kinds of policy thinkers” — taking what is typically a methodical process “and making it radically more quick and efficient.”Mr. Miller said the new camps would likely be built “on open land in Texas near the border.” He said the military would construct them under the authority and control of the Department of Homeland Security. While he cautioned that there were no specific blueprints yet, he said the camps would look professional and similar to other facilities for migrants that have been built near the border.The use of these camps, he said, would likely be focused more on single adults because the government cannot indefinitely hold children under a longstanding court order known as the Flores settlement. So any families brought to the facilities would have to be moved in and out more quickly, Mr. Miller said.The Trump administration tried to overturn the Flores settlement, but the Supreme Court did not resolve the matter before Mr. Trump’s term ended. Mr. Miller said the Trump team would try again.To increase the number of agents available for ICE sweeps, Mr. Miller said, officials from other federal law enforcement agencies would be temporarily reassigned, and state National Guard troops and local police officers, at least from willing Republican-led states, would be deputized for immigration control efforts.While a law known as the Posse Comitatus Act generally forbids the use of the armed forces for law enforcement purposes, another law called the Insurrection Act creates an exception. Mr. Trump would invoke the Insurrection Act at the border, enabling the use of federal troops to apprehend migrants, Mr. Miller said.“Bottom line,” he said, “President Trump will do whatever it takes.”Zolan Kanno-Youngs More

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      Speaker Mike Johnson’s Rise: ‘The Republicans Have Elevated an Extremist’

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      More from our inbox:Baseball on the ClockIron DeficiencyGovernors, Join Together to Solve the Immigration Crisis Kenny Holston/The New York TimesTo the Editor:Re “G.O.P. Elects Speaker, Ending Bitter Feud” (front page, Oct. 26):Our nation flails on the brink of disaster now that the Republicans have elevated an extremist to the honorable position of House speaker. A Times online newsletter article says all we need to know about Mike Johnson: “His elevation now places a socially conservative lawyer who opposes abortion rights and same-sex marriage, and who played a leading role in the efforts to overturn the 2020 election, second in line to the presidency.”Citizens of this great nation should fear this election-denying, rights-resisting, bigotry-promoting zealot. This turn of events underscores the importance of getting out the vote.May the universe and all things holy protect our republic from doom.M. Corinne CorleyIsleton, Calif.To the Editor:Republicans have elected a speaker of the people’s House who attempted to subvert the people’s will in the last election by leading a bogus effort to overturn the election that Joe Biden clearly and convincingly won, an effort that if it had succeeded could well have ended our democracy — a man who won the position as leader because Donald Trump, twice impeached and indicted on many felony charges, approved of him.America is full of second acts, but they begin with contrition.Mike Johnson, the new speaker, can get a fresh look from me if he admits he was wrong about the 2020 election, apologizes to Mr. Biden and the country, says clearly that Mr. Biden won, and commits to operate the people’s House for all of us, independently of Mr. Trump!John E. ColbertArroyo Seco, N.M.To the Editor:When all is said and done, what did the Democrats achieve? By voting to oust Kevin McCarthy, they exchanged the frying pan for what Matt Gaetz and his circus barkers wanted all along: the fire.Sabin WillettBostonTo the Editor:There can be no clearer evidence of the stranglehold that Donald Trump continues to have on subservient members of the Republican Party than the seemingly endless House speaker vote fiasco just played out in Congress.The former president was openly intimidating House speaker candidates whose credentials, in Mr. Trump’s view, were disqualifying if they included rejection of his claims that the 2020 election was stolen.Astoundingly, even as the walls of justice close in on the beleaguered former president and as a growing list of his administration cronies cooperates with prosecutors, a large and entrenched component of congressional Republicans remains complicit in abetting Mr. Trump’s obsession with a stolen election.Roger HirschbergSouth Burlington, Vt.To the Editor:Unfortunately I am shocked and beyond despair. It appears that the G.O.P. is set on self-destruct. I cannot imagine anything good coming out of this speaker selection. Congress is now slated to be all but gridlocked until the next election.It would appear that the party of gerrymandered districts is dead set on destroying our country and doesn’t care what most Americans want or think.Rob WheelerSummertown, Tenn.To the Editor:The “squishes” got squashed. Moderate Republicans once more prostrated themselves before their far-right overlords. As a result we have a new speaker of the House who was a leader of the effort to overthrow the government of the United States by overturning the results of the 2020 presidential election, and who ironically now stands second in the line of succession to the presidency. Squishy indeed.Steve NelsonWilliamstown, Mass.Baseball on the Clock Melanie LambrickTo the Editor:“Baseball Has Lost Its Poetry,” by Jesse Nathan (Opinion guest essay, Oct. 21), is an excellent piece of baseball writing. Baseball, however, is not played on the page. It’s played on the field.Mr. Nathan could not be more wrong about the pitch clock, which he opposes.As an author of baseball books, articles, essays, reviews and short stories, I have an appreciation for good writing, and include Mr. Nathan’s piece in this category. As a fan since 1957, an attendee at 50 opening days at Fenway Park and an inveterate TV watcher, I love the game.Starting about 10 years ago, the game became unwatchable. Each batter had his ritual of stepping out of the batter’s box, adjusting batting gloves, touching body parts, to reset focus and interrupt the pitcher’s rhythm. This happened on virtually every pitch.Pitchers, for their part, could hold the ball, throw to first with a man on base unlimited times, stare, even walk behind the mound, to reset and interrupt the batter’s timing. This could happen on every pitch. It was not a timeless escape from modern life. It was not poetry. It was a waste of time.If Mr. Nathan desires the timeless, I suggest Shakespeare’s sonnets.Luke SalisburyChelsea, Mass.The writer is the author of “The Answer Is Baseball.”Iron Deficiency Marta MonteiroTo the Editor:Two online articles on Oct. 17, “More Than a Third of Women Under 50 Are Iron-Deficient” and “How to Know if You’re Iron-Deficient, and What to Do About It,” call attention to a significant condition that affects millions of women worldwide.As noted in these articles, heavy menstrual bleeding is a major driver of iron deficiency. Hormonal contraceptives, including pills and certain IUDs, are important tools for managing heavy bleeding because they often reduce or completely pause menstrual periods.While research on this “side benefit” of contraceptives is continuing, the potential for contraceptives to complement other treatments for iron deficiency should be part of the conversations all providers have with patients to enable a fully informed choice.Contraception and menstruation are topics that hold significant stigma, which is why the connection between nutrition and contraception has lacked appropriate attention and traction. We call on our fellow health care providers and researchers across both disciplines to engage in this conversation now.By breaking the silos between these fields, we can bring these issues out of the shadows and help individuals manage heavy menstrual bleeding and iron deficiency while also improving the reproductive health care they desire and deserve.Laneta DorflingerAndrée SoslerEmily HoppesThe writers work on contraceptive technology innovation at FHI 360, an organization that aims to promote equity, health and well-being worldwide.Governors, Join Together to Solve the Immigration CrisisA bus full of migrants who turned themselves in to U.S. Customs and Border Protection officers in El Paso in May.Todd Heisler/The New York TimesTo the Editor:Re “Busing 50,000 People North, Texas Reframes Debate on Immigration” (news article, Oct. 19):Where are the nation’s 50 governors in trying to solve the immigration crisis? Despite the clear, purposeful and odious vengefulness of Texas Republicans in busing immigrants to Democratic cities and states, they have a point.Isn’t it in fact the responsibility of all states and all communities to share the burden that just a few states must now shoulder because of their proximity to the border? If so, shouldn’t the governors, through the National Governors Association, come up with a plan for them to do so?That they haven’t — that all states haven’t stepped up to assume responsibility for meeting and solving this crisis — just adds to, and illustrates, the grievous state of American governance.James M. Banner, Jr.Washington More

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      Trump Vows to Reject Gazan Refugees After Israel Attack

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      Mr. Trump, in an Iowa speech, further retreated from his criticism of Israel and did not repeat his comments about Hezbollah that prompted condemnation from political rivals.Former President Donald J. Trump, in remarks that invoked the deadly Hamas attacks on Israel to stoke fears of terrorism at home, said on Monday that he would expand a freeze on refugees that he enacted during his presidency to cover people from the Palestinian territory of Gaza.In an extension of the anti-Muslim and anti-immigrant sentiments he channeled during his 2016 presidential run and made a cornerstone of his administration, Mr. Trump offered a litany of proposals that in many ways adapted his previous policies to reflect current events. He promised again to bar people from certain parts of the world, particularly where Islam is most commonly practiced, while curbing immigration and the overall number of refugees the United States would take in.“We aren’t bringing in anyone from Gaza,” Mr. Trump said at a rally in Clive, Iowa, a suburb of Des Moines.Referring to recent demonstrations protesting Israel’s retaliatory bombardment of Gaza and supporting civilians in the region caught up in conflict, Mr. Trump promised to send Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents to what he called “pro-jihadist” rallies. He also proposed that immigrants be denied entry to the United States if they adhered to a laundry list of ideologies.“If you empathize with radical Islamic terrorists and extremists, you’re disqualified,” Mr. Trump said. “If you want to abolish the state of Israel, you’re disqualified.”So, too, would be people who supported Hamas “or any ideology that’s having to do with that,” he said, and anyone who was a “communist, Marxist or fascist.”Mr. Trump did not explain how the country would carry out or enforce such a screening, an idea he proposed in a slightly different form during his 2016 campaign. Nor did he elaborate on a separate proposal that included deporting “resident aliens” — which includes legal U.S. residents — with “jihadist sympathies.”“We have to. Or we’re going to have a country that’s going to be blown to shreds. Because bad things are happening. Millions and millions of people have come into our country, and nobody has any idea where they’re from. Some from countries that nobody’s ever heard of,” Mr. Trump said.Mr. Trump also said his administration would revoke the visas of “radical anti-American and antisemitic foreigners” like those involved in pro-Palestinian demonstrations, saying that foreign nationals at colleges and universities were “teaching your children hate.”Two other Republican contenders, Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida and Senator Tim Scott of South Carolina, both said in interviews on Monday that they favored deporting foreign students who appeared to support Hamas.Mr. DeSantis, on Fox News Radio’s “Guy Benson Show,” also said he did not think refugees from Gaza should come to the United States. “The Arab countries should take them,” he said.Mr. Trump’s remarks, building on his vow this month to reinstate a travel ban he enacted while president, represent an attempt to further retreat from comments he made at a rally in Florida last week about Israel that prompted widespread criticism from political rivals.The Trump rally in Clive, Iowa, his second event in the state on Monday.Rachel Mummey for The New York TimesAfter lashing out at Israel’s prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, Mr. Trump suggested the Israeli military, which is now on the brink of invading the Gaza Strip, needed to “straighten it out.” He also called Hezbollah, the Iran-backed, anti-Israel militant group in Lebanon, “very smart.”Mr. Trump’s Republican opponents, who are eager for any edge that could help them close the yawning gap separating them from the former president in the polls, seized on his comments, condemning him for criticizing a country still reeling from a deadly terrorist attack.In the days since, Mr. Trump has repeatedly sought to clarify that he stands with the nation and Mr. Netanyahu.In a statement, Jaime Harrison, the chair of the Democratic National Committee, accused Mr. Trump of using language that could incite violence like the murder of a 6-year-old boy in Illinois that the authorities are calling an anti-Muslim hate crime.“Donald Trump is following up last week’s erratic behavior — criticizing Israel and praising their terrorist enemies — by now exploiting fear and anxiety in a shameless attempt to revive his widely rejected, extreme Muslim ban,” Mr. Harrison said.Mr. Trump did not speak at length about the conflict in Israel in his first campaign appearance on Monday, in Adel, Iowa, where he focused more on domestic issues, including his own.Speaking shortly after a judge imposed a limited gag order restricting some public statements that Mr. Trump can make related to the federal case over his efforts to overturn the 2020 election, he said he and his lawyers planned to fight the ruling.“They put a gag order on me, and I’m not supposed to be talking about things that bad people do, and so we’ll be appealing very quickly,” Mr. Trump said, in front of a pyramid of hay bales at the Dallas County Fairgrounds.He added, “I’ll be the only politician in history where I won’t be allowed to criticize people.” More

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      Poland Election: Centrists Poised to Oust Law and Justice Party

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      The election, seen as one of the most significant in decades, was cast as a choice between the defense of Polish sovereignty and liberal values.Centrist and progressive forces appeared capable of forming a new government in Poland after securing more seats in a critical general election on Sunday, despite the governing nationalist party, Law and Justice, winning the most votes for a single party.Exit polls showing a strong second place finish by the main opposition group, Civic Coalition, and better than expected results for two smaller centrist and progressive parties suggested a dramatic upset that would frustrate the governing party’s hope of an unprecedented third consecutive term.A jubilant Donald Tusk, Civic Coalition’s leader, declared the projected results a resounding “win for democracy” that would end the rule of Law and Justice, known by its Polish acronym PiS, in power since 2015.“We did it! We really did!” Mr. Tusk, a former prime minister, told supporters Sunday night. “This is the end of this bad time! This is the end of PiS rule!”The election for a new Parliament, held after a vicious campaign in the highly polarized nation, was closely watched abroad, including in Russia and Ukraine, and viewed by many Poles as the most consequential vote since they rejected communism in the country’s first partly free election in 1989. Reflecting the high-stakes, nearly 73 percent of the electorate voted, the highest turnout in a Polish election since the end of communist rule.Both the governing Law and Justice and Civic Coalition cast the election as an existential moment of decision on Poland’s future as a stable democratic state.Voting on Sunday in Gdansk, Poland. The election in Poland, held after an often vicious campaign in the highly polarized nation, has been closely watched abroad.Mateusz Slodkowski/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesIf early forecasts turn out to be correct when final official results are announced, probably on Tuesday, Civic Coalition and its potential partners won 248 seats in the 460-member legislature, compared with 200 won by Law and Justice.Jaroslaw Kaczynski, the governing party’s chairman and Poland’s de facto leader for the last eight years, also claimed victory, declaring the vote “a great success for our formation, our project for Poland.” But he acknowledged that his party would have trouble forming a government if the exit polls are correct.Konfederacja, a radical right-wing grouping that shares many of the nationalist views of Law and Justice, won only 6.2 percent of the vote, giving it 12 seats. Exit polls are generally reliable in Poland but some experts cautioned that the unusually high turnout could make them less accurate. Because of long queues at polling stations voting continued late into the night in some places.Exit polls released by Poland’s three main television channels indicated that Law and Justice had won the most votes overall — 36.8 percent — compared with 31.6 percent for Civic Coalition. Two smaller parties, Third Way, an alliance of centrists, and The Left reached the necessary threshold to enter the more powerful lower house of Parliament, the Sejm.Seats in the Sejm are apportioned under a complicated proportional system that makes it difficult to determine with precision the future balance of power until all of the votes have been counted and those of smaller parties that failed to reach the threshold (5 percent for parties and 8 percent for coalitions) are redistributed among the top finishers.Przemyslaw Adynowski, a Warsaw lawyer, said he had voted for Civic Coalition in what he described as “probably the most important election in 30 years.” A victory for Law and Justice, he added, would complete Poland’s “phase of transition from democracy to an authoritarian system” and put it at odds with its allies in NATO and the European Union, except for Hungary, a much smaller nation with little clout.Campaign posters last week in Gorno, Poland. The governing Law and Justice party and its main rival, Civic Coalition, cast the election as an existential moment of decision on Poland’s future as a stable democratic state.Wojtek Radwanski/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesPiotr Buras, the head of the Warsaw office of the European Council on Foreign Relations, declared the election “a triumph of both democracy and liberalism” that “opens the way for a massive reorientation of Poland’s domestic and European policy.”The result was particularly striking given that Law and Justice enjoyed a big advantage thanks to its tight control of Poland’s public broadcasting system, a nationwide network of television and radio stations that is supposed to be neutral but mostly served as a propaganda bullhorn for the incumbent party.The playing field was further tilted in the governing party’s favor by the holding of a referendum alongside the parliamentary election. Voters were asked to answer four loaded questions about immigration and other issues that were clearly intended to cast the European Union, and by association the opposition, in a bad light.One asked: “Do you support the admission of thousands of illegal immigrants from the Middle East and Africa, in accordance with the forced relocation mechanism imposed by European bureaucracy?”The referendum short-circuited campaign finance restrictions, allowing Law and Justice to deploy state funds to promote supposedly neutral information about questions heavily slanted in its favor. Many voters, however, declined to answer referendum questions, viewing the exercise as a stunt by the governing party.Law and Justice hoped that the referendum would help revive an anti-migrant message that has for years been its electoral strong suit, but one that lost its edge in the final weeks of the campaign when some of its officials became embroiled in a visas-for-cash scandal. Evidence that a large number of Polish work visas, valid across the European Union, had been sold to African and Asian migrants led to the abrupt resignation of a deputy foreign minister and his removal from a list of candidates put forward by Law and Justice.Mr. Kaczysnki, the party’s chairman, warned that a vote for his opponents, led by Mr. Tusk, a former president of the European Council, the European Union’s main power center, would mean subordinating Poland’s national interests to those of Berlin and Brussels and the end of Poland as an independent democratic country.“They intend to eliminate democracy and any traces of the rule of law in Poland,” Mr. Kaczysnki said this month at a party convention.Mr. Tusk’s camp, for its part, presented Mr. Kaczynski as a mortal threat to liberal democracy and to Poland’s continued membership of the European Union, with which the departing Law and Justice government clashed repeatedly over the rule of law, the protection of minority rights and other issues.The election campaign was so vituperative and unsettling that many Poles, particularly opposition supporters, could not wait for it to be over.“It was awful, so brutal,” said Ewa Zabowska, a retired Health Ministry official, after casting her vote for the opposition at a Warsaw primary school. “It went on for too long. Nonstop lies for months.”What Ms. Zabowska viewed as lies, however, fans of Law and Justice accepted as alarming truths. “Tusk is an emissary of Germany — he will do exactly what Germany dictates,” Antoni Zdziaborski, a retired Warsaw tram driver, said after voting for the governing party.Anatol Magdziarz in Warsaw contributed reporting. More

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      A Gaza Father’s Worries About His Children

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      More from our inbox:A Temporary House Speaker?Republicans, Stand Up for UkraineWork Permits for ImmigrantsIs A.I. Art … Art?An injured woman and her child after an Israeli bombing near their house in the Gaza Strip.Samar Abu Elouf for The New York TimesTo the Editor:Re “What More Must the Children of Gaza Suffer?,” by Fadi Abu Shammalah (Opinion guest essay, Oct. 13):My heart goes out, and I cry over the suffering of Palestinian children in Gaza. They have done nothing to deserve war after war after war.However, to ignore Hamas’s responsibility for contributing to that suffering is to miss the whole picture. Hamas rules Gaza, and it has chosen to buy missiles and weapons with funds that were meant to build a better society for Gazan civilians.Last weekend’s attack was designed by Hamas to prompt a heavy response by Israel and stir up the pot, probably to kill a Saudi-Israeli peace deal, even if it meant sacrificing Palestinian civilians in the process. We can lay the blame for the Gazan children who have been killed in recent days at the feet of both the Israel Defense Forces and Hamas.Aaron SteinbergWhite Plains, N.Y.To the Editor:Thank you for publishing Opinion guest essays from Rachel Goldberg (“I Hope Someone Somewhere Is Being Kind to My Boy,” nytimes.com, Oct. 12) and Fadi Abu Shammalah. These essays, for the most part, demonstrate the dire disconnect between Israelis and Palestinians for decades.Ms. Goldberg and Mr. Abu Shammalah describe the horrors from their perspectives (terrorists or fighters; most vicious assaults on Jews since the Holocaust or terrifying violence raining down on Gaza).Despair is a shared theme in these articles. There is also a glimmer of hope found in the similar, heartbreaking pleas of loving parents for their children. Is now the time for mothers and fathers around the world to stand together for all children? If not now, when?Daniel J. CallaghanRoanoke, Va.To the Editor:Thank you for publishing Fadi Abu Shammalah’s essay. I’m hoping that hearing from a Palestinian in Gaza at this incredibly terrifying time might help your readers better understand the importance for all of us to call for immediate de-escalation to prevent Israel’s impending invasion.Shame on those who do not do what they can to prevent this assault on humanity. Let’s end this current horror show.Mona SalmaSan FranciscoTo the Editor:Regarding Fadi Abu Shammalah’s essay, “What More Must the Children of Gaza Suffer?”:Maybe Hamas should have considered that question before deciding to attack Israel.Jon DreyerStow, Mass.A Temporary House Speaker?Representative Steve Scalise, Republican of Louisiana, announcing his withdrawal as a candidate for House speaker on Thursday night. He hopes to remain as the party’s No. 2 House leader.Kenny Holston/The New York TimesTo the Editor:Re “Scalise Departs Speaker’s Race as G.O.P. Feuds” (front page, Oct. 13):Given the urgent state of affairs (Israel-Gaza, Ukraine, looming government shutdown), wouldn’t it be a good idea for the Republicans in the House of Representatives to pick a temporary speaker? Someone who doesn’t want the job permanently but would take the role through, say, early January.One would think that having the speaker role be temporary would make it easier to arrive at a compromise.Shaun BreidbartPelham, N.Y.Republicans, Stand Up for Ukraine David Guttenfelder for The New York TimesTo the Editor:Re “G.O.P. Resistance to Aid in Ukraine Expands in House” (front page, Oct. 6):Where do Republicans stand? On the side of autocracy or democracy? Dare I ask? The Ukrainians are on the front lines, fighting and dying to preserve the values of the West. Republicans, stand up and be counted!Norman SasowskyNew Paltz, N.Y.Work Permits for Immigrants Illustration by Rebecca Chew/The New York TimesTo the Editor:In your Oct. 8 editorial, “The Cost of Inaction on Immigration,” you correctly identified one potential benefit from proactive immigration policies. If Congress were not so frozen by the anti-immigration fringe, immigrants could fill the urgent gaps in the American labor market and propel our economy forward.President Biden can and should also expand work permits for long-term undocumented immigrants using an existing administrative process called parole.The organization I lead, the American Business Immigration Coalition, published a letter on behalf of more than 300 business leaders from across the country and a bipartisan group of governors and members of Congress clamoring for this solution.The farmworkers, Dreamers not covered by DACA and undocumented spouses of U.S. citizens who stand to benefit already live and belong in our communities. The advantages for businesses and everyday life in our cities and fields would be enormous, and this should not be held hostage to dysfunction in Congress.Rebecca ShiChicagoIs A.I. Art … Art?A.I. Excels at Making Bad Art. Can an Artist Teach It to Create Something Good?David Salle, one of America’s most thoughtful painters, wants to see if an algorithm can learn to mimic his style — and nourish his own creativity in the process.To the Editor:Re “Turning an Algorithm Into an Art Student” (Arts & Leisure, Oct. 1):A.I. art seems a commercially viable idea, but artistically it falls very far short of reasoned creativity and inspiration. When you remove the 95 percent perspiration from the artistic act, is it art anymore? I don’t think so.David Salle’s original work is inspired. The work produced by his A.I. assistant (no matter how much it is curated by the artist), I am afraid, will never be.I hope he makes money from it, as most artists don’t or can’t make a living with their inspired, personally or collectively produced art. They cannot because the market typically prefers a sanitized, digitized, broadly acceptable, “generically good” art product — something that has been produced and edited to satisfy the largest number of consumers/users/viewers. The market will embrace A.I. inevitably.I fear the day when A.I.-written operas, musicals, concerts and symphonies are performed by A.I. musicians in front of A.I. audiences. With A.I. critics writing A.I. reviews for A.I. readers of A.I. newspapers.Eric AukeeLos AngelesThe writer is an architect. More