[guest post by Dana]

Let’s go!

First news item

The cost of deporting 11 million undocumented aliens:

On the campaign trail, Donald Trump vowed to commence the largest mass deportation of undocumented immigrants in history on Day 1 if he retook the Oval Office.

Now that he’s president-elect, he’s pledging to make good on that promise — at any cost.

“It’s not a question of a price tag. It’s not — really, we have no choice,” Trump said Thursday in an interview with NBC News. “When people have killed and murdered, when drug lords have destroyed countries, and now they’re going to go back to those countries because they’re not staying here. There is no price tag.”

With an estimated 11 million undocumented aliens, a mass deportation is estimated to be around $315 billion, according to the American Immigration Council.

This is an unbelievable amount of money. Here is a breakdown of the costs:

The average cost of apprehending, detaining, processing and removing one undocumented immigrant from the United States in 2016 was $10,900, according to figures released by ICE at the time. That year, ICE also said the average cost of transporting one deportee to their home country was $1,978. Since then, the costs have only grown.

ICE Enforcement and Removal Operations has generally been underfunded and has previously had to reprogram funds to expand detention space, especially during border surges. But there are limits to how much money can be reprogrammed, officials said.

While the logistics of such an undertaking remain unknown, before all else, there is the moral consideration of ejecting 11 million people, many of whom have not committed crimes while living the U.S. We can assume that, of the non-criminals, many have lived, worked, and raised their families here. In other words, many, many of these people have been productive members of society.

P.S. I assume that we are all in agreement that, at the very least, minor children should not be separated from their families.

Additionally, and also very importantly: what are the protections that will be put in place to keep the food supply chain moving? After all, working on farms and in our dairies is the work that Americans don’t want to do and undocumented migrants willingly do. . .for us.

Second news item

Wow. BRUTAL words for her fellow liberals from Democratic strategist @JulieRoginsky on CNN:

“I’m going to speak some hard truths…We are not be party of common sense, which is the message the voters sent to us…When we address Latino voters…as Latinx, for instance, b/c… pic.twitter.com/kUxP4kbBNe

— Curtis Houck (@CurtisHouck) November 7, 2024

Third news item

Morale-building at the Los Angeles District Attorney’s Office:

On his first day in office four years ago, Los Angeles County Dist. Atty. George Gascón issued a slate of progressive edicts that many prosecutors in his office said handcuffed them in the fight against crime.

When Nathan Hochman takes Gascón’s seat in fewer than 30 days, he has vowed to untie those same prosecutors’ hands, rolling back his predecessor’s policies.

Hochman’s agenda includes a return to seeking the death penalty, an increase in the prosecution of low-level misdemeanors and using sentencing enhancements to seek long prison terms in cases that involve guns or gangs.

After routing Gascón on election night by 23 percentage points, Hochman said in an interview Wednesday that he plans to immediately deliver on his campaign promises to wipe away several of his predecessor’s “blanket, lazy policies” when he’s inaugurated Dec. 2.

Fourth news item

What he said:

“The moment we win, we will rapidly review the cases of every political prisoner unjustly victimized by the Harris regime, and I will sign their pardons on Day 1,” Trump said at a Wisconsin rally in September.

Post-election:

More than 1,500 rioters have been charged in connection with the Capitol attack with some 645 of them sentenced to time in prison and 143 of them ordered into home detention.

Among those defendants are 10 individuals who were convicted by juries of seditious conspiracy — plotting to use force to oppose the authority of the U.S. government — for attempting to block the certification of President Biden’s election victory against Trump.

“Every January 6 defendant is hoping and anxious for some relief from President Trump,” said Carmen Hernandez, a defense attorney who has represented several Jan. 6 defendants, including in the conspiracy cases against members of the right-wing extremist groups Proud Boys and Oath Keepers.

FYI:

Penny Cudd was sentenced to two months of probation after pleading guilty to one count of entering and remaining in a restricted building or grounds. In a teary video posted to X in the early hours of Nov. 6, she celebrated Trump’s win as a victory for all Jan. 6 defendants.

“It means the world to all of us J6ers to know that what we did was not in vain — and all of the pain and suffering and the families torn apart and the lives destroyed was not done in vain,” Cudd said.

“And we’re all really excited that we’re about to get presidential pardons.”

Fifth news item

Tariffs. . .again:

Advisers close to President-elect Donald Trump have been in discussions with House Ways and Means Chair Jason Smith (R-Mo.) on a broad tax package that is partially paid for by tariffs approved by Congress, according to two people familiar with the conversations who were granted anonymity to describe the internal discussions.

As part of those conversations, staffers and advisers close to the Trump team have also investigated whether House rules need to be changed to use tariffs as offsets for tax cuts, those people say.

The math:

It’s very unlikely that tariffs could help pay for a significant portion of any tax cuts, though — despite Trump’s flirtation with the idea of using tariffs to completely eliminate the income tax. In fiscal year 2020, U.S. Customs collected $74.4 billion in tariffs, accounting for only roughly 2.2 percent of total federal revenue, according to the Congressional Research Service.

According to estimates by the Tax Foundation, the U.S. would need to implement an across-the-board tariff hike of 69.9 percent to completely replace income taxes.

Sixth news

Possible Trump plan for ending the war in Ukraine (apparently it will take more than 24 hours):

The Wall Street Journal reported that President-elect Donald Trump’s team has drafted a proposal to end the ongoing war in Ukraine war on Thursday. Allegedly the plan includes significant conditions: Ukraine should give up its NATO membership aspirations for at least 20 years, the freezing of the current front lines and the establishment of a demilitarized zone between Russian-held territory and Ukraine.

The plan is said to exclude the possibility of US troops or UN contingents to monitor and enforce any ceasefire, instead suggesting that Kyiv’s European allies – such as Poland, Germany, Britain, and France – should take on the responsibility.

According to the WSJ source within Trump’s team, the US would continue to provide military training and support including weapons to Ukraine to help deter further Russian advances. However, previous reports from Trump’s advisors have hinted at the possibility that Washington could suspend military aid as a way to encourage Kyiv to enter peace negotiations.

Reminder: JD Vance has not been shy about his calls to halt sending aid to Ukraine. But offering clarity to the incoming administration is Ukraine’s former Defense Minister:

Vice President-elect JD Vance has suggested that Russia’s war in Ukraine could end with freezing the lines of conflict.

Ukraine’s former Defense Minister @Andriypzag says that’s a fundamental mistake: “Putin is not waging this war to get a little bit more territory. His goals… pic.twitter.com/NIo4S7KbZZ

— Christiane Amanpour (@amanpour) November 7, 2024

President Biden should use his short time left in offic to provide Ukraine with everything *they* have said they need. Not what Washington says they need, but what those actually in the fray say they need to win this war.

Seventh news item

May the saner minds prevail:

Donald Trump’s team appeared to be quietly distancing itself from Robert F Kennedy Jr in the immediate aftermath of the election amid speculation that the former presidential candidate could be handed control of US public health agencies.

Advisers to the president-elect questioned whether Mr Kennedy, a vaccine sceptic who has also been the subject of a series of bizarre stories involving animals, would make it through a security check for a cabinet position.

It raises questions about what role, if any, Mr Kennedy would be given in the Trump administration, as the Republican’s transition team sets about filling thousands of federal posts for his return to the White House.

MISCELLANEOUS: Briefly, as I process the election results, I am in shock that Donald Trump won. It is jarring that a majority of Americans preferred a massively corrupt individual over the other candidate. The result is the complete normalization of an individual who is anything but normal and who has, without shame, demonstrated this truth in spades over the past 9+ years.

Nonetheless, have a good weekend.

— Dana