What to Know About Project 2025, Trump’s Second-Term Blueprint

By Andrea González-Ramírez, a senior writer for the Cut who covers systems of power.

 2024 election Updated Aug. 19, 2024

Photo-Illustration: by The Cut; Photos: AP, Getty Images

What’ll happen if Donald Trump wins the presidency in November? His administration will likely follow the road map of Project 2025, a transition plan that includes a laundry list of far-right policies and has been called “authoritarian,” “dystopian,” and a “blueprint for destroying our democracy.”

The plan focuses on obvious conservative priorities ranging from gutting abortion access and LGBTQ+ rights to ending efforts to combat climate change and income inequality. But it also outlines several insidious policies that would change the country as we know it, including what amounts to the most dramatic transformation of the federal-government workforce since the 19th century.

During the Democratic National Convention in Chicago, the party dedicated time to outlining what Project 2025 entails. “They went ahead and wrote down all the extreme things that Donald Trump wants to do in the next four years,” Michigan state Senator Mallory McMorrow said on Monday. “And then they just tweeted it out, putting it out on the internet for everybody to read. “

Below, you’ll find a breakdown of who is behind the transition plan, what they are proposing, and Trump’s disingenuous efforts to distance himself from Project 2025.

What is Project 2025, exactly?

Project 2025 is a transition plan that conservative think tank the Heritage Foundation and other right-wing organizations have put together to serve as a road map for the next Republican administration. The playbook, titled Mandate for Leadership: The Conservative Promise, comprises 900 pages detailing policy proposals for major federal agencies. Though the document does not mention Trump by name, key players involved in the plan’s conception have worked with his administration in the past or have close connections to his team.

Who is behind the Project 2025 plans?

The plan was conceived by the Heritage Foundation in collaboration with more than 100 right-wing organizations, including the anti-abortion and anti-LGBTQ+ legal-advocacy group Alliance Defending Freedom, which overturned Roe v. Wade; the NRA; Moms for Liberty, which has spearheaded attacks on education across the country; and America First Legal, which is led by anti-immigration hawk and former Trump adviser Stephen Miller. The groups have been explicit in their call to completely remake the federal government and the country in their image. In a recent interview with Steve Bannon, Heritage Foundation president Kevin Roberts said, “We are in the process of the second American Revolution, which will remain bloodless if the left allows it to be.”

What does Project 2025 say about reproductive rights?

Project 2025 would have major repercussions for access to reproductive health care, including abortion care and contraception. Some of the transition plan’s proposals include:

• Enforcing the Comstock Act, which would allow the prosecution of people who send abortion pills through the mail. The law isn’t referred to by name in the document, but the footnotes use its code number, 18 U.S.C. § 1461. (Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito has pulled this trick, too, during oral arguments in recent abortion cases.)
• Rescinding the FDA’s two-decade-old approval of mifepristone, one of the two drugs used in medication abortion.
• Tracking abortion seekers through the Health and Human Services Department by using “every available tool, including the cutting of funds, to ensure that every state reports exactly how many abortions take place within its borders, at what gestational age of the child, for what reason, the mother’s state of residence, and by what method.”
• Rescinding the Biden administration’s guidance on EMTALA, which currently requires hospitals receiving federal funding to provide emergency, life-saving abortions.
• Codifying the Hyde Amendment, which bans the use of federal funds for abortion care, and prohibiting organizations that perform abortions from receiving family-planning grants that help low-income patients access birth control.
• Excluding emergency contraception from the Affordable Care Act’s no-cost coverage mandate.

And education?

The most dramatic proposal related to education would eliminate the Department of Education entirely. The plan also calls for ending Head Start, which has served more than 39 million low-income children since it was implemented nearly 60 years ago. Another proposal would restore the Trump administration’s Title IX regulations, which advocates say place nearly impossible barriers in front of survivors of sexual violence who seek recourse in their schools and universities. Project 2025 would also impact those with student-loan debt, as the authors propose limiting or ending student debt-forgiveness programs, as well as phasing out income-driven repayment plans.

What about LGBTQ+ rights?

The document calls for the federal government to follow a “biblically based” definition of marriage and family, which the group clarifies means “heterosexual, intact marriage.” Other proposals include:

• Requiring that the Health and Human Services Department promote “a family agenda,” explicitly stating that “men and women are biological realities” and that “married men and women are the ideal, natural family structure.”
• Reinstating Trump’s policy banning transgender people from serving in the military, including expelling current service members with “gender dysphoria.”
• Prohibiting public teachers from using a student’s preferred name and pronouns without their parent or guardian’s consent if it doesn’t correspond to their “biological sex.”
• Rescinding federal anti-discrimination protections “on the basis of sexual orientation, gender identity, transgender status, and sex characteristics.”

And climate change?

The transition plan calls for a “whole-of-government unwinding” of the Biden administration’s efforts to fight climate change. The proposals include ending subsidies for wind and solar power, eliminating energy-efficiency standards for appliances, and prioritizing the use of fossil gas and oil. Others would dismantle the National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA); get rid of the Clean Energy Corps, which is tasked with researching, developing, and deploying solutions to climate change; and prohibiting that greenhouse-gas emissions be taken into consideration when authorizing gas pipelines and liquefied natural-gas export facilities.

How about immigration?

The plan goes much further than Trump’s attacks on immigration during his last term. The proposals include:

• Increasing the standard of credible fear for asylum seekers.
• Limiting which immigrants can qualify for employment authorization.
• Eliminating T and U visas, which are available for victims of certain crimes, including human trafficking.
• Blocking Dreamers — people who were brought to the U.S. as children without authorization, and who are protected from deportation under DACA — from having access to federal student-loan programs.
• Making it harder for Dreamers to renew their DACA permit by having immigration agencies deprioritize those cases.
• Pushing Congress to end the Flores Settlement Agreement, which limits how long migrant children can stay in detention and requires them to be in the “least restrictive conditions” possible while in custody.

Is there more?

Yes. The most dramatic proposal in Project 2025 calls for the reclassification of tens of thousands of federal workers, which would allow Trump to fire career public servants and replace them with political appointees who side with his administration. “Our goal is to assemble an army of aligned, vetted, trained and prepared conservatives to work on Day One to deconstruct the Administrative State,” the authors of the document say in the foreword. It’d be the most dramatic change in the federal workforce since the 1880s. The implications can’t be overstated: Imagine a pandemic happens again. Many workers at key federal agencies would be Trump loyalists, rather than high-skilled experts who’ve remained in their positions from administration to administration regardless of their political affiliation.

Project 2025 also calls for ending the independence of the Justice Department and the FBI; slashing Medicaid funding; accelerating the production of nuclear weapons; changing the tax code to favor high-earning individuals in a way that’d hurt low-income people; and making it harder for Americans to unionize.

What has Trump said about Project 2025?

Trump has tried to distanced himself from the transition plan, posting on Truth Social on July 5: “I know nothing about Project 2025. I have no idea who is behind it.”

That is demonstrably false. Not only do the policies outlined in the Trump campaign’s Agenda 47 mirror most of Project 2025’s main proposals, but the top directors of the transition plan — Paul Dans, Spencer Chretien, and Troup Hemenway — worked in the Trump administration. Many of Mandate’s authors are also Trump alumni. The list includes Housing secretary Ben Carson, Trump’s deputy chief of staff Rick Dearborn, director of the Health and Human Services’ Office for Civil Rights Roger Severino, acting secretary of Defense Christopher Miller, Homeland Security official Gene Hamilton, assistant to the president Peter Navarro, and Office of Management and Budget director Russ Vought.

In a secretly-recorded video, published on August 15 by the non-profit Centre for Climate Reporting, Vought admitted that not only had he been in contact with Trump in recent months, but the former president has also “been at our organization, he’s raised money for our organization, he’s blessed it.” He added: “He’s very supportive of what we do.” He went on to say that Trump’s denials were just a “very, very conscious distancing himself from a brand. It’s interesting, he’s in fact not even opposing himself to a particular policy.”

And despite Trump’s half-hearted attempt to disavow the Heritage Foundation, the organization itself boasts in Project 2025’s website that “the Trump administration relied heavily” on its previous Mandate document, “embracing nearly two-thirds of Heritage’s proposals within just one year in office.” So there’s plenty of reason to believe a second Trump administration would do the same.

S

Trump Says He May End EV Tax Credit If Elected

ANOTHER REASON NOT TO VOTE FOR HIM

Written: 2024-08-20 

Photo : YONHAP News

U.S. Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump reportedly said that, if elected, he would consider ending the 75-hundred dollar tax credit for electric vehicle purchases, calling it “ridiculous.”

According to Reuters, Trump made the remark in an interview on Monday after a campaign event in Pennsylvania, saying that tax credits and tax incentives are generally not beneficial. 

The possible elimination of the U.S. tax credit is expected to strike a blow to electric vehicle sales and have a negative impact on South Korea’s battery industry.

Trump also said that, if elected, he would tap Elon Musk, the CEO of Tesla and SpaceX, for a cabinet or advisory role “if he would do it.”

Hamas challenges Blinken's Gaza truce claim, says US buying time for Israel

Palestinian resistance group says it is losing faith in Washington as mediator, accusing American negotiators of siding with Israel as hawkish Netanyahu makes new changes to original Biden-approved plan that Hamas says are non-starter.



AA

Relatives of Palestinians, who Israel killed in an attack, mourn after their bodies are brought to the Al-Aqsa Martyrs Hospital for burial in Deir al-Balah. / Photo: AA


Hamas senior official Osama Hamdan has refuted US Secretary of State Antony Blinken's statement that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu accepted an updated proposal to end the war on besieged Gaza, saying it "raises many ambiguities" because it is "not what was presented to us nor what we agreed on."

"When Blinken says that the Israelis agreed and then the Israelis say that there is an updated proposal, this means that the Americans are subject to Israeli pressure and not the other way around. We believe that it is a manoeuvre that gives the Israelis more time," senior Hamas official Osama Hamdan told Reuters news agency on Monday.

Hamdan told Reuters that the Palestinian resistance group has already confirmed to mediators that "we don't need new Gaza ceasefire negotiations," and that "we need to agree on an implementation mechanism."

Hamas says it has already accepted US President Joe Biden's previous proposal to end the war on Gaza and the UN Security Council decision. It says Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is refusing to stick to Biden's plan and is putting up obstacles.

Hamas insists on "a permanent ceasefire and a comprehensive (Israeli) withdrawal from the Gaza", saying Netanyahu instead wants to keep Israeli forces at several strategic locations within the besieged territory.

Western ally Jordan, relatives of hostages and supporters of cease fire deal who protested in Tel Aviv during Blinken's visit, and Hamas have called for pressure on Netanyahu in order for an agreement to be reached.

Hamas spokesperson's remarks came after Blinken said that Israel has accepted a proposal to bridge differences holding up a ceasefire and hostage-prisoner release in Gaza, and he called on Hamas to do the same, without saying whether concerns cited by the resistance group had been addressed.

Netanyahu has not commented on whether he has accepted the proposal touted by Blinken.

Hamas said Netanyahu has retracted from original US proposal, saying "Netanyahu's conditions, particularly his refusal of a permanent ceasefire, a complete withdrawal from the Gaza, and his insistence on continuing the occupation of the Netzarim Junction (which separates the north and south of the Gaza), the Rafah crossing, and the Philadelphi Corridor (Saladin Axis) (in the south)."

"He also set new conditions in the hostage swap file and retracted other terms, which obstructs completion of the deal," Hamas said in a statement.

Hamas said it is losing faith in the US as a mediator, accusing American negotiators of siding with Israel as it makes new demands that Hamas says are a non-starter.

Meanwhile, Hamdan said Hamas' new political chief and negotiator Yahya Sinwar has always been part of the decision making process in the Gaza ceasefire talks.

"Due to security conditions, communication with Sinwar has tools and mechanisms in place yet they are operating smoothly," Hamdan added in an interview with Reuters.

Months of on-off negotiations with US, Qatari and Egyptian mediators have failed to produce an agreement

Blinken is due to travel on Tuesday to Egypt where ceasefire talks are expected to resume this week. He said he will then go on to Qatar.

Israel's genocidal war

The Biden administration, which has provided unbridled support to Israel, is under domestic pressure over Gaza. During Blinken's visit to Israel, a massive pro-Palestine protest took place outside the Democratic National Convention in Chicago, ahead of November's presidential election.

The US is by far the biggest supplier of arms to Israel, with more than 70 percent of its arms imports coming from the US, according to the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute.

US-made weapons were photographed several times in Israeli strikes in Gaza although US authorities have declined to confirm.

US never holds back from arming Israel, regardless of alarming Gaza civilian casualties. The United States gives Israel $3.8 billion in annual military dole and often shields its ally at the United Nations.

Tel Aviv, which is accused of genocide at the International Court of Justice, has killed nearly 40,000 Palestinians, mostly women and children, and wounded over 92,000 others. Thousands have perished under the debris of bombed homes while some 10,000 Palestinians have been abducted by Israeli troops.

Some 45 American physicians, surgeons and nurses, who have volunteered in Gaza since last October say the likely death toll from Israel's genocidal war is "already greater than 92,000".

According to a study published in the journal Lancet, the accumulative effects of Israel's war on Gaza could mean the true death toll could reach more than 186,000 people.

SOURCE: TRTWorld and agencies

Federal government grants first floating offshore wind power research lease to Maine

The federal government has issued the nation’s first floating offshore wind research lease to the state of Maine, comprising about 23 square miles in federal waters

ByDAVID SHARP Associated Press
August 19, 2024, 4:00 PM



PORTLAND, Maine -- The federal government issued on Monday the nation’s first floating offshore wind research lease to the state of Maine, comprising about 23 square miles (60 square kilometers) in federal waters.

The state requested the lease from the federal Bureau of Ocean Energy Management for a floating offshore wind research array with up to a dozen turbines capable of generating up to 144 megawatts of renewable energy in waters nearly 30 miles (48 kilometers) southeast of Portland, Maine.

The research array will use floating offshore wind platforms designed by the University of Maine and deployed by partner Diamond Offshore Wind. But construction is not likely for several years.

The research is key to growing the ocean wind energy industry in Maine.

Democratic Gov. Janet Mills signed a bill last year that aims to see Maine procure enough energy from offshore wind turbines to power about half its electric load by 2040, and the state has selected a site to build, stage and deploy the turbine equipment. In the next decade, University of Maine researchers envision turbine platforms floating in the ocean beyond the horizon, stretching more than 700 feet (210 meters) skyward and anchored with mooring lines.

“Clean energy from offshore wind offers an historic opportunity for Maine to create good-paying jobs, reduce our reliance on fossil fuels, and fight climate change by cutting greenhouse gas emissions,” Mills said.

The state requested the lease in 2021. The roughly 23 square miles (60 square kilometers) in the federal lease is larger than the state's request of about 15 square miles (39 square kilometers). It will allow the state, the fishing community, oceanography experts and the offshore wind industry to thoroughly evaluate the compatibility of floating offshore wind.

Floating turbines are the only way some states can capture offshore wind energy on a large scale. In the U.S. alone, 2.8 terawatts of wind energy potential blows over ocean waters too deep for traditional turbines that affix to the ocean floor, according to the National Renewable Energy Laboratory. That’s enough to power 350 million homes — more than double the number of existing homes in the U.S.

President Joe Biden has made offshore wind a key part of his plans for fighting climate change.

Since the start of his administration, the Department of the Interior has approved the nation’s first nine commercial scale offshore wind projects with a combined capacity of more than 13 gigawatts of clean energy — enough to power nearly 5 million homes.

East Palestine residents want more time and information before deciding to accept $600M settlement

Some East Palestine residents want more time and more information before they have to decide by a deadline this week whether to accept their share of a $600 million class-action settlement with Norfolk Southern over last year's disastrous train derailment

ByJOSH FUNK Associated Press

August 19, 2024, 

Some East Palestine, Ohio, residents want more time and more information before they have to decide by a deadline this week whether to accept their share of a $600 million class-action settlement with Norfolk Southern over last year's disastrous train derailment.

But it's not clear whether the judge will rule on their motion before Thursday's deadline for people who live within 20 miles (32 kilometers) of the derailment to file a claim.

Residents who live within 10 miles (16 kilometers) of the Feb. 3, 2023, crash near the Ohio-Pennsylvania border also have to decide whether to accept up to $25,000 per person for personal injuries, although accepting that money will force them to give up the right to sue later if someone develops cancer or other serious illness because of the chemical exposure.

The amount residents can receive varies by how close they lived to the derailment, with people who lived within 2 miles receiving $70,000 for property damage. People who lived at the outer edge of the area might only receive a few hundred dollars.

One of the key complaints in the motion filed by attorney David Graham is that attorneys who represented residents in the lawsuit haven't disclosed any of the results of testing done around town by their own expert, Stephen Petty, who has testified in hundreds of lawsuits about contamination concerns, to determine the extent of the contamination caused when toxic chemicals spilled and burned after the derailment.

Some of the attorneys involved in the case promised residents in news interviews early on that Petty's data would be disclosed in court filings to lay out the impact on East Palestine. So Graham asked the judge to order that information to be released to try to address residents' concerns.

“Fast forward to their present, post-settlement posture, and class counsel and their PR machine have now forgotten all about their star testing expert, Petty,” Graham wrote.

Instead of Petty, the lawyers brought out a different expert at an online town hall meeting a couple weeks ago who told residents he didn’t think anyone in town would develop cancer as a result of the derailment. But Dr. Arch Carson didn’t make clear what data he relied on for that opinion other than a brief mention of tests from the Environmental Protection Agency.

Researchers studying the health of residents in the area and tracking respiratory problems, rashes and other ailments they are reporting say it may not be clear for years what the long-term implications of the derailment will be.

“I completely disagree with Dr. Arch Carson – there is no research data that suggest that his statement is correct,” said Dr. Erin Haynes, who is leading one of the main studies in town and is chair of the Department of Epidemiology and Environmental Health at the University of Kentucky College of Public Health.

Graham suggested that the plaintiffs' attorneys might be more interested in collecting their up to $180 million in legal fees than representing residents' interests.

The plaintiffs' lawyers didn't immediately respond to the motion Monday, but they have previously defended the settlement that was announced in the spring. They have said the settlement is bigger than any past derailment settlement that has been made public, and that the amount of time residents received to evaluate the deal is similar to other settlements.

Some residents have complained that the initial opt-out deadline in the lawsuit came less than a week after the National Transportation Safety Board held a hearing on its findings in the investigation.

Harley-Davidson drops DEI initiatives amid right-wing backlash

Harley-Davidson said it was also ending its sensitivity training, diversity spending goals, and said it will review its sponsorships to focus more on motorcycles, first responders, active military, and veteran

THERE ARE NO BAME, LGBTQ+, AAIP, OR WOMEN MILITARY/ VETERANS?!

By Misty Severi
Published: August 19, 2024 

The motorcycle manufacturing powerhouse Harley-Davidson announced on Monday that it was ending its diversity-centered initiatives after facing pressure from the political right.

The company faced backlash from the conservative activist Robby Starbuck, who claimed the company had gone woke after it adopted the Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) business model.

Harley-Davidson said it also ended its sensitivity training, diversity spending goals, and said it will review its sponsorships to focus more on motorcycles, first responders, active military, and veterans.

“We are saddened by the negativity on social media over the last few weeks, designed to divide the Harley-Davidson community,” the company wrote in a statement posted on X "We have not operated a DEI function since April 2024, and we do not have a DEI function today. We do not have hiring quotas and we no longer have supplier diversity spend goals.”

The company is just the latest to bend to social pressure and end their DEI policies. John Deere and Tractor Supply Co. have also ended their initiatives recently, after facing pressure from Starbuck, according to CNN.

“We remain committed to listening to all members of our community,” Harley-Davidson added in its statement.

Misty Severi is an evening news reporter for Just The News. You can follow her on X for more coverage.

Massachusetts raised taxes on millionaires to give its students free meals

The tax has brought in $800 million more than the state expected.

Tod Perry
08.20.24

via Nevada Department of Agriculture/Flickr
Children enjoying their school lunches.

The state of Massachusetts passed a 4% tax hike on residents making over a million a year in 2022, which took effect in 2023. The tax has raised more revenue than lawmakers originally expected and provides free school lunches for the state’s children.

Before the tax hike, Massachusetts residents paid a 5% annual income tax. After the Fair Share Amendment went into effect, those making over $1 million a year now pay an additional 4% on the portion of their income above $1 million.

The extra income generated by the tax means the state can now afford to provide free school lunches, free community college for those 25 and over and expanded financial assistance for state schools. The tax also funds transportation projects, including road and bridge repairs and new bicycle lanes.

The free school lunches should significantly impact food insecurity in the state. A 2022 study from the Greater Boston Food Bank found that 33% of Massachusetts households were food insecure in 2022. Massachusetts is now the 8th state in the country to offer free school lunches for all students.

"[F]ree universal school meals will literally change lives, full stop," Democratic Representative Jim McGovern said in a statement. "No child in Massachusetts will ever have to wonder how to get through the school day on an empty stomach."

Since the tax hike took effect, it’s generated $1.8 billion for the state, $800 million more than the state legislature and Governor Maura Healey planned to spend in 2024.

“This is exciting because it's the first concrete numbers we have seen showing that 'Fair Share' revenue is coming in far above the initial projections,” Andrew Farnitano, a spokesperson for the Raise Up Massachusetts campaign that pushed for the surtax, said according to WGBH. “These numbers show that the commonwealth collected nearly $2 billion in that year already, with a few months to go. What that means is there will be even more money available to spend on the critical transportation and public education needs that Massachusetts has.”

The short-term success of the wealth tax is welcomed in many corners of Massachusetts, but some believe the honeymoon could be short-lived. Massachusetts isn’t the only state in the nation and its high-income earners can choose to move to states such as New Hampshire, Florida, or Texas, where they won’t have to pay a state income tax.

Wealth taxes are also associated with a drop in overall economic activity, which can depress wages for lower-income earners.

“Whatever short-term financial benefit the state will receive from the income surtax will be outweighed by the long-term negative effect this tax is having on the state,” Paul Craney, a spokesperson for the Massachusetts Fiscal Alliance, said according to WGBH. “It's chasing out high-income earners and making the decision very easy for taxpayers who are regularly impacted by this tax to domicile in more tax-friendly states.”

It’s said that states are the laboratories of democracy, and so far, the experiment in Massachusetts appears to be working as planned. What remains to be seen is whether the tax hike eventually leads to a loss in revenue because high-income people who pay a significant percentage of the state’s revenue choose to move somewhere cheaper.

Biden’s immigration relief program opens for applicants

August 19, 2024
By Aline Barros
VOA

 The Department of Homeland Security headquarters is seen in northwest Washington,


The Biden administration on Monday launched a parole program for spouses and stepchildren of U.S. citizens, allowing them to apply for lawful permanent residence without leaving the country and avoiding a potential ban on reentry.

The program, announced June 17, is known as parole in place.

Parole under immigration law is very different than in the criminal justice context, according to the American Immigration Council.

Under immigration law, parole is a way for a noncitizen to enter, live and sometimes work temporarily in the U.S. Parole plays an important role in allowing someone to meet the criteria to adjust status under immigration law.

The Immigration and Nationality Act gives the secretary of the Department of Homeland Security discretionary power to temporarily parole individuals into the United States on a case-by-case basis for urgent humanitarian reasons or significant public benefit. It also allows DHS to grant parole to people who are already in the United States without lawful immigration status, enabling them to stay for a specified period.

Eligibility

To be eligible for parole, an undocumented person must have been continuously present in the U.S. for at least 10 years, be legally married to a citizen before June 17, 2024, have not been convicted of any crime, and have not posed a threat to national security or public safety, among other criteria.

The person must fill out a lengthy application and pay a fee to apply, currently $580. There is also a $470 fee to request employment authorization and a fee of $1,440 to apply for permanent residency. Finally, the U.S. citizen spouse must file a form for stepchildren, which costs $625 per individual.

If the person meets all of the requirements and DHS approves the application, the person will have three years to apply for permanent residency. During this time, the person will be allowed to remain in the U.S. with family and be eligible for work authorization.

Undocumented spouses of US citizens

In its parole fact sheet, the American Immigration Council says spouses of U.S. citizens typically qualify for an immigrant visa as an immediate relative of the citizen. But for those spouses who entered the United States without authorization, adjusting immigration status is “bureaucratically onerous, and risky.”

“Under federal law, some immigrants — namely, those who have already been ‘inspected and admitted’ (generally, anyone who entered through an official port of entry) or ‘inspected and paroled’ into the U.S. — can apply to adjust their status to permanent residency without having to depart the country to attend an immigrant visa interview at a U.S. embassy or consulate abroad. However, immigrants who entered without inspection do not have this option. They must leave the United States, go to a consulate abroad, and obtain a new immigrant visa to reenter,” the fact sheet says.

Leaving the U.S. to visit a consulate often triggers a lengthy reentry ban. A 1996 immigration law imposes bans of up to 10 years on individuals who have been "unlawfully present" in the U.S. for more than a year. Being "unlawfully present" also makes them ineligible for visas.

Yet, current legislation does allow an applicant to file for a waiver. A U.S. government official approves these waivers on a case-by-case basis, with the applicant required to meet certain conditions.

One such condition is “if they can demonstrate that their citizen spouses would suffer ‘extreme hardship’ from such a prolonged separation,” the American Immigration Council said in its fact sheet. As of April, decisions on these waiver requests were taking more than 41 months.

Ultimately, an adjustment of immigration status for someone who entered the country illegally, even if the person is married to a U.S. citizen, is at the discretion of a U.S. immigration officer.

Under the parole in place program, undocumented immigrants married to U.S. citizens will be allowed to stay in the U.S. for up to three years, obtain work authorization and apply for lawful permanent resident status without having to leave the country.

DHS estimates that 500,000 undocumented spouses of U.S. citizens would be eligible to apply, as would about 50,000 stepchildren.

Criticism

In June, a group of Republican senators sent a letter to President Joe Biden expressing "grave concerns" about the parole in place program. The lawmakers said this immigration relief "directly contravenes the laws Congress has passed" and "will exacerbate the ongoing border crisis."

“We have previously challenged the legality of your administration’s parole authority and have sought to reform this authority to ensure that decisions regarding parole are restored to Congress’ original intent — ‘on a case-by-case basis’ to aliens who are not already present in the U.S. … We urge you to rescind this policy immediately,” the lawmakers wrote.

While the program has yet to be challenged in court, Biden administration officials say they are confident about its legal standing.

“We feel strongly that we are on strong legal footing to make this announcement and are comfortable doing so,” a senior official said on background during a June call with reporters. Officials speaking on background can remain anonymous.

What is ‘model collapse’? An expert explains the rumors about an impending AI doom

The Conversation
August 19, 2024 

Virinaflora/Shutterstock

Artificial intelligence (AI) prophets and newsmongers are forecasting the end of the generative AI hype, with talk of an impending catastrophic “model collapse”

But how realistic are these predictions? And what is model collapse anyway?

Discussed in 2023, but popularized more recently, “model collapse” refers to a hypothetical scenario where future AI systems get progressively dumber due to the increase of AI-generated data on the internet

The need for data

Modern AI systems are built using machine learning. Programmers set up the underlying mathematical structure, but the actual “intelligence” comes from training the system to mimic patterns in data.

But not just any data. The current crop of generative AI systems needs high quality data, and lots of it.

To source this data, big tech companies such as OpenAI, Google, Meta and Nvidia continually scour the internet, scooping up terabytes of content to feed the machines. But since the advent of widely available and useful generative AI systems in 2022, people are increasingly uploading and sharing content that is made, in part or whole, by AI.

In 2023, researchers started wondering if they could get away with only relying on AI-created data for training, instead of human-generated data.

There are huge incentives to make this work. In addition to proliferating on the internet, AI-made content is much cheaper than human data to source. It also isn’t ethically and legally questionable to collect en masse.

However, researchers found that without high-quality human data, AI systems trained on AI-made data get dumber and dumber as each model learns from the previous one. It’s like a digital version of the problem of inbreeding.

This “regurgitive training” seems to lead to a reduction in the quality and diversity of model behavior. Quality here roughly means some combination of being helpful, harmless and honest. Diversity refers to the variation in responses, and which people’s cultural and social perspectives are represented in the AI outputs.

In short: by using AI systems so much, we could be polluting the very data source we need to make them useful in the first place.

Avoiding collapse

Can’t big tech just filter out AI-generated content? Not really. Tech companies already spend a lot of time and money cleaning and filtering the data they scrape, with one industry insider recently sharing they sometimes discard as much as 90% of the data they initially collect for training models.

These efforts might get more demanding as the need to specifically remove AI-generated content increases. But more importantly, in the long term it will actually get harder and harder to distinguish AI content. This will make the filtering and removal of synthetic data a game of diminishing (financial) returns.

Ultimately, the research so far shows we just can’t completely do away with human data. After all, it’s where the “I” in AI is coming from.
Are we headed for a catastrophe?

There are hints developers are already having to work harder to source high-quality data. For instance, the documentation accompanying the GPT-4 release credited an unprecedented number of staff involved in the data-related parts of the project.

We may also be running out of new human data. Some estimates say the pool of human-generated text data might be tapped out as soon as 2026.

It’s likely why OpenAI and others are racing to shore up exclusive partnerships with industry behemoths such as Shutterstock, Associated Press and NewsCorp. They own large proprietary collections of human data that aren’t readily available on the public internet.

However, the prospects of catastrophic model collapse might be overstated. Most research so far looks at cases where synthetic data replaces human data. In practice, human and AI data are likely to accumulate in parallel, which reduces the likelihood of collapse.

The most likely future scenario will also see an ecosystem of somewhat diverse generative AI platforms being used to create and publish content, rather than one monolithic model. This also increases robustness against collapse.

It’s a good reason for regulators to promote healthy competition by limiting monopolies in the AI sector, and to fund public interest technology development.

The real concerns

There are also more subtle risks from too much AI-made content.

A flood of synthetic content might not pose an existential threat to the progress of AI development, but it does threaten the digital public good of the (human) internet.

For instance, researchers found a 16% drop in activity on the coding website StackOverflow one year after the release of ChatGPT. This suggests AI assistance may already be reducing person-to-person interactions in some online communities.

Hyperproduction from AI-powered content farms is also making it harder to find content that isn’t clickbait stuffed with advertisements.

It’s becoming impossible to reliably distinguish between human-generated and AI-generated content. One method to remedy this would be watermarking or labelling AI-generated content, as I and many others have recently highlighted, and as reflected in recent Australian government interim legislation.

There’s another risk, too. As AI-generated content becomes systematically homogeneous, we risk losing socio-cultural diversity and some groups of people could even experience cultural erasure. We urgently need cross-disciplinary research on the social and cultural challenges posed by AI systems.

Human interactions and human data are important, and we should protect them. For our own sakes, and maybe also for the sake of the possible risk of a future model collapse.

Aaron J. Snoswell, Research Fellow in AI Accountability, Queensland University of Technology

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

Brazil fishermen turn to mobile app to combat pollution scourge

Agence France-Presse
August 20, 2024 

Guanabara Bay, a natural port of about 400 square kilometers (154 square miles), battles pollution not only from visiting vessels and oil rig accidents, but also runoff from cities and old ships abandoned in its waters (Pablo PORCIUNCULA/AFP)

Brazilian activist and fisherman Alexandre Anderson uses one hand to steer his boat, and the other to film an oil stain spreading over Rio de Janeiro's Guanabara Bay.

He will upload the video to an app developed to expose environmental damage in the iconic bay crucial for tourism and the fishing industry, but plagued by spills of oil, chemicals and untreated wastewater.

Guanabara Bay, a natural port of about 400 square kilometers (154 square miles), battles pollution not only from visiting vessels and oil rig accidents, but also from old ships abandoned in its waters and runoff from cities.

Frustrated with what they see as a lack of official response, the bay's fishermen decided to take matters into their own hands, and with the backing of non-governmental organization 350.org, had an app developed for them.

"We used to take pictures with our cell phone or a camera," but without exact geolocation data, it was of little use, Anderson -- president of the bay's Ahomar fishermen's association -- told AFP as he filmed a steady stream of wastewater being dumped from a ship.

The app, however, "gives me the precise" data with which to file a complaint, anonymously.

The information is verified by a moderator and published on a dedicated website, after which it is reported to authorities such as the country's Ibama environmental regulator or Brazil's navy, which patrols the bay.

Every time he monitors the dark waters for just a few hours, Anderson encounters several illegal spills, he says.

Within three weeks of the app launching on July 26, 20 complaints were posted on the web, and more than 100 others are under analysis, according to administrators.


- 'Practically' no more sea bass or hake -

"The inspection agencies always claimed they don't have the tools to deal with complaints," said Paulo Barone, who belongs to another local fishermen's association.

But with this new app, he said, the authorities "can no longer deny or ignore" the complaints.

For 350.org's Brazil coordinator Luiz Afonso Rosario, artisanal fishermen have been on the "front lines" for too long.

"Oil and gas companies, in addition to polluting the waters that are a source of food, income and leisure for thousands of families, aggravate the climate crisis... by providing fossil fuels that are the main cause of global warming," he said.

Fishermen were particularly hard hit by a spill in 2000 that saw 1.3 million liters of oil dumped into the bay from a Petrobras refinery.

"That ended the fishing. You practically don't find any sea bass (or) hake anymore," said Roberto Marques Resende, who still fishes in the region.

For some, the battle is about more than even subsistence.

Anderson, who has been standing up to the petrochemical industry for years, says he has been the target of threats and attacks for years and hopes that the app will help ensure that "those responsible are really punished."

"Only then will we solve these problems," he said.