Trump said Sunday that a new wave of raids would target immigrants in Democrat-run cities — and Monday there were signs that farms, hotels and restaurants again will be subject to raids.
[...]
Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) officials were told Monday that agents should resume raids on hotels and restaurants, but also agricultural businesses, the Washington Post reported.
Axios
Trump hotels need their undocumented employees. And farmers have a big ass lobby.
Expect lawsuits by the immigrants who are being rounded up and deported now who have been in the country working and being "good" for 20 years.According to the Agriculture Department, 42% of crop farmworkers from 2020 to 2022 lacked legal status.
[...]
"Our farmers are being hurt badly," the president said during a bill-signing ceremony Thursday.
"They have very good workers," he continued. "They've worked for them for 20 years; they're not citizens, but they've turned out to be ... great, and we're going to have to do something about that."
Axios
Top Trump aide Stephen Miller and Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem are calling for immigration agents to arrest 3,000 people a day.
The Trump administration has restored the student visa registrations of thousands of foreign students studying in the United States who had minor — and often dismissed — legal infractions.
The Justice Department announced the wholesale reversal in federal court Friday after weeks of intense scrutiny by courts and dozens of restraining orders issued by judges who deemed the mass termination of students from a federal database — used by universities and the federal government to track foreign students in the U.S. — as flagrantly illegal.
[...]
Judges also expressed frustration with the seemingly arbitrary moves and the unwillingness of government lawyers to say whether the students could continue to attend classes or needed to leave the country immediately.
The terminations from the federal database earlier this month sparked more than 100 lawsuits, with judges in more than 50 of the cases — spanning at least 23 states — ordering the administration to temporarily undo the actions. Dozens more judges seemed prepared to follow suit before Friday’s reversal.
DOJ said that Immigration and Customs Enforcement is working on a new policy regarding foreign students studying in the United States on so-called F-1 visas. Until that policy is issued, no students will have their online student-visa records, known as SEVIS records, terminated “solely based on” criminal history checks that had flagged misdemeanor charges and dismissed cases.
It was not immediately clear whether the State Department is reversing a wave of outright cancellation of the visas of many of the same students. A federal official told a judge last week that the agency was performing “quality control” on those decisions.
Earlier this year, Secretary of State Marco Rubio canceled the student visas of dozens of foreigners he contends were disrupting U.S. foreign policy through pro-Palestinian activism. However, a more recent, larger wave of visa cancellations appeared to target students who had minor brushes with the law and were also impacted by the termination of their profiles in the SEVIS database.
Politico
No doubt the fact that Obama created the monuments is why Trump downsized them in the first place. Surprisingly, he didn't just abolish them altogether. Something he might well do if he gets another crack at the presidency.The Bears Ears National Monument, which was created by President Barack Obama shortly before he left office, will go back to 1.36 million acres, and Grand Staircase will be restored to 1.87 million acres. Both are in Utah.
The Northeast Canyons and Seamounts Marine National Monument, off the New England coast, was established by Obama in 2016 as the first marine national monument in the Atlantic Ocean.
[...]
In 2017, then-President Donald Trump signed an executive order that dramatically downsized Bears Ears by 85% and cut Grand Staircase in half; it was the largest reversal of U.S. land monument protections in history.
NPR
Might not be a bad idea. But maybe that should be done regardless of land restoration.Environmental and tribal leaders sued the Trump administration, but that lawsuit has been on hold since Biden issued an executive order in January to look further into the matter.
But Biden's decision may not prevent future lawsuits.
Utah Gov. Spencer Cox, a Republican, has said his state would sue Biden if he restored the land unilaterally. Cox has instead advocated for handling the land's status through a bill in Congress. That way, it would avoid the back-and-forth of land ownership, especially if control of the White House changes.
A widely used pesticide that could cause potential health issues in children will no longer be used on food in the US, the Environmental Protection Agency said Wednesday, reversing a Trump-era decision not to ban the controversial chemical.
"Today EPA is taking an overdue step to protect public health. Ending the use of chlorpyrifos on food will help to ensure children, farmworkers, and all people are protected from the potentially dangerous consequences of this pesticide," EPA Administrator Michael Regan said in a statement.
"After the delays and denials of the prior administration, EPA will follow the science and put health and safety first," he added. The statement said the agency would revoke all "tolerances" for chlorpyrifos, which is used on crops including soybeans, broccoli, cauliflower, and fruit and nut trees and also has "non-food uses." The chemical has "been associated with potential neurological effects in children," the statement said.
CNN
...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.A federal judge has ordered the Biden administration to reinstate the "Remain in Mexico" policy that had been put in place by the Trump administration, stating that President Biden's White House had acted "arbitrarily and capriciously" in ending the program.
As CBS News reported, U.S. District Judge Matthew Kacsmaryk said in his ruling on Friday that the Biden administration had violated procedural laws and failed to see "several of the main benefits" of the Remain in Mexico policy, also known as the Migrant Protection Protocols (MPP).
In June, the Biden administration formally ended Trump's immigration policy, which required asylum-seekers to remain in Mexico as their cases awaited trial in the U.S.
Biden suspended the program on his first day in office.
The Hill
Attorney General Merrick Garland on Thursday announced a moratorium on federal executions, a shift from the Trump administration, which had resumed the use of the death penalty in federal cases.
The Hill
In a memo to senior officials, he said serious concerns have arisen about the arbitrariness of capital punishment, its disparate impact on people of color, and "the troubling number of exonerations" in death penalty cases.
[...]
Garland ordered a review of the revised lethal injection protocol and directed the Bureau of Prisons to stop using that method while that is underway. He also said the department would study a Trump administration regulation that allowed federal prisons to carry out executions in any manner authorized by the state where the death sentence was imposed.
Garland's memo did not address whether the federal government would continue to seek the death penalty in criminal cases. It therefore does not change the Justice Department's position before the U.S. Supreme Court, where the government is defending the death sentence for Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, the convicted Boston Marathon bomber.
NBC
Survivors of domestic and gang violence have better odds of getting asylum in the U.S. as the Justice Department reverses several controversial rulings from the Trump administration.
In a pair of decisions announced Wednesday, Attorney General Merrick Garland is vacating several controversial legal rulings issued by his predecessors — in effect, restoring the possibility of asylum protections for women fleeing from domestic violence in other countries, and families targeted by violent gangs.
NPR
...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.The Interior Department will suspend several oil and gas leases in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge Tuesday, according to three individuals briefed on the decision, overturning one of Donald Trump’s most significant environmental acts during his last days in office.
The move, which could spark a major legal battle, aims to unwind nearly a dozen leases in the heart of a pristine expanse in Alaska that Republicans and Democrats have fought over for four decades. The Trump administration auctioned off the right to drill in the refuge’s coastal plain — home to hundreds of thousands of migrating caribou and waterfowl as well as the Southern Beaufort Sea’s remaining polar bears —just two weeks before President Biden was inaugurated.
WaPo
One family a month. This will take a while.A report from DHS’s Office of the Inspector General (OIG) found the Trump administration separated families even in instances when parents facing deportation wished to return to their home country with their children.
“ICE removed at least 348 parents separated from their children without documenting that those parents wanted to leave their children in the United States,” OIG wrote in its report, referring to U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement.
[...]
The Trump administration officially kicked off its "zero tolerance" policy in 2018, but the the OIG report found the more than 300 separations predated the family separation policy and were a result of “increasing criminal prosecutions in July 2017” where individual ICE officers carried significant discretion over separations.
“Even when ICE documented a parent’s choice to leave the child behind, some of the available records are significantly flawed, suggesting that not all parents who purportedly waived reunification did so knowingly and voluntarily,” the OIG concluded.
The Trump administration separated roughly 2,800 children from their parents under the 2018 policy, with October court documents showing more than 500 were never reunited with their parents.
The Biden administration's family reunification task force, however, is currently reviewing some 5,600 recently discovered files to determine if there were other affected families.
The administration also recently announced that families separated under Trump would have the option of reuniting and remaining in the U.S.
[...]
The Biden administration has thus far reunited four families separated under the Trump administration.
The Hill
...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.CDT welcomes President Biden’s decision today to revoke the Trump Administration’s unconstitutional Executive Order 13925 regarding social media. Issued by former President Trump nearly a year ago, the Executive Order on “Preventing Online Censorship” was an effort by then-President Trump to chill online speech and interfere with efforts to fight election disinformation. CDT filed a First Amendment lawsuit against this Executive Order in June 2020.
“As we have consistently argued, President Trump’s Executive Order was an attempt to use threats of retaliation to coerce social media companies into allowing disinformation and hateful speech to go unchecked,” said Alexandra Givens, President & CEO of CDT. “The Biden Administration has rightly rejected this deeply flawed approach. We applaud the timely decision by President Biden to fully repeal this unconstitutional order.”
Center for Democracy & Technology
...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.The Biden administration on Thursday moved to repeal a Trump-era regulation that it said weakened the government’s ability to curb air pollution that threatens public health and is driving climate change.
Critics said the regulation distorted the costs of reducing air pollution while diminishing the associated benefits. It is one of several Trump administration policies that have been reversed by Michael S. Regan since he became the administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency in March.
[...]
Experts said that [a Trump-era cost-benefit] requirement appeared designed to give industries a way to legally block the E.P.A. over future air pollution rules. It would have also allowed the E.P.A. to avoid putting a price tag on certain health benefits if the scientific evidence was deemed limited.
[...]
The policy had been long sought by the fossil fuel industry, which argued for years that the federal government used unfair economic formulas that resulted in burdensome pollution regulations.
When Andrew Wheeler, Mr. Trump’s second E.P.A. administrator, finalized the policy last year, he said it would promote transparency. But he also acknowledged it was aimed at preventing future administrations from imposing restrictions on toxic mercury pollution from power plants, as the Obama administration did.
[...]
John Walke, clean air director for the Natural Resources Defense Council, an environmental group, noted that the Trump administration did not even apply the restrictions to its own policies. “Americans can now expect stronger clean air and climate safeguards without unnecessary bureaucratic delays,” he said.
NYT
A federal bankruptcy judge dismissed an effort by the National Rifle Association to declare bankruptcy on Tuesday, ruling that the gun rights group had not filed the case in good faith.
The ruling slams the door on the NRA's attempt to use bankruptcy laws to evade New York officials seeking to dissolve the organization.
[...]
The bankruptcy trial had paused other legal challenges the NRA had been facing, but this decision returns the group to its confrontation with the New York attorney general, who is seeking to shut it down over alleged "fraud and abuse."
NPR
This next one is not a done deal, but it's encouraging.
The U.S. Interior Department approved the country's first large-scale offshore wind project Tuesday, a final hurdle that reverses course from the Trump administration and sets the stage for a major shift in the energy landscape.
[...]
The $2.8 billion project, known as Vineyard Wind 1, will consist of 62 turbines spaced about a mile apart, each standing about 837 feet above the water's surface. Cables buried beneath the ocean floor will connect the power from these turbines with the New England grid onshore.
The project is expected to produce enough renewable electricity to power 400,000 Massachusetts homes every year while also saving ratepayers billions of dollars and reducing annual carbon dioxide emissions in the state by about 1.68 million metric tons.
Lars Pedersen, Vineyard Wind's CEO, recently told public radio station WBUR that he expects offshore construction to begin next year, with renewable energy flowing to the grid by the end of 2023.
NPR
It's a tough time to be a young person. COVID-19 has robbed many of them of experiences and plans. Their unemployment rate remains high. College enrollment is down.
To address those concerns and bolster preparedness for a warming world, President Biden wants to retool and relaunch one of the country's most celebrated government programs: the Civilian Conservation Corps.
[...]
Created in 1933, in the wake of the Great Depression, the CCC put millions of young men — yes, just men — back to work. They moved from East to West, to places they'd never been before, building roads, bridges, telephone lines, campgrounds and dams — infrastructure that's still in use and, at times, maintained by smaller conservation corps crews such as Spofforth's today. The original CCC ended in 1942, disrupted by World War II.
[...]
The original Civilian Conservation Corps employed roughly 3 million young men in its nine-year run. The corps fought wildfires and helped in disaster relief efforts after hurricanes. It built more than 100,000 miles of roads and trails, 318,000 dams and tens of thousands of bridges. It strung telephone lines across mountain passes, connecting the country.
[...]
"Just like we need a unified national response to COVID-19, we need a unified national response to climate change," Biden said while introducing his climate team.
While his is not the first effort to bring back a federal conservation corps, Biden has put the program center stage like never before. One of his first executive orders called for the creation of a modern CCC to "mobilize the next generation of conservation and resilience workers and maximize the creation of accessible training opportunities and good jobs." His interior secretary, Deb Haaland, sponsored a bill with a similar goal while representing New Mexico in Congress
[...]
Biden's Civilian Climate Corps, while modeled after the original CCC, would likely differ in a few significant ways.
The first: scope. Biden wants to spend $10 billion on creating his Civilian Climate Corps — a sliver of the $2 trillion proposed in his American Jobs Plan. Adjusted for inflation, that's a far cry from the money Roosevelt poured into the original CCC and less than many progressive groups have been advocating for.
[...]
The jobs, though, would be offered to a far broader group of people. For all the nostalgia the CCC brings up among progressives, there's the reality it was racially segregated, closed off to women and paid almost nothing.
[...]
Biden's executive order directed the Interior and Agriculture departments to submit a report laying out how a program could form under existing statutes. (The report is overdue and has not yet been released.)
[...]
Most of the jobs would be short term, with the goal of launching corps members into environmental and outdoors-focused careers.
[...]
Montana Conservation Corps crews are already doing some of the work envisioned in Biden's climate proposal — reducing wildfire risk and building artificial dams to help retain water higher in watersheds.
That kind of work would increase exponentially if Biden's proposal passes, said McKinney, president of the corps. But the bigger benefit might be in what it could do for America's youth.
[...]
Biden is the most unapologetic, big-government Democratic president in decades. It's a stance supported by an array of circumstances: the enormity of the pandemic, former President Donald Trump's embrace of big spending projects and deficit-funded tax cuts, and a progressive shift within the Democratic Party.
"Well, we've been living in the shadow of Reagan's America. And now it's back to the future. We're going to start to live in the shadow of FDR," said Jonathan Alter, a journalist and historian who wrote a book about Roosevelt's famed first 100 days.
NPR
