Large groups of migrants apprehended at US-Mexico border in recent days
Hundreds of migrants are in custody after being caught by U.S. border agents. This comes as the Biden administration prepares for an even bigger surge of border crossings ahead of President-elect Donald Trump’s inauguration.
The chief patrol agent for the Tucson area posted a photo Monday, Nov. 18, of the more than 230 migrants that agents encountered crossing the border near San Miguel, Arizona.
Three Points Station agents encountered a group of 232 migrants from 7 different countries who illegally crossed the border near San Miguel, AZ.
The group included single adults, family units, and unaccompanied children. The group was safely transported for processing. pic.twitter.com/PQ2jWIcaoP
Overall, numbers have been dropping sharply at the border since June following President Biden signing a proclamation drastically limiting the number of arrivals who can come into the U.S.
Shortly after the election, NBC news reported Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas held a meeting with the heads of Customs and Border Protection and Immigration and Customs Enforcement to discuss concerns about what Trump’s victory would do to border security and how they would deal with a potential spike in immigration.
Trump has criticized the Biden-Harris administration for not doing enough on the issue of immigration
He confirmed Monday, Nov. 18 that he is preparing to declare a national emergency when he takes office, which would allow the use of military assets to conduct a mass deportation program.
Republican introduces transgender bathroom ban for Capitol Hill
History will be made four times over when the 119th Congress meets for the first time in just a few weeks. However, some current representatives introduced legislation to create a transgender bathroom ban that targets a new coworker.
In the House of Representatives, Sarah McBride will become the firstopenly–transgender person to be elected to Congress after winning Delaware’s only open House seat. Delaware will also see its first Black U.S. senator, who will simultaneously be the first woman to represent the state in the Senate. Maryland will also be represented by its first Black U.S. senator, and New Jersey will see the first Korean-American senator.
The measure would prohibit any lawmakers and House employees from “using single-sex facilities other than those corresponding to their biological sex.”
“Sarah McBride doesn’t get a say in this,” Mace said when asked by reporters whether the move was meant to target a marginalized person. “He’s a biological man trying to force himself in women’s spaces and I’m not gonna tolerate it. You have the radical left that are trying to erase women and erase women’s rights.”
“This is about women, this is about girls, this is about our rights and being protected in our private spaces,” Mace added. “I don’t want to see a man in a women’s restroom.”
Every day Americans go to work with people who have life journeys different than their own and engage with them respectfully, I hope members of Congress can muster that same kindness.
“Every day Americans go to work with people who have life journeys different than their own and engage with them respectfully, I hope members of Congress can muster that same kindness,” McBride wrote.
McBride went on to say the move is an attempt from far-right wing extremists to distract from the real problems facing Americans, like the cost of housing, health care and child care.
Wyoming state abortion ban struck down as unconstitutional
A judge in Wyoming has ruled that two laws making up the state’s abortion ban violate the state’s constitution. The ruling makes abortion legal in the state for the time being.
Teton County District Judge Melissa Owens sided with the women and nonprofits who filed a lawsuit against the state over the ban, finding the state failed to define key terms in the law, including what makes a fetus viable.
Owens grounded her ruling in concerns over women’s rights, writing in part that the state “has enacted laws that impede the fundamental right to make health care decisions for an entire class of people, pregnant women.”
This is the third time Owens has ruled to block a version of the state’s abortion ban. The ruling could be appealed to the Wyoming Supreme Court.
Republican Gov. Mark Gordon’s office did not immediately respond to the ruling but has supported appeals challenging the previous rulings.
With the decision, abortion is currently legal in Wyoming up until the point of fetal viability, which medical professionals generally consider to be about 24 weeks into pregnancy.
Wyoming is the latest state where supporters of abortion rights access have had success. Voters in seven states — Arizona, Colorado, Maryland, Missouri, Montana, Nevada and New York — approved ballot measures earlier this month that expanded abortion rights.
Two states, Florida and South Dakota, defeated abortion rights measures. Nebraska, meanwhile, saw voters split on two measures related to abortion rights.
State-level courts have issued rulings recently related to abortion restrictions and bans. Judges in North Dakota and Georgia struck down their respective state bans in September, although the Georgia Supreme Court allowed the Peach State’s ban to remain in effect while the case is heard.
In the U.S., 13 states currently have total abortion bans in effect that resemble the laws blocked in Wyoming. A further 21 states have enshrined abortion rights as state law.
Trump staffer says Pa. election officials will get jail time over recount
President-elect Donald Trump’s co-campaign manager Chris LaCivita is predicting election officials in Pennsylvania will face jail time after going against a Supreme Court ruling and counting mail-in ballots with either incorrect or missing dates. LaCivita posted to X, “They will go to jail – count on it.”
Pennsylvania is in the middle of a recount with Democratic incumbent Sen. Bob Casey refusing to concede the race against Republican Senator-elect Dave McCormick.
Before the election, the Pennsylvania Supreme Court ruled mail-in ballots that lacked required signatures or dates couldn’t be included in the official tally of votes.
Democratic-run election boards in Philadelphia, Bucks and Montgomery counties opposed the ruling. All three counties voted to include the ballots in the recount.
On Monday, Nov. 18, the state Supreme Court ordered the counties to abide by its previous rulings to not count the disputed mail-in ballots.
Democratic Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro asked the election boards to respect the court’s decision.
“The rule of law matters in this commonwealth, and as I have always said, it is critical for counties and officials in both parties to respect it with both their rhetoric and their actions,” Shapiro said in a statement.
As of the morning of Tuesday, Nov. 19, McCormick leads Casey by more than 17,000 votes.
Lawyer details Gaetz accusations as committee mulls report release
The heat gets turned up on Matt Gaetz, President-elect Donald Trump’s nominee for attorney general, as the House Ethics Committee weighs whether to release its report. And New York City issues a historic drought warning. These stories and more highlight your Unbiased Updates for Tuesday, Nov. 19, 2024.
Lawyer details Gaetz accusations as committee mulls report release
President-elect Donald Trump continues to make cabinet appointments, despite some of his choices sparking controversy on both sides of the aisle.
On Monday, Nov. 18, Trump announced he selected former Wisconsin congressman and Fox Business host Sean Duffy as his secretary of the Department of Transportation. Fox Business confirmed Duffy’s last day as an employee was Monday.
In a statement, Trump said Duffy will “prioritize excellence, competence, competitiveness and beauty when rebuilding America’s highways, tunnels, bridges and airports.”
Former Congressman Matt Gaetz, Trump’s choice for attorney general, has been under investigation by the bipartisan House Ethics Committee for allegations of sexual misconduct and illicit drug use. The committee is expected to hold a closed-door meeting Wednesday, Nov. 20, to discuss whether it will release a report of its findings.
Since Gaetz resigned from Congress after Trump’s nomination, the committee’s investigation has ended but the future of the report is still in question.
The Justice Department declined to charge Gaetz last year after its lengthy Investigation into the allegations. Gaetz has denied any wrongdoing.
However, on Monday a lawyer for two women who claim Gaetz paid them for sex, said that one of his clients saw Gaetz having sex with a friend who was 17 at the time during a house party in Florida in 2017. Florida attorney Joel Leppard told multiple news outlets his client testified about what she saw to the Ethics committee.
“She testified [that] in July of 2017, at this house party, she was walking out to the pool area, and she looked to her right, and she saw Representative Gaetz having sex with her friend, who was 17,” Leppard said.
According to Leppard’s client, Gaetz stopped having a sexual relationship with the girl when he found out she was underage.
Trump transition team spokesperson Alex Pfeiffer responded to the allegations saying, “Matt Gaetz will be the next attorney general. He’s the right man for the job and will end the weaponization of our justice system. These are baseless allegations intended to derail the second Trump administration. The Biden justice department investigated Gaetz for years and cleared him of wrongdoing.”
While the lawyer for the two women making the accusations against Gaetz joins calls from both sides of the aisle to release the Ethic Committee’s report, House Speaker Mike Johnson said he would not recommend the committee do so. Johnson said since Gaetz left Congress, he does not think that would be appropriate.
Reports: Trump to join Musk for SpaceX launch in Texas
According to reports, Trump will be there along with ally and SpaceX CEO Elon Musk to see the company’s sixth test of its Starship rocket. The launch is scheduled for 5 p.m. ET.
Musk has been by Trump’s side in recent days, attending meetings last week at Mar-a-Lago and in Washington and joining the president-elect at the UFC event in Madison Square Garden over the weekend, where they received a thunderous welcome.
Musk was recently named to lead Trump’s newly formed Department of Government Efficiency along with former Republican presidential candidate Vivek Ramaswamy.
Pennsylvania Supreme Court sides with Republicans on misdated ballots
The Pennsylvania Supreme Court sided with Republicans Monday, directing all the state’s county election officials not to count certain mail-in ballots. While the ballots arrived on time, they were in envelopes without the correct dates, handwritten by voters.
The order was prompted by a request from the Republican National Committee and Pennsylvania’s Republican party. Philadelphia, Montgomery and Bucks County leaders voted to count hundreds of such ballots in recent days, even though the Supreme Court already said they could not be included in this election.
This comes as the Pennsylvania Senate race is headed to an automatic recount. While the Associated Press has declared Republican candidate David McCormick the winner, saying he narrowly edged Democratic incumbent Bob Casey, McCormick’s unofficial margin of victory stands at roughly 26,000 votes. That leaves it within the 0.5% threshold required under Pennsylvania law to trigger an automatic recount.
45 pro-democracy activists sentenced to prison in Hong Kong
A court in Hong Kong sentenced dozens of pro-democracy activists to 4 to 10 years in prison Tuesday in the single largest trial under a national security law introduced in 2020. Critics say it has been used by Beijing to all but eliminate political dissent in the Chinese territory.
The court convicted 45 of 47 defendants of conspiracy to commit subversion for organizing or participating in an unofficial primary election for the city legislature in 2020, despite government warnings not to. The other two defendants were acquitted earlier this year.
Legal scholar Benny Tai, whom judges said was the mastermind behind the election, got the longest sentence of 10 years.
New York City under drought warning for first time in 22 years
For the first time in more than two decades, a drought warning is in effect for New York City.
Dry conditions across the Northeast have prompted city and state officials to implement water-conservation protocols. On Monday, Mayor Eric Adams upgraded the drought warning and temporarily halted a $2 billion aqueduct repair project that had stopped drinking water from flowing from some reservoirs in the Catskill region.
New York Gov. Kathy Hochul also issued a statewide drought watch Monday and elevated 15 counties to drought warning status, asking residents to conserve water whenever possible.
Dozens of fires have broken out in the New York City area over the past few weeks, as well as across the state line in northern New Jersey, because things are so bone dry.
Jersey Mike’s Subs could soon be sold in $8 billion deal
Private equity firm Blackstone could soon own the popular sandwich chain Jersey Mike’s Subs. According to The Wall Street Journal, the deal would value Jersey Mike’s at $8 billion, including debt.
Blackstone has a history of investing in franchise businesses. It just made a deal in April to buy Tropical Smoothie Cafe.
Consulting company Technomic said Jersey Mike’s is the second largest sub-style sandwich company in the U.S. by sales after Subway.
Trump’s transition team tussles over choice for top economic post
It’s the most important pick for President-elect Donald Trump’s economic agenda. Now it appears Trump is having second thoughts about his treasury secretary options.
The Treasury secretary acts as the president’s closest economic advisor and is fifth in the presidential line of succession. The person who holds this cabinet post will play a key role in helping Trump carry out his agendas on tax cuts and tariffs.
The president-elect’s search for a Treasury secretary is expanding this week after reports of infighting in Trump’s camp over the selection.
Howard Lutnick and Scott Bessent have been floated as the final two candidates but they are now joined by two more names, Marc Rowan and Kevin Warsh.
Howard Lutnick
Cantor Fitzgerald CEO Howard Lutnick is Trump’s transition co-chair and has had a big say in how Trump’s cabinet has shaped up so far. The two have known each other for decades and Lutnick fundraised for Trump during a critical part of the campaign. He’s also a big proponent of Trump’s tariff policies.
“Tariffs are an amazing tool by the president to use. They’re an amazing tool, but he understands, don’t tariff stuff we don’t make,” Lutnick said on CNBC. “If we don’t make it and you want to buy it, I don’t want to put the price up there. It’s pointless. But use tariffs to build in America. If we want to make it in America, tariff it, or if we’re competing with it, tariff it. But you gotta remember, we need to protect the American worker. Finally, someone’s going to protect the American worker.”
But will he get his desired post of Treasury secretary? The New York Times reports Lutnick has gotten on Trump’s nerves lately, with Trump privately expressing frustration that “Lutnick has been hanging around him too much and that he has been manipulating the transition process for his own ends.”
Would be interesting to hear more people weigh in on this for @realDonaldTrump to consider feedback.
My view fwiw is that Bessent is a business-as-usual choice, whereas @howardlutnick will actually enact change.
Lutnick does have the public backing of Elon Musk as a changemaker. Musk said another frontrunner, Scott Bessent, would be “business-as-usual,” which is “driving America bankrupt.”
Scott Bessent
“I’ve been in the investment business 35 years, and Donald Trump is the most sophisticated leader on economics that I’ve met,” Bessent told Fox Business.
Bessent is the founder and CEO of the hedge fund Key Square Group, an ex-Soros executive and a key economic adviser to Trump during the 2024 campaign.
Trump has said he is “a nice-looking guy” who is “one of the most brilliant men on Wall Street.”
Bessent is seen as a safe bet for markets. Investment manager Dan Loeb appeared to back Bessent as the better choice in an X post, indicating Lutnick would shake markets.
But the jockeying for Treasury secretary between these two was described in the Times “as a knife fight, with Mr. Lutnick as the primary aggressor.” Now, two more choices have entered the fray.
Marc Rowan
“I think this administration has a remarkable chance to really pivot the country, to take advantage of all the inherent positives that we have,” Apollo Global Management CEO Marc Rowan told Yahoo Finance.
Rowan is a new face in the race but does he want the job? According to The Wall Street Journal, Trump aides have reached out to the Wall Street billionaire to gauge his interest. The Times said Trump wants someone “big” for the role and has made clear he’s impressed with Rowan.
“Our financial situation is fixable,” Rowan said. “It is fixable in a way that is positive for the base that [the] President-elect has said that he wants to help. But it is not fixable by small amounts of tinkering. It is about wholesale change, and we as humans, we are sometimes scared of wholesale change.”
If the offer of Treasury secretary doesn’t entice Rowan to step into the public sector, there’s another candidate with whom Trump has more history.
Kevin Warsh
Trump once considered former Federal Reserve Governor Kevin Warsh as a potential Fed chair before choosing Jerome Powell, a choice Trump has long lamented.
“When times were tough, what did the Federal Reserve say? They went to Congress and said, ‘Please spend more.’ So they acted asymmetrically,” Warsh said of the Fed’s pandemic-recovery moves. “That’s the big mistake you can make. Well if you’re going to get into the fiscal business when you’re running these kinds of deficits at a time of relative peace and relative prosperity, you have to open your mouth the other way too. You cannot have fiscally responsible economic policy and irresponsible monetary policy. When one policy is irresponsible, so is the other, and that’s the fix we’re in, and we need to get out of it.”
Warsh will likely be interviewed for the Treasury post but has also been raised as someone who could potentially replace Powell as chair of the Federal Reserve when Powell’s seat is up in 2026.
According to reports, Trump is expected to invite potential Treasury picks to interview at Mar-a-Lago this week. But given Trump’s uncertainty over the role, there could be more names floated before the week is done.
Trump wants charges for military leaders over Afghanistan withdrawal: Report
President-elect Donald Trump’s transition team is reportedly investigating the 2021 U.S. troop withdrawal in Afghanistan and whether military leaders could face charges over their involvement. NBC News reported Trump’s team is putting together a list of current and former military officials who had a hand in the withdrawal and determining if they could be charged with treason.
It’s not clear what would legally justify treason charges, since the military officers were following the orders of President Joe Biden to withdraw all U.S. forces.
A source tells NBC, the team is looking at the possibility of recalling several commanders to active duty for the possible charges.
The investigation stems from an attack by a suicide bomber in August 2021 that killed 13 U.S. service members outside an airport gate in Kabul.
Trump has repeatedly condemned the attack, blaming the Biden-Harris administration. He has called it “the most embarrassing moment in the history of our country.”
Following the attack in Kabul, Biden responded to what was at the time vocal and bipartisan criticism by defending his troop withdrawal.
“I was not going to extend this forever war and I was not extending a forever exit,” Biden said on Aug. 31, 2021, following the attack.
A 2022 review by the Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction (SIGAR) blamed both the Trump and Biden administrations for the fallout from the withdrawal.
Afghanistan withdrawal timeline
In 2020, Trump reached an agreement with the Taliban to withdraw all 13,000 U.S. troops from Afghanistan. The agreement also released 5,000 Taliban fighters from prison.
The Trump administration said if the Biden administration stuck with the May 1, 2021 deadline they had signed to leave by, the Taliban wouldn’t attack American forces.
However, the Biden administration said the complete drawdown would take much longer and set a Sept. 11, 2021 deadline instead.
Biden finished the withdrawal and according to the review, it overestimated the ability of Afghan government forces to fight the Taliban on their own.
Trump’s choice for Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth has criticized the withdrawal, saying the U.S. wasted billions of dollars.
Trump’s transition team hasn’t commented on the reported investigation into military leaders and the troop withdrawal.
WaPo calls Pa. Democrats’ push to count invalid ballots undemocratic
Tensions are rising in Pennsylvania’s Senate race, where some Democratic election officials are defying recent court rulings on counting ballots after The Associated Press called the race for Republican Dave McCormick. However, some efforts to defy court orders to count certain ballots are being viewed as undemocratic, according to The Washington Post editorial board.
Before the election, Pennsylvania’s Supreme Court ruled provisional ballots were required to be signed in two places and mail-in ballots were to be dated. However, Democratic leaders in several counties are challenging those mandates.
The AP reported four counties voted to count mail-in ballots that were in question.
Lawyers for Sen. Bob Casey, D-Penn., requested the action. Casey is trailing McCormick by about 24,000 votes.
Nearly all of the 7 million ballots cast have already been counted. Casey is allowed to request a recount due to the narrow margin.
The issue of counting mail-in and provisional ballots has been contentious in Pennsylvania. Lower courts have already litigated the issue and the state’s Supreme Court ruled it’s illegal to count ballots missing required signatures and dates for the 2024 election.
“I think we all know that precedent by a court doesn’t matter anymore in this country,” Bucks County Commissioner Diane Ellis-Marseglia said. “People violate laws anytime they want. So, for me, if I violate this law, it’s because I want a court to pay attention.”
Local Democratic officials argue the court got it wrong and is invalidating votes over clerical errors. Pennsylvania’s Supreme Court is made up of five Democratic justices and two Republicans.
“The mere attempt to defy judicial rulings is corrosive to democracy and invites similar behavior in future elections,” The Post’s editorial board wrote.
“Democrats would surely protest if a Republican commissioner made the same statement to justify tipping the scales for their party’s Senate nominee—and they would be right. Elections need rules, established in advance of the voting, and those rules must be applied equally and consistently,” the board added.
While most election results this cycle have been accepted, three candidates have yet to concede, including Casey in Pennsylvania, Republican Senate candidate Kari Lake in Arizona and Republican Senate candidate Eric Hovde in Wisconsin.
Iowa pollster Ann Selzer retires after major miss, Trump wants investigation
Ann Selzer, the pollster behind the Des Moines Register’s election poll that showed Donald Trump trailing Kamala Harris by 3 percentage points in Iowa, has announced her retirement. The poll, which ultimately missed the mark by more than 16 percentage points, generated significant reaction and controversy.
In the wake of the poll’s release, bets on a Trump victory dropped by more than 10 percentage points on Polymarket, and Trump’s stock on Truth Social also declined.
Selzer had served as the lead pollster for the Iowa Poll since 1997. Despite the recent miss, the poll has a long track record of accuracy, correctly predicting the outcome of five of the last seven presidential races.
Although the poll’s flawed prediction drew criticism, Selzer said she had decided to retire a year ago, long before the 2024 poll was released. She acknowledged that the survey was a “big miss” but suggested it may have inadvertently energized Republican voters in Iowa, contributing to Trump’s eventual easy victory in the state.
Trump, however, was quick to dismiss the poll and is now calling for an “investigation.” He posted on Truth Social, calling the poll “a totally fake poll” that created “great distrust and uncertainty” at a critical time. Trump thanked Iowa voters for his victory and alleged “election fraud” by Selzer and the Des Moines Register. He called for an investigation into the poll.
In her farewell column, Selzer admitted that polling is an unpredictable “science of estimation” and expressed humility over the results. She also emphasized the importance of integrity in her work and said she would learn from the unexpected findings.
The Des Moines Register responded to the poll’s inaccuracy, with executive editor Carol Hunter stating that the newspaper plans to “reimagine” its polling methods in the future to better reflect public sentiment and improve accuracy. Gannett Media, which owns the Register, acknowledged that it had failed to meet its mission of providing “trusted news and content,” admitting that the poll did not deliver on that promise.
Bolton says Gaetz, Gabbard should be investigated by FBI before confirmation
President-elect Donald Trump’s former national security advisor John Bolton is reacting to Trump’s cabinet picks. He called for an FBI investigation into two of his choices: Tulsi Gabbard and Matt Gaetz.
Trump choosing Gaetz, a now-former Florida representative, as attorney general was a surprise to both Democrats and Republicans. Gaetz was investigated by the Justice Department over allegations related to sex trafficking.
Prosecutors did not charge Gaetz. He was also under investigation by the House Ethics Committee for allegations including sexual misconduct, illicit drug use, converting campaign funds for personal use and accepting a bribe.
The former Florida representative also has a history of being at odds with the DOJ over the Jan. 6 riots and has been accused of spreading conspiracy theories. Gaetz has called for the FBI to be defunded and abolished.
When it comes to Gabbard, a former congresswoman and veteran, both parties are pointing out her views on Russia as she’s been accused of amplifying Russian propaganda. Trump tapped Gabbard to be the next director of national intelligence.
In 2022, Gabbard said the U.S. had been funding biological laboratories in Ukraine. Some have also criticized the fact she never worked an intelligence job or served on a congressional intelligence committee.
Bolton said because of the track record Gabbard and Gaetz have, he wants the FBI to get involved.
“With his announcement of Tulsi Gabbard to be the director of national intelligence, he’s sending a signal that we’ve lost our mind when it comes to collecting intelligence,” Bolton said. “I don’t think she or Matt Gaetz should have a confirmation hearing until they have both had full field FBI investigations.”
Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, R-Ga., posted her support for Gaetz on X.
Another incredible choice by President Trump to nominate my friend, @mattgaetz, as the next Attorney General of the United States.
For the past four years, the Department of Justice has been a haven for corruption and political persecution.