Tag Archives: Congress

Roll Call: Republicans move to change Senate rules to speed confirmation of some nominees

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Facing insurmountable backlog, Thune moves to allow consideration of multiple nominees as a group

Senate Majority Leader John Thune took the first procedural step Monday toward changing the chamber’s rules to speed up the confirmation of lower-level Trump nominees, saying the move is necessary to combat obstruction from Democrats.

Democrats this Congress have forced the GOP majority to use valuable floor time on procedural votes, slowing down the confirmation process and leaving spots unfilled in the Trump administration.

Republicans argue Democrats are destroying a Senate tradition of quickly confirming noncontroversial nominees regardless of the party of the president. But Democrats contend the posture is a needed negotiating tool as Trump has burned through government norms and at times embraced an authoritarian attitude of executive power.

Thune, R-S.D., late Monday asked for immediate consideration of an executive resolution that would authorize the en bloc consideration in executive session of certain nominations. In order to place it on the calendar, he said, he objected to his own request.

The resolution now lies over one calendar day. A copy of the resolution was not immediately available Monday night.

Thune said in a floor speech earlier Monday that after Trump’s eight months in office this term, no civilian nominee has been confirmed by voice vote.

He compared that to other presidents: George W. Bush and Barack Obama each had 90 percent of their civilian nominees confirmed on voice vote, and Trump in his first term and Biden had more than 50 percent.

“It’s time to take steps to restore Senate precedent and codify in Senate rules what was once understood to be standard practice, and that is the Senate acting expeditiously on presidential nominations to allow a president to get his team into place,” Thune said.

Thune said Republicans would seek to speed up confirmations. The change would apply to nominees at the sub-Cabinet level and not Article III judicial nominees, he said.

The objective, he said, was “confirming groups of nominees all together so the president can have his team in place and so the Senate can focus on the important legislative work in its charge.”

The Senate would have to take another 600 votes before the end of the year to clear the current backlog of nominees on the calendar and at committee, Thune said.

“That’s more votes than this record-breaking Senate has taken all year up until now,” Thune said. “There is no practical way that we could come close to filling all the vacancies in the four years of this administration, no matter how many hours the Senate works.”

Minority Leader Charles E. Schumer, D-N.Y., slammed the GOP effort, warning Republicans that they would come to regret the decision to “go nuclear.”

“What will stop Donald Trump from nominating even worse individuals than we’ve seen to date, knowing this chamber will rubber-stamp anything he wishes?” Schumer said.

The move is the latest in a history of changing Senate rules to lower vote thresholds in the chamber.

Under then-Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., Republicans in 2017 removed the 60-vote requirement for confirming Supreme Court justices as they sought to confirm Neil M. Gorsuch.

Years before, in 2013, Senate Democrats did away with that vote threshold for other judicial nominees.

Since the start of the second Trump administration, some Senate Democrats have sought to use the lower-level confirmations as a pressure point.

In May, Schumer announced a hold on all Justice Department nominees after the administration agreed to accept a plane from Qatar. That move from Schumer prevented U.S. attorney nominees from moving forward on voice votes.

The same month, Sen. Richard J. Durbin of Illinois, the top Democrat on the Judiciary Committee, put a hold on Trump’s pick for U.S. attorney for the Southern District of Florida.

Durbin also warned he might do so for other U.S. attorney nominees who reach the Senate floor.

In February, Sen. Brian Schatz, D-Hawaii, announced he was putting a blanket hold on all Trump administration State Department nominees over the shuttering of the U.S. Agency for International Development.

Just ram King Donald’s incompetent appointees through the process!

Republicans move to change Senate rules to speed confirmation of some nominees – Roll Call
Republicans move to change Senate rules to speed confirmation of some nominees – Congress

https://rollcall.com/2025/09/09/republicans-move-to-change-senate-rules-to-speed-confirmation-of-some-nominees

Washington Post: Senators ramp up pressure on Trump to abandon threats to send troops into U.S. cities

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A group of Democratic senators is filing a friend of the court brief Tuesday in California Gov. Gavin Newsom’s lawsuit against President Donald Trump, stepping up pressure to keep Trump from overriding Democratic leaders and sending National Guard troops into Democrat-led cities like Chicago.

The 19 senators are asking the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit to overturn a temporary order issued by a three-judge panel in June that found that Trump had the authority to send National Guard troops into Los Angeles this summer over Newsom’s objections. The Democratic senators argue that the issue has gained greater salience since then, as Trump began threatening to go into other states and cities against the wishes of their governors and mayors.

The senators are amplifying Newsom’s argument that the president’s use of the federal troops — at a moment when local law enforcement officials said they did not need federal support — violated the separation of powers doctrine by usurping Congress.

A federal district court judge initially sided with Newsom on June 12. Then, on June 19, the three-judge panel issued their temporary ruling siding with Trump. California is waiting on a final ruling from the appeals court.

Led by California Democratic Sens. Adam Schiff and Alex Padilla, the group includes senators who represent Baltimore, Boston, Chicago, and Portland — all cities that Trump has threatened to send in National Guard troops to “straighten it out” as he ramps up enforcement on crime and immigration. Schiff said in a statement that he hoped the Newsom case would become “the line drawn in the sand to prevent further misuse of our service members on the streets of American cities.”

The senators argue in their brief that by federalizing 4,000 California National Guard troops for domestic law enforcement over Newsom’s objections “without showing a genuine inability to enforce federal laws with the regular forces,” Trump violated the Tenth Amendment’s anti-commandeering mandate and contravened the provisions of the Constitution assigning power over militias to Congress.

“Our concern that President Trump will continue to act in bad faith and abuse his power is borne out by his recent deployment of state militias to Washington, D.C. and his stated intent to deploy state militias elsewhere (like Chicago and Baltimore),” the senators wrote in the brief obtained by The Washington Post that will be filed in court Tuesday. They warned that courts are the last resort to “prevent the President from exceeding his constitutional powers” and that failing to do so could “usher in an era of unprecedented, dangerous executive power.”

In court filings this summer, the administration argued that Trump was compelled to send the National Guard to protect federal personnel and property because numerous “incidents of violence and disorder” posed unacceptable safety risks to personnel who were “supporting the faithful execution of federal immigration laws.” Department of Justice lawyers argued that Trump was within his rights to mobilize the National Guard and Marines “to protect federal agents and property from violent mobs that state and local authorities cannot or choose not to control.”

Before Trump sent National Guard troops into Los Angeles this summer in the midst of protests against his administration’s immigration raids, prior presidents had deployed Guard troops on American soil primarily to assist after natural disasters or to quell unrest.

The senators write that the last instance in which a president federalized the National Guard without consent from the state’s governor is when Alabama Gov. George Wallace (D) ordered the Alabama Highway Patrol to prevent the Rev. Martin Luther King, Rep. John Lewis and others from marching from Selma to Montgomery. President Lyndon B. Johnson intervened to protect the marchers.

Our arguments to the court make clear that Trump’s unprecedented militarization of Los Angeles should not be used as a playbook for terrorizing other cities across America,” Padilla said in a statement.

Last month, the president deployed National Guard troops and federal agents to D.C., arguing that they needed to tackle a “crime emergency” that local officials say does not exist. D.C. Attorney General Brian Schwalb, a Democrat, last week sued the Trump administration, seeking to force it to withdraw troops from the city.

In recent days, Trump has escalated his warnings to intervene in Chicago, posting on his social media site that the city is “about to find out why it’s called the Department of WAR,” a reference to the Defense Department.

Illinois Gov. JB Pritzker (D) said on social media Monday that Trump’s threats were not “about fighting crime,” which would require “support and coordination” from the administration that he had not yet seen.

The Department of Homeland Security announced Monday that it had launched an operation to target immigrants in Chicago as the president vowed a broader crackdown on violent crime. A spokesperson for Pritzker said Monday that the governor’s office has not received any formal communication from the Trump administration or information about its plans.

Senators ramp up pressure on Trump to abandon threats to send troops into U.S. cities
Democratic senators are filing a brief in support of California Gov. Gavin Newsom’s suit against the Trump administration.

https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/us/senators-ramp-up-pressure-on-trump-to-abandon-threats-to-send-troops-into-u-s-cities/ar-AA1Mb9dp

Forbes: New $250 Visa Integrity Fee Will Cost US $11 Billion, Say Tourism Officials

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U.S. tourism officials say Congress’s controversial $250 visa integrity fee will deter international visitors and cost the country nearly $11 billion in lost visitor spending and tax revenue over the next three years.

  • The Congressional Budget Office (CBO) estimated that the new $250 visa integrity fee will bring in around $27 billion over a decade—or $2.7 billion per year—to U.S. government coffers and reduce the national debt.
  • But a U.S. tourism official told Forbes the fee will instead cost the U.S. economy $11 billion over three years, including $9.4 billion in lost visitor spending and $1.3 billion in lost tax revenue—or about $3.6 billion per year, according to an analysis by Tourism Economics.
  • In addition, the lost revenue will lead to losing 15,000 U.S. travel jobs, according to U.S. tourism industry estimates.

How Will The $250 Fee Impact Tourism To The U.s.?

The CBO based its estimate solely on the potential revenue generated by the fee itself, while the U.S. tourism industry looked at the macroeconomic impact of implementing the fee, hence the wildly different estimates. The CBO estimated that charging roughly 11 million annual visa applicants $250 apiece would rake in roughly $2.7 billion per year for the State Department. Tourism officials say Congress wrongly assumed the pricey fee would have little impact on the volume of visitation. Tourism Economics, a division of Oxford Economics, estimated that the $250-per-person fee is onerous enough to deter 5.4% of international visitors from coming to the U.S., which would translate to a drop of nearly 1 million fewer visits annually. Fewer visitors translate to less visitor spending, and in turn to lower tax revenue and job losses in the tourism industry, sending a negative ripple effect throughout the national economy. “By longstanding tradition, the Congressional Budget Office does not incorporate macroeconomic feedback effects into its traditional cost estimates,” a CBO spokesperson told Forbes. “We didn’t specifically do a dynamic analysis of this provision.” In other words, the CBO did not factor in the potential negative economic impact from lower visitor spending, tax revenue and subsequent job cuts—key metrics used by the U.S. tourism industry and the U.S. Commerce Department to evaluate the overall value of tourism to the U.S. economy. “I think in the minds of congressional leaders, foreign visitors don’t vote, so making them pay more to help fund the [Big Beautiful] Bill wouldn’t come at any political cost,” Erik Hansen, senior vice president of government relations at the U.S. Travel Association, told Forbes. “But the problem is it comes at a huge economic cost to American businesses.”

What Else Do U.s. Tourism Experts Say Congress Got Wrong?

“Congress made the mistake of assuming that this worldwide visa integrity fee would not have a big impact on visitors from countries like India or Brazil,” Hansen told Forbes. “This is the exact type of armchair public policymaking that is going to get us into a big mess.” India, in particular, is a “bright spot” for inbound international travel because visitation numbers have surpassed where they were in 2019, he said, while most other countries are lagging behind their pre-pandemic volume. In 2024, Indian tourists spent roughly $13.3 billion in the U.S., according to the National Travel and Tourism Office, part of the U.S. Commerce Department. “Applying a $250 fee to a country where travel is growing is mindboggling. It will absolutely deter travel—that’s what our research has found,” Hansen said.

What Do International Visitors Need To Know About The Visa Integrity Fee?

The fee is not actually as “refundable” as Congress has billed it to be. As written, the Big Beautiful Bill says the State Department “may reimburse” the fee after the visitor’s visa expires, provided that the visa holder has complied with all conditions of the visa. But most visitor visas are valid for 10 years, Hansen pointed out. “The idea that you’re going to give the government money and then wait around 10 years and remember to ask for it back, even if you followed the rules, is just absolutely crazy,” he said. Indeed, to arrive at its projection, the CBO reasoned in its estimate that “a large number of nonimmigrants would not be eligible to seek reimbursement until several years after paying the fee” so consequently only “a small number of people would seek reimbursement.” In other words, said Hansen, “there’s a very good understanding that the refund process itself is not going to be easy, and even if it is easy, that a lot of people aren’t going to seek that refund after a decade.” Another red flag: The $250 fee was inserted into the Big Beautiful Bill without a plan for processing refunds. In its analysis, the CBO wrote that “the Department of State would need several years to implement a process for providing reimbursements.”

Why Are So Many International Travelers Avoiding The U.s. This Year?

In June, a World Travel & Tourism Council (WTTC) analysis of the economic impact of tourism in 184 countries revealed the U.S. was the only country forecast to see international visitor spending decline in 2025, which by some estimates is as much as $29 billion. The root causes of this decline, multiple studies have found, are a combination of President Trump’s tariffs, travel bans, inflammatory rhetoric and harsher immigration policies, all which have created a chilling effect on visitors. “While other nations are rolling out the welcome mat, the U.S. government is putting up the ‘closed’ sign,” Julia Simpson, president and CEO of WTTC, said in a statement. “Given we’re halfway through the year and we’ve seen these impacts, we don’t know when the stiffest headwind is, but I think it does stay sustained,” Aran Ryan, director of industry studies at Tourism Economics, told Forbes last month. “We’re generally assuming that this persists for a while and that some of it is going to persist throughout the end of the administration.” Simpson characterized the WTTC study as a “wake-up call for the U.S. government,” adding that “without urgent action to restore international traveler confidence, it could take several years for the U.S. just to return to pre-pandemic levels of international visitor spend.”

Tangent

Trump’s signature spending bill contains another blow to U.S. tourism. A Senate committee led by Senator Ted Cruz (R-Tex.) slashed the budget of Brand USA, the country’s public-private destination marketing organization, from $100 million to $20 million. “This is another error that Congress has made,” Hansen said, noting that the Trump administration recommended full funding for the organization in its fiscal year 2026 budget. “We have a big misperception problem among international visitors right now, but Congress cut funding for the one organization that’s in charge of setting perceptions and sending a welcoming message about travel to the United States.”

Controversial $250 Visa Integrity Fee Will Cost US $11 Billion As It Deters Tourists, Analysts Say
The U.S. is facing a steep decline in international travelers—and this fee will only make it worse, say tourism officials.

https://www.forbes.com/sites/suzannerowankelleher/2025/08/15/visa-integrity-fee-cost-us-11-billion

Forbes: Struggling U.S. Tourism Takes Another Hit: New Visa Requirement For Foreign Visitors

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The U.S. State Department announced a brand new hurdle for international travelers seeking tourist visas—which will make already-long visa wait times even longer.

  • “Effective immediately,” the State Department announced Saturday that nonimmigrant visa applicants should schedule an interview at their local U.S. embassy, adding “applicants must be able to demonstrate residence in the country where they are applying.”
  • The announcement warned applicants who schedule interviews at a U.S. embassy or consulate outside of their country of nationality or residence they “might find that it will be more difficult to qualify for the visa,” noting that fees “will not be refunded and cannot be transferred.”
  • The new rule applies to short-term visas for tourists as well as business travelers, students and temporary workers.
  • Forbes has reached out to the U.S. Travel Association for comment.

How Do Long Visa Wait Times Hurt U.s. Tourism?

The U.S. tourism industry has carped about the State Department’s long visa wait times for years. Geoff Freeman, CEO of the U.S. Travel Association, explained to Forbes in 2023 that long visa wait times create an unnecessary friction that makes the country less competitive as a destination. “We need to look at travel as a path of least resistance. That’s what travelers tend to follow: Who makes it easy? Who makes it comfortable?” Freeman said at the time. Depending on a would-be tourist’s nationality, the wait time for a visa interview at a U.S. consulate or embassy abroad can be more than a year.

Why Are International Tourists Essential To The Us Economy?

International tourists spent $181 billion in the U.S. in 2024, according to travel association data. While domestic tourism represents a five-times-bigger slice of the country’s overall tourism pie, foreign travelers stay longer than Americans traveling within the U.S., and spend, on average, $4,000 per trip—eight times more than domestic travelers.

Key Background

U.S. tourism officials were initially expecting to see a 9% increase in overall international arrivals to the U.S. in 2025. Instead, the U.S. is the only country that will see international visitor spending decline in 2025, according to a study from the World Travel & Tourism Council (WTTC) that analyzed the economic impact of tourism in 184 countries. The U.S. is facing an 8.2% decline in foreign tourists this year, according to Tourism Economics, the travel-focused division of Oxford Economics. “Geopolitical and policy-related concerns … paired with harsh rhetoric” have contributed to “unpredictability and negative global travel sentiment toward the US,” Tourism Economics wrote in its August update, noting “the sentiment drag has proven to be severe.” The organization noted international inbound air bookings for August through October are pacing 10% to 14% below last year, and air bookings from Canada—which accounts for nearly one quarter of all inbound tourism—have fallen by up to 43% compared to this time last year. All told, the U.S. went from an anticipated $16.3 billion increase in international tourism revenue to a loss of between $8.3 billion (Tourism Economics estimate) and $12.5 billion (WTTC estimate), meaning the U.S. is facing a shortfall of as much as $29 billion this year.

How Else Has The U.s. Made It Harder For International Visitors?

The passage of the “Big Beautiful Bill,” which President Donald Trump signed into law in July, introduced a new $250 “visa integrity fee” for most non-immigrant U.S. visas, including tourist, student and work visas, beginning in 2026. The Congressional Budget Office (CBO) estimated that the new fee will bring in around $27 billion over a decade—or $2.7 billion per year—to U.S. government coffers. But a U.S. Travel Association official disputed how Congress calculated its estimate, telling Forbes its economic impact study found the fee will instead cost the U.S. economy $3.6 billion per year, including more than $3 billion in lost visitor spending and more than $450 million in lost tax revenue. In addition, the lost revenue will lead to 15,000 U.S. fewer travel jobs, according to U.S. tourism industry estimates.

Tangent

Brand USA, the country’s public-private destination marketing organization, has laid off 15% of its staff, the travel industry news outlet Skift reported Saturday. The cuts come after the Big Beautiful Bill slashed the organization’s budget from $100 million to $20 million. USTA said it is “deeply concerned” by the cuts, noting in a statement that “for every $1 spent on marketing, Brand USA adds $25 to the U.S. economy.”

State Department Tightens Visa Rules For International Tourists, Students, Business Travelers And More
With international tourism to the U.S. significantly down this year, the State Department just issued a new rule that makes it even harder for foreign travelers to get a visa.

https://www.forbes.com/sites/suzannerowankelleher/2025/09/08/struggling-us-tourism-takes-another-hit-new-visa-requirement-for-foreign-visitors

MSNBC: House Oversight Committee member shares expectations for Epstein estate docs

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House Oversight Committee member shares expectations for Epstein estate docs
Today is the deadline for Jeffrey Epstein’s estate to turn over documents subpoenaed by the House Oversight Committee. The documents are expected to include financial records and Epstein’s infamous “birthday book.” Rep. Melanie Stansbury (D-NM), a member of the committee, joins Chris Jansing to share more on what she is expecting.

https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/politics/house-oversight-committee-member-shares-expectations-for-epstein-estate-docs/vi-AA1M7TP2

CNN: Epstein survivor who invited Trump to meet with her says she’s heard ‘crickets’ in response

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Epstein survivor who invited Trump to meet with her says she’s heard ‘crickets’ in response
Haley Robson, who says she was assaulted by Jeffrey Epstein when she was 16, tells CNN’s Pamela Brown that she has yet to hear from the White House after she directly invited Trump to sit down with her to prove that calls for transparency are “not a hoax.”

https://www.msn.com/en-us/video/news/epstein-survivor-who-invited-trump-to-meet-with-her-says-she-s-heard-crickets-in-response/vi-AA1M8zQ4

Newsweek: Immigrant New York farm workers issue warning over ICE raids

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New York’s small farms are beginning to feel the strain of immigration enforcement under the Trump administration, with experts warning that an industry heavily reliant on undocumented workers needs an urgent solution from Congress.

While much of the focus when it comes to immigrants in the Empire State has been the New York City metro area, the state itself is home to as many as 67,000 farmworkers across 30,000 farms mostly upstate and on Long Island.

“We are the most important part of the country, because no one can live without food,” said one Mexican man who has worked in New York for 12 years, speaking to Newsweek on condition of anonymity. “So we can live without a car, without electricity, without many things. But we can’t live without food.”

A Multi-Billion Dollar Industry At Risk

The human impact of ongoing ICE raids is evident to those working on the ground. Another farm worker in New York, who spoke on the condition of anonymity for fear of reprisals, told Newsweek that “cows are going to die” if the administration’s deportations continue across the state.

“It’s a risk every day to go to work. It’s a risk to go to the grocery store. It’s a risk to drive your kids to school. It’s a risk to drive your child to their doctor’s appointment,” the worker told Newsweek.

The person said that the farming industry in New York won’t be able to function without immigrant workers.

“It doesn’t make sense on either a human level or on a business level. The food industry relies mostly on undocumented people,” the worker said.

New York is the country’s top producer of yogurt, and number two producer of apples, but U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) raids are potentially putting an $8 billion farming industry at-risk, experts believe.

Margaret Gray, an associate professor of political science at Adelphi University, told Newsweek that New York state has a diversity of farming sectors and immigrant workers supporting them.

“Dairy workers are year-round workers, apple pickers might only be in the state for eight or 12 weeks,” Gray said. “So, a lot of the apple pickers are on H-2A guest worker visas and so they’re not going to be targeted by ICE, but the dairy industry is not eligible for these visas at this time because to be eligible, you cannot have year-round work.”

Year-round operations, such as dairy farms, are largely ineligible for H-2A visas. Dairy farming requires consistent labor throughout the year to care for animals and maintain production, and the H-2A program is designed only for temporary or seasonal work during workforce shortages.

As a result, many dairy farms and other year-round agricultural businesses continue to rely heavily on undocumented workers to keep their operations running.

Gray said that communities like those in Suffolk County, on Long Island, where large immigrant communities have formed around the farming and agricultural industries, are among those most at risk when many residents and workers do not hold legal status.

“Even the detention of one worker right now can cause chaos. I have talked to people who are literally afraid to leave the house,” Gray said. “They’re afraid to go grocery shopping, they won’t go to parent-teacher meetings, and some of them aren’t even sending their children to school out of fear.”

A declining workforce, especially in sectors such as agriculture, could trigger supply shortages and higher labor costs, which may ultimately increase consumer prices.

Undocumented New Yorkers made a substantial economic contribution, paying $3.1 billion in state and local taxes, according to the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy. The Migration Policy Institute estimates that approximately 11.3 million undocumented immigrants live in New York.

“As business owners and employers in agriculture, we are very dependent on migrant workers,” Dennis Rak, who owns Double A Vineyards in West New York, told Newsweek. “These are jobs that we’d offer to any person, they are not bad-paying jobs, they’re $20 an hour or more, but no one wants to do any sort of manual labor anymore. So it’s critical for agriculture to have access to a source of labor that will do this.”

Will Trump Find a Solution?

Armando Elenes, Secretary-Treasurer for the United Farm Workers of America, told Newsweek that UFW has seen higher engagement from farm workers who want to know their rights should ICE show up.

In May, 14 workers at Lynn-Ette & Sons Farms, in Orleans County, were detained during an ICE raid. Then, in mid-August, agents showed up again to arrest seven more.

“The workers that have not been detained, it’s the fear of them being next or them being targeted, and the workers who were detained, they have their roots here,” Elenes said. “They’ve been here for years, and they have families here, they have friends here, and to be uprooted and basically sent back, whether it be to Guatemala or to Mexico, it’s a traumatic experience.”

President Donald Trump said in July at the Iowa State Fairgrounds that his administration was working on legislation to allow undocumented workers in sectors such as agriculture and hospitality to remain in the country, a compromise that many in MAGA said amounted to “amnesty.”

“We’re working on legislation right now where – farmers, look, they know better. They work with them for years. You had cases where…people have worked for a farm, on a farm for 14, 15 years and they get thrown out pretty viciously and we can’t do it. We gotta work with the farmers, and people that have hotels and leisure properties too,” Trump said, although no official program or policy update has been announced.

The administration has urged those in the U.S. without legal status to self-deport, offering them $1,000 to do so, or face tougher penalties, such as ICE detention. For the Mexican worker Newsweek spoke to, leaving is not an option.

“I think that the people who are taking self-deportation are people who have just arrived and since they haven’t had a permanent job, they don’t have a life, like they don’t have stability anymore,” he said. “So that’s not an option, I think, for most of the people who are here, because, I mean, $1,000 you earn in a week.”

Newsweek asked the USDA what the administration was doing about the issue, with a spokesperson repeating that Trump was “putting America First”, including streamlining H-2A and H-2B visas.

“Our immigration system has been broken for decades, and we finally have a President who is enforcing the law and prioritizing fixing programs farmers and ranchers rely on to produce the safest and most productive food supply in the world,” the spokesperson said.

Rak said he had little faith that the Trump administration was making any serious efforts on immigration reform which would help business owners like him.

“It doesn’t matter who is in the White House, or who’s in charge of Congress, none of them has been able to work together to come up with a solution that would solve this problem,” Rak said. “If the problem was solved with a workable immigration policy, we wouldn’t need to have the enforcement things that are going on now.”

Immigrant New York farm workers issue warning over ICE raids
Smaller farms producing dairy and apples are under growing pressure as the Trump administration increases its immigration enforcement.

https://www.newsweek.com/new-york-farms-immigrant-workers-ice-raids-2124775

Wall Street Journal: Did a Boat Strike in Caribbean Exceed Trump’s Authority to Use Military Force?

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President Trump was operating within his constitutional powers as commander in chief when he ordered the U.S. military to destroy a vessel in the Caribbean, administration officials said, describing the drugs it was allegedly smuggling as an imminent national security threat.

But that claim was sharply disputed by legal experts and some lawmakers, who said that Trump exceeded his legal authority by using lethal military force against a target that posed no direct danger to the U.S. and doing so without congressional authorization.

The disagreement since Trump announced the deadly attack Tuesday underscored how much of a departure it represents from decades of U.S. counternarcotics operations—and raised questions about whether drug smugglers can be treated as legitimate military targets.

“Every boatload of any form of drug that poisons the American people is an imminent threat. And at the DOD, our job is to defeat imminent threats,” Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth told reporters Thursday during a visit to an Army base in Georgia. “A drug cartel is no different than al Qaeda, and they will be treated as such.”

Trump administration officials said Tuesday’s strike, which killed 11 people on the boat, was just the opening salvo in an expanded campaign to dismantle the drug cartels they say pose a major threat to Americans.

But in importing tactics from the post-9/11 war against terrorist groups to use against drug cartels, some former officials said, Trump is trampling on longstanding limits on presidential use of force and asserting legal authorities that don’t exist.

The casualties “weren’t engaged in anything like a direct attack on the United States” and weren’t afforded a trial to determine their guilt, said Frank Kendall, who served as the secretary of the Air Force during the Biden administration and holds a law degree. “Frankly, I can’t see how this can be considered anything other than a nonjudicial killing outside the boundaries of domestic and international law.”

Unlike the interdictions which are usually conducted by the U.S. Coast Guard, the strike was carried out without warning shots, and no effort was made to detain the ship, apprehend its crew, or confirm the drugs on board. “Instead of interdicting it, on the president’s orders they blew it up,” Secretary of State Marco Rubio said in Mexico City on Wednesday.

Trump said U.S. forces “positively identified” the crew before the attack as members of Venezuelan crime syndicate Tren de Aragua, calling them “narcoterrorists.” Tren de Aragua is among the Latin American cartels and gangs that Trump has designated as foreign terrorist organizations since February.

The White House has provided no further information on the operation against the boat or detailed the legal arguments that it claims support it. Nor have officials disclosed where the strike took place, the identities of the casualties or the weapons used.

Some Trump administration officials suggest that by designating the drug cartels as foreign terrorist organizations, the Pentagon has the leeway to treat the groups as it would foreign terrorists. As commander in chief, Trump has the power to order military action against imminent threats without congressional authorization, they said.

The strike “was taken in defense of vital U.S. national interests and in the collective self-defense of other nations,” White House spokeswoman Anna Kelly said, adding that the strike occurred in international waters and “was fully consistent with the law of armed conflict.”

But Geoffrey Corn, a retired lieutenant colonel who was the Army’s senior adviser on the law of war, said: “I don’t think there is any way to legitimately characterize a drug ship heading from Venezuela, arguably to Trinidad, as an actual or imminent armed attack against the United States, justifying this military response.”

Corn, a law professor at Texas Tech University, noted that critics have condemned U.S. drone strikes since 2001 against militants in Afghanistan, Iraq and other countries as extrajudicial killings, but those strikes were legitimate, he said, because the U.S. was engaged in an armed conflict under the laws of war against al Qaeda and other terrorist groups.

Brian Finucane, a former State Department lawyer who is now at the International Crisis Group, said that designation of drug cartels as terrorist groups doesn’t authorize the use of military force against them. Rather it enables the U.S. to levy sanctions and pursue criminal prosecutions against individuals who support the groups.

Nor can military action be justified under the law Congress passed authorizing the use of force against al Qaeda and related terrorist groups following the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, experts said.

For the military to use force, “there needs to be a legitimate claim of self-defense in international waters, an action that is necessary and proportional in response to an armed attack or imminent armed attack,” said Juan Gonzalez, who served as the National Security Council’s senior director for Western Hemisphere affairs during the Biden administration. “That clearly didn’t happen.”

The attack was the U.S. military’s first publicly acknowledged airstrike in Central or South America since the U.S. invasion of Panama in 1989. The White House released a grainy black-and-white video that showed the destruction of a small boat, which it celebrated as a blunt warning for drug traffickers throughout the region.

Trump administration officials have offered conflicting accounts of the episode. On Tuesday, Rubio said the drugs the vessel was carrying “were probably headed to Trinidad or some other country in the Caribbean” and could “contribute to the instability these countries are facing,” differing from Trump’s statement that the vessel was “heading to the United States.” On Wednesday, Rubio suggested that the shipment was “eventually” headed to the U.S.

No state in the region has publicly appealed for the U.S. to take military action against the cartels as an act of collective self-defense, Corn said.

On Thursday, two Venezuelan F-16 jet fighters flew near one of the U.S. Navy warships that have been positioned near the county. The Pentagon criticized the apparent show of force as a “highly provocative move” and warned Venezuela not to interfere with its “counter narco-terror operations.”

In the past, some U.S. counternarcotics strikes have ended in tragedy. In 2001, Peruvian and U.S. counterdrug agents mistook a small plane carrying American missionaries over the Peruvian Amazon as belonging to drug traffickers. The Peruvian Air Force shot down the plane, killing a 35-year-old woman and her infant daughter.

The U.S. has limited intelligence on small drug boats leaving Venezuela, from which the Drug Enforcement Administration was expelled in 2005 under then-President Hugo Chávez, said Mike Vigil, a former DEA director of international operations.

“The United States doesn’t really have the capability to develop good intelligence about these embarkations,” he said. “You don’t just send a missile and destroy a boat. It is the equivalent of a police officer walking up to a drug trafficker on the street and shooting him.”

In Quito, Ecuador, on Thursday, Rubio announced the designation of two more criminal groups—the Ecuadorean Los Choneros and Los Lobos—as foreign terrorist organizations. He said U.S. partners in the region would participate in operations to use lethal force against drug cartels.

A senior Mexican naval officer with decades of service and experience boarding drug vessels said actions like the one taken Tuesday by the U.S. would never be allowed by its Mexican counterpart, which has been trained in interdiction procedures by the U.S. Coast Guard.

“There is never a direct attack unless you are attacked,” he said. “As commander of the ship, I would get into serious trouble. I could be accused of murder.”

Did a Boat Strike in Caribbean Exceed Trump’s Authority to Use Military Force?
Legal experts said the president exceeded his legal authority by using lethal military force against a target that posed no direct danger to the U.S.

https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/world/did-a-boat-strike-in-caribbean-exceed-trump-s-authority-to-use-military-force/ar-AA1LU02a

Slingshot News: ‘You Don’t Know This’: Trump Makes Freudian Slip, Infers His GOP Underlings Are Dumb During White House Dinner Event

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‘You Don’t Know This’: Trump Makes Freudian Slip, Infers His GOP Underlings Are Dumb During White House Dinner Event
Donald Trump held a dinner event for Republican members of Congress several days ago at the Rose Garden in the White House. Trump talked down to his GOP underlings, telling them they don’t know that grass has a “life,” inferring they’re too dumb to understand that grass is a living organism.

https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/politics/you-don-t-know-this-trump-makes-freudian-slip-infers-his-gop-underlings-are-dumb-during-white-house-dinner-event/vi-AA1M3as2

For once, Trump was right!

Mirror US: Trump warned Pentagon name change makes US a ‘laughing stock’ to both allies and enemies

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The President aims to lean into ‘warrior ethos’ after having campaigned on promises of ‘uniting forces to end the endless foreign wars’

The Trump administration is moving forward with plans to rename the Department of Defense to the Department of War after President Donald Trump first floated the idea on Monday, according to a Fox News report. A White House official confirmed the plan to The Mirror US on Thursday.

The decision marks a stark U-turn from the president’s campaign promises in 2024 to pursue peace, and from his frequent criticisms of former President Joe Biden for driving the U.S. “closer to World War III than anybody can imagine.”

“As President Trump said, our military should be focused on offense – not just defense – which is why he has prioritized warfighters at the Pentagon instead of DEI and woke ideology. Stay tuned!” White House spokeswoman Anna Kelly told Reuters this week, referring to programs aimed at increasing diversity, equity and inclusion. The Trump administration has not revealed the reasons it believes the department’s name constitutes “woke ideology.” It comes after a lip reader revealed the chilling 3-word promise that Donald Trump whispered into Vladimir Putin’s ear at their Alaska summit.

The move follows a string of similar name-changing decisions by the Trump administration as a measure of projecting the president’s stance on specific policy issues. In January, Trump issued an executive order to rename the Gulf of Mexico to the “Gulf of America”. He also referred to his controversial July domestic spending bill as the One Big Beautiful Bill Act, which in recent days his administration has attempted to rebrand as the “working families tax cut.”

Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth has also ordered the renaming of certain military vessels that previously bore the names of civil rights leaders, such as the USNS Harvey Milk. Last month, he renamed his conference room the “W.A.R. Room.” Hegseth has often proven to be concerned with the outward appearance of elements of his department, having even ordered a makeup studio to be installed inside the Pentagon and dictated which colors of nail polish are acceptable to be worn by Army soldiers.

Though restoring the name would require congressional action, the White House is reportedly exploring alternative methods to enact the change, according to the Wall Street Journal.

The decision to rename the Pentagon comes amid a broader push by Trump, Hegseth and their coalition to restore a “warrior ethos” to the federal government and America as a whole. It has included a purge of top military leaders whose views do not align with the president’s agenda.

“As Department of War, we won everything. We won everything,” Trump said last month, referring to the War Department established by Congress in 1789 to oversee the Army, Navy and Marine Corps. “I think we’re going to have to go back to that.”

The administration has also sought to ban transgender individuals from voluntarily joining the military and remove those who are currently serving on the basis of a claim that they are medically unfit. The claim has been described by civil rights groups as false and a representation of illegal discrimination, according to Reuters.

“This is so stupid and it’s going to make us a laughing stock in front of both our allies and our enemies,” one user wrote on X on Thursday.

Posturing the top defense department in the nation in a more aggressive and offensive direction is at odds with promises and statements made by Trump during his 2024 presidential campaign.

Trump lobbed frequent criticisms at Biden for the fact that, during his presidency, Russia invaded Ukraine and the conflict between Israel and Hamas was ignited. “(Biden) will drive us into World War III, and we’re closer to World War III than anybody can imagine,” Trump said, according to CNN.

Last August, while endorsing anti-war former Democratic Rep. Tusli Gabbard at a National Guard conference in Detroit, Trump claimed both Democrats and Independents would vote for him because of his plan to end wars. “We’re uniting forces to end the endless foreign wars,” he said of Gabbard’s endorsement. “When I’m back in the White House, we will expel the warmongers, the profiteers … and we will restore world peace.”

“I am confident that his first task will be to do the work to walk us back from the brink of war,” Gabbard said. “We cannot be prosperous unless we are at peace.”

His decision in June to launch a missile attack on Iran’s nuclear enrichment facilities threw several of his most ardent, right-wing supporters into opposition, urging the president and his allies not to engage in foreign conflicts.

Trump, who claimed that he would solve the Russia-Ukraine war before taking office on Jan. 20,” had made little headway by early September in brokering peace between the two nations. He has also dubiously claimed that he has personally ended a handful of global wars during his second term.

“We will measure our success not only by the battles we win, but also by the wars that we end, and perhaps most importantly, the wars we never get into,” Trump said during his inaugural address. “My proudest legacy will be that of a peacemaker and unifier. That’s what I want to be: a peacemaker and a unifier.”

It comes after Ukraine warned that Putin has a hit list of FIVE countries that he wants to invade next.

Trump warned Pentagon rename makes US a ‘laughing stock’ to allies and enemies
The President aims to lean into ‘warrior ethos’ after having campaigned on promises of ‘uniting forces to end the endless foreign wars’

https://www.themirror.com/news/us-news/trump-warned-pentagon-name-change-1372151