Tag: donald trump

Texas Offers Trump Over 1,400 Acres to Build Facility for Conducting Mass Deportation of Illegal Aliens

Texas has offered President-elect Donald Trump over 1,400 acres to conduct its mass deportation operation.

The land is available to be used for “processing, detention, and coordination of the largest deportation of violent criminals in the nation’s history,” according to the Texas Land Commissioner.

According to a report from Fox News, “Texas Land Commissioner Dawn Buckingham has written to President-elect Donald Trump offering him the land in Starr County, which the state purchased from a ranch owner in October. The 1,402 acres are in the Rio Grande Valley sector near the border.”

The letter said that the land commissioner is “fully prepared to enter into an agreement with the Department of Homeland Security, Immigration and Customs Enforcement, or the United States Border Patrol to allow a facility to be built for the processing, detention, and coordination of the largest deportation of violent criminals in the nation’s history.”

“What I care about is that we have safe communities, and there is no doubt that we are losing too many of our children to these violent criminals that are coming across the border,” Buckingham told Fox News. “I am 100% on board with the Trump administration’s pledge to get these criminals out of our country, and we are more than happy to offer our resources to facilitate those deportations of these violent criminals.”

Buckingham said the land is perfect for the facility.

“Right now, it’s essentially farmland, so it’s flat, it’s easy to build on. We could very easily put a detention center on there, a holding place as we get these criminals out of our country,” she said. “It’s accessible to international airports as well as a major crossing over the river. And so we’re just happy to get help, do anything we can to get these violent criminals off of our soil.”

Incoming border czar Tom Homan recently suggested that criminal illegal aliens and gang members should self-deport because “we know who you are, and we’re gonna come and find you.”

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Deep State Focus On The FBI

It’s becoming more clear by the day that the Deep State is gathering itself for an all out war against Trump 2.0. The attempts at disruptive “leaks”—hoaxes—were just the start, although we can expect them to continue, perhaps at more sophisticated levels. The ATACMS authorization, which was quickly implemented, is a lesson in how far the Deep State is willing to go. How that will work out remains to be seen.

Early on when the first rumors were floated, touting former Congressman Mike Rogers for the Director FBI position, I warned that there could hardly be a worse choice, from a purely Trumpian standpoint. Rogers is totally Deep State and Swamp Dweller, having served as chairman of the HPSCI and now being on the board of directors for the Atlantic Council. If you require more confirmation of how bad Rogers would be, The Federalist can fill you in:

A New FBI Director: Americans Can’t Trust Mike Rogers To Give The FBI The Reckoning It Needs

Today we got another Rogers related rumor from Sundance:

Reported Senate Offer: We’ll Give You Matt Gaetz in DOJ, if You Give us Mike Rogers in FBI

That says so much, doesn’t it? For starters, you know that if that’s the Senate offer, it’s a bad deal for Trump. And it raises the question of why the Deep State/Ruling Class place such a high priority on the FBI—as if we couldn’t figure this out from Trump 1.0. This tells you that the Deep State view is that controlling the investigative process with regard to USPersons and controlling the flow of classified information is a top priority. It has to be the case, if Thune is willing to tolerate Gaetz at DoJ. There may also be a calculation that Gaetz may be more easily thwarted at DoJ than a tough Director at the FBI. Or that Gaetz could be ousted after confirmation. Lots of possibilities here, but they all militate against Trump’s interests.

All of this fits in with my speculation that at least some of Trump’s announced appointments may be initial bargaining positions. If this rumor is true, it’s a strong indication that the Deep State and the Ruling Class are playing for keeps against Trump. It also suggests that they are very fearful that Trump will prioritize a full airing of the Russia Hoax. One which would implicate large swathes of the Deep State/Ruling Class.

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Ex-security adviser accuses Biden of trying to ‘sabotage’ Trump’s effort to end Russia-Ukraine war

Aformer top security aide to Donald Trump on Monday accused the Biden administration of trying to intentionally “sabotage” the President-elect’s efforts to bring an end to the Russian war against Ukraine.

Former National Security Council chief of staff Fred Fleitz said President Joe Biden was repeatedly unwilling to authorize Ukraine to use U.S.-made missiles to strike deep inside Russia before the election, and his lame-duck decision this weekend to authorize it now smacks of an effort to thwart Trump’s effort to create a ceasefire and peace deal.

“The timing is really curious, because Biden was reluctant to do this before the election, because he was worried he would escalate the war. He would take a lot of criticism for possibly escalating the war,” Fleitz told the John Solomon Reports podcast. “And now that the election is over, he’s made this decision, which Putin has said is a red line and could put Russia at war with the United States.

“I don’t think this is an effort to give Ukraine leverage in negotiations with Russia, because it’s going to make the war worse,” he added. “I think this is a deliberate attempt by Joe Biden to sabotage President Trump’s efforts to negotiate a ceasefire.”

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The Very Definition of Tyranny: A Dictatorship Disguised as Democracy

Power corrupts. Absolute power corrupts absolutely.

Unadulterated power in any branch of government is a menace to freedom, but concentrated power across all three branches is the very definition of tyranny: a dictatorship disguised as democracy.

When one party dominates all three branches of government—the executive, the legislative, and the judicial—there is even more reason to worry.

There’s no point debating which political party would be more dangerous with these powers.

This is true no matter which party is in power.

This is particularly true in the wake of the 2024 election.

Already, Donald Trump, who promised to be a dictator on “day one,” is advancing plans to further undermine the nation’s already vulnerable system of checks and balances.

To be fair, this is not a state of affairs that can be blamed exclusively on Trump.

America’s founders intended our system of checks and balances to serve as a bulwark against centralized power being abused.

As constitutional scholar Linda Monk explains, “Within the separation of powers, each of the three branches of government has ‘checks and balances’ over the other two. For instance, Congress makes the laws, but the President can veto them, and the Supreme Court can declare them unconstitutional. The President enforces the law, but Congress must approve executive appointments and the Supreme Court rules whether executive action is constitutional. The Supreme Court can strike down actions by both the legislative and executive branches, but the President nominates Supreme Court justices, and the Senate confirms or denies their nominations.”

Unfortunately, our system of checks and balances has been strained to the breaking point for years now, helped along by those across the political spectrum who, in marching in lockstep with the Deep State, have conspired to advance the government’s agenda at the expense of the citizenry’s constitutional rights.

By “government,” I’m not referring to the farce that is the highly partisan, two-party, bureaucracy of the Republicans and Democrats. Rather, I’m referring to “government” with a capital “G,” the entrenched Deep State that is unaffected by elections, unaltered by populist movements, and has set itself beyond the reach of the law.

This is exactly the kind of concentrated, absolute power the founders attempted to guard against by establishing a system of checks of balances that separate and shares power between three co-equal branches.

Yet as law professor William P. Marshall concludes, “The system of checks and balances that the Framers envisioned now lacks effective checks and is no longer in balance. The implications of this are serious. The Framers designed a system of separation of powers to combat government excess and abuse and to curb incompetence. They also believed that, in the absence of an effective separation-of-powers structure, such ills would inevitably follow. Unfortunately, however, power once taken is not easily surrendered.”

The outcome of the 2024 elections is not a revolutionary bid to recalibrate a government run amok. Rather, this is a Deep State coup to stay in power, and Donald Trump is the vehicle by which it will do so.

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Panicked DOJ and FBI Officials Are Hiring Criminal Defense Lawyers Ahead of Trump’s Return

The hammer of justice is coming.

Officials at the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) and the Department of Justice (DOJ) are hiring themselves criminal defense attorneys in anticipation of Donald Trump’s return to the White House.

According to a report from NBC News, senior members of both government agencies are panicking about the prospect of Trump and his prospective attorney general, former Florida Congressman Matt Gaetz.

The report states:

“Everything we did was aboveboard,” said a former senior FBI official who has started contacting lawyers because he expects to be prosecuted himself. “But this is a different world.”

The official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity out of fear of becoming even more of a target, doesn’t believe any attempt to prosecute him will be successful. Judges and juries have the power to throw out cases or find defendants innocent if they deem prosecutions to be baseless.

But like many other current and former Justice Department officials, he is bracing for a potentially long and costly legal battle, as well as the possibility of protracted congressional investigations, after Trump takes office in January.

Another satisfying aspect of the report are claims that that DOJ officials “wept” after the election, while Attorney General Merrick Garland was left “shocked” by the result:

Justice Department officials, including Attorney General Merrick Garland, were shocked by Trump’s decisive election win.

For the last four years, Garland has argued that strictly following post-Watergate norms that require the Justice Department to work in a nonpartisan manner in criminal investigations would restore public trust in the Justice Department.

Instead, some career Justice Department officials wept after the election, dismayed by the fact that large numbers of Americans apparently continue to believe Trump’s claims that the department is a cesspool of corruption.

While Trump nor Gaetz have never specified exactly what charges could be brought against certain individuals, any prosecutions would likely relate to their efforts to imprison the former president and his most loyal supporters.

Mike Davis, a conservative lawyer and advisor to president, recently argued that special counsel Jack Smith, who led the efforts to prosecute and imprison Trump for challenging the fraudulent results of the 2020 presidential election, should “lawyer up.”

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Donald Trump Has A Mandate To Implement Nationwide Election Integrity Laws

Donald Trump’s resounding victory over Kamala Harris was historically consequential: it was the first time a Republican presidential candidate carried both the electoral college and popular vote in twenty years.

More than that, however, was the lasting, even generational, impact it will have on our politics for decades to come.

If Donald Trump, who had been target number one of weaponized lawfare like nothing seen in our history, had not won this race, America as we know it would have been destroyed for good.

Now there is at least a chance for restoration — if not a new golden age.

The restoration must begin with rigorous election integrity laws.  President Trump’s popular vote win affords him with a mandate that he did not have (at least officially) in his first term.

The feat is made even more impressive by the certainty that fraud and corruption still impacted the results of this race.

The idea that the President had to win over and above what should be the normal threshold to victory – hence, this year’s mantra, “too big to rig” – must be considered unacceptable moving forward.

It should be a top priority for any first world country, especially the United States, to have confidence in its election procedures.

It is inexcusable that in a democratic society, the people would even harbor the slightest doubt about the integrity of their election laws – and the legitimacy of the outcome.

Alas, the way America runs its elections has become a joke around the world.

The fact that we do not have a national standard to check for citizenship in the form of voter ID is a disgrace and embarrassment.

As many commentators, including Elon Musk, have noted on X and elsewhere, it’s striking that every state without voter ID laws voted for Kamala Harris, the Democratic candidate, this cycle.

Among other things, Democrats have long opposed voter ID laws for winning elections; in a few cases, they have even advocated for permitting illegal aliens and other undocumented persons to vote in local and state elections.

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What Happens To Jan. 6 Defendants After Trump’s Election Win?

After President-elect Donald Trump won a second term, multiple defendants charged for their roles in the events of Jan. 6, 2021, asked to delay their cases because they anticipate pardons from Trump.

According to data collected by NPR, more than 1,500 people have been charged in relation to Jan. 6, with nearly 1,000 pleading guilty.

At least a dozen cases have been dismissed, while plenty remain with changes following Trump’s election. At the beginning of November, the U.S. Attorney for the District of Columbia announced multiple sentences and guilty verdicts.

Various factors could determine whether these individuals end up avoiding jail time, but perhaps the most important is Trump’s eventual control of the Department of Justice (DOJ) and who will lead that department.

On Nov. 13, Trump announced Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-Fla.) as his pick for attorney general. Gaetz has been critical of the prosecutions and introduced a bill in July that was intended to prevent prosecutors from retaliating against Jan. 6 defendants for seeking resentencing. Gaetz has also questioned federal involvement, stating that Jan. 6 “wasn’t an insurrection” but that it “very well may have been a fedsurrection.”

Assuming the presidency also grants Trump substantial pardon power under the Constitution: Trump has indicated that he’s open to pardoning those charged but left open the possibility that some would face punishment.

“We will treat them fairly,” he said in January 2022. “And if it requires pardons, we will give them pardons, because they are being treated so unfairly.”

More recently, during an event in July, he was asked about individuals who assaulted officers. He said he would “absolutely” pardon the defendants “if they’re innocent” and added that “they were convicted by a very tough system.”

More than 70 defendants have received a mixed verdict, and so far, more than 1,000 people have been sentenced, with 64 percent receiving prison time, according to NPR data. Some defendants have also taken plea deals.

“I think there’s going to be a complete second look at all of the prosecutions,” Robert Ray, a former Trump impeachment attorney, told The Epoch Times, while noting the large number of cases brought. He added that a second look wouldn’t “necessarily yield a favorable result with regard to each and every defendant, but I think there’s going to be a pretty strenuous exercise of the pardon and commutation power to deal with overreaching [by prosecutors].”

John Pierce, an attorney who has represented Jan. 6 defendants, told The Epoch Times he expects a “blanket pardon,” while Trump–Vance transition spokeswoman Karoline Leavitt said the president-elect “will make pardon decisions on a case-by-case basis.”

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Report: Trump Team Putting Together List of Military Officers Involved in Afghanistan Withdrawal

President-elect Donald Trump’s transition team is putting together a list of United States military officers who were involved in the Biden Administration’s botched withdrawal from Afghanistan, according to a recent report.

Two people familiar with the plan told NBC News that Trump’s transition team is reportedly in talks about whether to establish “a commission to investigate” the Biden administration’s withdrawal from Afghanistan, which left 13 American service members dead.

The commission would reportedly also gather “information about who was directly involved in the decision-making for the military,” and how the plan “was carried out,” among other things.

“They’re taking it very seriously,” one person with the plan explained to the outlet.

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Ukraine’s Zelensky Admits War More Likely To End Sooner With Trump In The White House

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky has told reporters that he firmly believes the war with Russia will “end sooner” with president Trump back in office than it would if the Democrats had won the election.

The BBC reports that the Ukrainian leader told Ukrainian media outlet Suspilne “It is certain that the war will end sooner with the policies of the team that will now lead the White House.”

“This is their approach, their promise to their citizens,” Zelensky further noted, adding that Ukraine “must do everything so that this war ends next year, ends through diplomatic means.”

Zelensky also stated during the interview that he had a “constructive exchange” with Trump during their phone conversation last week, noting that US law prohibits him from meeting with Trump until after his inauguration in January.

It was widely reported last week that Elon Musk was also present on Trump’s call with Zelensky, which lasted around 25 minutes, according to the sources who were briefed on its details.

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Like Biden, don’t expect Trump to pay much attention to Africa

As commentators assess the implications of Donald Trump’s election victory for the United States and the world, various publications have asked what Trump’s return will mean for their continent. In one well-informed analysis, the BBC’s Wedaeli Chibelushi highlights “trade, aid, and security” as key sectors. We can also ask what might change in terms of Washington’s political relationships with various African countries, and how such changes would affect the overall balance of U.S. primacy versus restraint.

An initial caveat is necessary – of all the world’s regions, Trump and his team will likely not be thinking much about Africa. When Professor Stephen Walt recently assessed “The 10 Foreign-Policy Implications of the 2024 U.S. Election,” for example, he did not mention Africa – and that’s because the Middle East, Ukraine, NATO, and China, among other issues, will likely consume much more of Trump’s attention than the African continent will.

If Trump ignores Africa, that would be in keeping with a bipartisan neglect of the continent from the time of Barack Obama through the present. Obama and Joe Biden each held a “U.S.-Africa Leaders Summit” (in 2014 and 2022, respectively), but across the Obama, Trump, and Biden administrations, Africa was approached mostly as a theater for counterterrorism, trade, and global influence, rather than as having intrinsic importance to Washington. Vice President Kamala Harris would likely have replicated the largely performative, status quo-friendly approach of Biden. Although Harris had a deep bench of Africa hands on her campaign, that depth more reflects the long line of aspirants who line up for foreign policy jobs in Democratic administrations, more than a now-dashed promise of transformation. Biden and Harris will leave office with little to show for their Africa policy beyond the summit and a slate of high-profile but low-substance trips, including Biden’s upcoming visit to Angola.

As Trump takes office, there will be something of an opportunity for diplomatic outreach and “reset” with Africa. So far, Trump’s picks for top foreign policy postings do not include anyone with a pronounced interest in African affairs and his victory has elicited more mixed reactions in Africa than one might expect. Despite his infamous “shithole countries” comment and his numerous racist and Islamophobic remarks, many ordinary Africans admire Trump’s entrepreneurial career, socially conservative platform, and outspokenness. Various African leaders were quick to congratulate the comeback candidate. Trump is, however, likely unaware of and relatively indifferent to whatever opportunity exists for engagement, and so it will probably slip by.

If “personnel is policy,” Trump’s first term did not bring any shocking or unusual appointments for civilian posts related to Africa, and his second term may not either; the true ideologues and hawks are likely to gravitate towards Iran policy, for example. During his first term, Trump appointed veteran diplomat Tibor Nagy as Assistant Secretary of State for African Affairs, think tanker J. Peter Pham as Special Envoy for the Sahel, and another veteran diplomat, Donald Booth, as Special Envoy for Sudan. The situation in the Sahel and Sudan was worse when Trump’s term ended than when it began: a massacre in Sudan in June 2019 brought no consequences for its perpetrators, and Mali witnessed a coup in 2020. Yet those outcomes cannot be laid solely at the feet of the Trump administration. Tellingly, the situation in the Sahel and Sudan in 2024 is also worse than it was when Biden took office, so neither administration earns high marks here.

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