Trump’s Deportation Plan Is About Numbers, Not Safety

“The Trump administration’s plan to arrest and deport as many undocumented immigrants as possible quickly became a numbers game as White House officials set quotas and government press officers highlighted each day’s deportation tally. As president, Donald Trump is continuing his campaign-trail rhetoric by insisting federal officers are rounding up murderers, even though a deportation policy that focuses on generating impressive numbers to achieve a “mission accomplished” moment cannot also prioritize removing dangerous criminals.”

“After Trump became “disappointed” in the number of arrests so far, The Washington Post reported, the administration set arrest quotas, telling Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) officials that “each of the agency’s field offices should make 75 arrests per day and managers would be held accountable for missing those targets.” The Post added, “The orders significantly increase the chance that officers will engage in more indiscriminate enforcement tactics or face accusations of civil rights violations as they strain to meet quotas, according to current and former ICE officials.””

“Given the desire for numbers and other factors, cases of U.S. citizens being held or arrested by ICE are likely—and already happening. A U.S. military veteran from Puerto Rico was apprehended during a raid in New Jersey. (Puerto Ricans are U.S. citizens.) “At least 15 Indigenous people in Arizona and New Mexico have reported being stopped at their homes and workplaces, questioned or detained by federal law enforcement and asked to produce proof of citizenship during immigration raids since Wednesday, according to Navajo Nation officials,” reported CNN.

During most presidential administrations, due to limited resources, ICE focuses on people with criminal convictions.”

“Considering the vast majority of deportees will not be criminals but men, women, and children who lived and worked in the U.S. peacefully for years, Americans will decide if the number hailed by government officials is cause for celebration.”

https://reason.com/2025/01/31/trumps-deportation-plan-is-about-numbers-not-safety/

Trump administration orders consumer protection agency to stop work, closes building

“The Trump administration has ordered the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau to stop nearly all its work, effectively shutting down an agency that was created to protect consumers after the 2008 financial crisis and subprime mortgage-lending scandal.
Russell Vought, the newly installed director of the Office of Management and Budget, directed the CFPB, in a Saturday night email confirmed by The Associated Press, to stop work on proposed rules, to suspend the effective dates on any rules that were finalized but not yet effective, and to stop investigative work and not begin any new investigations. The agency has been a target of conservatives since President Barack Obama pushed to include it in the 2010 financial reform legislation that followed the 2007-2008 financial crisis.

The email also ordered the bureau to “cease all supervision and examination activity.””

“Since the CFPB is a creation of Congress, it would require a separate act of Congress to formally eliminate it. But the head of the agency has discretion over what enforcement actions to take, if any.”

“Vought said in a social media post that the CFPB would not withdraw its next round of funding from the Federal Reserve, adding that its current reserves of $711.6 million is “excessive.” Congress directed the bureau to be funded by the Fed to insulate it from political pressures.”

How is this legal?

https://www.yahoo.com/news/trump-official-orders-consumer-protection-160835011.html

Biden’s DOJ just asked the Supreme Court to do a huge favor for Donald Trump

“The question of whether a single federal trial judge should have the power to halt a federal law or policy throughout the entire country is hotly contested. As Justice Neil Gorsuch wrote in a 2020 opinion arguing against nationwide injunctions, “there are currently more than 1,000 active and senior district court judges, sitting across 94 judicial districts, and subject to review in 12 regional courts of appeal.” If nationwide injunctions are allowed, any one of these district judges could potentially halt any federal law, even if every other judge in the country disagrees with them.
The problem is particularly acute in Texas’s federal courts (Mazzant sits in the United States District Court for the Eastern District of Texas), where local rules often allow plaintiffs to choose which judge will hear their case. During the Biden administration, Republicans often selected highly partisan judges to hear challenges to liberal federal policies — and those judges frequently rewarded this behavior by issuing nationwide injunctions.

Such injunctions can potentially be lifted by a higher court, but the process of seeking relief from such a court can take weeks or even months — and that’s assuming that the appeals court is inclined to follow the law. Federal cases out of Texas, for example, appeal to the US Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit, which is dominated by far-right judges who frequently defy Supreme Court precedents that are out of favor with the Republican Party.

Moreover, while some Republican judges such as Gorsuch expressed doubts about these nationwide injunctions, the GOP-controlled Supreme Court frequently let such injunctions against the Biden administration remain in effect for many months — even if a majority of the justices eventually concluded that the policies at issue in those cases, which often involved disputes over immigration policy, were legal. So the Court apparently did not view ending the practice of nationwide injunctions as a high priority so long as those injunctions thwarted Democratic policies.”

https://www.vox.com/scotus/393540/supreme-court-garland-texas-top-cop-shop-nationwide-injunction

USAID Shutdown Kicks Off Trump/Musk Plan To Privatize Government Functions

Rubio used to talk overall positively about foreign aid, now he speaks differently. Did he have a change in heart, or is he Trump’s little bitch?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QaPgQZnDg1I

Trump slams paper straws, vows ‘back to plastic’

“Democrat Biden had announced a target to eliminate single-use plastic utensils like drinking straws by 2035 across government agencies.”

Note: This is about future policies affecting federal agencies. There was no federal plastic straw ban.

https://www.yahoo.com/news/trump-slams-paper-straws-vows-160410883.html

Trump’s Theory of Tariffs Makes No Sense

“The high tariffs that America imposed during the late 19th century did not make America rich and did not make American manufacturing strong. It’s also absurd to claim that the country was at its wealthiest in an era when most people did not have access to indoor plumbing, electricity, or modern medical care—and when the average person was, objectively, much poorer.”

“If tariffs are as great as Trump says they are, he should be implementing them no matter what the leaders of any other silly little countries say or do. We can tax our way to prosperity, Trump claims, but we’ll just…not do that, I guess?

That’s the problem with Trump’s theory about tariffs. Either tariffs are an inherently good and prosperity-generating policy that enriches America, or they are a threat to get other countries to do as Trump says. Both things can’t be true.”

https://reason.com/2025/02/03/trumps-theory-of-tariffs-makes-no-sense/