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ACLU sues for information on Trump’s mass deportation plan – live
by Evelyn Reynolds 18 November 2024, 20:39
The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) filed a lawsuit a little earlier today seeking basic details on how the federal government would carry out a program to deport millions of people from the US, which President-elect Donald Trump has pledged to begin on “day one” of his new administration.As part of the federal action, the ACLU demanded to be given information about the government’s current relationships with, for example, private airlines, ground transportation facilities and other elements that would be involved in arranging deportation flights for undocumented people. The lawsuit was first reported by the Washington Post this afternoon.The suit was filed in Los Angeles by the American Civil Liberties Union Foundation of Southern California and accuses the government of keeping the mechanisms used to deport people “shrouded in secrecy”.Trump has pledged to begin deporting millions of people despite the legal, financial, economic and human rights implications, also confirming today that he would be prepared to shred norms and harness the US military to enforce his policy, despite the threat to democracy and due process.As the Trump administration continues to take form, the field of potential appointees to lead the treasury department has widened to include Marc Rowan who founded and runs one of the nation’s largest public equity firms, and Kevin Warsh a central banker who from 2006 to 2011 served as a governor for the Federal Reserve, Reuters reports.Two others in the running for the seat are Scott Bessent, the founder of the capital management firm Key Square who has said he wants the US dollar to remain the world’s reserve currency and use tariffs as a negotiating tactic, and Howard Lutnick who leads Cantor Fitzgerald.Trump ally Elon Musk publicly threw his support behind Lutnick in a post on X that argues that Lutnick “will actually enact change”.A lawyer who is representing two women who gave testimony to the ethics committee of the House of Representatives investigating Matt Gaetz has said in an interview that the former congressman paid the women to have sex with him.The two women were adults at the time but also told lawmakers that she witnessed Gaetz having sex with a 17-year-old at the same party she attended, ABC News reported.Gaetz resigned from his position as a Republican representative for Florida last week immediately on being nominated by President-elect Donald Trump to become US attorney general. That immediately shut down the congressional investigation and, despite pressure, the House has not yet agreed to release the report of the investigation to the public or the US Senate, the body that will have the job of confirming Gaetz’s appointment.Florida-based lawyer Joel Leppard spoke to ABC News earlier today.“Just to be clear, both of your clients testified that they were paid by [then] Representative Gaetz to have sex?” interviewer Juju Chang asked Leppard.“That’s correct. The House was very clear about that and went through each. They essentially put the Venmo payments on the screen and asked about them. And my clients repeatedly testified, ‘What was this payment for?’ ‘That was for sex,’” Leppard told Chang.One of the clients, Leppard said, also told the House committee that at the party she was at in July 2017 as she went to the pool area she saw Gaetz having sex with a friend of hers, who was 17.Gaetz has denied any wrongdoing throughout various investigations into his behavior amid allegations of sexual misconduct. The names of Leppard’s clients have not been disclosed.Donald Trump appears to be planning to attend a SpaceX Starship rocket launch tomorrow, in the latest indication of influence of the company’s founder, Elon Musk, on the president-elect and his orbit.The Federal Aviation Administration has issued temporary flight restrictions over the area of Brownsville and Boca Chica, at the eastern end of the Texas-Mexico border, for a VIP visit that coincides with the SpaceX launch window for a test of its massive Starship rocket from its launch facility on the Gulf of Mexico, the Associated Press reports.Tuesday’s 30-minute launch window opens at 4pm central time (5pm ET), according to the company, with the company again looking to test the landing capture system of the booster in Texas, which it debuted last month and about which Trump has been complimentary, while the upper stage continues to a splashdown in the Indian Ocean.Musk pumped an estimated $200m through his political action committee to help elect Trump.The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) filed a lawsuit a little earlier today seeking basic details on how the federal government would carry out a program to deport millions of people from the US, which President-elect Donald Trump has pledged to begin on “day one” of his new administration.As part of the federal action, the ACLU demanded to be given information about the government’s current relationships with, for example, private airlines, ground transportation facilities and other elements that would be involved in arranging deportation flights for undocumented people. The lawsuit was first reported by the Washington Post this afternoon.The suit was filed in Los Angeles by the American Civil Liberties Union Foundation of Southern California and accuses the government of keeping the mechanisms used to deport people “shrouded in secrecy”.Trump has pledged to begin deporting millions of people despite the legal, financial, economic and human rights implications, also confirming today that he would be prepared to shred norms and harness the US military to enforce his policy, despite the threat to democracy and due process.Mikie Sherrill has represented New Jersey’s 11th District, which includes parts of Essex, Morris and Passaic counties, since her 2018 election during president-elect Donald Trump’s first administration’s midterm. Sherrill flipped the district from Republican control with former Representative Rodney Frelinghuysen’s retirement and has been reelected three times since.Before getting elected to Congress, she was a prosecutor for the US attorney for the district of New Jersey. She served in the Navy from 1994 to 2003, the AP writes.Sherrill joins fellow Democratic US House member Josh Gottheimer, who announced his run for governor last week. Also seeking the Democratic nod are Newark Mayor Ras Baraka, Jersey City mayor Steven Fulop, teachers union president Sean Spiller and former state Senate President Steve Sweeney.Republicans are also lining up to run. Among them are state senator Jon Bramnick, former state legislator Jack Ciattarelli, former state senator Ed Durr and radio host Bill Spadea.New Jersey Democratic congresswoman Mikie Sherrill of New Jersey has announced today that she’s running for governor, saying it’s time to fix the state’s economy and make it more affordable.Sherrill, a former federal prosecutor and US Navy helicopter pilot, joins a crowded field of Democrats vying to succeed Democratic governor Phil Murphy, whose second term expires after next year’s election. Murphy is barred by term limits from running again, the Associated Press reports.In a video announcing her run, Sherrill introduced herself as a US Naval Academy graduate and chopper pilot and leaned on her military experience.
I learned early on: In a crisis, the worst thing you can do is freeze. You have to choose to lead, to follow, or get out of the way.”
She went on to say in the video that the state’s economy needs to be fixed.
“Let’s make life more affordable for hardworking New Jerseyans, from health care to groceries to childcare. These challenges aren’t new and it’s time to confront them head on.”
Tom Fitton, the president of the influential conservative group Judicial Watch, has had a little more to say today, after his social media post prompted Donald Trump this morning to confirm that he is prepared to utilize the US military to conduct mass deportations when he takes office.Fitton popped up on the hard-right Newsmax cable channel a little earlier. He said that his social media post that Trump 2.0 would be prepared to declare a national emergency in order to use military assets was not derived from any insider knowledge but just from stories that were around. Trump has caused a stir by reposting the message today with the endorsement “True!”He told Newsmax: “Does anyone dispute the invasion is not a national emergency? It’s got to be a whole government approach.”Rightwingers such as Fitton, Trump and Texas’s anti-immigration hardline governor, Greg Abbott, often invoke an “invasion” of undocumented people seeking refuge in the US and crossing the border from Mexico without authorization as and invasion.“They cut the line and they need to be sent home,” he said.The House ethics committee is reportedly set to meet on Wednesday to discuss its report into Matt Gaetz, according to NBC News.The committee has been looking into allegations that Gaetz engaged in sexual misconduct, illicit drug use and other ethical breaches.Last week, Gaetz was nominated by president-elect Donald Trump to serve as his Attorney General. Gaetz then resigned from the House of Representatives, which effectively ended the ethics inquiry.The news of the meeting on Wednesday comes as an increasing number of lawmakers on both sides of the aisle have said that they would like to review the Ethics committee report.Eric Hovde, the Republican Senate candidate in Wisconsin, has conceded the race to Democratic incumbent Tammy Baldwin in a video message.In the message, Hovde, who lost to Baldwin by about 29,000 votes, said that he would not request a recount of the vote but expressed concerns about the election process and alleged “many troubling issues” related to absentee ballots in Milwaukee.His claims of impropriety have been refuted by Republicans, Democrats and non-partisan election leaders.In the video message Hovde said that “without a detailed review of all the ballots and their legitimacy, which will be difficult to obtain in the courts, a request for a recount would serve no purpose, because you will just be recounting the same ballots, regardless of their integrity”.The Florida governor, Ron DeSantis, said that the process of selecting someone to fill Florida senator Marco Rubio’s seat has begun and that a selection will likely be made by the beginning of January.In a statement on Monday, DeSantis said that Rubio is expected to resign from the Senate to assume duties as secretary of state when the Trump administration takes power on January 20th.Under Florida law, DeSantis is tasked with appointing Rubio’s successor.“We have already received strong interest from several possible candidates, and we continue to gather names of additional candidates and conduct preliminary vetting” DeSantis said. “More extensive vetting and candidate interviews will be conducted over the next few weeks.”
Donald Trump gave the nod on social media this morning to the notion that he wants to use the military to enforce his previously-stated intentions for the mass deportation of undocumented immigrants from the US once he gets into office.
Conservative strategist Steve Bannon was due to go to trial next month on state charges in New York of conspiring to dupe donors to build a border wall but a judge said this morning that Bannon won’t face trial until February.
There are reports of clashes among top Trump insiders over leadership picks.
According to reports, Linda McMahon, a former Small Business Administration (SBA) director, is expected to be announced as Trump’s secretary of commerce.
Trump picked Brendan Carr, Project 2025 co-author, to lead FCC as speculation over treasury secretary appointment mounts.
Steve Bannon did not turn up in person to attend the latest hearing in his court case in New York City today, on state charges of conspiring to dupe donors to build a wall on the US-Mexico border.Instead, he listened in virtually as the judge, April Newbauer, set 25 February for jury selection, postponing it from December.Bannon did not speak except to say, “yes, ma’am” when asked whether he understood he must be in court on the new date, the Associated Press reported.The judge delayed the trial date from 9 December after deciding to let the future jurors hear evidence that some of the wall charity’s money went to pay a more than $600,000 credit card debt that a separate Bannon-related not-for-profit organization had racked up in 2019.Prosecutors wanted to introduce it and defense lawyers argued unsuccessfully that it was irrelevant.Bannon denies the charges, including conspiracy and money laundering. Manhattan prosecutors brought the case after Donald Trump pardoned Bannon in a similar federal prosecution that was in its early stages, where Bannon had denied pocketing over $1m from the We Build the Wall outfit.Newbauer has yet to rule on whether jurors’ names will be kept confidential, as the prosecution has requested. More
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Uncommitted achieved its goal in making Gaza a mainstream issue | Camonghne Felix
by Evelyn Reynolds 18 November 2024, 12:55
In the days following the 2024 election, a cadre of pundits have been eager to call the uncommitted voters’ impact on the presidential race both a failure and a significant factor in Vice-President Kamala Harris’s loss. Despite those contradicting analyses, the movement’s success lies not in its voter count, but rather in the clarity it offered voters, even those who changed their minds and chose to vote for Harris in the end.As with the anti-war campaigns of the 1960s, the Uncommitted National Movement, the more than 500,000-person effort which called on Americans against the genocide in Gaza to withhold their votes, was a representation of the nation’s shifting consciousness around US responsibility in Israel’s war. By asking the public to confront imperialism, the movement opened the door to a confrontation between the people and the Democratic party, awakening its voters to an issue once seen as someone else’s concern.When the uncommitted movement offered to endorse Harris in exchange for having a speaker at the Democratic national convention and were denied, it allowed the movement to more extensively highlight the contradictions that mark the party. If the Democrats weren’t giving marginalized people an opportunity to speak, what does that say to Muslims, Arabs and voters of color who know intimately this kind of erasure and disregard at the hands of the party that purports to represent them?While some in the Democratic party billed Israel’s carnage as an issue that concerned only the left, many liberals across the spectrum, from the far left to centrists, actually consider it a mainstream issue, one that dominates their political perspectives and positions.More and more people, through the activism of uncommitted voters, learned that American democracy is a feature of western imperialism – Republicans and Democrats alike would supply arms to Israel and allow its government impunity on the world stage. Even though more than 60% of US voters supported an arms embargo, including 77% of Democratic voters and 40% of Republican voters, and even though stopping arms transfers polled highly in swing states, the Democratic party ignored demands for an embargo and ceasefire. (The Biden administration has repeatedly said it is pushing for a ceasefire.) That ceasefire has yet to come, and more than 40,000 Palestinians have been killed, with many more unaccounted for.The anti-war college campus protests also furthered the cause of uncommitted: students across the country were unduly labeled as antisemitic antagonists because they pressed their universities to divest from weapons manufacturers. Democratic voters across the country became more and more sympathetic to the students’ actions, marking an even more pronounced break from the party position. That consciousness only grew once the expansion of the war into Lebanon and Syria underscored the extent of US involvement in the creation and exacerbation of regional warfare.Uncommitted voters in Michigan, which has the largest population of Palestinians, Arabs and Muslim people in the country, helped deliver a loss to the Harris campaign on election night. To be clear: there is no basis to the accusation that Harris losing Michigan was the lone cause of Trump’s win. But it matters that Arab and Muslim voters in cities such as Dearborn rejected the Democrats’ agenda, while Rashida Tlaib, a Palestinian representative from Michigan and Ilhan Omar, a representative from Minnesota, held on to their seats. Biden and Harris had room to choose a different approach on Israel, even if it meant appealing to a smaller group of Democrats who would have been happy to campaign and organize for Harris had the party shown any significant steps to end the war.Even those uncommitted voters who decided to vote for Harris were participating in a consciousness-raising effort that revealed existing contradictions within the party and democracy as a whole. Their demands dominated headlines, especially before the Democratic national convention.Uncommitted voters, in the end, are the ones coming away from this election with a win. In raising awareness, the movement has provided an example for future anti-war actions, by redefining the function of the vote as less of a compulsion and more of an opportunity to center morality instead of myopic harm-reductionist tactics meant to maintain the status quo.The movement also offers a useful retrospective on the race: when the party of the people chooses to remain hostile to Palestinian protests and refuses to show any proportional empathy to Palestinian people, the voters they need will reject them. Anger and disappointment took up the space that hope might have, and was the dominant emotion felt by many in the electorate, due in part to the persistence of uncommitted voters in elevating their voices and pushing others to consider the value of their vote.That this was possible was news to many Americans until uncommitted voters began to organize. Because of their activism, the Democrats are learning that the genocide in Gaza is a hard line for more people than they thought, and that chances of winning back the House and Senate in 2026 will remain slim unless some shift is made in the strategy, a shift that requires the party to aggressively pursue an end to the hecatomb of Gaza.America is slowly opening its eyes to the violent truths of American hegemony. Because of uncommitted, more people now have a working criticism of America’s position on the world stage. This is what the seams of Harris’s loss reveal: the Democrats are in trouble, and democracy is in trouble, too. More
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‘Queen of polling’ J Ann Selzer quits after Iowa survey missed by 16 points
by Evelyn Reynolds 17 November 2024, 20:58
J Ann Selzer, the celebrated Iowa election pollster, announced on Sunday that she is moving on “to other ventures and opportunities”, two weeks after her survey in the state wrongly predicted a strong shift to Kamala Harris in the days before the election.That poll, which projected a 47% to 44% lead for the vice-president over Donald Trump on the back of older women breaking for Democrats over the issue of reproductive rights, came three days before the national vote, giving Democrats false hope that Harris could win the White House decisively. When the votes were counted, Selzer was off by 16 points as the former president won the state decisively.Selzer, known as the “queen of polling”, shot to fame in 2008 when she predicted that a virtually unknown senator, Barack Obama, would beat frontrunner Hillary Clinton in the Iowa caucuses.She told MSNBC before the vote that Harris was leading in early voting in Iowa “because of her strength with women generally, even stronger with women aged 65 and older. Her margin is more than 2-to-1 – and this is an age group that shows up to vote, or votes early, in disproportionately large numbers.”Trump disputed the poll in a post on his Truth Social network at the time.“In fact, it’s not even close! All polls, except for one heavily skewed toward the Democrats by a Trump hater who called it totally wrong the last time, have me up, BY A LOT.”According to unofficial results, Trump ultimately won Iowa by 13 points, 56% to 43%.In a column published by the Des Moines Register on Sunday, Selzer wrote that public opinion polling had been her “life’s work” and had made a decision to step back from it a year ago.“Would I have liked to make this announcement after a final poll aligned with Election Day results? Of course,” she wrote. “It’s ironic that it’s just the opposite.”Seltzer ventured that her strong track record had “maybe that history of accuracy made the outlier position too comfortable”.“Polling is a science of estimation, and science has a way of periodically humbling the scientist. So, I’m humbled, yet always willing to learn from unexpected findings,” she added.A review of Selzer’s final 2024 poll hasn’t revealed a clear reason for missing Trump’s runaway victory in the state, the paper said in a column published on Sunday, adding that it is “evaluating the best ways to continue surveys that will provide accurate information and insight about issues that matter to Iowans”.Editor Carol Hunter wrote that the Iowa Poll “has been an important legacy indicator and we recognize the need to evolve and find new ways to accurately take the pulse of Iowans on state and national issues”.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionBut the black eye the polling business has received for failing to predict a strong Trump victory in the electoral college, 312 to 226, and popular vote, taking with him all seven swing states and seeing every state moving Republican, may not be entirely deserved.Most political polls for the 2024 presidential election saw a close race in the electoral college, and a popular-vote victory for Harris. But the election results so far show that Trump added more than 2m votes to his 2020 total, while Harris received millions fewer votes than Joe Biden did four years earlier, in what some are calling the lost “couch vote”.Trump won the electoral college 312 to 226, and currently leads the popular vote by 1.7%. UC Riverside polling expert Andy Crosby wrote that Trump’s margin of victory was within the 2.2% margin of error of most of the final elections polls.After what turned out to be the final Selzer Iowa poll this year, she had offered these words of warning to excited Never Trump podcasters at The Bulwark: “People looked at my methodology … and it’s published in every article in the Des Moines Register, how we do it, but you look at it on paper and you go, It’s too simple, this can’t possibly work. And so far it has, but I’m prepared that one day it will not work and I will blow up into tiny little pieces and be scattered across the city of Des Moines.” More
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Republican senator calls for release of Matt Gaetz ethics report to chamber
by Evelyn Reynolds 17 November 2024, 17:21
Discussion on Donald Trump’s selection of Matt Gaetz, the former Florida congressman who had been accused of sexual misconduct, for US attorney general continued on Sunday, with Republican senator Markwayne Mullin calling for an unreleased ethics report to be released to the Senate.Mullin told NBC’s Meet the Press that the Senate, which will oversee Gaetz’s confirmation hearings to become attorney general, “should have access to that” but declined to say if it should be released publicly.Gaetz resigned from his seat in Congress on Wednesday soon after the president-elect made his controversial pick, frustrating plans by a congressional ethics panel to release a review of claims against Gaetz, including sexual misconduct and illegal drug use. Gaetz denies any wrongdoing.Republican House speaker Mike Johnson repeated his position on Sunday that the survey should remain out of the public realm. Gaetz had faced a three-year justice department investigation into the same allegations that concluded without criminal charges being brought.Johnson said the principle was that the ethics committee’s jurisdiction did not extend to non-members of the House. “There have been, I understand, I think, two exceptions to the rule over the whole history of Congress and the history of the ethics committee,” Johnson told CNN, adding that while he did not have the authority to stop it “we don’t want to go down that road.”Trump’s selection of Gaetz, while successfully provoking Democrats’ outrage, is also seen as a test for Republicans to bend Trump’s force of will. Mullin has previously noted situations in which Gaetz had allegedly shown colleagues nude photographs of his sexual conquests and described him as “unprincipled”.But the senator said he had not made a decision on whether to support Gaetz in a confirmation vote. “I’m going to give him a fair shot just like any individual,” Mullin said.The pending report seems likely to emerge in some form after other senior Republicans, including senators Susan Collins, John Cornyn and Thom Tillis have all said they believe it should be shown to them.Separately, Pennsylvania Democratic senator John Fetterman repeated his advice to members of his own party to not “freak out” over everything Trump does, pointing out that for at least the next two years, Republicans can “run the table”.Fetterman, who won decisive re-election in the state this month, said he looked forward to reviewing some of Trump’s nominations but others “are just absolute trolls”, including Gaetz.For Democrats, who are still trying to figure out reasons for their devastating loss at the ballot box this month, their outrage at Trump’s nominations “gets the kind of thing that he wanted, like the freak out”.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotion“It’s still not even Thanksgiving yet and if we’re having meltdowns at every tweet or every appointment.”Democrats, Fetterman added, should be “more concerned” about Republicans being able “to run the table for the next two years. Those are the things you really want to be concerned about, not small tweets or, you know, random kinds of appointments.”But Democratic senator-elect Adam Schiff told CNN that Gaetz was “not only unqualified, he is really disqualified” to become the country’s top lawyer.“Are we really going to have an attorney general [with] … credible allegations he was involved in child sex-trafficking, potential illicit drug use, obstruction of an investigation? Who has no experience serving in the justice department, only being investigated by it,” Schiff said. More
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Musk publicly supports Lutnick for treasury secretary as Trump considers pick
by Evelyn Reynolds 17 November 2024, 14:40
Elon Musk has publicly weighed in on Donald Trump’s choice for US treasury secretary, one of the remaining key incoming cabinet nominations the president-elect will make in the coming days.Musk urged followers on X to support a candidate that would not be “business as usual” and “will actually enact change” as he threw his support behind Trump’s transition co-chair Howard Lutnick to lead the treasury department.Lutnick, former CEO of Cantor Fitzgerald, a firm that lost 658 employees in the 9/11 attacks, is believed to be up against Scott Bessent, the founder of capital management firm Key Square who has said he wants the US to remain the world’s reserve currency and use tariffs as a negotiating tactic.“My view fwiw is that Bessent is a business-as-usual choice, whereas @howardlutnick will actually enact change,” Musk posted on Saturday. “Business-as-usual is driving America bankrupt, so we need change one way or another.”Musk urged his followers to “weigh in on this for Donald Trump to consider feedback”.Lutnick told the Wall Street Journal recently that whomever Trump hires will “be loyal to the policies of the president”, telling the outlet: “For my whole life I was a fiscal conservative, social liberal … The Democratic Party moved away from me.”Both Lutnick and Bessent are supportive of Trump’s trade tariff polices, a tactic he used against China during his first term. “Tariffs are a means to finally stand up for Americans,” Bessent wrote in an op-ed on Fox News on Friday.But both candidates argue that lowering taxes would offset the higher import costs and promote economic growth.But some economists have warned that tariffs could weaken growth, boost inflation and lower employment. A recent paper by the Peterson Institute for International Economics predicted inflation would climb to at least 6% by 2026, and consumer prices would be 20% higher over the next four years.Musk’s intervention in the battle between Lutnick and Bessent for the key post – one who advises the president on economic and fiscal matters, including spending and taxes – comes amid anxiety over the space and transport entrepreneur’s proximity to Trump.Musk, the world’s wealthiest person, is set to co-chair an advisory department, the department of government efficiency, or Doge, in the new administration to cut departments and reduce as much as $2tn wasteful federal spending.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionAccording to the Washington Post, some in Trump’s circle expressed surprise that Musk would weigh in on the choice of treasury secretary. “People are not happy,” one said, according to the outlet, adding that Musk was acting as a “co-president”.Musk, who spent more than $100m in support of Trump’s campaign, has been a near constant presence around the president-elect, including sitting in with Trump on a call with Ukraine president Volodymyr Zelenskyy.On Saturday, Musk appeared to mock Zelenskyy’s claim Ukraine is an independent country that could not be forced to the negotiating table with Russia, posting on X that the Ukrainian leader’s “sense of humor is amazing”.Musk and Trump later on Saturday sat together ringside at New York’s Madison Square Garden, site of a widely-criticized pre-election rally, for a UFC title fight. Alongside them were house speaker Mike Johnson, Robert F Kennedy Jr, Joe Rogan, Tulsi Gabbard, and Vivek Ramaswamy, who is set to head Doge with Musk. More
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Haitian immigrants flee Springfield, Ohio, in droves after Trump election win
by Evelyn Reynolds 17 November 2024, 13:00
From a tiny office behind a Haitian grocery store on Springfield’s South Limestone Street, Margery Koveleski has spent years helping local Haitians overcome bureaucratic red tape to make their lives in the Ohio city a little bit easier.But Koveleski – whose family is Haitian – has noticed a major change recently.Haitians are now coming to her to figure out how to leave.“Some folks don’t have credit cards or access to the internet, and they want to buy a bus ticket or a plane ticket, so we help them book a flight,” she told the Guardian recently. “People are leaving.”Koveleski, leaders in Springfield’s Haitian community, and others have relayed reports of Haitians fleeing the city of 60,000 people in recent days for fear of being rounded up and deported after Donald Trump’s victory in the 5 November presidential election.“The owner of one store is wondering if he should move back to New York or to Chicago – he says his business is way down,” Koveleski remarked.Trump has repeatedly said he would end immigrants’ temporary protected status (TPS) – the provision through which many Haitians are legally allowed to live and work in the US – and deport Haitians from Springfield once in office.For many, the threats are real.A sheriff in Sidney, a town 40 miles (64km) north-west of Springfield that is home to several dozen Haitian immigrants, allegedly told local police in September to “get a hold of these people and arrest them”.“Bring them – I’ll figure out if they’re legal,” he said, referencing Haitian immigrants in the area.As Jacob Payen, a co-founder of the Haitian Community Alliance who runs a business that includes helping Haitians in Springfield to file tax returns, said: “People are fully aware of the election result, and that is why they are leaving; they are afraid of a mass deportation.“Several of my customers have left. One guy with his family went to New Jersey; others have gone to Boston. I know three families that have gone to Canada.”Some are thought to have moved to nearby cities such as Dayton, where they believe they would be less visible to law enforcement. Others who had temporary asylum in Brazil are pondering going back to the South American country, community leaders say.Springfield’s Haitian community has been in the spotlight since Trump falsely accused immigrants here of eating pets during a presidential debate in September. Since then, the city has seen false bomb threats and marches by neo-Nazi groups after having experienced a revival in recent years in large part because of Haitians who took jobs in local produce packaging and machining factories that many previously there found undesirable.Unofficial results from the presidential election found that Trump beat Harris by fewer than 150 votes in Springfield despite his making false claims about immigrants in the Ohio city a cornerstone of his anti-immigration election campaign.A policy that has been around since 1990, the TPS program currently sees more than 800,000 immigrants who have fled conflict or humanitarian emergencies in 16 countries to live and work legally in the US for a limited time. About 300,000 Haitians fleeing widespread violence in the Caribbean country have been authorized to remain in the US through TPS until at least 3 February 2026.But while it once enjoyed support from both sides of the political aisle, Trump’s first term saw a California court rule in 2020 that his administration could end TPS for citizens of Haiti and three other countries.TPS is granted – and often renewed – by the secretary of homeland security. On Tuesday, reports emerged that Trump had chosen to give the post to the South Dakota governor, Kristi Noem, who has deployed state national guard troops to the US-Mexico border several times in recent years.Trump’s deportation threats are happening at a time when Haiti is experiencing renewed violence from politically connected gangs. The country’s main airport in Port-au-Prince has been closed periodically and was shuttered again on Tuesday after gunfire hit a commercial passenger airplane flying in from the US. That was the second time since October that gunfire had hit an aircraft over Haiti.Though Trump may ultimately succeed in ending TPS for some immigrants, some legal experts believe that is unlikely to happen during the early days of his administration after his second presidency begins on 20 January.“There’s a fear among the Haitian community that TPS is going to end on 20 January, and I don’t think that is very likely for a number of reasons,” said Katie Kersh, a senior attorney at the non-profit law firm Advocates for Basic Legal Equality.“The strain any deportation effort would place on an already stretched immigration court system would be significant.”Even if the program was ended, Kersh says, current law allows for a court hearing that could take months or years to take place. Similarly, immigrants who have asylum applications filed also have an opportunity to have that application heard.By ending TPS, Trump could in fact make the issue of undocumented immigration even worse.“TPS provides employment authorization and a right to reside in the US, so when a TPS grant ends, the people who have it immediately lose employment authorization unless another status which provides it is available to them,” said Ahilan Arulanantham of UCLA’s School of Law, who was among several lawyers to successfully challenge an earlier attempt by Trump to end TPS for Haitians as well as others in 2018.“That effect occurs regardless of whether they later face deportation.”For companies in Springfield and in nearby communities that depend on Haitian labor, Trump’s comments could prove damaging. The Haitians who filled thousands of jobs at area packaging and auto plants have helped rejuvenate once-blighted neighborhoods and contributed to the local economy in myriad ways.While many food products lining the shelves of Springfield’s Caribbean stores are imported, many items – bread from Florida and pinto beans from Nebraska – are American. Chicken, beef and eggs served at Haitian restaurants are regularly sourced from local farms.Recently, a Haitian community organization bought a former fire station it hopes to turn into a facility for English language classes, drivers’ education and a meeting spot.“I pay thousands of dollars in income and property taxes every year,” said Payen, “and – because I work with Haitians to file their taxes – I see their W-2s and so on. If these people leave, that money is gone from the city and the local economy.”Curiously, some Haitians, who do not have the right to vote unless they are citizens, have blamed prominent Democrats such as Bill and Hillary Clinton for destroying their country after a devastating 2010 earthquake killed about a quarter of a million people – and displaced in excess of a million more.Their Clinton Foundation, which ran dozens of projects in the country, had helped raise billions of dollars to assist with reconstruction efforts. But many Haitians believe the funds were siphoned off, which the Clintons deny.Huge numbers of US guns have been trafficked to Haiti in recent years – a fact that is not lost on some in the Springfield community, according to Koveleski.“They don’t have any faith in the Democratic party,” she said. “Some believe that if Donald Trump says, ‘leave Haiti alone,’ he’s going to leave us alone.” More
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The ‘foolproof’ election forecaster who predicted Trump would lose – what went wrong?
by Evelyn Reynolds 16 November 2024, 15:00
Surely not even Nostradamus could get it right all of the time.Allan Lichtman had correctly forecast the result of nine of the past 10 US presidential elections (and even the one he didn’t, in 2000, he insists was stolen from Al Gore). His predictive model of “13 keys” to the White House was emulated around the world and seemed all but indestructible.Until, that is, Donald Trump, the notorious human wrecking ball, came along and broke his crystal ball. Lichtman had prophesied that Democrat Kamala Harris would win eight of his keys, claiming the presidency, forcing him to face the harsh truth that his winning streak was over. Was it a big personal blow?“Of course,” the 77-year-old admits by phone. “But I care far less about the personal blow than I care about the blow to our democracy. Even before the election I said, ‘Look, if I’m wrong, the implications are vastly greater for our society than they are for the keys.’ It’s much more important to look at the broader implications.”Lichtman, a history professor who has been teaching at American University in Washington for more than a half a century, developed his keys to the White House in the early 1980s. With Vladimir Keilis-Borok, a Soviet expert on earthquake prediction, he analysed elections in terms of stability (the party holding the White House holds it) versus earthquake (the party holding the White House is ejected).The pair devised 13 true/false questions: if six or more keys went against the White House party, it would lose. Lichtman used the model to successfully predict Ronald Reagan’s victory in 1984 and (nearly) every election that followed. After the 2016 election, he received a copy of his Washington Post interview with a message written in a Sharpie pen: “Congrats, professor. Good call. Donald J Trump.”The 2024 election was always going to be a tough test for Lichtman. Joe Biden dropped out in favour of Harris while Trump, who survived two assassination attempts, is a norm-busting figure who was bidding to become the first former president to win back the White House since Grover Cleveland in the 19th century.Why did he think Harris would win, and what went wrong? “The keys are premised on the proposition that a rational, pragmatic electorate decides whether the White House party has governed well enough to get another four years,” he explains. “Just as this kind of hate and violence is new, there are precedent-shattering elements now to our political system, most notably disinformation.“There’s always been disinformation but it has exploded to a degree we’ve never seen before. It’s not just Fox News and the rightwing media. It’s also rightwing podcasters and we have a brand new player, the $300bn guy, Elon Musk, whose wealth exceeds that of most countries in the world and has heavily put his thumb on disinformation.”Musk’s Super Pac reportedly spent about $200m to help elect Trump while his social media platform X, formerly Twitter, amplified rightwing propaganda. Musk was a leading Trump surrogate and has since become a near-permanent fixture at his Mar-a-Lago club in Florida. Along with the entrepreneur Vivek Ramaswamy, he will now head an effort to reduce wasteful government spending.Lichtman continues: “It’s been reported that the disinformation that he disseminates has been viewed billion of times. The disinformation extends to every aspect of our society and our economy. Many people are living in an alternative universe and that calls into question the fundamental basis of political decision-making in this country.”That includes disinformation about inflation, jobs, employment, the stock market, growth, hurricane aid, the Ukraine war and undocumented immigrants, falsely portrayed as dangerous killers when in fact they commit crimes at far lower rate than native-born Americans.Another problem for Lichtman’s model was a presidential candidate who has constantly torn up the rulebook and defied categorisation. “We’ve seen Trump far more than we’ve ever seen in the history of this country channel the darkest impulses in American life – things that have always been with us but were increased exponentially this time: racism, misogyny, xenophobia, antisemitism.“We’re seeing something new in our politics, which affected the prediction and could affect future predictions but has a much bigger message for the future of our democracy. George Orwell was 40 years too soon. He made it clear that dictatorships don’t just arise from brutality and suppression. They arise from control of information: doublethink. Famine is plenty, war is peace. We’re in the doublethink era and maybe we can get out of it, maybe not.”After Lichtman made his 2024 prediction, he and his wife received a backlash in the form of death threats, vulgar abuse and even people trying to breach their home. They were also the victims of swatting (false reports of a threat intended to draw a heavy police response at the target’s home) and doxing, in which their private information was published online.“I’ve been doing this for 42 years and I have never experienced anything remotely like this,” he says. “I haven’t had to call the police before ever; now they’ve been here several times. They’re on alert. They notified the FBI.”Once an idealistic 13-year-old who watched John F Kennedy speak in New York, Lichtman is dismayed that politics has come to this. “It tells me that America has fallen to an absolute new low,” he reflects.“All I have done is exercise my free speech and yet here I am, subject to all of this hate, attempts to breach the security of my family, and it’s consistent with what we heard from Donald Trump, who’s constantly invoking violence as legitimate, plus for dehumanising those he doesn’t agree with as vermin, scum, something less than human to be dealt with. We’ve never seen anything like this before in America.”Looking back at his 2024 miscalculation, Lichtman is not about to let Democrats off the hook. He had been a staunch defender of Biden until the end and condemned the party for forcing him to step aside in favour of Harris. He is now unimpressed by its epic blame game and self-flagellation over the election result.“They’re pointing the finger at everyone else but not taking any responsibility. This election proves what I’ve been saying for years. I can summarise American politics in one sentence. Republicans have no principles, Democrats have no spine.”As if to prove the point, Trump has nominated Matt Gaetz, a Maga bomb thrower once subject to a sex-trafficking investigation, as his attorney general. The post is currently held by Merrick Garland, whom Lichtman has known for 60 years.“I love the guy,” he says. “I thought he was maybe the greatest federal judge in America and he is now the poster child of the spineless Democrats who have let all this happen. He diddled for almost two years before appointing a special counsel [to investigate Trump’s role in the January 6 2021 insurrection].“We all knew on January 7 what Trump had done. Certainly we knew it by the time Merrick Garland was appointed in early 2021. If he had acted as he should have right away, everything would have been different. I believe Trump would have been convicted of serious federal crimes and either be in jail or be on probation and the whole political system would have been different.”Lichtman adds: “He epitomises the spineless Democrats. ‘Oh, I don’t want to do this because I might seem political and Republicans might criticise me.’ Didn’t he learn anything from his supreme court nomination? Republicans are going to do what they’re going to do.“It doesn’t depend on what you do. I always go by the mantra of: it’s not just the evil people who wreak havoc on this world, it’s the good people who don’t do enough to stop them. And Merrick Garland is right front and centre of that.”The Trump-Musk axis “broke my predictive model this year”, Lichtman admits, but he intends to pick himself up, dust himself down and try again in 2028. “I fully expect to adjust the keys according to what I see unfolding over the next several years,” he promises. “The beauty of being a presidential predictor is you have four years to correct your course.“Presuming I’m still around at 81 and fully engaged in my faculties, I will be very carefully monitoring developments over the next few years apropos of the keys and also speaking out in defence of our democracy. The keys are one thing – they’re totally non-partisan – but I have my own political views as well and I fully intend to express them. And when I think the Democrats are worthy of criticism, I don’t hold back.” More
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Trans Americans brace for Trump’s ‘sinister’ return: ‘It’s almost intolerable’
by Evelyn Reynolds 15 November 2024, 12:00
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This weekend, Atticus Sparks plans to attend a six-hour concealed weapons permit class. He’s not a gun person, but as an 18-year-old trans man, he’s concerned he might someday need to own one, “just in case”. Since Donald Trump’s election, Sparks has faced online threats of violence and sexual assault from the president-elect’s supporters.View image in fullscreen“Hopefully I won’t ever need a gun,” Sparks, who lives in South Carolina, said. “But everyone here is so pro-gun. I work across from a gun store, and I always see people carrying around loaded rifles.”Along with taking his concealed carry class, Sparks faces the more banal tasks of making sure all of his documentation is in order. This week, he met with an advocate about getting his name legally changed but was told that due to the sluggish pace of family court, he probably won’t get a court date until next summer.An existential threat, and a bureaucratic nightmare: for trans people across America, Trump’s victory represents a terrifying acceleration of the discriminatory policies that conservative lawmakers have already put in place in states across the country.Republicans spent almost $215m on anti-trans ads this election. (Sample line: Kamala Harris “is for they/them – not you”.) Trump’s official platform, Agenda 47, promises to “cut federal funding for any school pushing critical race theory, radical gender ideology, and other inappropriate racial, sexual, or political content on our children” and “keep men out of women’s sports”, a reference to trans women and girls playing on teams that correspond to their identity.The president-elect has also proposed a ban on federal funding for gender-affirming care, and said he would push schools to “promote positive education about the nuclear family” – shorthand for an emphasis on conservative Christian gender roles and values in public classrooms.Experts and advocates warn that Republican control in Washington DC could roll back LGBTQ+ rights decades, threatening trans healthcare, marriage equality and the overall safety of the queer community.Facing this new reality, Alex, a teacher in Texas, reached out to a crisis hotline three times in the past week. “It’s sort of the most depressed I’ve been in a long time,” he said. “It’s like you get used to tolerating a certain amount of not OK, and having to hide and sort of being pushed down, but it feels like it’s hit a level where it’s almost intolerable.”Though some of Alex’s co-workers know he is trans, his students do not. He considers himself “stealth” at work, which means he conceals his trans identity to fit in with cisnormative standards. (Because of this, Alex used a pseudonym in this piece.)“The big thing people don’t recognize is that they most likely have interacted with a trans person without knowing,” Alex said. “I use the men’s locker room at the gym every morning, and no one gets hurt or upset. I guarantee for every single person, [Trump’s victory] is going to impact someone they love, or the loved ones of someone they love, and they just don’t know it.”View image in fullscreenThe Trevor Project, a non-profit focused on suicide prevention efforts for LGBTQ+ youth, reported a 700% increase in calls, texts and messages to its crisis hotline after election day. Youth experiencing thoughts of depression, self-harm and suicide are encouraged to contact the organization – though, according to 19th News, there are “long hold times at an especially vulnerable time for LGBTQ+ people”.Corinne Goodwin, executive director of Eastern PA Trans Equity Project, wrote in an email that since the election, the non-profit had seen a 600% increase in calls to its infoline for people seeking resources and support. Attendance at peer-led support groups rose by 200%, and requests for assistance with gender or name change markers increased by 1,000%.The day after the election, Goodwin said, the group received a call from a transgender person who lives in a very rural part of Pennsylvania. The caller said that four of their neighbors had come to their house the night before, pounding on their front door and threatening to assault them for being transgender. The person called the police, who refused to investigate, citing no proof of an incident.“This is an example of what many transgender people fear, that not only will their rights be reduced or taken away, but that the most reactionary elements in our society will feel emboldened to harm them,” Goodwin wrote.In Rochester, New York, Javannah J Davis leads Wave Women Inc, a non-profit supporting underserved Bipoc trans and gender non-conforming individuals. “The challenges are going to get worse before it gets better,” she said. “People are scared. That’s the main feeling going through the community: fear.”Davis says her goal is to help as many trans people as possible navigate the serpentine process of legally changing their names before the end of the year.Mike, a trans man in his 60s, leads support groups in Pennsylvania. “People talk about moving to another country, but the reality is that’s just not realistic,” he said. (Mike used a pseudonym and did not want his exact age printed to prevent being identified by his employer.)Sparks, the 18-year-old, plans to move to a state that allows greater access to gender-affirming care. This year, South Carolina banned access to care for trans youth, also prohibiting public funds such as Medicaid from being used to provide healthcare for transgender people of any age.View image in fullscreenSouth Dakota also restricts access to gender-affirming care for trans youth. So, in some ways, the morning after the election was “just another day for them”, says Morgan Peterson, a 25-year-old administrative assistant at Transformation Project, which serves trans people in the state.Peterson, who is non-binary, says many clients decided to move next door to Minnesota, a state with better healthcare options. “For me, I’m not on hormones, and I’m very fortunate, so I’m pretty determined to stay here and fight for people,” they said.Zaya Perysian, a 22-year-old content creator from Los Angeles, renewed her passport this week. She has no plans to leave the country and considers herself somewhat buffered by her state’s blue status. But she wants to be prepared, just in case.“It seems like we’re in the early stages of something much darker for the future of this country when it pertains to minority communities,” Perysian said. “The last time Trump won, we were like, ‘It’ll all be fine,’ and it mostly was. But this time, it’s different. There’s something that feels so sinister behind it. A lot of us just want to be prepared because you never know what type of legislation they are going to try to pass to erase us from public society, or history.”Kendall, a 47-year-old from Pennsylvania, planned to marry her partner next summer. They imagined a big, fairytale wedding, maybe in Europe. But as the election approached, the couple, both trans women, decided they didn’t want to take their chances. They feared a Trump presidency could signal the end of marriage equality. They eloped in September.“We had a few people over to our apartment and did it,” Kendall said. (She asked to use a pseudonym due to fears for her safety.) “We did it in our living room. People asked, ‘Was it nice?’ We tried to play it off like we wanted something intimate, but the real reason is we needed it to be legal.”Now, Kendall wonders: “God knows how long we’ll be allowed to be married.”Shane Whiteside, who is 30 and lives in South Carolina, also hopes to make it legal with his fiancee before Trump’s election. “I told her, I know we didn’t want to rush this, but I’m absolutely terrified that if I don’t get married to you right now, the state is not going to let me, because they’ll take away same-sex marriage,” he said.View image in fullscreenIn the days after the election, some lawmakers and pundits scapegoated transgender people for Kamala Harris’s loss. Such messaging echoes past retrograde thinking from John Kerry’s failed 2004 bid: at the time, politicians on both sides blamed the loss on the senator’s support for civil unions.The US representative Seth Moulton, a Democrat from Massachusetts, told the New York Times: “Democrats spend way too much time trying not to offend anyone rather than being brutally honest about the challenges many Americans face. I have two little girls, I don’t want them getting run over on a playing field by a male or formerly male athlete, but as a Democrat I’m supposed to be afraid to say that.”Trans individuals are already more likely to experience gender-based violence, poverty, and housing insecurity than cis Americans. Comments like Moulton’s add to the pain they feel as they prepare for a hostile administration.“It’s really a bunch of bullshit coming from both sides when it pertains to trans people,” said Perysian. “We’re just exhausted. We’re just trying to find our own American dream here, and unfortunately our future in this country has become less and less bright. I’ve heard a lot of trans people say that after this election, it feels like our best days are behind us.”Now, trans individuals cling to any shreds of hope they can find. Alex felt it when his co-workers hugged him the morning after Trump’s win. Mike feels it at his trans support group. Kendall feels it when she watches old clips of Mr Rogers being a good neighbor.Sparks relates to a quote he saw on social media this week: “For every bigot, there’s going to be an ally.”“Community and trans people don’t just go away,” Sparks said. “They may take it out of schools and stuff, but it’s not like we’re going to disappear. We just won’t have a word for what we’re feeling because they won’t teach it to us.”For Perysian, though, “It’s not about hope. It’s more about waiting and seeing.” More

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