The US Supreme Court has ruled against President Donald Trump's bid to end a major programme that protects young immigrants from deportation. The justices upheld lower court rulings that found his move to rescind Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (Daca) was "unlawful".It protects "Dreamers", about 650,000 young people who entered the US without documents as children.The Trump administration has sought to end the Obama-era policy since 2017.The Supreme Court took up the case after lower courts ruled that the Trump administration did not adequately explain why it was ending the programme, criticising the White House's "capricious" explanations.On Thursday, the justices voted 5-4 to uphold the lower courts' findings that the administration's order violated the Administrative Procedure Act, which says a government action cannot make policy that is "arbitrary, capricious, an abuse of discretion or otherwise not in accordance with law" or "unsupported by substantial evidence"."Daca means continuing to live the American dream."Mr Trump denounced the decision in a series of tweets."These horrible & politically charged decisions coming out of the Supreme Court are shotgun blasts into the face of people that are proud to call themselves Republicans or Conservative," he wrote. He called on voters to re-elect him in November to put more conservative judges in the court, should there be a vacancy. He also suggested that he would renew efforts to end the programme and "start the process all over again". "Do you get the impression that the Supreme Court doesn't like me?" he tweeted.Former President Barack Obama praised the ruling and urged voters to elect a Democratic president and Congress in November to ensure "a system that's truly worthy of this nation of immigrants once and for all".Joe Biden, the 2020 Democratic presidential nominee, said he would seek to make the programme permanent should he beat Mr Trump. Four reasons why this was a bad week for Trump Tulsa confronts violent past ahead of Trump rally Chief Justice John Roberts, often described as a conservative, sided with the court's four liberals in Thursday's majority ruling.It marked the second time this week that Chief Justice Roberts has ruled against Mr Trump.On Monday, the court ruled that gay and transgender workers are protected under federal employment law, a major victory for LGBT campaigners.That decision was written by Justice Neil Gorsuch, a Trump appointee.During his presidency, Mr Trump has appointed one other justice, Brett Kavanaugh. The Supreme Court's bench is widely regarded as the most conservative in modern history. Yet last year Chief Justice Roberts again joined his liberal-leaning counterparts in preventing the Trump administration from adding a question on citizenship to the 2020 census, which opponents had argued would suppress responses from immigrants and racial minorities. The court has, however, sided with the Trump administration in two other major cases.It defended the White House's travel ban affecting mostly Muslim countries, and allowed Mr Trump's ban on transgender people in the military to go into effect.Once again the Supreme Court has ruled that a controversial action by the Trump administration is illegal. And once again the biggest stumbling block for the White House isn't that their officials lacked the power, it's that they went about exercising them in the wrong way.The Justice Department's attempt to rescind Daca was "arbitrary and capricious", the court held, in a way prohibited by federal law. That mirrors the court's conclusion in a decision last year blocking the Trump administration's efforts to include a citizenship question on the decennial US census.Both opinions were written by Chief Justice John Roberts, whose technicality-minded devotion to a federal law is presenting an imposing obstacle to the administration's policy objectives.While the Trump team waged a lengthy court battle to have its Daca order upheld, there may be a few sighs of relief from the president's campaign over this ruling. A Trump win would have pushed hundreds of thousands of Daca recipients into the economic shadows or onto deportation rolls just months before the November election. It would have put a sympathetic human face on the targets of administration's hard-line immigration policies.Instead, the Supreme Court has given Daca recipients a reprieve, leaving their ultimate fate still far from certain.Most of the children protected by the Daca programme are from Mexico and other Latin American countries.A 2012 executive order, created by former President Obama, shields these so-called "Dreamers" from deportation, and provides work and study permits.Mr Obama signed the order following failed negotiations for immigration reform on Capitol Hill.In order to qualify for Daca, applicants under the age of 30 are required to submit personal information to the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), including addresses and phone numbers.They must go through an FBI background check and have a clean criminal background, and either be in school, recently graduated or have been honourably discharged from the military.In exchange, the US government agrees to "defer" any action on their immigration status for a period of two years.The other 'Dreamers' facing uncertain future It is only available to individuals residing in the US since 2007.Daca recipients told the BBC they were relieved and surprised by the ruling on Thursday, and many said they would continue advocating for immigration reform.Juana Guzman of Texas, 28, said: "It's a very needed win and this is giving us the fuel we needed to continue moving forward and to keep fighting for the rest of our families and the community that does not have Daca".Metzli Sanchez, 23, said: "As big of a victory that this is, we have to keep applying pressure that we have to keep fighting for other people who are just as able and capable but who do not have this protection."

The pound jumped and U.K. stocks rose after Prime Minister Boris Johnson scored a decisive election victory on the promise of delivering Brexit. But despite investor optimism, the British government still faces a number of challenges. Photo: Jason Alden/Bloomberg News Byand Updated Dec. 13, 2019 1:22 pm ET LONDON—Fresh from a decisive electoral victory, U.K. Prime Minister Boris Johnson pledged to move quickly to take Britain out of the European Union, while promising to deliver billions of pounds in public spending to consolidate the Conservative Party’s once-in-a-generation gains among working-class voters still hurting from the financial crisis. As Mr. Johnson basked in a historic victory that saw him win a majority of 80 seats in Parliament, attention quickly turned to what kind of vision he has for post-Brexit Britain after... To Read the Full Story Subscribe Sign In Continue reading your article with a WSJ membership View Membership Options

But Mr. Trump quickly undercut that statement, telling NBC News that he had planned to fire Mr. Comey even before receiving Mr. Rosenstein’s memo. “And in fact, when I decided to just do it, I said to myself, I said, ‘You know, this Russia thing with Trump and Russia is a made-up story,’” Mr. Trump said. “It’s an excuse by the Democrats for having lost an election that they should have won.”Mr. Trump also told Russian diplomats in the Oval Office that firing Mr. Comey had relieved “great pressure” that he had faced because of Russia.Mr. Rosenstein’s comments to Mr. McCabe were made against a backdrop of those shifting explanations. After their meeting, Mr. Rosenstein gave Mr. McCabe a copy of a draft firing letter that Mr. Trump had written, according to two people familiar with the conversation. Mr. McCabe later gave that letter, and his memos, to Mr. Mueller.Mr. McCabe’s memo reflects the anxiety of the early months of the Trump administration and presaged a relationship with law enforcement that has only grown more strained. Just as Mr. Comey kept memos on interactions with Mr. Trump and Attorney General Jeff Sessions, Mr. McCabe documented his own conversations with the president and others.Mr. Trump has injected himself into Justice Department operations in ways that have little precedent. While most presidents who have faced federal investigations have assiduously avoided discussing them for fear of being seen as trying to influence them, Mr. Trump has shown no hesitation. He has called the investigation a “witch hunt,” declared that a “deep state” was trying to undermine his presidency, and encouraged the Justice Department to provide sensitive details about the special counsel inquiry to Congress.Most recently, Mr. Trump has publicly demanded that the Justice Department investigate the Russia investigation itself.In response, Mr. Rosenstein has walked a perilous line. Faced with threats on his job, he told Republicans in Congress that he would not be “extorted.” But he has also relented to pressure in some instances, providing information to Congress that would not normally be shared amid an investigation.

A Columbia, Missouri, man was sentenced to 236 months in prison in federal court today for his role in making preparations to launch a terrorist attack with persons he believed were members of the Islamic State of Iraq and al-Sham (ISIS), but who were actually undercover law enforcement employees, announced Assistant Attorney General for National Security John C. Demers and U.S. Attorney Timothy A. Garrison for the Western District of Missouri. Robert Lorenzo Hester Jr., 28, was sentenced by U.S. District Judge Greg Kays to 236 months in federal prison without parole. The court also sentenced Hester to a lifetime of supervised release following incarceration.Hester pleaded guilty on Sept. 24, 2019, to attempting to provide material support to ISIS from October 2016 to Feb. 17, 2017, knowing that it was a designated foreign terrorist organization that engages in terrorist activity. Hester actively attempted to plot a mass casualty attack with others that he believed were acting on behalf of ISIS. Hester drew the attention of law enforcement through advocating violence on social media, and when contacted by undercover officers, he immediately showed that he wanted action in addition to words. Law enforcement engaged Hester to see if he was truly committed to an act of terrorism, and his responses left no doubt that he was.Hester, who has been in federal custody since his arrest in February 2017, is a U.S. citizen. He was enlisted in the U.S. Army for less than a year, receiving a general discharge from service in mid-2013.According to the plea agreement, multiple confidential sources reported to the FBI that Hester had posted a variety of material on multiple social media accounts. Hester indicated that he had converted to Islam, expressed animus toward the United States, and posted photos of weapons and the ISIS flag, among other material, suggesting an adherence to radical Islamic ideology and a propensity for violence. In order to assess whether Hester posed a security threat, the FBI undertook a series of investigative steps, beginning with an examination of whether and to what extent Hester would engage directly online with confidential sources working for the FBI and, later, with FBI employees working in an undercover capacity.FBI employees using undercover identities communicated with Hester via social media, texting and personal meetings on several occasions. In those conversations, Hester said, for example, that the U.S. government should be “overthrown,” and he suggested “hitting” the government “hard,” while noting that it would not be “a one man job.” Hester identified categories of potential targets for attack, including “oil production,” “military bases,” “federal places,” “government officials,” and “Wall Street.” Hester specified that “[a]ny government building in DC would get attention of everyone.” He said he wanted a “global jihad.” Citing his brief enlistment in the U.S. Army, Hester also claimed proficiency with “assault weapons” and said that his favorite firearm was the AK-47 rifle. Hester spoke about the perceived ease in which one could gain access to a military base.Hester established an apparent willingness to act on the statements that he made online. An undercover FBI employee conversing online with Hester offered an in-person meeting with a like-minded “brother.” Hester agreed to meet and subsequently did meet on numerous occasions with a person who was described as, and Hester believed was, a terrorist operative – but who, in reality, was an employee of the FBI working in an undercover capacity. Throughout their conversations, the undercover employee provided Hester a number of opportunities to dissociate with no questions asked, but Hester repeatedly reaffirmed his commitment to their plot.In the meetings, the FBI undercover made clear to Hester that the undercover was representing a foreign terrorist organization (ISIS) and that the undercover was planning an attack that would involve multiple operatives, deploy bombs and guns, and result in mass casualties. Hester indicated through his statements and actions that he was ready and willing to participate and assist in the “plot.”Hester obtained, at the undercover’s request, items that he was told would be used as bomb components, including boxes of roofing nails. The undercover made clear to Hester that the nails’ purpose was to maximize the number of casualties. In addition, Hester did not hesitate when the undercover showed him a cache of three machine guns and two handguns that would be used in the “attack,” and two pipes that would be used to construct the “bombs.” In fact, in the days after seeing this display, which was arrayed in the rear compartment of the undercover’s SUV, Hester provided information on storage units that could be used to hold the weapons and agreed to obtain additional supplies for the operation.As the plea agreement cites in greater detail, throughout the investigation, Hester expressed his interest in and exhibited his willingness to commit violence in support and on behalf of ISIS.This case was prosecuted by Assistant U.S. Attorneys Brian P. Casey and David Raskin and Trial Attorney Jennifer Levy of the National Security Division’s Counterterrorism Section. It was investigated by the FBI.

Amazon informed its workforce Tuesday that one of its employee in Seattle tested positive for the coronavirus.In an email to employees that was reviewed by The Seattle Times, Amazon said the worker was in the company's downtown Seattle office and went home sick on Feb. 25. The employee has yet to return to work.The company said it received confirmation Tuesday that the employee tested positive for the coronavirus.Amazon confirmed the situation to The Hill, saying in a statement it is “supporting the affected employee who is in quarantine.”The message to the Amazon employees said the tech giant had notified employees who had worked in close contact with the affected employee and that the risk of transmission to employees who had not been in close contact “is assessed to be low.”The company quantified “close contact” as having worked closer than 6 feet to the sick employee for a prolonged period of time.“Your health is our top priority and we are continuing with enhanced deep cleaning and sanitization in the office,” the message said.Two Amazon employees had previously been diagnosed with the coronavirus in Italy. Washington state has seen the largest surge of cases of the virus, with the total number of confirmed cases in the state standing at 27. Nine people have died thus far in the state.

Alexei Navalny, Russian President Vladimir Putin’s most outspoken critic, has come out of the medically induced coma he’s been in since he was poisoned three weeks ago with a nerve agent the Kremlin has long been suspected of using against political dissidents. “The patient has been removed from his medically induced coma and is being weaned off mechanical ventilation,” the Charité hospital in Berlin, where Navalny is being treated, said in a Monday statement. “He is responding to verbal stimuli,” the statement said, but added, “It remains too early to gauge the potential long-term effects of his severe poisoning.”Still, it’s good news for Navalny, his wife, his team, and his millions of supporters, as it appears he’ll survive the suspected attack. That prospect was somewhat in doubt when the German government last week revealed a toxicology report showing evidence of the nerve agent Novichok in Navalny’s system. Novichok is one of the world’s most lethal nerve agents. It was developed by the Soviet Union and was used on a Russian double agent in the UK two years ago.The use of the deadly nerve agent increases the likelihood that the Russian government was behind Navalny’s poisoning, as many have suspected, and led to condemnations from world leaders like German Chancellor Angela Merkel and NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg. President Donald Trump, however, has yet to significantly rebuke the Kremlin or President Putin for Navalny’s condition.Which means the fallout from the suspected murder attempt might further split ties between a Europe united in its disdain for Russia’s actions and an America unwilling to chastise Moscow for the heinous act.On August 20, Navalny drank tea at a Siberian airport before boarding a flight to Moscow. He became ill on the aircraft, with a video purportedly showing the politician moaning and needing immediate medical attention. The plane made an emergency landing in Omsk, near Kazakhstan, where an ambulance waited to take him to a local hospital. But Navalny’s condition worsened, and he fell into a coma before he arrived at the facility. Russia’s Omsk Emergency Hospital No. 1, where Navalny was first treated, became the site of a frustrating standoff between Navalny’s family and supporters and the doctors overseeing his care. Navalny’s wife and team alleged the doctors were controlled by the Kremlin and tried to cover up the poisoning attack instead of properly treating their patient. The physicians at the time said Navalny wasn’t poisoned but instead suffered from a “metabolic disorder” that led to low blood sugar. “Poisons or traces of their presence in the body have not been identified,” Anatoly Kalinichenko, the deputy chief doctor at the Omsk emergency hospital, told reporters on Friday. “The diagnosis of ‘poisoning’ remains somewhere in the back of our minds, but we do not believe that the patient suffered poisoning.” But Navalny’s team — including his wife Yulia Navalnaya, who was barred from seeing her husband in the Russian hospital, according to a spokesperson — suspected foul play. They had good reason to believe that: The Kremlin has a long, sordid history of poisoning political dissidents, defectors, and other enemies of the state. “The medics are being totally commanded by the FSB and hardly release anything,” Vladimir Milov, a close Navalny associate, told me last week, using the acronym for Russia’s Federal Security Service, the successor agency to the Soviet-era KGB responsible for internal security, among other things. “We of course cannot trust this hospital and we demand for Alexei to be given to us, so that we could have him treated in an independent hospital whose doctors we trust,” Navalnaya said in another press conference on August 21.A medical plane sent by the Berlin-based humanitarian group Cinema for Peace Foundation arrived in Omsk on Friday to take the opposition leader to Germany for treatment. The Russian doctors initially blocked the transfer, saying Navalny wasn’t stable enough to travel, before finally allowing the German physicians to take a look at the patient’s condition.Navalnaya wrote a letter to Putin, pleading for him to allow the transfer, and EU leader Charles Michel raised the issue and expressed concern about the situation in a Friday call with Putin. Late that Friday, the Russian physicians granted the transfer request, and Navalny arrived in Berlin over the weekend. Hanging over all the drama is one pressing question: Did Putin have anything to do it? As of right now, we don’t have a definitive answer to that question — and we may never get it. Turns out, that may be exactly the point. Ask people familiar with how the Russian government handles dissidents, and they unanimously note that what likely happened to Navalny is part of a long-standing Russian government playbook — one that Putin follows.“Killing or intimidating ‘enemies of the people’ has been a staple of Kremlin policy for over 100 years,” said John Sipher, who ran CIA operations in Russia during his 28-year intelligence career before retiring six years ago. “Putin has continued this tactic of killing his enemies at home and abroad, and has created a system where those who wish to earn the Kremlin’s support need to do [his] bidding,” Sipher said. “Whether or not Putin personally ordered the poisoning, he is behind any and all efforts to maintain control through intimidation and murder.”Poisoning people is kind of the Kremlin’s thing. In 2004, Viktor Yushchenko campaigned against a Putin ally for the presidency of Ukraine. But then he fell ill, with his face mysteriously and suddenly blotchy and the left side paralyzed. He also suffered immense abdominal and back pain. He said he had been poisoned — with dioxin, a toxic chemical, no less — but Russian officials have long denied having anything to do with what happened to him. (Oh, and Yushchenko ended up winning the presidency.)In 2006, two Russian agents put polonium-210 — a highly radioactive chemical — in former Russian spy Alexander Litvinenko’s tea at a London hotel bar (he had defected to the UK). It took weeks for Litvinenko to die, and he blamed Putin for orchestrating the attack.“You may succeed in silencing one man,” Litvinenko said from his hospital bed, “but the howl of protest from around the world will reverberate, Mr. Putin, in your ears for the rest of your life.” Russia continues to deny any involvement in Litvinenko’s death.In 2018, the UK determined that Russian operatives poisoned a former Russian double agent and his daughter in Britain with Novichok, one of the world’s most lethal nerve agents (that just so happens to have been developed by the Soviet Union), putting both victims in the hospital in serious condition. They both recovered from the attack and are now in an unknown location — hiding out of fear of another potential attack.And while poison is one of the most commonly used assassination tools, the Kremlin isn’t above using more prosaic methods. Boris Nemtsov, for instance, was shot near the Kremlin in February 2015. Nemtsov had been digging up dirt on the government’s misdeeds, which may have prompted Putin allies to want him dead. A man was sentenced to 20 years in prison for the murder, but many critics believe the whole trial was a sham and a cover-up by the president’s team.The common thread among all of these episodes, as Sipher alluded to, is that it’s unclear just how directly Putin may or may not have been involved. Plausible deniability is baked into the cake of his authoritarian system. Everyone who works in the government knows what Putin wants without him having to explicitly ask. That means Kremlin operatives have the green light to pursue some of those goals — like knocking off a political rival — while officially keeping Putin out the loop.That, in a sense, is how he gets what he wants without having his fingerprints on the government’s dirtiest actions.So Putin could have ordered Navalny dead himself, but it’s equally possible that someone who wanted to make Putin happy did it on their own initiative. “Navalny has lots of enemies,” said Judy Twigg, a Russia expert at Virginia Commonwealth University. Navalny has been repeatedly jailed for instigating protests against Putin and was twice attacked with an antiseptic green dye in 2017. “It looks funny but it hurts like hell,” Navalny tweeted about the attacks. And last summer, while Navalny was serving a 30-day prison sentence for leading anti-government protests, he was taken to the hospital with symptoms of facial swelling, itching, and a rash. As the Guardian reported at the time, doctors at the hospital said Navalny was experiencing an allergic reaction to something but didn’t say what that something was. One of Navalny’s personal doctors also examined him, though, and she said he was suffering from “the result of harmful effects of undefined chemical substances ... induced by a ‘third person.’” In other words, poison. There’s still no official proof of foul play (of course).But beyond this very suggestive history, there are two other potential context clues that point the finger in Putin’s direction in this latest incident.First, if the FSB did indeed put pressure on the Omsk hospital, as the Navalny associate Milov alleged, that would imply that Putin or someone close to him cares deeply about how Navalny’s situation is handled. Twigg told me it’s certainly possible the FSB was involved. “The FSB would surely be highly engaged in a situation where there’s contact with foreigners,” said Twigg, especially since employees of the state — which includes most Russian medical staff — must report their contacts with international visitors, such as the German doctors.Of course, any state security officials that were involved may have just been following protocol by inserting themselves into a situation that would clearly garner global attention. But their suspected role in keeping the German doctors from initially seeing Navalny, if true, could mean they were trying to hide something — like, say, any evidence of poison coursing through the opposition figure’s veins.Second, things aren’t looking too great for Putin right now. He’s overseeing one of the world’s worst coronavirus outbreaks, facing protests that question his leadership, and watching as his ally in Belarus faces nationwide calls to step down. With all that instability, Putin may have wanted to target his main political rival to send a strong message.“This is an escalation and a sign that the regime is anxious and eager to clamp down once and for all,” Alina Polyakova, the president of the Center for European Policy Analysis, told me. If that was the plan, it’s unclear whether it will actually work. If Navalny fully recovers, he may have even more credibility to form a larger opposition movement against Putin as a result of the suspected attack, experts say. Instead of getting rid of his biggest political rival, Putin (or whoever might be responsible) may have just made him more powerful. Whether or not Navalny bounces back and is able to wield that power is what many inside and outside Russia — and certainly many inside the Kremlin — will be waiting to see.Help keep Vox free for allMillions turn to Vox each month to understand what’s happening in the news, from the coronavirus crisis to a racial reckoning to what is, quite possibly, the most consequential presidential election of our lifetimes. Our mission has never been more vital than it is in this moment: to empower you through understanding. But our distinctive brand of explanatory journalism takes resources — particularly during a pandemic and an economic downturn. Even when the economy and the news advertising market recovers, your support will be a critical part of sustaining our resource-intensive work, and helping everyone make sense of an increasingly chaotic world. Contribute today from as little as $3.

Let's get the big news out of the way first: Last week, the one everyone just wrapped up, will likely go down in history as the moment in time where, on All Hallows' Eve, the US House of Representatives voted to formalize the rules of the impeachment proceedings against President Trump. It was a big deal. But it was only the beginning. It was also the week during which Senator Elizabeth Warren released her Medicare for All plan, the site Deadspin basically died after its writers resigned en masse in protest against management, Google misunderstood its shopping list and bought the company Fitbit instead of just getting itself a fancy wristband, and Twitter banned political advertising. All things considered, that might actually count as a quiet week given the state of things lately. Here's everything people have been talking about online over the past seven days, Halloween costumes excluded.The Vote Is InWhat Happened: Well, now it's officially official: The House of Representatives has voted in favor of an impeachment inquiry of President Trump's behavior with regards to Ukraine and other foreign policy decisions.What Really Happened: The ongoing question of whether or not the president committed an impeachable offense in his dealings with Ukraine has been the subject of a formal inquiry since the end of September, with that investigation including many closed door testimonies. Faced with this information, Republicans have responded by questioning the process itself, complaining that there was no vote to formally authorize the inquiry—even though there didn't need to be one.Then, this happened.Yes, the House has voted for the impeachment inquiry, removing one of the Republican roadblocks to actually investigating what’s going on at the White House. But what does this actually mean?The White House, of course, was prepared to declare the process invalid.As was (checks notes) the subject of the impeachment inquiry.Once again, you’d think certain citizens of Salem, Massachusetts, would disagree, but we digress. As it happened, the president actually met with Republican senators, promising them campaign financing if they spoke out against impeachment—despite the fact that they will, ultimately, be his jurors when the matter reaches the Senate, leading many to accuse him of attempting bribery in the process. Things really weren’t going his way. If only there was someone else to defend him. Someone like, say, his daughter Ivanka. Could reality’s Shiv Roy make things better? Well...As Ivanka Trump seemingly compared her dad to Thomas Jefferson, Twitter watched, agog. Still, one good quote apparently deserved another.Others, meanwhile, acknowledged the similarities between Presidents Trump and Jefferson.Well, at least no one on the president’s side marked the vote with a prank that entirely backfired.The Takeaway: What’s next is likely going to be quite a thing to watch.Take Me Out at the BallgameWhat Happened: President Trump attended a World Series game. Not everyone was happy to see him.

MIAMI (AP) — The plan was simple, but perilous. Some 300 heavily armed volunteers would sneak into Venezuela from the northern tip of South America. Along the way, they would raid military bases in the socialist country and ignite a popular rebellion that would end in President Nicolás Maduro’s arrest.What could go wrong? As it turns out, pretty much everything.The ringleader of the plot is now jailed in the U.S. on narcotics charges. Authorities in the U.S. and Colombia are asking questions about the role of his muscular American adviser, a former Green Beret. And dozens of desperate combatants who flocked to secret training camps in Colombia said they have been left to fend for themselves amid the coronavirus pandemic. ADVERTISEMENTThe failed attempt to start an uprising collapsed under the collective weight of skimpy planning, feuding among opposition politicians and a poorly trained force that stood little chance of beating the Venezuelan military.“You’re not going to take out Maduro with 300 hungry, untrained men,” said Ephraim Mattos, a former U.S. Navy SEAL who trained some of the would-be combatants in first aid.This bizarre, untold story of a call to arms that crashed before it launched is drawn from interviews with more than 30 Maduro opponents and aspiring freedom fighters who were directly involved in or familiar with its planning. Most spoke on condition of anonymity, fearing retaliation.When hints of the conspiracy surfaced last month, the Maduro-controlled state media portrayed it as an invasion ginned up by the CIA, like the Cuban Bay of Pigs fiasco of 1961. An Associated Press investigation found no evidence of U.S. government involvement in the plot. Nevertheless, interviews revealed that leaders of Venezuela’s U.S.-backed opposition knew of the covert force, even if they dismissed its prospects.Planning for the incursion began after an April 30, 2019, barracks revolt by a cadre of soldiers who swore loyalty to Maduro’s would-be replacement, Juan Guaidó, the opposition leader recognized by the U.S. and some 60 other nations as Venezuela’s rightful leader. Contrary to U.S. expectations at the time, key Maduro aides never joined with the opposition and the government quickly quashed the uprising. A few weeks later, some soldiers and politicians involved in the failed rebellion retreated to the JW Marriott in Bogota, Colombia. The hotel was a center of intrigue among Venezuelan exiles. For this occasion, conference rooms were reserved for what one participant described as the “Star Wars summit of anti-Maduro goofballs” — military deserters accused of drug trafficking, shady financiers and former Maduro officials seeking redemption.ADVERTISEMENTAmong those angling in the open lobby was Jordan Goudreau, an American citizen and three-time Bronze Star recipient for bravery in Iraq and Afghanistan, where he served as a medic in U.S. Army special forces, according to five people who met with the former soldier. Those he interacted with in the U.S. and Colombia described him in interviews alternately as a freedom-loving patriot, a mercenary and a gifted warrior scarred by battle and in way over his head.Two former special forces colleagues said Goudreau was always at the top of his class: a cell leader with a superb intellect for handling sources, an amazing shot and a devoted mixed martial arts fighter who still cut his hair high and tight.At the end of an otherwise distinguished military career, the Canadian-born Goudreau was investigated in 2013 for allegedly defrauding the Army of $62,000 in housing stipends. Goudreau said the investigation was closed with no charges.After retiring in 2016, he worked as a private security contractor in Puerto Rico following Hurricane Maria. In 2018, he set up Silvercorp USA, a private security firm, near his home on Florida’s Space Coast to embed counter-terror agents in schools disguised as teachers. The company’s website features photos and videos of Goudreau firing machine guns in battle, running shirtless up a pyramid, flying on a private jet and sporting a military backpack with a rolled-up American flag. Silvercorp’s website touts operations in more than 50 countries, with an advisory team made up of former diplomats, experienced military strategists and heads of multinational corporations -- none of them named. It claims to have “led international security teams” for the president of the United States. Goudreau, 43, declined to be interviewed. In a written statement, he said that “Silvercorp cannot disclose the identities of its network of sources, assets and advisors due to the nature of our work” and, more generally, “would never confirm nor deny any activities in any operational realm. No inference should be drawn from this response.” `CONTROLLING CHAOS’Goudreau’s focus on Venezuela started in February 2019, when he worked security at a concert in support of Guaidó organized by British billionaire Richard Branson on the Venezuelan-Colombian border. “Controlling chaos on the Venezuela border where a dictator looks on with apprehension,” he wrote in a photo of himself on the concert stage posted to his Instagram account.“He was always chasing the golden BB,” said Drew White, a former business partner at Silvercorp, using military slang for a one-in-a-million shot. White said he broke with his former special forces comrade last fall when Goudreau asked for help raising money to fund his regime change initiative.“As supportive as you want to be as a friend, his head wasn’t in the world of reality,” said White. “Nothing he said lined up.” According to White, Goudreau came back from the concert looking to capitalize on the Trump administration’s growing interest in toppling Maduro. He had been introduced to Keith Schiller, President Donald Trump’s longtime bodyguard, through someone who worked in private security. Schiller attended a March 2019 event at the University Club in Washington for potential donors with activist Lester Toledo, then Guaidó’s coordinator for the delivery of humanitarian aid. Last May, Goudreau accompanied Schiller to a meeting in Miami with representatives of Guaidó. There was a lively discussion with Schiller about the need to beef up security for Guaidó and his growing team of advisers inside Venezuela and across the world, according to a person familiar with the meeting. Schiller thought Goudreau was naive and in over his head. He cut off all contact following the meeting, said a person close to the former White House official.In Bogota, it was Toledo who introduced Goudreau to a rebellious former Venezuelan military officer the American would come to trust above all others — Cliver Alcalá, ringleader of the Venezuelan military deserters. Alcalá, a retired major general in Venezuela’s army, seemed an unlikely hero to restore democracy to his homeland. In 2011, he was sanctioned by the U.S. for allegedly supplying FARC guerrillas in Colombia with surface-to-air missiles in exchange for cocaine. And last month, Alcalá was indicted by U.S. prosecutors alongside Maduro as one of the architects of a narcoterrorist conspiracy that allegedly sent 250 metric tons of cocaine every year to the U.S. Alcalá is now in federal custody in New York awaiting trial. But before his surrender in Colombia, where he had been living since 2018, he had emerged as a forceful opponent of Maduro, not shy about urging military force. Over two days of meetings with Goudreau and Toledo at the JW Marriott, Alcalá explained how he had selected 300 combatants from among the throngs of low-ranking soldiers who abandoned Maduro and fled to Colombia in the early days of Guaidó’s uprising, said three people who participated in the meeting and insisted on anonymity to discuss sensitive conversations.Alcalá said several dozen men were already living in three camps he maintained in and around the desert-like La Guajira peninsula that Colombia shares with Venezuela, the three said. Among the combatants in the camps was an exiled national guardsman accused of participating in a 2018 drone attack on Maduro.Goudreau told Alcalá his company could prepare the men for battle, according to the three sources. The two sides discussed weapons and equipment for the volunteer army, with Goudreau estimating a budget of around $1.5 million for a rapid strike operation. Goudreau told participants at the meeting that he had high-level contacts in the Trump administration who could assist the effort, although he offered few details, the three people said. Over time, many of the people involved in the plan to overthrow Maduro would come to doubt his word. From the outset, the audacious plan split an opposition coalition already sharply divided by egos and strategy. There were concerns that Alcalá, with a murky past and ties to the regime through a brother who was Maduro’s ambassador to Iran, couldn’t be trusted. Others worried about going behind the backs of their Colombian allies and the U.S. government. But Goudreau didn’t share the concerns about Alcalá, according to two people close to the former American solider. Over time, he would come to share Alcalá’s mistrust of the opposition, whose talk of restoring democracy was belied by what he saw as festering corruption and closed-door deal making with the regime, they said.More importantly to Goudreau, Alcalá retained influence in the armed forces that Maduro’s opponents, mostly civilian elites, lacked. He also knew the terrain, having served as the top commander along the border.“We needed someone who knew the monster from the inside,” recalled one exiled former officer who joined the plot.Guaidó’s envoys, including Toledo, ended contact with Goudreau after the Bogota meeting because they believed it was a suicide mission, according to three people close to the opposition leader. Undeterred, Goudreau returned to Colombia with four associates, all of them U.S. combat veterans, and begin working directly with Alcalá. Alcalá and Goudreau revealed little about their military plans when they toured the camps. Some of the would-be combatants were told by the two men that the rag-tag army would cross the border in a heavily armed convoy and sweep into Caracas within 96 hours, according to multiple soldiers at the camps. Goudreau told the volunteers that — once challenged in battle — Maduro’s food-deprived, demoralized military would collapse like dominoes, several of the soldiers said.NO CHANCE TO SUCCEEDMany saw the plan as foolhardy and there appears to have been no serious attempt to seek U.S. military support. “There was no chance they were going to succeed without direct U.S. military intervention,” said Mattos, the former Navy SEAL who spent two weeks in September training the volunteers in basic tactical medicine on behalf of his non-profit, which works in combat zones. Mattos visited the camps after hearing about them from a friend working in Colombia. He said he never met Goudreau. Mattos said he was surprised by the barren conditions. There was no running water and men were sleeping on the floors, skipping meals and training with sawed-off broomsticks in place of assault rifles. Five Belgian shepherds trained to sniff out explosives were as poorly fed as their handlers and had to be given away.Mattos said he grew wary as the men recalled how Goudreau had boasted to them of having protected Trump and told them he was readying a shipment of weapons and arranging aerial support for an eventual assault of Maduro’s compound. The volunteers also shared with Mattos a three-page document listing supplies needed for a three-week operation, which he provided to AP. Items included 320 M4 assault rifles, an anti-tank rocket launcher, Zodiac boats, $1 million in cash and state-of-the-art night vision goggles. The document’s metadata indicates it was created by Goudreau on June 16.“Unfortunately, there’s a lot of cowboys in this business who try to peddle their military credentials into a big pay day,” said Mattos.AP found no indication U.S. officials sponsored Goudreau’s actions nor that Trump has authorized covert operations against Maduro, something that requires congressional notification. But Colombian authorities were aware of his movements, as were prominent opposition politicians in Venezuela and exiles in Bogota, some of whom shared their findings with U.S. officials, according to two people familiar with the discussions. True to his reputation as a self-absorbed loose cannon, Alcalá openly touted his plans for an incursion in a June meeting with Colombia’s National Intelligence Directorate and appealed for their support, said a former Colombian official familiar with the conversation. Alcalá also boasted about his relationship with Goudreau, describing him as a former CIA agent. When the Colombians checked with their CIA counterparts in Bogota, they were told that the former Green Beret was never an agent. Alcalá was then told by his hosts to stop talking about an invasion or face expulsion, the former Colombian official said. It’s unclear where Alcalá and Goudreau got their backing, and whatever money was collected for the initiative appears to have been meager. One person who allegedly promised support was Roen Kraft, an eccentric descendant of the cheese-making family who — along with former Trump bodyguard Schiller — was among those meeting with opposition envoys in Miami and Washington.At some point, Kraft started raising money among his own circle of fellow trust-fund friends for what he described as a “private coup” to be carried out by Silvercorp, according to two businessmen whom he asked for money. Kraft allegedly lured prospective donors with the promise of preferential access to negotiate deals in the energy and mining sectors with an eventual Guaidó government, said one of the businessmen. He provided AP a two-page, unsigned draft memorandum for a six-figure commitment he said was sent by Kraft in October in which he represents himself as the “prime contractor” of Venezuela. But it was never clear if Kraft really had the inside track with the Venezuelans. In a phone interview with AP, Kraft acknowledged meeting with Goudreau three times last year. But he said the two never did any business together and only discussed the delivery of humanitarian aid for Venezuela. He said Goudreau broke off all communications with him on Oct. 14, when it seemed he was intent on a military action.“I never gave him any money,” said Kraft. `WE KNEW EVERYTHING’Back in Colombia, more recruits were arriving to the three camps — even if the promised money didn’t. Goudreau tried to bring a semblance of order. Uniforms were provided, daily exercise routines intensified and Silvercorp instructed the would-be warriors in close quarter combat. Goudreau is “more of a Venezuelan patriot than many Venezuelans,” said Hernán Alemán, a lawmaker from western Zulia state and one of a few politicians to openly embrace the clandestine mission.Alemán said in an interview that neither the U.S. nor the Colombian governments were involved in the plot to overthrow Maduro. He claims he tried to speak several times to Guaidó about the plan but said the opposition leader showed little interest.“Lots of people knew about it, but they didn’t support us,” he said. “They were too afraid.”The plot quickly crumbled in early March when one of the volunteer combatants was arrested after sneaking across the border into Venezuela from Colombia.Shortly after, Colombian police stopped a truck transporting a cache of brand new weapons and tactical equipment worth around $150,000, including spotting scopes, night vision goggles, two-way radios and 26 American-made assault rifles with the serial numbers rubbed off. Fifteen brown-colored helmets were manufactured by High-End Defense Solutions, a Miami-based military equipment vendor owned by a Venezuelan immigrant family. High-End Defense Solutions is the same company that Goudreau visited in November and December, allegedly to source weapons, according to two former Venezuelan soldiers who claim to have helped the American select the gear but later had a bitter falling out with Goudreau amid accusations that they were moles for Maduro.Company owner Mark Von Reitzenstein did not respond to repeated email and phone requests seeking comment. Alcalá claimed ownership of the weapons shortly before surrendering to face the U.S. drug charges, saying they belonged to the “Venezuelan people.” He also lashed out against Guaidó, accusing him of betraying a contract signed between his “American advisers” and J.J. Rendon, a political strategist in Miami appointed by Guaidó to help force Maduro from power. “We had everything ready,” lamented Alcalá in a video published on social media. “But circumstances that have plagued us throughout this fight against the regime generated leaks from the very heart of the opposition, the part that wants to coexist with Maduro.”Through a spokesman, Guaidó stood by comments made to Colombian media that he never signed any contract of the kind described by Alcalá, whom he said he doesn’t know. Rendon said his work for Guaidó is confidential and he would be required to deny any contract, whether or not it exists. Meanwhile, Alcalá has offered no evidence and the alleged contract has yet to emerge, though AP repeatedly asked Goudreau for a copy.In the aftermath of Alcalá’s arrest, the would-be insurrection appears to have disbanded. As the coronavirus spreads, several of the remaining combatants have fled the camps and fanned out across Colombia, reconnecting with loved ones and figuring out their next steps. Most are broke, facing investigation by Colombian police and frustrated with Goudreau, whom they blame for leading them astray. Meanwhile, the socialist leadership in Caracas couldn’t help but gloat.Diosdado Cabello, the No. 2 most powerful person in the country and eminence grise of Venezuela’s vast intelligence network, insisted that the government had infiltrated the plot for months.“We knew everything,” said Cabello. “Some of their meetings we had to pay for. That’s how infiltrated they were.”___Investigative researcher Randy Herschaft in New York and investigative reporter James LaPorta in Delray Beach, Florida, contributed to this report.___Contact AP’s global investigative team at [email protected].___Joshua Goodman on Twitter: www.twitter.com/APjoshgoodman

LONDON—Boris Johnson has won a seismic election victory that will secure him a place in British history alongside the landslides of Margaret Thatcher, Tony Blair, and Clement Attlee in 1945.By promising to deliver Brexit, the Conservatives succeeded in wiping out Labour strongholds that have stood across Britain since the 1930s, securing as many as 368 seats and giving Johnson a majority in the House of Commons of around 76 seats.Johnson will now lead Britain out of the European Union by the end of next month, ending three agonizing years of uncertainty and fundamentally reshaping the country’s political and economic future.Speaking before dawn on Friday, Johnson exclaimed: “We’ve done it. We pulled it off!”“This election means that getting Brexit done is now the irrefutable, irresistible, unarguable decision of the British people.”As the results were tallied through the night, it became clear that the Conservative vote had increased since the 2017 election, but the decisive factor in Johnson’s stunning win was the total collapse of the Labour vote. The Conservatives have not received as much as 45 percent of the vote since 1970.Jeremy Corbyn has presided over the loss of huge sections of the Labour Party’s traditional heartlands in the Midlands, Wales, and Northern England, many of which voted in favor of Brexit in 2016. Those areas have been Labour for generations, and Thursday’s election result is likely to represent the party’s worst showing since 1935. In a speech after 3 a.m. local time, the Labour leader announced that he would stand down, but he said he wanted to stay in position while the party decided how to choose his successor. It remains to be seen how long he will be allowed to do so.As the recriminations began in the minutes after the shock exit poll was published, Corbyn’s No. 2, John McDonnell, claimed the vote had become “a Brexit election” and that the country had wanted to move on, accepting Johnson’s claim that he would “Get Brexit done.”That is half the story, but Labour candidates from across the country have also admitted that Corbyn’s brand of radical left-wing politics had been received disastrously by working-class voters in Labour strongholds. A battle within the party erupted in the early hours of Friday morning as Labour MPs clashed over whether the party could simply blame Brexit for their humiliating defeat or if they needed to select a more mainstream successor to Corbyn.The first big shock result of the night came in Blyth Valley, a northeastern district that was created in 1950 and has been represented by a Labour member of Parliament ever since. With a swing of almost 10 percent, the Conservatives took the seat for the first time. Ronnie Campbell, who represented the district for 32 years, did warn The Daily Beast earlier this week that the party was in big trouble. “We’re obviously going to take a little bit of a battering,” he said.He was right. The Tories won dozens of Labour seats, some of which they had not represented since they were founded as constituencies as long ago as 1895. Campbell blamed the handling of Brexit by Corbyn, a close ally of his on the left of the party for decades. “It could end his leadership and then we’ll get a right-wing leadership and we’re back to Tony Blair and the Blairites,” he said.To Labour politicians like Campbell and Corbyn, “Blair” is a dirty word that represents centrism and the selling out of the party’s socialist roots. It seems the British electorate does not agree. The rout of Corbyn—and the loss of millions of working-class voters—means that by the time of the next election, Blair will have been the only Labour leader to win a general election in 50 years. For generations, Labour has represented a swath of seats that runs diagonally across the country from Blyth westward to North Wales. That hitherto impregnable barrier was known as the “red wall.”Many of those seats turned Tory blue overnight. Giddy at the scale of his party’s win, Conservative MP Mark Francois told the BBC: “In 1989, Russia’s Berlin Wall came down; in 2019 Labour’s ‘red wall’ came down.”Corbyn is Britain's least popular party leader since polling records began, with voters complaining about his indecision over Brexit, his extreme policy positions, and his inability to deal with anti-Semitism in the party.Former Labour Home Secretary Alan Johnson said the wall had crumbled because of Corbyn's leadership.“It’s Corbyn. We knew that in Parliament. We knew he was incapable of leading, we knew he was worse than useless at all the qualities you need to lead a political party,” he told ITV. “The Corbynistas will make an argument that victory is a bourgeois concept, that ‘the only goal for true socialists is glorious bloody defeat.’”Even in Remain-voting areas, former Labour voters turned their backs on Corbyn. Richard Davis, 61, in the Labour target seat of Chingford and Woodford in northeast London, said his entire family was anti-Brexit but they had voted Conservative in order to stop Corbyn. “I’m in favor of socialist policies, but we can’t have an anti-Semite like Corbyn in power,” he told The Daily Beast.Boris Johnson’s victory will easily give him enough votes to pass his Brexit deal through the House of Commons in time for the next deadline on Jan. 31. Matters will then become more complex as he attempts to negotiate a trade deal in the remaining 11 months of the transition period, but by then Britain will have officially left the European Union.The straightforward narrative of getting Brexit done proved decisive, with swings toward the Conservatives particularly pronounced in Leave-voting districts. With seats falling like dominoes in areas that have been represented by Labour since the 1930s and beyond, Johnson secured a spectacular Conservative victory, the like of which has not been seen since the era of Margaret Thatcher.Johnson’s controversial and hardline stance on forcing Brexit through, which included shutting down Parliament, misleading the Queen, and sacking 21 of his colleagues, succeeded in convincing the country that he would deliver Brexit if he was returned to power.Voters overwhelmingly said they did not like Johnson or believe him to be truthful, but they did think he would get Brexit done. In the end, that was enough. Convinced that they could leverage Brexit to secure a five-year term in office, Johnson and his No. 10 aides pushed hard for an early election in the fall only to be rebuffed by the Remain alliance parties. That changed in late October, when Liberal Democrat leader Jo Swinson gambled and decided to break with Labour and join the Scottish National Party (SNP) in agreeing to accept the Tory electoral challenge.Buoyed by a string of positive opinion polls, Swinson began the campaign claiming she could be swept to power as prime minister on a wave of anti-Brexit feeling. She ended the campaign unemployed after failing to make any headway as a party leader and losing her own district to the SNP. That surprise result was celebrated wildly by SNP leader Nicola Sturgeon on a remarkable night in which she strengthened her grip north of the border, winning around 50 of Scotland’s available 59 seats. After the collapse of Labour, that makes Sturgeon the most powerful opposition leader and she is determined to take the fight to Johnson. She responded to the result by renewing calls for another Scottish independence referendum, which will put her at loggerheads with the prime minister. He is in no mood for compromise after securing a crushing victory in England and Wales, but he may find it was easier to “get Brexit done” than to see off the Scottish campaign to break up the union.

Boris Johnson has been accused of “dog-whistle” Islamophobia by a former Conservative chair after he compared Muslim women in burqas to “letterboxes” and “bank robbers.”Sayeeda Warsi said the lack of action by the party over Johnson’s comments showed it was “business as usual.”Labour demanded that the Conservative chair, Brandon Lewis, refer the former foreign secretary for mandatory equalities training, amid renewed calls for the party to open an independent investigation into Islamophobia in the party.In a letter to Lewis, the shadow equalities minister, Naz Shah, said Johnson’s comments were “ugly and naked Islamophobia” and said Lewis should abide by his word to give Tory members diversity training to combat Islamophobia.The party was also criticised by the Finsbury Park mosque imam, who was praised for his heroism during the terror attack last year. He said the Tory party was “in denial” over the extent of Islamophobia. Johnson said he did not agree with a ban on the face veil, but compared Muslim women in burqas to bank robbers and rebellious teenagers. In his column for the Telegraph, he said he would expect his constituents to remove face coverings when talking to him at his MP’s surgery, comments which Shah said fell foul of equalities law. “As a Muslim woman, I am appalled that this kind of ugly and naked Islamophobia has been published in a national newspaper and so far appears to be tolerated by your party leadership,” Shah wrote in the letter that was also sent to the women and equalities minister, Penny Mordaunt.Shah said Johnson’s suggestion that he should be “fully entitled” to ask a constituent who came to him for advice or assistance to remove her veil was “grossly insulting and Islamophobic... it would also potentially be unlawful if he were to carry it out”.The MP said the Conservative party had vowed to tackle Islamophobia, pointing to a ConservativeHome article where Lewis said he would set up diversity training. “If no action is taken against Mr Johnson – for example, at the very least requiring him to attend a course of training and engagement with the Islamic community – what faith can Muslim people have in your public statements?” she wrote.Lady Warsi, who has previously called for an inquiry into Islamophobia in the Conservative party after it was raised by the Muslim Council of Britain (MCB), tweeted that the comments were “dog-whistle” from Johnson. The MCB said Johnson was “pandering to the far-right” and underlined the need for a deeper investigation by the Conservative party.The Finsbury Park imam, Mohammed Mahmoud, said there was a general lack of engagement with the Muslim community from ministers. Writing for the Evening Standard on the anniversary of the van attack that killed one worshipper and injured 12 others, he said: “Despite the rising scale and severity of Islamophobia and anti-Muslim hatred, the response from the government has been lacklustre, or worse, in denial.”Other Labour MPs condemned Johnson. David Lammy called him a “pound-shop Donald Trump” and accused him of “fanning the flames of Islamophobia” for political advantage. Jess Phillips said she would report Johnson to the Equality and Human Rights Commission.In his column, Johnson said schools and universities should be entitled to tell students to remove a veil if a student “turns up … looking like a bank robber”. “It is absolutely ridiculous that people should choose to go around looking like letter boxes; and I thoroughly dislike any attempt by any – invariably male – government to encourage such demonstrations of ‘modesty’,” he wrote. Businesses and government agencies should be able to “enforce a dress code that enables their employees to interact with customers”, including by allowing them to see their faces, Johnson said.Denmark introduced a burqa ban last week, with fines of around 1,000 kroner, following similar moves in France, Austria and Belgium.Johnson said he did not support a blanket ban on wearing a face veil in the UK. “You risk turning people into martyrs, and you risk a general crackdown on any public symbols of religious affiliation, and you may simply make the problem worse,” he wrote.The Conservative party did not respond to a request for comment. Topics Boris Johnson Islam David Lammy Religion Conservatives Labour Sayeeda Warsi news

President Donald Trump has spent three years molding America’s immigration system to primarily be concerned with keeping people out. He built, layer by layer, impediments in Central America, at the border, in detention centers, and in the immigration courts that have made obtaining asylum nearly impossible. He swept aside former President Barack Obama’s immigration enforcement priorities in favor of vastly expanding immigration detention and prosecuting every immigrant who crosses the border without authorization. The result is a punitive system that treats immigrants as criminals and places them in prolonged detention even if they don’t pose any danger to the public.And he waged a quiet and effective campaign to reduce legal immigration — including expanding his travel ban to block immigration from Nigeria, the largest country in Africa. Under Trump, the legal immigration system increasingly rewards skills and wealth over family ties to the US, while shutting out a growing number of people from low-income countries. When Trump laid out the start of his reelection-year argument in the State of the Union address on Tuesday night, his guests included a senior Border Patrol official and the brother of a man who was killed by an unauthorized immigrant. His immigration record was one of his top talking points. He painted immigrants as criminals that pose a danger to public safety (overall, they don’t) and railed against sanctuary cities that do not cooperate with federal immigration enforcement authorities. And he touted his policies clamping down on unauthorized border crossers. “Before I came into office, if you showed up illegally on our southern border and were arrested, you were simply released and allowed into our country, never to be seen again,” Trump said. “My Administration has ended Catch-and-Release. If you come illegally, you will now be promptly removed.” It’s true that Trump has run into some roadblocks: He’s behind schedule on construction of the southern border wall, a key messaging tool for his base. He hasn’t been able to appoint his preferred candidates to lead the immigration agencies. His attempts to pass immigration-related legislation in Congress have failed. And his policies have faced so much opposition in the courts that his administration has appeared to pursue a strategy of rapidly churning out new policies and hoping that at least some of them survive judicial review. But while he might not have succeeded at building an actual wall to keep immigrants out, his policies have achieved the same end. Reducing overall immigration levels has long been on the wish list of once-fringe restrictionist groups like the Center for Immigration Studies, whose co-founder advocated for maintaining a European-American majority population. Trump is making it a reality.Trump’s primary focus upon entering office was addressing the unprecedented number of children and families arriving at the southern border from Honduras, El Salvador, and Guatemala — collectively known as Central America’s Northern Triangle — where crime, violence, and lack of economic opportunity has driven hundreds of thousands to flee over the past two years. The administration hasn’t addressed the root causes of that crisis, but it has effectively cut off migrants’ access to the US asylum system. His ability to do all this has even surprised Mark Krikorian, the executive director of the Center for Immigration Studies. “I didn’t expect them to pull it off,” he said. (Krikorian and his group are still pushing Trump to go further in his second term; his strategies have “taken the edge off,” but migrants are still continuing to arrive in “unacceptably high” numbers, he argues.) Trump has deputized Central American countries in his immigration enforcement efforts. Some 60,000 asylum seekers have been sent back to Mexico to wait for their immigration court hearings in the US under his “remain in Mexico” policy, officially known as the Migrant Protection Protocols (MPP). It has appeared to discourage migrants from attempting to cross the southern border but has exacerbated the humanitarian crisis in Mexico, where thousands are waiting for their court hearings in the US, many of them in dire need of humanitarian aid. Some migrants are lucky to find housing in shelters, hotels, or rooms for rent, but for more than 5,000 others, only tents and tarps, some held up by only sticks and stones, stand between them and the elements, even as temperatures drop below freezing. As populations swell, both the US and Mexico have left thousands in the camps without basic necessities like clean drinking water and warm clothes — and at risk of extortion, kidnapping, and rape at the hands of cartels and other criminal actors.Trump has also brokered a series of agreements with the Northern Triangle countries that require migrants to apply for protections in those countries first. If they fail to do so, US immigration authorities can send them back to those countries (though only the agreement with Guatemala is currently in effect). So far, 368 asylum seekers have been deported to Guatemala. The agreements resemble “safe third-country agreements,” a rarely used diplomatic tool that requires migrants to seek asylum in the countries they pass through by deeming those countries capable of offering them protection (though the Trump administration has been reluctant to use that term). Until recently, the US had this kind of agreement with just one country: Canada.These agreements were never meant to be a means to push the burden of absorbing asylum seekers onto other countries, but that appears to be the way Trump is trying to use them. Immigrant advocates say the costs could be deadly, since it means returning migrants to countries that have high levels of crime and instability, and that are not used to dealing with an influx of people seeking refuge.In Mexico and the Northern Triangle countries, migrants are commonly robbed, kidnapped for ransom, raped, tortured, and killed. The State Department, meanwhile, has issued travel warnings for US citizens in all four countries. El Salvador has the highest homicide rate in the world, while Honduras ranks fifth, Guatemala 16th, and Mexico 19th, according to the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime. They have rampant government corruption and high rates of violence against women and LGBTQ individuals. As much as Trump’s rhetoric focuses on clamping down on unauthorized immigration at the southern border, the president has also instituted new restrictions on legal immigration — many of which have survived Supreme Court review. During his speech on Tuesday, Trump called for an immigration system that rewards immigrants who “contribute to our economy, support themselves financially, and uphold our values” — while keeping out low-income immigrants and nonwhites from what he once referred to as “shithole countries.” He’s already bringing that vision to life. Heeding calls from 31 states to end refugee admissions from Syria, Trump has slashed the total number of refugees the US accepts annually to just 18,000 this year, the fewest in history and down from a cap of 110,000 just two years ago. His so-called public charge rule essentially establishes a wealth test for immigrants seeking to enter the US, extend their visa, or convert their temporary immigration status into a green card. The rule gives immigration officials much more leeway to turn away those who are “likely to be a public charge” based on an evaluation of 20 factors, ranging from the use of certain public benefits programs — including food stamps, Section 8 housing vouchers, and Medicaid — to English language proficiency.Julia Gelatt, a senior policy analyst at the Migration Policy Institute, a nonpartisan think tank, said that 69 percent of the roughly 5.5 million people who were granted green cards over the past five years had at least one negative factor under the rule, which officials could have used as justification to reject their applications for immigration benefits.Trump is also cracking down on foreigners giving birth to children in the US who become, by birth, American citizens, particularly if they can’t prove they can pay for their medical treatment. And he’s placed restrictions on citizens of many Muslim-majority and African countries. His travel ban prevents citizens of Iran, Libya, Somalia, Syria, Yemen, Venezuela, and North Korea from obtaining any kind of visa allowing them to enter the US. He recently added new restrictions on immigration from six additional countries — Myanmar, Eritrea, Kyrgyzstan, Nigeria, Sudan, and Tanzania — in what advocates are calling an “African ban” since about four in five of those affected are from African nations. Trump has overcome court challenges to some of these policies: In four of the six cases in which the Supreme Court weighed in on Trump’s immigration policies, the court’s conservative majority has so far sided with the administration. Notably, the justices upheld his travel ban in June 2018, affirming his broad powers to restrict immigration to the US for national security reasons. The justices have also allowed Trump to move forward with his immigration policy plans while lawsuits challenging them make their way through lower courts. They gave the green light to Trump’s rule preventing migrants from applying for asylum if they passed through another country other than their own before arriving in the US. They also allowed him to divert $3.6 billion in military funds to construct the border wall and implement the public charge rule.The way Trump talks about immigration in his State of the Union address is likely to preview what he says on the campaign trail. That might appeal to the 42 percent of voters who support his immigration policies. But 57 percent of voters disapprove of Trump’s performance on immigration and 60 percent either oppose or strongly oppose the construction of the border wall, his signature immigration policy. Not only are most voters against Trump’s immigration policies, but many also just don’t view it as a top priority — bread-and-butter issues like health care and the economy are what they care about most. Fifty-one percent of voters overall said that immigration should be a top priority, ranking below eight other policy issues. Republicans seem to care more about immigration, with 68 percent saying it should be a top priority compared to 40 percent of Democrats. The share of Americans who support increasing immigration has also risen to 32 percent as of 2018, up from 10 percent in 2001.“While Trump mobilizes his core supporters on the issue of immigration, he also mobilizes a backlash to his divisiveness and xenophobia,” Frank Sharry, the executive director of the immigrant advocacy group America’s Voice, said.Democratic candidates have largely ignored the topic of immigration in the debates so far, but based on the immigration plans they’ve released, the entire field has moved to the left on immigration. All of the frontrunners would, for example, push for a pathway to citizenship for unauthorized immigrants living in the US and streamline the process of applying for asylum and other forms of legal immigration. Their biggest challenge upon entering office, however, would be reversing Trump’s changes to the immigration system. Much of it they could accomplish unilaterally by executive action — they could end MPP and the travel ban and raise the cap on refugee admissions immediately, for example — but some of Trump’s changes are harder to reverse. Repealing Trump-era immigration regulations would involve a protracted process of giving public notice and the opportunity to comment that often takes months. It may also take time to rebuild some of the institutions that deal with immigration. For example, Trump has presided over a brain drain of experienced staffers in the immigration courts and the State Department, which manages the refugee program and consulates abroad. For as much as Democratic candidates claim they will reverse Trump’s policies, the president has left his mark on the immigration system. He has delivered for his base on that front — and he’s hoping it will be enough to carry him to victory again in 2020.

HONG KONG—After months of protests, this city’s voters have sent a direct message to the Chinese Communist Party, a massive rebuke to the stranglehold that pro-Beijing figures have tried to maintain over Hong Kong politics. Just three weeks ago, CCP leader Xi Jingping gave his public endorsement to Carrie Lam, Hong Kong’s chief executive—and by extension, the city’s establishment politicians. But in district elections on Sunday the pro-democracy camp won by a landslide, taking 388 of the 452 available seats. That’s a six-to-one majority. The vote showed Hongkongers are using every means they have to ensure their own interests are represented in government, and the Party can take a back seat.District councilors are at the base of the pyramid in Hong Kong politics. They are officials who manage funds for things like environmental improvements, community activities, or public services in small neighborhoods—in other words, local matters that normally don’t receive too much attention even from Hongkongers.In the past, campaign platforms revolved around matters like the placement of recycle bins and traffic lights. But nearly six months of unrest—involving massive political rallies, a trashed legislative building, the development of a syncretic protest philosophy and strategic planning, chaos at the airport, and the city’s leader invoking emergency powers to ban face masks—have turned the election into a one-issue race: Do Hongkongers want public representatives who will push for change at the highest level?The answer is an assertive, resounding yes.The polls opened across the city at 7:30 a.m. By the early afternoon, more than 1.5 million people had cast their ballots—surpassing the total turnout in the previous district council election four years ago. At 10:30 p.m., when polling stations closed, more than 2,940,000 people had showed up to the voting booth. That’s 71.2 percent of the 4.1 million people who are registered to vote in Hong Kong. In some districts, turnout was greater than 80 percent.“The pro-democracy camp found overwhelming popularity at the polling booths, boosted by recent demonstrations and as a consequence of the constant community organization that has been conducted at the grassroots level.”While results rolled in, it was the first time since June that crowds gathered in public were smiling, laughing, celebrating instead of expressing rage or heartbreak.This city of 7.4 million has never seen so many people show up for any election. Some stood in line for more than three hours to vote. And there's a good reason for that. Sunday’s election involved more than 1,100 candidates. For the first time ever, every incumbent faced a challenger. It was a chance to disrupt the status quo—not by using roadblocks or clashing with the police, but by building political ownership one vote at a time.Ahead of the election. establishment figures had called repeatedly for postponing the Sunday vote, often citing security concerns referring to protesters barricading and taking over university campuses, even shooting arrows at riot police. But many Hongkongers saw that as those in power developing cold feet—the side that expects to win doesn’t ask for the race to be delayed.There were some candidates who muddied perception. In swing districts, “independents” adopted protest slogans in their campaign materials, yet received funding from or had links to pro-Beijing organizations. Never mind. The pro-democracy camp found overwhelming popularity at the polling booths, boosted by recent demonstrations and as a consequence of the constant community organization that has been conducted at the grassroots level. Here are some of the candidates who won or kept their seats:— Jimmy Sham Tsz-kit is the leader of the Civil Human Rights Front, which organized the rallies that drew one million, then two million people to march on the government headquarters. In mid-October, four men attacked him by slamming his head with hammers and wrenches before speeding off in a car. Sham’s head is still scarred. He walks with a cane now due to his injuries.— Incumbent councilor Andrew Chiu Ka-yin, whose ear was bitten off by a knife-wielding man three weeks ago.— Tommy Cheung Sau-yin, the former spokesperson of Scholarism, an organization that spearheaded the 2014 pro-democracy Umbrella Movement.— Lester Shum, one of the leaders of the Umbrella Movement.— Stanley Ho Wai-hong, a Labor Party member who in September suffered fractures and a head wound after being beaten by men dressed in white and wielding rods.— Clara Cheung Ka-lei, an artist and grassroots cultural worker. One of her volunteers was attacked and punched by a man on election day.— Jocelyn Chau Hui-yan, a 23-year-old accountant who was attacked when she was campaigning in October.— Cathy Yau Man-shan, a former police officer who resigned from the force after she saw how her colleagues treated people who have been arrested.One figure is particularly loathed by Hong Kong’s black bloc and pro-democracy camp: Junius Ho Kwan-yiu was seen expressing gratitude to thugs who attacked protesters and passers-by in a train station in July. In early November he was the victim of a knife attack. As Sunday's vote approached, local press asked Junius Ho if he was confident about retaining his position as councilor. He said the question was “retarded.” And then he lost.“The protest movement has galvanized Hongkongers.”Such was the landslide that even Michael Tien Puk-sun, a legislator and relatively well-respected, moderate voice among establishment politicians, lost his seat to a newcomer.The protest movement has galvanized Hongkongers, who first cornered the city’s government into scrapping proposed extradition to mainland China, then more broadly rose up against a political system rigged by Beijing and its proxies. Some who were abroad flew in from the United States, Canada, Australia, the United Kingdom, and other places just to cast their ballots on Sunday, flying out almost immediately afterward.There were anomalies, like phantom voters at real or fake addresses. Some elderly people were guided in to cast their ballots—typically in favor of establishment figures. Others were bussed in to polling stations and handed gifts like sacks of rice, pillows, even rolls of toilet paper, plus palm-sized reminders of who their vote should go to.“Democracy is a 'malignant virus.'”— The Chinese Communist Party's 'China Daily'The Chinese Communist Party had previously said the seeds of terror were present in Hong Kong. CCP-run media outlet China Daily went further to say university campuses in Hong Kong are the “fortresses” of terrorism and democracy is a “malignant virus.” Beijing has been flirting with the idea of a violent clampdown, or at least signaling that it is in the cards. In August, thousands of members of the People’s Armed Police, a paramilitary force that is typically deployed to quell civil unrest in mainland China, was stationed in a stadium in Shenzhen, near the border with Hong Kong. And in November, troops of the People’s Liberation Army stationed in Hong Kong exited their barracks for about half an hour to clear a road section in Hong Kong; they weren’t in military uniforms, but wore basketball jerseys that indicated they were part of a counterterrorism brigade.Watching from Beijing, the chief editor of the bombastic CCP mouthpiece Global Times, Hu Xijin—a man who 30 years ago marched on Tiananmen Square to demand democracy in China—claimed that Western powers were meddling in Hong Kong’s elections.When faced with opposition—or simply a lack of fealty—the CCP relies on disinformation, intimidation, brute force, and economic strangleholds to force allegiance. In Hong Kong, the Party’s proxies have for years invoked the idea that a “silent majority” exists in the city, that those who dare to dissent are merely a vocal, belligerent minority. Yet on Sunday, the pro-democracy camp and its supporters formed the largest voting group Hong Kong has ever seen. Months of street-level violence, clashes with riot police, labor and student strikes—with more than 4,400 people arrested so far—have translated into solid action within the political arena, nullifying the CCP mischaracterizations.The people of Hong Kong understand that fear feeds tyranny. The Party and its proxies thrive on that. So now the Hongkongers’ weapon of choice against that fear has proven to be the ballot.There is a sigh of relief across the city, because months of street-level organizing and outreach have formally evolved into a modicum of power in political office. On Monday, there were celebrations and congratulations, but Hongkongers have been conscious of remembering the individuals who died along the way, with each seeking their own form of resistance to upset the status quo.And the next step? Of Hong Kong’s district councilors, 117 will be able to join the 1,200-member committee to vote for the city’s leader in 2022. But before then, in September 2020, they will lay the groundwork for candidates running to become legislators. Right now, an immediate challenge exists: There are still about 30 protesters on the occupied campus of Polytechnic University. They are surrounded by police and say they will not surrender. Already, incoming councilors like Jimmy Sham are calling for the police to retreat from the school’s peripheries. Perhaps, knowing that the black bloc’s efforts have helped shape Sunday’s results, there can be a peaceful resolution to the standoff. That would be yet another triumph.

Pro-democracy activists pause protests to vote in Hong Kong02:34Pro-democracy activists pause their protests to vote in Hong Kong.Nov. 24, 2019

Prime Minister Boris Johnson just secured a Brexit victory — only to suffer another crushing defeat. That’s just how things go in UK politics these days.Earlier on Tuesday, the UK Parliament voted to advance Johnson’s Brexit bill, the legislation that will put his Brexit deal into UK domestic law.But after giving Johnson’s deal the okay to advance — a step his predecessor never came close to reaching — Parliament rejected Johnson’s rapid timetable to get the Brexit legislation approved, indicating it wanted more time to scrutinize the bill. That would mean a Brexit delay, past the October 31 deadline. Johnson was forced, by law, to request a three-month extension over the weekend. The EU is considering the UK’s delay request but has not yet approved it.Johnson has said he’d rather be “dead in a ditch” than delay Brexit beyond October 31. So now the prime minister pausing the Brexit legislation altogether, even though it just got approval to proceed. Still, Johnson made it clear that he wants this deal to pass.“One way or another we will leave the EU with this deal to which this House has just given its assent,” Johnson said Tuesday, after his defeat.To achieve that, a Brexit delay looks inevitable. But Johnson’s dream of leaving the EU on October 31 seems all but dead. Johnson brought back a revised Brexit plan from Brussels last Thursday and scheduled a Saturday vote on it. But Parliament foiled his plans by approving an amendment that deferred approval for his Brexit deal until all the necessary legislation was passed, thus forcing him to seek a three-month extension from the EU. Johnson did so because the law forced him to, not because he wanted to. He sent a second letter informing the EU that he still wanted to get Brexit done by October 31.He forged ahead with that plan. On Monday, the government published the 100-plus page Withdrawal Agreement Bill (WAB), which takes the Brexit deal and puts it into UK law. And he wanted this massive, consequential piece of legislation to get through Parliament by this Thursday.MPs agreed to move the bill forward in its “second reading,” which means Parliament agrees to the deal in principle, but it hasn’t yet given final approval to the legislation.But enough MPs bristled at the idea of ramming this legislation through Parliament in three days, so they voted down what’s called a “program motion,” which set out Johnson’s aggressive timetable. Parliament basically said it wanted more time.Johnson doesn’t want Parliament to have any more time, though. While advancing the Brexit bill might indicate he has parliamentary support for his Brexit plan, perhaps with some minor tweaks, Johnson doesn’t trust what he views as a “Remain”-minded Parliament to actually pass his Brexit agenda.Ahead of the vote on Tuesday, Johnson threatened to completely scrap all of the Brexit legislation if the program motion failed — and said he’d call for an election so he could get a Parliament that supports him.If Parliament “refused to allow Brexit to happen and instead gets its way,” Johnson said Tuesday, then “the bill will have to be pulled and we will have to go forward with a general election. I will argue at that election: ‘Let’s get Brexit done.’”Johnson still needs two-thirds of MPs to support any election plans if he takes that route, and MPs have rejected his attempts to call an election twice before. The opposition, specifically the Labour Party, can see the polls aren’t looking all that good for them, and it may decide it’s easier to frustrate Johnson’s Brexit agenda with the current Parliament rather than risk a big electoral defeat that will leave them with even less leverage to influence the Brexit process. Labour “is very likely to say, ‘No way, Boris. We’re not going to do this; we’re not going to have an election. We need a little more time,’” Harold Clarke, an expert on voting and elections at the University of Texas Dallas, told me. “And they’ll delay and delay on that, hoping the mood of the country will change. You’ve got this sort of perfect deadlock.”Right now, Johnson has put the legislation on hold, though not pulling the bill entirely. But he made no mention of any election when he announced his decision to put the Brexit bill on pause, despite his earlier threats.Now everyone will look toward the EU to see if it’s willing to grant the extension. All 27 EU leaders must agree unanimously to postpone the current deadline. Parliament forced Johnson to ask the EU for a three-month delay, until January 31, 2020. The EU can go for that. It can also opt for a much shorter delay. Or it can give the UK a lot more time. All of which means nothing is settled for Brexit. Parliament agreed to advance the bill, but not at Johnson’s accelerated pace. And now the EU must decide if it will offer a new Brexit deadline — avoiding a no-deal Brexit, but prolonging the uncertainty for a third time.

closeVideoSteve Hilton: The Truth About Impeachment, Week 13Steve Hilton recaps the week the House of Representatives formally voted to impeach President Trump."The Democrats should feel plenty of shame over this impeachment, but the president certainly shouldn't, and neither should his supporters," Hilton said."In fact, just the opposite. Wear impeachment like a badge of honor and wield it like a weapon of war. Turn it on the Democrats. Make them pay for what they've done to America.""They hate him [Trump], they hate the people who support him and they really hate his success," Hilton said of House Democrats. "They fear that none of their candidates are strong enough to beat Trump in 2020. They know that the Trump record is a re-election record. Any reasonable person looking at the policy results..the substance...the facts would agree that the Trump presidency is one of the most successful in American history."KARL ROVE: 2020 DEMS SHOULD RECUSE THEMSELVES FROM SENATE IMPEACHMENT TRIALPointing to a slew of accomplishments by the Trump administration, including reduced unemployment rates, criminal justice reform and efforts to secure the southern border, Hilton doubled down in his criticism of House Democrats, accusing them of being "addicted to their own self-indulgent political games."VideoPelosi has indicated she wants reassurances that the Senate would hold a fair trial, likely involving certain Democrat-sought witnesses, before sending over the charges."Drag this process out in the Senate, every day this goes on is worse for them. Put their dirty secrets on public display, make Joe Biden testify... make them pay," Hilton said."Make them suffer. Make them regret every minute of the last three years of Trump-hating, democracy undermining, progress blocking, Russia-Ukraine conspiracy theory madness that has taken over a once sane political party."

Just a few months after going head-to-head with an Amazon-backed rival to claim her third term on the Seattle city council, Kshama Sawant has proposed a new tax on the trillion dollar giant and other large Seattle businesses, which she says will “stop at nothing” to try to defeat progressive proposals like this one.The proposal, which was unveiled last week, would involve a 1.7% payroll tax on the top 3% of companies (based on their payroll) operating out of the city. Sawant estimates the tax will impact about 825 companies, each with about $7m or more in annual payroll. All non-profit organizations, public employers and grocery stores would be exempt.“On the whole what we have achieved is exactly what we want to achieve, which is that it’s a truly progressive tax, meaning it falls only on the very very largest corporations,” Sawant told the Guardian.Amazon has a long-history of tax management. It paid just 1.2% in federal income tax last year – a three-year high for the company – and has angered some critics with its tax policies.In Seattle the new tax is expected to raise $300m each year. In a city that has the fourth highest rate of unsheltered homeless in the US, according to a 2019 federal report, 75% of the money from the tax would go toward building thousands of affordable, publicly owned homes. The rest of the funds would go toward converting homes that use oil or gas to clean electric energy.Sawant, a member of the Socialist Alternative party and former tech worker, introduced a similar tax on big businesses in 2018. The Head Tax proposal would have implemented a per-employee tax on corporations making more than $20m each year.Although the nine-member council initially unanimously approved it, after Amazon, Starbucks and other locally based companies contributed financially to a campaign to kill it, called No Tax on Jobs, all but two council members voted for repeal (Sawant and Democratic council member Teresa Mosqueda voted for the tax). Supporters at the inauguration of the ‘Tax Amazon 2020 Kickoff’ event. Photograph: Jason Redmond/AFP via Getty ImagesNow Sawant has reignited that fight at a much larger scale. The new proposal would likely impact at least 200 more businesses than the previous tax and potentially raise more than six times the funds. And with a better sense of what can befall a proposal like this one at the 11th hour, the council member is also working to build up more momentum at the grassroots level.“We need an even more powerful movement to withstand not just the pressures, but the bullying and threats of big business,” she said. “They will stop at nothing.”Sawant was elected six years ago as the first socialist on the Seattle council in almost 100 years. She won her second re-election campaign in November, after a hard-fought battle against Amazon-backed candidate Egan Orion. The corporation, which is headquartered in Seattle, funneled $1.5m into the local city council elections by way of the Seattle Metropolitan Chamber of Commerce’s political action committee, which supported Orion and six other candidates considered to be business-friendly (all but two of these candidates lost their races).Amazon did not immediately respond to a request for comment.Throughout her campaign, she frequently referenced her plan to revive her fight for a tax on big business. But she said the specific proposal just announced came out of several months of deliberations among hundreds of people from the Socialist Alternative party, Democratic party and renters’ rights organizations.Seattle mayor Jenny Durkan, a Democrat, said in a recent statement that while she does believe big businesses should contribute more financially to addressing the city’s challenges, “this proposal that is six times bigger than the failed council head tax proposal is not a plan that I can support”.“Being progressive means actually making progress. While slogans are nice, a failed, divisive fight that is high on rhetoric but low on outcomes, or one that funds lawyers instead of housing, is not an actual solution,” she said.Mayor Durkan helped to put together a bill introduced last month in the Washington state legislature that would authorize King county, which includes Seattle, to implement a 0.1 to 0.2% payroll tax on big businesses. But there has also been a recent push to add a clause barring cities from enacting similar big-business taxes. Seattle has the fourth highest rate of unsheltered homeless in the US, according to a 2019 federal report. Photograph: Elaine Thompson/APSawant said such a move would be “devastating” and “a huge betrayal of working people”.Alicia Teel, spokesperson for the Seattle Metropolitan Chamber of Commerce, said that while lawmakers at the state level are working to develop a regional approach to help increase funding for housing and homelessness, “councilmember Sawant is spending her time printing posters and calling press conferences”.Sawant plans to formally introduce the tax to the city council later this month. She said she also will likely hold district meetings throughout the city, along with rallies and marches to help spread awareness about the tax.At the same time, she is working to introduce this tax to the Seattle council, there is also a group working on a corresponding ballot initiative. The idea is that if her proposal doesn’t get through the council, they can take the issue directly to the people.Sawant was recently charged with violating the city’s ethics and elections code for promoting the initiative through links posted on her city council website. She said she was very surprised with the complaint, since the ballot initiative hadn’t been officially submitted or even written.“We did not in any intentional way break any rules, and I’m looking forward to meeting with the commission to resolve this issue,” she said.

America’s 45th president generates vast tides of comparisons: Donald Trump is a toddler, a savior, a dictator. He’s a prophet, a psychopath, a plague. Though these divided visions threaten to rupture into constitutional crisis in the current impeachment proceedings, we share one belief: Trump, devil or hero, is always and emphatically himself.Trump, in short, appears authentic. This source of appeal caused nearly 63 million Americans to overlook his personal failings and political inexperience in 2016. Despite unprecedented news coverage of the president’s professional failings, lies, and scandals, nearly half the country continues to support him. Why?Trump’s enduring political appeal, like his success in Hollywood, is the product of his perceived authenticity. While the American ideal of authenticity now lives in our language, celebrities, and songs, its value was most powerfully articulated by the famous 19th-century preacher and philosopher Ralph Waldo Emerson. Strange as it may seem, understanding Emerson unlocks the deep and hidden cultural logic that led to the rise of Donald Trump. To see how authenticity became a core American virtue, it’s essential to understand the work of the philosopher Harold Bloom called “the dominant sage of the American imagination.”At first glance, the two men seem to share nothing. Trump struggles to spell basic words, barely reads anything, and writes “sentences” like this: “People don’t realize, you know, the Civil War, if you think about it, why?” Emerson, by contrast, read Latin fluently by his early teens, accumulated a deep knowledge of history and literature, scorned material wealth, and wrote sentences like this: “After every foolish day we sleep off the fumes and furies of its hours; and though we are always engaged with particulars, and often enslaved to them, we bring with us to every experiment the innate universal laws.”What could these two men possibly have in common?Trump and Emerson share a deep faith in authenticity as a private and political virtue. This faith comprises three basic elements: an indifference to facts and consistency, a hostility to history, and a belief in the authentic individual as the arbiter of truth.“With consistency a great soul has simply nothing to do,” Emerson famously declared in his essay “Self-Reliance,” concluding that, “A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds, adored by little statesmen and philosophers and divines.” Trump has precisely this Emersonian belief that his greatness exempts him from the claims of consistency. To reverse and contradict himself is not grounds for criticism, but simply a manifestation of his “great soul.” By some estimates, Trump has told more than 10,000 lies while in office. Even now, in the face of impeachment, Trump claims that incriminating documentary evidence exonerates him. That others fail to appreciate his heroic inconsistencies and indifference to facts is an expected consequence of greatness. “To be great,” Emerson teaches us in the essay “Self-Reliance,” “is to be misunderstood.” Both men also have little use for history. “Each age, it is found, must write its own books,” Emerson said at Harvard in 1837, “...The books of an older period will not fit this.” One of his great themes is the necessity of freeing oneself from the shackles of history, which he calls “an impertinence and an injury,” its long centuries “conspirators against the sanity and majesty of the soul.”“For both Trump and Emerson, authenticity means appealing to a truth higher than fact.”Donald Trump is similarly hostile to history. He barely reads anything because, as he once explained, “I don’t have the time.” The result is a president who says that there were airports during the Revolutionary War and that Frederick Douglass is still alive. Trump has indeed freed himself from the “conspirators against... the majesty of the soul.” Both men regard the truth not as a result of deliberate study of documents, books, and evidence, but as the upwelling genius of the inner authentic self.In 2014, Trump tweeted one of Emerson's many famous aphorisms on being true to one’s own nature: “To be yourself in a world that is constantly trying to make you something else is the greatest accomplishment.” For both men, authenticity means appealing to a truth higher than fact. A consistent motif across Emerson’s work is the supremacy of intuition and the idealization of authenticity. Only the subjective self is a reliable guide in life. The rational mind, with its emphasis on facts and its demand for consistency, is a prison from which he counsels escape. Rather than freezing a topic with the “wintry light of understanding,” Emerson urges his readers to consult their authentic selves and act accordingly. Trump, similarly, is guided by hunches, intuition, and instinct. He follows a truth that only he can see. This is perhaps why he is celebrated as both a visionary by his followers and a madman by his critics. Emerson now enjoys only the former designation, but a close reading of his work shows that in many ways Trump is merely following in his footsteps.In an interview with The New Yorker, the Stanford historian and conservative commentator Victor Davis Hanson conceded that while Trump may not be honest, he is something more important.Hanson: ...every time Hillary Clinton went before a Southern audience, she started speaking in a Southern accent. And Barack Obama, I think you would agree, when he gets before an inner-city audience, he suddenly sounded as if he spoke in a black patois. When Trump went to any of these groups, he had the same tie, the same suit, the same accent. What people thought was that, whatever he is, he is authentic.New Yorker: Honest, authentic.Hanson: I don’t know about honest, but authentic and genuine. Honest in the sense that…New Yorker: The larger sense.Hanson: Yeah.However stark their political differences, Hanson and his interviewer both see the authentic as something that transcends honesty and fact. An authentic person is honest “in the larger sense.”Something here is deeply wrong; a person can be entirely dishonest, and yet still claim honorific honesty. The key idea that bridges this contradiction is the appeal to authenticity.The word “authentic,” once meant something quite different than it does today. The English “authentic” derives from the Greek words autos, “self,” and hentes, “doer or actor.” To be authentic is to be a “self-actor.” An αὐθέντης, a “self-doer” can even be a “murderer,” one who takes the law into his own hands and whose self-interest transgresses the law of the community. Doing the biddings of the private self can pose a public hazard.In Latin authenticus is a rare word that describes a text that truly “comes from the author,” and is an original and genuine work. This is the sense the term carries in English before Emerson. It specifies factual accuracy. The Oxford English Dictionary cites an example from 1798, five years before Emerson was born. “An authentic book, is that which relates matters of fact, as they really happened.” Note the emphasis on accuracy, reliability, and fact.In Emerson’s work, the word “authentic” connotes a higher spiritual truth marked by fidelity to one's own nature, rather than factual accuracy. When Emerson describes the “authentic,” he means that which is “indicative of no custom or authority.” As he writes in the 1837 address “The American Scholar,” “The discerning will read, in his Plato or Shakespeare… only the authentic utterances of the oracle; all the rest he rejects, were it never so many times Plato’s and Shakespeare’s.” The authentic individual in Emerson rejects what is false to himself and keeps only what he intuits to be true. The self, in short, is the oracle.Today, this metaphorical extension of the Latin adjective from text to self dominates our understanding of the authentic, but the Greek meaning reveals a danger inherent in the concept: one who acts on the urges of the self, regardless of factual and communal standards, can justify any number of misdeeds, including murder.In his revolt against 18th-century European rationalism, Emerson sought to articulate and inspire a new ideal. “Ours is the revolutionary age, when man is coming back to consciousness,” he wrote in 1839. In this new consciousness, knowledge dwells not in the facts of the world but in the intuition and subjective experience of the individual. The world is simply “the shadow of the soul,” or in an even more narcissistic, Trumpian formulation, the “other me.”Emerson made the appealing case that self-creation is America’s quintessential art, the only sure path to individual fulfillment and national progress. His rhetorical style relies heavily on seductive metaphors and oracular assertions. “I—this thought which is called I,—is the mould into which the world is poured like melted wax.”His essays defy simplistic reductions in their attempt to elicit the voice of the authentic individual. Nonetheless, the great American literary critic F.O. Matthiessen sees one passage from an 1840 journal entry as the key to Emerson’s philosophy: “I have taught one doctrine, namely, the infinitude of the private man.” Emerson, in his late essay, “Historic Notes on Life and Letters in Massachusetts,” clarifies this notion. “The individual is the world.”“Trump fails to remember basic facts of American history, but Emerson asserts they do not matter in the first place.”Emerson’s central idea is present in one of his earliest works, the address “The American Scholar” (1837). He wrote, “If there be one lesson more than another, which should pierce [the] ear, it is, the world is nothing, the man is all.” Here, Emerson articulated a new vision of knowledge opposed to the Enlightenment rationalist philosophy which held that knowledge is an objective pursuit. Instead, Emerson relativizes all knowledge to the individual: “in yourself is the law of all nature, and you know not yet how a globule of sap ascends; in yourself slumbers the whole of Reason; it is for you to know all, it is for you to dare all.”Emerson reframed the German philosopher Immanuel Kant’s well-known aphorism (taken from Horace): sapere aude, “dare to know.” Emerson’s message was different. “Dare to know” became the more problematic “Dare to be yourself.” One fundamental cultural shift that could inject sanity into our crazed politics is a reversal of Emerson's terms: less authenticity, more knowledge.If we equate knowledge with self-knowledge, we are destined to privilege intuition over information. Emerson shows an open hostility to facts and consistency, which he understands as barriers to authenticity. In his 1841 essay “History,” he writes, “No anchor, no cable, no fences, avail to keep a fact a fact. Babylon, Troy, Tyre, Palestine, and even early Rome, are passing already into fiction.” For Emerson, facts and consistency are directly opposed to authentic intuition. Those who finally dare “to be themselves” will “come to revere their intuitions and aspire to live holily” because “their own piety explains every fact, every word.”What Emerson expresses philosophically, Trump lives every day. Trump fails to remember basic facts of American history, but Emerson asserts they do not matter in the first place: “I hold our actual knowledge very cheap,” he writes. Since Emerson believes in individual intuition, he also feels that rational consistency limits authenticity. His essays are beautiful compounds of metaphor and insight, but his style itself discourages rational scrutiny of his claims. His ideas are usually no more separable from the tumult of his brilliant metaphors than the respiratory system is from an organism: seamless integration is a design feature. This is a major aspect of his style—the irreducibility of his language to propositional claims. If it were possible to translate his ideas without reduction, they would be subject to debate, evaluation, and relevant evidence. Instead, the power of Emerson’s language and ideas is driven by his own persona and voice. The proof of his ideas is in his work, not in debate, and not in information about the world. In Emerson’s understanding of the American imagination, the final proof of truth is the self.“Emerson’s claim that “The individual is the world” is not only the ideal of individual authenticity; it is also the aphorism of the dictator.”Facts encumber. Rationality confuses. Debate dilutes authenticity. “Good and bad,” Emerson tells us, “are but names very readily transferable to that or this; the only right is what is after my constitution, the only wrong what is against it.” Emerson, like Donald Trump, believes in “inspiration,” “miracle,” and “individual culture.” As Emerson writes in the “Transcendentalist,” individual culture is opposed to the culture of facts and consistency, which is founded “on history, on the force of circumstances, and the… wants of man.” By branding facts as encumbrances and rejecting the moral claims of others, Emerson believes he has freed individuals to create whatever selves they deem most true. Emerson’s cult of authenticity promises individual freedom, but it sacrifices the foundations of a shared political life.There is a seductive beauty in the idea that the world is the image of the individual. But we rarely address the dark side of our belief in spiritual authenticity. Absent any objective moral standards, what if we discover an authentic self that delights in harming others? Emerson is unconcerned by this possibility; he explicitly asserts the supremacy of the self, regardless of its moral content. As he writes in “Self-Reliance,” “If I am the Devil’s child, I will live then from the Devil.” Add a few glaring typos, and it could almost be Trump.Emerson’s claim that “The individual is the world” is not only the ideal of individual authenticity; it is also the aphorism of the dictator. When the media charges Trump with mendacity, he responds with the doctrine of the “devil’s child.” If your news is not mine, Trump says, your news is fake. Or, in Emerson’s words, “If you are… not in the same truth with me, cleave to your companions; I will seek my own.” This perfectly describes the tribal partisanism that shapes our contemporary politics.Emerson preaches an ideal that has served Trump well, “the single man [must] plant himself indomitably on his instincts, and there abide, the huge world will come round to him.” Ultimately, this philosophy ends in contradiction. The world cannot come round to everyone. All cannot yield to all. This is the consequence of Emersonian individualism: weak souls must inevitably bend to the will of the authentic. Emerson is explicit on this. Lesser souls, Emerson tells us, “are content to be brushed like flies from the path of a great person” because “they sun themselves in the great man's light.” Emerson, like Trump, has no empathy for those who lack the strength to self-create.This explains Emerson's critical, Nietzschean views on philanthropy. It is the “foolish philanthropist” who considers the poor. We must have “the manhood to withhold” support for public institutions and charities. The authentic great man stands beyond and above “your miscellaneous popular charities,” “the education at college of fools,” and “alms to sots.” In perhaps his most candid formulation, Emerson lambasts charity and romanticizes hate: “Never varnish your hard uncharitable ambition with this incredible tenderness for black folks a thousand miles off… The doctrine of hatred must be preached.” He presents the distant poor as a distraction from the project of self-realization. Particularly striking is his presumption that “hard uncharitable ambition” constitutes the true self, and that yielding to public-spirited charitable enterprises is thus a departure from individual integrity.In the absence of facts, history, and communal consensus, power is left as the only diagnosis of true authenticity. As Emerson writes, “Power is in nature the essential measure of right. Nature suffers nothing to remain in her kingdoms which cannot help itself.” This is directly echoed in Trump’s obsession with power. “We love winners. We love winners. Winners are winners.” This ideal, in Emerson, leads to the idolization of tyrants. Writing on the Roman dictator Caesar, Emerson claims, “Every true man is a cause, a country, and an age… posterity seems to follow his steps as a train of clients.”“To understand the circumstances that have produced Donald Trump, we must recognize that authenticity is a sacred American value.”This is the ultimate threat Donald Trump embodies. Like the tyrants Emerson celebrates, Trump exemplifies the original meaning of the word authentic, “a self-doer,” one so willing to advance individual interest at the expense of the collective that they even justify murder. A man who, as Trump himself stated, could “stand in the middle of Fifth Avenue and shoot somebody.”While it is tempting to dismiss Trump and his supporters as foolish, uneducated, and even “deplorable,” it is much more difficult to find what lies at the heart of his appeal to authenticity. In order to understand the circumstances that have produced Donald Trump, we must recognize that authenticity is a sacred American value. We seek it in friends, lovers, music, food, political candidates, novels, and neighborhoods. We find it in the world and the self: street tacos in Los Angeles, intimate journal entries, blues bands in New Orleans, country music in West Texas, meditation retreats in San Francisco. The authentic transcends mere truth and brushes against something deeper, something spiritual. Authenticity offers the beautiful promise that inside each of us is a true self that can be realized under the right circumstances. It’s the closest we get to a shared national religion.The appeal to authenticity even unites our fractured political divide. Supporters of Joe Biden and Donald Trump share a common faith in each man’s authenticity. On the left Nancy Pelosi defended Joe Biden’s support of segregationist senators in 1970s, saying, “I think that authenticity is the most important characteristic that candidates have to convey to the American people, and Joe Biden is authentic.” At the heart of this American ideal lies Emerson’s belief in the “I” writ large.Those who really want to oppose Trump must refuse the appeal to authenticity. Instead of an indifference to facts and consistency, we must prioritize knowledge and informed action in our political life. Instead of a hostility to history, we must strengthen our command of its materials. Instead of a politics of self-expression, we must accept the necessity and struggle of democratic life. We must abandon the myths of great individuals and forge communal values based on reason and fact.Perhaps there is no better example of the antithesis of Donald Trump than the 20th-century American author Ralph Ellison. Ellison, who was named Ralph in honor of Emerson, was intimately aware of the dangers inherent in the myth of Emersonian authenticity. While Ellison recognized Emerson’s great power as a writer, he also critiqued the dangers of an Emersonian worldview. “Perhaps more than any other people, Americans have been locked in a deadly struggle with time, with history. We’ve fled the past and trained ourselves to suppress, if not forget, troublesome details of the national memory, and a great part of our optimism, like our progress, has been bought at the cost of ignoring the processes through which we’ve arrived at any given moment in our national experience.” Ellison reminds us that we must struggle with the history of our ideas and the troublesome details of the national memory that the tides of Trumpism constantly threaten to overthrow.

For a clearer picture of the influence China wields, look no further than a ruckus that unspooled simultaneously with the NBA imbroglio. Last Sunday, Activision Blizzard, an e-gaming company, banned a professional Hearthstone player from the game’s lucrative pro league for a year and forced him to forfeit $10,000 after he said, “Liberate Hong Kong, revolution of our times,” in an interview about his tournament wins. Chung Ng Wai, who uses the handle “Blitzchung,” also donned a mask, which has become a symbol of the protests, before he was hustled from the podium. (Blizzard later said it would reduce the one-year suspension to a six-month one, and that it would restore the prize money.) What’s stunning, or pathetic, is that Activision Blizzard made this decision—citing “damages to the company’s image”—on its own, apparently without direction from Beijing, an indication that the firm, like many others, has internalized Chinese values. Activision Blizzard makes a lot of money in China, where gaming has become a national pastime for a generation of young men. Blizzard has a partnership with the Chinese tech company NetEase, and Tencent owns 5 percent of its parent company.Blizzard Activision is just one of many corporations that have bent to Chinese whims, perceived or otherwise, in recent years. Corporate heavyweights such as Marriott, Cathay Pacific, Muji, Versace, Dolce & Gabbana, United Airlines, Swarovski, Mercedes Benz, Gap, Apple, Google, and Leica have all been targeted by either the Chinese Communist Party or by Chinese netizens for perceived slights. And slight they were indeed. Last week, Tiffany & Co. killed an ad that showed the Chinese model Sun Feifei wearing a Tiffany ring on her right hand, which covered her right eye. Chinese netizens claimed the advertisement could be interpreted as showing support for Hong Kong’s protesters, many of whom hide their faces with masks. Go figure.Responses by multinationals to China’s wrath have resulted in real-world consequences for innocent workers. In March 2018, Marriott International fired a low-level social-media employee from Omaha after he “liked” a tweet about Tibet that offended the Chinese government. In September, Cathay’s CEO, Rupert Hogg, resigned because China opposed how Cathay had handled its employees who participated in demonstrations in Hong Kong.Hollywood, ground zero of China’s success at managing the developed world, has not released one major movie with a Chinese villain since 1997. In one film, the 2012 dud Red Dawn, editors actually swapped out Chinese baddies for North Koreans in post-production.Although Facebook remains banned in China, its founder, Mark Zuckerberg, has been craven in his efforts to return Facebook to the good graces of the Chinese Communist Party. Zuckerberg has pulled publicity stunts such as jogging through thick smog on Tiananmen Square. He has learned broken Chinese. At a White House dinner in 2015, Zuckerberg even had the gumption to ask Chinese President Xi Jinping to give an honorary Chinese name to his unborn child. Xi turned him down. The one big U.S. tech company that has stayed in the China market has been LinkedIn; the price has been aggressive censoring of speech.

Enlarge this image Former Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort's statements "were not instances of mere memory lapses," prosecutors wrote in the court filing. Jose Luis Magana/AP hide caption toggle caption Jose Luis Magana/AP Former Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort's statements "were not instances of mere memory lapses," prosecutors wrote in the court filing. Jose Luis Magana/AP Updated at 9:45 p.m. ETPaul Manafort allegedly lied to prosecutors about his communications with officials in the Trump administration, "information pertinent to another Department of Justice investigation" and more, the government said in a court filing on Friday.Manafort met with prosecutors 12 times and testified twice before a grand jury, the Justice Department said. National Security The Mueller Russia Investigation: A Full Docket Of Developments Set For Friday During that time, prosecutors say Manafort didn't tell the truth about key topics even though he had agreed to cooperate with the government in any way it wanted as part of his guilty plea.The disclosures by special counsel Robert Mueller raise significant new questions about Manafort's motivations and his contacts with senior Trump administration officials even after he was indicted on several felony charges. National Security Special Counsel Says Paul Manafort 'Breached' Plea Deal, Lied to FBI Manafort's statements "were not instances of mere memory lapses," prosecutors wrote. "If the defendant contends the government has not acted in good faith, the government is able to prove the false statements at a hearing."Manafort's attorneys said in an earlier court filing that he has given the government useful information. Manafort is scheduled to be sentenced on March 5.The alleged false statementsProsecutors say Manafort made false statements about five major topics. They include his associate Konstantin Kilimnik, with whom he faced charges for alleged witness tampering; Kilimnik's role in that alleged crime; and a wire transfer to a company working for Manafort.Prosecutors have asserted in other court materials that Kilimnik has links to Russia's intelligence services.The fourth area is not spelled out — the government alludes only to "information pertinent to another Department of Justice investigation" — and the fifth involves Manafort's contacts with officials in the Trump administration.Authorities say Manafort sought to distance himself from the White House and other officials after he inked a plea deal. But they uncovered a text exchange in May 2018 between someone Manafort had authorized to speak on his behalf and an unnamed official. Moreover, prosecutors wrote, Manafort himself maintained contact with a "senior Administration official" through February 2018. They found still more contacts after they reviewed Manafort's electronic documents. National Security Trump: Manafort Pardon Not 'Off The Table' After Briefings From Manafort's Lawyer The New York Times recently reported that even as Manafort had been cooperating with the special counsel's office, his attorney had been briefing an attorney for President Trump.That arrangement, although unusual, evidently isn't illegal, and it enabled Trump's lawyers to get a sense about the operations of Mueller's team. The special counsel's office, for its part, now contends that Manafort's denials about contacting people in the administration were among multiple false statements that void his plea deal. Law Ex-Trump Lawyer Michael Cohen Should Get 'Substantial Prison Term,' Feds Say Mueller's office is investigating whether anyone in Trump's campaign conspired with the Russians who attacked the 2016 election. Manafort ran that campaign for part of the year and had many contacts with powerful Eastern Europeans as part of his earlier political consulting business.There is so far no allegation, however, that Manafort or anyone else with the Trump campaign colluded with the Russians who attacked the election. Trump posted on Twitter on Friday, evidently responding to the evening's headlines, that he has been vindicated.Later, White House press secretary Sarah Sanders said, "The government's filing in Mr. Manafort's case says absolutely nothing about the President. It says even less about collusion and is devoted almost entirely to lobbying-related issues. Once again, the media is trying to create a story where there isn't one."A significant portion of the special counsel filing is either under seal or redacted. It's not clear when those secret passages will become public. NPR editor Philip Ewing contributed to this report.

A federal appeals court has upheld President Donald Trump’s decision to take away legal protections for 400,000 immigrants, who could be deported next year if he wins reelection — despite having put down roots in the US over years or even decades.Citizens of El Salvador, Haiti, Honduras, Nepal, Nicaragua, and Sudan have been able to stay in the US through Temporary Protected Status (TPS), a protection typically offered to citizens of countries experiencing natural disasters or armed conflict that allows them to legally live and work in the US. Against the advice of senior State Department officials, Trump tried to end TPS for those countries starting in November 2017, arguing that conditions have improved enough that their citizens can now safely return.A federal court decision had prevented Trump from proceeding to roll back those protections temporarily. But on Monday, a divided panel of judges at the Ninth Circuit lifted the lower court’s block, meaning that the administration could terminate TPS status for all countries but El Salvador on March 5, 2021 (Salvadorans would lose their status on November 5, 2021). After those dates, TPS recipients’ work permits will expire and they will lose their legal status, making them eligible for deportation. Those affected could include roughly 130,000 essential workers, more than 10,000 of whom are in medical professions, and roughly 279,000 US-citizen children under age 18 who are living with TPS recipients and could be separated from their families if their relatives were deported. Wilna Destin, a TPS recipient from Haiti who has lived in Florida for two decades and recently contracted Covid-19, said in a press call that the Ninth Circuit ruling represented just one in a series of challenges she has recently had to face. “We have coronavirus, we have hurricane, and now this. For me, it’s another disaster,” she said. The fate of TPS holders hinges on the outcome of the presidential election this fall. If former Vice President Joe Biden is elected, he has vowed to prevent TPS recipients from being sent back to countries that are unsafe and would pursue legislation providing a path to citizenship to those who have lived in the US for an “extended period of time and built lives in the US.” He would also try to expand TPS protections to Venezuelans fleeing their country’s present socioeconomic and political crisis.If Trump wins, his administration could also decide not to move forward with ending TPS protections at any time. But what’s more likely is that Congress will face pressure to pass legislation offering permanent protections to TPS holders who have put down roots in the US, shielding them from deportation. The Dream and Promise Act, which passed the House last year, would have made TPS holders who have lived in the US for three or more years eligible to apply for a green card and, eventually, US citizenship. It could serve as a template for further negotiations, though whether it will get any traction depends on the makeup of the next Congress. In a second term, Trump could also move forward with his plan to terminate the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program, which has allowed more than 700,000 young immigrants who came to the US as children to live and work in the US legally. (The Supreme Court has temporarily prevented him from doing so, but his administration is laying the groundwork for him to try again and has refused to fully reinstate the program.)“Temporary Protected Status is on the ballot in November,” Frank Sharry, the executive director of the immigrant advocacy group America’s Voice, said in a statement. “And if we do not remove Trump ... we could see one of the largest mass deportations and family separation crises in American history.”The Ninth Circuit ruled that no court has the authority to review the administration’s decision to terminate TPS, which it said is a matter of agency discretion. It also dismissed the ACLU’s argument that Trump’s decision to terminate TPS was motivated by racial animus toward nonwhite, non-European immigrants in violation of the Constitution’s guarantee that everyone receive equal protection under the law, regardless of race or national origin.The ACLU’s Ahilan Arulanantham, who represented TPS holders at the Ninth Circuit, said in a press call that the organization will ask the full appeals court to review the case and, failing that, would seek review at the Supreme Court, potentially setting up another high-profile case challenging Trump’s immigration policy. In the meantime, immigration advocates are waiting on the result of another lawsuit now before the Second Circuit concerning some 40,000 Haitian TPS recipients. If that court decides that the administration can’t terminate their TPS status, they could be spared termination of their status before next March. 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