Trump, Donald J

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      Biden’s Policies Offer a Starting Point for Trump’s Border Crackdown

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      Mr. Trump has criticized the Biden administration for what he calls its lax handling of the border — but it has left him with tools he can use to shut down the border.President-elect Donald Trump has spent the last year railing against the Biden administration’s immigration policies, saying they left the border wide open and risked American security.But actions taken by President Biden in the past year, including a sweeping asylum ban and more streamlined deportation procedures, may make it easier for Mr. Trump to fulfill his promise to shut down the border and turn back migrants as quickly as possible.To be sure, Mr. Biden’s vision for immigration is different from Mr. Trump’s. While the White House has enacted stricter regulations at the border, it has also emphasized legal pathways to enter the country and offered temporary legal status to migrants from certain troubled countries.After promising a more humane immigration policy when he took office in 2021, Mr. Biden was confronted with a worldwide surge in migration that put pressure on the southern U.S. border. By his second year in office, annual border arrests topped 2 million.As chaotic scenes emerged of migrants crowding at the border, Republicans like Mr. Trump argued that the Democrats were unable to govern and protect American cities, and they urged a crackdown on immigration. Republican governors such as Greg Abbott of Texas and Ron DeSantis of Florida sent thousands of migrants by bus and plane to Democratic northern cities to highlight the border crisis.President Biden visiting Brownsville, Texas, in February, where he received an operational briefing from U.S. border officials. Kenny Holston/The New York TimesWe are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Trump’s Cabinet Picks, Panned in Washington, Thrill Many of His Voters

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      Where Donald J. Trump’s critics see underqualified nominees with questionable judgment, his voters described them as mavericks recruited to shake up Washington.To his detractors, President-elect Donald J. Trump’s cabinet looks like a rogues’ gallery of people with dubious credentials and questionable judgment.His supporters see something different.“It’s a masterpiece,’’ Eileen Margolis, 58, who lives in Weston, Fla., and owns a tattoo business, said of Mr. Trump’s cabinet picks unveiled over the past week. “If it was a painting, it would be a Picasso.”A “brilliant alliance,’’ is how Joanne Warwick, 60, a former Democrat from Detroit, described many of the nominees.“It’s pretty much a star cast,’’ said Judy Kanoui of Flat Rock, N.C., a retiree and lifelong Democrat who voted for Mr. Trump for the first time this month.Democrats, and even some Republicans, worry that these nominees for top positions in government are inexperienced, conflicted and potentially reckless. But in interviews with almost two dozen Trump voters around the country, his supporters were more likely to describe them as mavericks and reformers recruited to deliver on Mr. Trump’s promise to shake up Washington.In Robert F. Kennedy Jr., the nominee for health and human services secretary, Mr. Trump’s supporters see a crusader searching for new solutions to chronic illnesses, not a conspiracy theorist promoting questionable and debunked ideas about vaccines and fluoride.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      What Can the Department of Government Efficiency Do?

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      President-elect Trump has indicated the entity will operate outside the government, a position that comes with legal limits.In between the cabinet nominations that President-elect Donald Trump announced this week was an unusual appointment: Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy will lead a newly created Department of Government Efficiency.While Trump has not detailed how the entity will operate, he said in a statement that it would “slash excess regulations, cut wasteful expenditures and restructure federal agencies” and “provide advice and guidance from outside of government.”Conventionally, what outsiders can do in the government has been pretty limited. But with Trump and Musk both known for pushing boundaries, it’s not clear what “DOGE” will look like.The federal code’s primary conflict-of-interest law is a big deterrent to adopting government authority. It bans government employees from participating in government matters where they have a financial stake. But it doesn’t apply to outside contractors or advisers, which could be important to Musk, whose businesses interact with many federal agencies and who would most likely be required to make divestments if he became a federal employee.Things get complicated if an outsider acts on behalf of the government. Just saying you’re not a government employee doesn’t mean the law will treat you that way, even if you’re not paid. Acting like a government employee — for example, by managing government employees — may open the door to being charged with a felony under the conflict-of-interest law.“What he shouldn’t do is pretend he’s not a government employee and then come in there and start running around acting like a government employee — supervising government employees, giving orders, performing the functions of a government employee,” Richard Painter, who was the principal lawyer responsible for clearing financial conflicts of interest in the George W. Bush administration, said of Musk.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Trump’s New Cologne: Eau de Musk

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      I was feeling sad that Melania may not care to come play first lady in the second Trump administration.She visited the East Wing only a couple of times during her husband’s first term, turning into the first lady of absenteeism, according to Katie Rogers, the author of “American Woman,” a history of modern first ladies. Her office there was so empty, her staff used it as a gift-wrapping station.Even so, I thought we might get a little comme il faut from “the Portrait,” as Ivanka nicknamed her stepmother — a small bow to protocol.But not likely. As some in the Trump orbit point out, it’s no accident that Barron is going to New York University, not a university here, like Georgetown or American.Melania will probably “move in” to the White House and drop by the capital, looking impervious and gorgeous. But in general, the Slovenian Sphinx is going to get even more sphinxy this time. She has made her disdain for D.C. clear. She skipped the ritual torch-passing of having tea in the Yellow Room of the White House with Jill Biden as the two presidents met. Jill had to settle for handing a note to Donald to take back to Melania in Palm Beach.The New York Post reported that Melania abhorred the Bidens because of the Mar-a-Lago documents raid in 2022, when she felt violated by F.B.I. agents with a search warrant snooping in the drawer with her fine washables.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      I’m 16. On Nov. 5 the Girls Cried, and the Boys Played Minecraft.

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      On the morning after the election, I walked up the staircase of my school. A preteen was crying into the shoulders of her braces-clad peer. Her friend was rubbing circles on her back.I continued up the stairs to the lounge, where upperclassmen linger before classes. There I saw two tables: One was filled with my girlfriends, many of them with hollows under their eyes. There was a blanket of despair over the young women in the room. I looked over to the other table of teenage boys and saw Minecraft on their computers. While we were gasping for a breath, it seemed they were breathing freely.We girls woke up to a country that would rather elect a man found liable for sexual abuse than a woman. Where the kind of man my mother instructs me to cross the street to avoid will be addressed as Mr. President. Where the body I haven’t fully grown into may no longer be under my control. The boys, it seemed to me, just woke up on a Wednesday.What made my skin burn most wasn’t that over 75 million people voted for Donald Trump. It was that this election didn’t seem to measurably change anything for the boys around me, whether their parents supported Mr. Trump or not. Many of them didn’t seem to share our rage, our fear, our despair. ​​We don’t even share the same future.I am scared that the Trump administration will take away or restrict birth control and Plan B — the same way they did abortion. I am scared that the boys I know will see in a triumphant, boastful Mr. Trump the epitome of a manly man and model themselves after him. I was 8 years old the first time he was elected. Now I am 16. I am still unable to vote, but I am so much more aware of what I have to lose.I have seen the ways in which many of the boys in my generation can be different from their fathers. The #MeToo movement went mainstream when they were still wearing Superman pajamas. On Tuesdays in health class, they learn about the dangers of inebriated consent. They don’t pretend to gag when a girl mentions her period or a tampon falls out of her backpack. They don’t find sexist jokes all that funny and don’t often make them in public.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      The ‘Diploma Divide’ and the 2024 Election

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      Readers discuss a David Brooks column about how the less educated are being left behind.To the Editor:Re “Voters to Elites: Do You See Me Now?,” by David Brooks (column, Nov. 8):Mr. Brooks is exactly right, but he doesn’t carry his line of reasoning to its logical conclusion. Yes, Donald Trump won the election because of a strong showing by the non-college-educated population. And yes, that segment is disadvantaged in many ways.But why did that segment vote for Mr. Trump? I would suggest there is a reason that people go to college. And contrary to what many believe, it is not just to get a better job. It is to become a better and more informed citizen, and to learn to distinguish truth from falsehood. And that is not easy when confronted with constant disinformation and outright lies.Partly as a result, the non-college-educated do not see that they have been duped. They have voted for a man and a party that have consistently worked to keep them suppressed, that have been against universal health care, against efforts to control global warming, against monopolistic practices, etc., etc.Democrats should stop flagellating themselves for having done something wrong. It is not they who have betrayed the non-college-educated. As global warming, hurricanes and flooding increase; as privatized health care grows more expensive, and epidemics again kill thousands because of vaccine skeptics; as inflation shoots up from tariffs and tax reduction, the non-college-educated will suffer disproportionately.Let them look to their elected Republicans. They have broken it, and now they own it.Robert H. PalmerNew YorkTo the Editor:Trying to blame the Democrats’ loss on their supposed disrespect of voters and behaving like elites is old and tired.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Kennedy’s Views Mix Mistrust of Business With Bizarre Health Claims

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      Seven years after Americans celebrated the licensing of Jonas Salk’s polio vaccine, President John F. Kennedy called on Congress to finance a nationwide vaccination program to stamp out what he called the “ancient enemies of our children”: infectious disease.Now Kennedy’s nephew, Robert F. Kennedy Jr., is the nation’s chief critic of vaccines — a public health intervention that has saved millions of lives — and President-elect Donald J. Trump’s pick to become the next secretary of health and human services. Mr. Kennedy calls himself a vaccine safety activist. The press calls him a vaccine skeptic. His detractors call him an anti-vaxxer and a conspiracy theorist.Whatever one calls him, Mr. Kennedy is a polarizing choice whose views on certain public health matters beyond vaccination are far outside the mainstream. He opposes fluoride in water. He favors raw milk, which the Food and Drug Administration deems risky. And he has promoted unproven therapies like hydroxychloroquine for Covid-19. His own relatives called his presidential bid “dangerous for our country.”If there is a through line to Mr. Kennedy’s thinking, it appears to be a deep mistrust of corporate influence on health and medicine. In some cases, that has led him to support positions that are also embraced by public health professionals, including his push to get ultra-processed foods, which have been linked to obesity, off grocery store shelves. His disdain for profit-seeking pharmaceutical manufacturers and food companies drew applause on the campaign trail.People close to him say his commitment to “make America healthy again” is heartfelt.“This is his life’s mission,” said Brian Festa, a founder of We the Patriots U.S.A., a “medical freedom” group that has pushed back on vaccine mandates, who said he has known Mr. Kennedy for years.But like Mr. Trump, Mr. Kennedy also has a tendency to float wild theories based on scanty evidence. And he has hinted at taking actions, like prosecuting leading medical journals, that have unnerved the medical community. On Friday, many leading public health experts reacted to his nomination with alarm.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Trump Names Karoline Leavitt as His White House Press Secretary

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      President-elect Donald J. Trump announced on Friday that he had chosen Karoline Leavitt, who worked in his administration and served as his campaign’s press secretary, to be his White House press secretary.Ms. Leavitt, 27, will take on one of the most visible jobs in Mr. Trump’s next administration, fielding questions from reporters in the White House briefing room on behalf of a president with an adversarial relationship to the mainstream media. She will be the youngest person ever to assume the role.“Karoline is smart, tough, and has proven to be a highly effective communicator,” Mr. Trump said in a statement. “I have the utmost confidence she will excel at the podium, and help deliver our message to the American People as we, Make America Great Again.”Mr. Trump can be hyper-focused on coverage of himself, complaining both privately and publicly about newspaper headlines and television packages. He made a public show of castigating news outlets over unfavorable coverage and amped up his threats against the media in the final weeks of his campaign.Mr. Trump cycled through four press secretaries during his first four years in office, and Ms. Leavitt will have to manage his expectations while also navigating the demands of the White House press corps. Her position will immediately make her a public figure in a way that few other Trump officials will be.Throughout the campaign, Ms. Leavitt adopted Mr. Trump’s disdain for the mainstream media in frequent appearances on major television networks and conservative outlets. Mr. Trump was pleased with her performance and looked to her as a trusted voice to defend him on television, according to people who worked on the Trump campaign.After working in the White House as an assistant press secretary and in the Office of Presidential Correspondence during the first Trump administration, Ms. Leavitt ran for Congress in New Hampshire in 2022, winning a Republican primary but failing to unseat a Democratic incumbent. She also was a spokeswoman for Representative Elise Stefanik of New York, a close Trump ally who has been tapped to be his ambassador to the United Nations. More