It’s possible that I shall make an ass of myself. But in that case one can always get out of it with a little dialectic. I have, of course, so worded my proposition as to be right either way (K.Marx, Letter to F.Engels on the Indian Mutiny)
Sunday, January 19, 2025
Attorney general pick Pam Bondi earned millions from Donald Trump-related groups: filing
Bart Jansen, USA TODAY Fri, January 17, 2025
WASHINGTON – Pam Bondi, President-elect Donald Trump’s choice to become attorney general, made at least $3 million from the creation of the parent company of Trump’s social media platform, Truth Social, according to her personal financial disclosure form.
The form filed with the U.S. Office of Government Ethics and obtained by USA TODAY detailed her financial links to Trump through organizations he owns or that supported him.
Bondi, “like all other shareholders,” received $3 million in shares and warrants of Digital World Acquisition Corp. from Renatus LLC "on the morning of a merger" between Digital World and Trump Media & Technology Group, according to the disclosure form. The shares and warrants were then converted to stock in Trump Media, the filing said.
Bondi was listed as a “consultant” for the merger. She owned another $2 million to $10 million in shares and warrants in Trump Media, the filing said. She is a former Florida attorney general and local prosecutor who represented Trump during his first impeachment.
The form filed as part of her Senate confirmation process also listed her nearly $1.1 million salary last year from Ballard Partners, where she performed government and public affairs consulting.
President Donald Trump makes a point about gun safety in schools while Attorney General Pam Bondi, R-Fla., listens during a meeting with local and state officials about improving school safety at the White House in Washington, on Feb. 22, 2018. Independence from Trump?
Several Senate Democrats, who said Bondi is likely to be confirmed, questioned at the hearing whether she could be independent of Trump.
Trump has named at least four personal lawyers to top posts at the Justice Department, which legal experts said raises questions about whether those appointees would represent Trump or the national interest. Besides Bondi, he named his criminal defense lawyers Todd Blanche and Emil Bove as deputy attorney general and principal associate deputy attorney general, respectively. Trump chose John Sauer, who represented him at the Supreme Court in personal criminal appeals, as solicitor general.
Pam Bondi delivers opening remarks during a Senate Judiciary committee hearing on her nomination to be Attorney General of the United States on Jan. 15, 2025 in Washington, D.C. Bondi testified she would not let politics play a role in her leadership of the Justice Department.
"I believe that the Justice Department must be independent and must act independently,” Bondi said. “The No. 1 job is to enforce the law fairly and evenhandedly, and that’s what will be done if I am confirmed as the attorney general.”
“Politics will not play a part,” Bondi added. “I’ve demonstrated that my entire career as a prosecutor, as attorney general and I will continue to do that.”
Trump's transition team didn't immediately respond to a request for comment about Bondi's filing.
Bondi also earned $520,000 last year from consulting for the America First Policy Institute, a think tank of former Trump administration officials. She earned $203,738 from providing legal serves to Pfizer through the law firm Panza, Maurer, & Maynard, P.A., according to the filing.
Bondi earned between $110,003 and $1 million from renting out commercial real estate properties in Florida. She earned $27,600 in contributor fees from Newsmax and a $20,000 speaking fee from a conference last year hosted by bitnile.com, an online gaming company.
This article originally appeared on USA TODAY
Opinion | Republicans insist that Trump is hugely popular. His approval ratings say otherwise.
Paul Waldman
MSNBC Sat, January 18, 2025 President-elect Donald Trump speaks to the media after a meeting with members of Congress on Jan. 8, 2025.
Not once but twice during her confirmation hearing before the Senate Judiciary Committee, attorney general nominee Pam Bondi interrupted a Republican questioning her to emphasize Donald Trump’s margin of victory last November. When Sen. Ted Cruz noted that Trump won the election, Bondi added, “By 77.3% — 77.3 million Americans.” Later, Sen. Mike Crapo, R-Idaho, mentioned that Trump won, and Bondi piped up to say “312 electoral votes, senator,” to which he replied, “A landslide.”
It was a reminder that even Trump’s choices for the most ostensibly nonpartisan Cabinet positions act like cultists eager to massage Trump’s tender ego. But the Republicans’ reminders of Trump’s victory obscures an important weakness and Democrats should be paying close attention.
Republicans are more desperate than ever to convince the public that Trump is hugely popular — and that opposing him and his policies will be politically disastrous for Democrats. Nothing could be further from the truth. Trump was a historically unpopular president the first time around, and so far it looks as though he’ll face the same widespread public opposition in his second term.
Exaggerating the size of a president’s victory is not new. After George W. Bush won re-election in 2004, for instance, he bragged about spending his new “political capital.” But this time, the scale of the hyperbole is classically Trumpian. As much as Republicans want to throw around words such as “landslide” and “mandate,” 2024 was one of the closest elections in American history. Trump beat Vice President Kamala Harris in the popular vote by less than 1.5%; only one election in the last half-century (in 2000) was closer. And the razor-thin margins by which Republicans control both the House and the Senate testify to how closely the electorate is divided.
Still, most new presidents typically enjoy a honeymoon period: Fresh from their election victory, the public invests them with hopes for positive change and gives them the benefit of the doubt. Joe Biden, for instance, had 57% approval in the first Gallup poll of his presidency; Barack Obama came in at 67% approval. Even Bush, who like Trump lost the popular vote in his first victory, started at 57%. In fact, Trump was the only president in the Gallup poll’s history — going all the way back to Harry Truman — who entered office with an approval rating under 50%. He was also the only one to never crack 50% approval for a single day of an entire term.
On the verge of his second term, even after his first popular vote victory in three tries, Trump’s approval is weak. A new Marist/NPR poll puts it at just 44%; 49% say they disapprove of him. The Economist/YouGov poll gives him a similar 45/51 split, while a USA Today/Suffolk University survey has his favorability/unfavorability at 47% each.
The reasons Trump remains unpopular are, at this point in his career, both obvious to anyone and unlikely to change. No wonder then, that Republicans are so eager to inflate the size of Trump’s victory: it’s their best hope that Democrats will be scared away from being too full-throated in their opposition to Trump’s nominees and policy agenda.
Unfortunately, it has never been too hard to scare Democrats, many of whom always worry that a misplaced word or insufficiently focus-grouped proposal will doom them to defeat. And it sometimes appears that they are fooled by his incessant bragging and the intensity of his supporters’ devotion into thinking those supporters are more numerous than they are.
Since the election, too many Democrats have been shaky in their opposition. Some of them have granted the legitimacy of Elon Musk’s absurd effort to slash government, saying they look forward to working with him. Dozens of House and Senate Democrats joined with Republicans to pass the Laken Riley Act, an anti-immigrant measure that will put troubling powers in the hands of reckless red-state officials. Sen. John Fetterman even went to Mar-a-Lago to hang out with Trump and signal his openness to working together.
Democrats who are feeling fearful should take a cue from Republicans, who like Trump believe in a kind of fake-it-till-you-make-it approach to politics: Act as though everyone loves you and can’t wait for you to implement your agenda, and victory might just follow. The opposition version of this strategy is much more realistic: Assume that the public is, if not outright opposed to the president and what he does, at least skeptical enough to hear arguments about why it should be mad at the White House. Then act accordingly.
Even the best presidential honeymoons — which Trump is unlikely to get — are short-lived. Before long the public starts blaming the president for everything that goes wrong; there’s a reason almost every president’s party suffers defeats in midterm elections.
But not all voters are that attentive, so they need the opposition party to tell them everything the president is screwing up and why his administration is dragging the country to disaster. On this score, Trump and his administration will offer no shortage of material. When Trump takes the oath of office, Democrats need to treat him as a weak and reviled executive. And from then on, they should never let up the pressure.
This article was originally published on MSNBC.com
California isn’t the only place where insurers are dropping homeowners
LA LIBERTARIANS WANTED TO REPLACE THE STATE WITH AN INSURANCE CO.
Todd C. Frankel, (c) 2025 , The Washington Post Sat, January 18, 2025
A growing number of homeowners nationwide are being dropped by insurance companies as firms and regulators struggle to deal with the unpredictable and costly risks of climate disasters.
Nonrenewal notices surged by nearly 30 percent from 2018 to 2022 to more than 620,000 a year, according to a Treasury report released Thursday that examined 246 million policies nationwide. Nonrenewal rates were nearly 80 percent higher in Zip codes that faced the highest risk from insurance perils such as strong winds and wildfires compared with the lowest risk areas.
The rise of nonrenewal notices, as they are called, has attracted attention and criticism during the ongoing Los Angeles wildfires, where some major insurance companies had said last year they were dropping thousands of homes that ended up burning down in the raging fires.
But it’s not just a California thing. Florida, Louisiana and North Carolina all posted nonrenewal rates higher than the Golden State in 2023, according to a Senate report released in December. Florida’s rate was nearly 3 percent, compared with California’s rate of about 1.8 percent. That report also found an increased rate of nonrenewals nationwide.
The spike in nonrenewals is being driven by the increasing severity of extreme weather events, higher inflation pushing up the cost of rebuilding and stiff regulations that make it harder for insurance companies to raise prices to cover their costs, according to industry officials and consumer advocates.
“If you’re getting a nonrenewal, you have a really high level of risk,” said Jeremy Porter, head of climate implications research at First Street Foundation, a nonprofit research firm that compiles climate risk data.
Insurers also have struggled to accurately price in the risk of promising to rebuild homes in the many parts of the country vulnerable to wildfires, hurricanes and wind storms. The computer models used to identify the riskiest areas, built on historical weather patterns, have been upended by climate change. Porter said he’s heard of hail models that are largely outdated because today’s storms can be so much bigger than in the past.
“I think we’re getting to a point where insurance could be unaffordable in some places,” Porter said.
Homeowners have seen insurance premiums soar - up 33 percent from 2020 to 2023, according to a National Bureau of Economic Research report. Insurance is required in most cases on properties with mortgages.
As prices rise, some have turned to state-run insurance pools as a last resort to find coverage. But others have opted to drop insurance entirely - what’s known in the industry as “going bare.” The number of homes without insurance has nearly tripled since before the pandemic, according to survey estimates.
In some states, insurers say regulators have made it harder for insurers to raise rates sufficiently to cover the growing threat from hurricanes, wildfires and severe storms. Rate hikes are especially difficult in states such as California, where regulators must sign off on changes. So some companies say they feel forced to abandon policyholders, as a wave of insurers did in recent years. Regulators say they are trying to protect homeowners.
Insurers have been hit with big losses in their homeowners policies in recent years. The U.S. homeowner’s insurance market paid out $15.2 billion more in claims and costs than it collected from policyholders in 2023, the worst result this century and double the loss in 2022, according to AM Best, a credit-rating agency focused on the insurance industry.
The numbers for 2024 are not expected to look any better, said Karen Collins, property and environmental vice president at American Property Casualty Insurance Association, a trade group.
“There’s a higher frequency of higher severity events, and people are moving to riskier areas,” Collins said, pointing to rapid population growth in states such as Florida.
Nonrenewal notices are a sign of “either pricing pressure or risk pressure,” said Dave Jones, the California insurance commissioner from 2011 to 2018 who now runs the Climate Risk Initiative at the University of California at Berkeley’s School of Law.
Last year, California’s largest homeowners insurance company, State Farm, announced it would not renew thousands of policies. The company said it needed to reduce its exposure in high-risk areas and restore its “financial strength” after it had already stopped selling new home policies in the state.
The nonrenewals were the next step, such as dropping almost 70 percent of its policies - representing about 1,600 homes - in the Zip code that includes Los Angeles’ Pacific Palisades neighborhood, among the hardest hit areas during the ongoing L.A. wildfires. It is not known how many of these homes burned down, but State Farm’s action was criticized by some people who accused it of abandoning customers, even though the insurer gave several months’ warning. Many found coverage with the state-backed “insurer of last resort” known as the Fair Plan, according to state regulators.
But nonrenewal rates are even higher in states such as Florida, where the price for homeowners insurance is high and rules have been changed to entice insurers to do business, Jones said.
“Climate change in the long term will outrun whatever is being done on the regulatory side,” he said. “We’re not going to rate increase our way out of the problem.”
The insurance industry has pushed for more flexibility from regulators to account for the new reality. It also has asked for help with other obstacles it says leads to dropped policies, such as fraudulent claims.
California was in the middle of updating its insurance regulations when the wildfires hit last week. The state’s homeowners pay among the lowest insurance premiums in the country, despite the state’s abundant risks, said Mark Friedlander, director of corporate communications at the Insurance Information Institute, a nonprofit funded by insurers.
On the other end of the country, Florida’s problems are “a man-made crisis, not a natural disaster crisis” fueled by fraud, Friedlander said. New state laws have helped address that, he said.
Florida’s Glades County had the highest nonrenewal rate in the country in 2023, with insurers dropping 16 percent of the roughly 2,900 homeowners there, according to the Senate report. The rural county in the state’s south-central region saw widespread destruction during Hurricane Milton in October.
In 2023, Mike Chaney, Mississippi’s insurance commissioner, heard Nationwide planned to cancel thousands of homeowners’ policies along the Gulf Coast. He was not happy. The insurance company was targeting a number that fell just below the threshold where it would need to report the changes to regulators, right after it had pushed to write more policies along the Gulf Coast, he said. Mississippi posted the sixth highest nonrenewal rate that year, according to the Senate report.
Chaney started calling regulators in other states to see if he was alone. “They don’t always tell you what you need to know,” Chaney said of insurance companies.
He called up Mike Causey, the North Carolina insurance commissioner, and discovered that Nationwide was looking at dropping about 10,000 home policies there. Causey said insurers seemed to be getting pickier about who they would insure than 10 or 20 years ago. “And that’s because of the higher risk,” he said. North Carolina had the third highest rate of nonrenewals in 2023.
Nationwide’s nonrenewal notices were part of a broader “rebalancing” of its insurance lines to deal with “increasingly severe catastrophic losses,” the company said in a statement.
Chaney said he convinced Nationwide to drop only about 3,200 policies. Residents were rattled, but he said he worked to get some homeowners into the state’s insurance pool, and he reached out to other insurance companies to encourage them to pick up some of the dropped policies, too.
“We were able to place them all,” he said.
Now, he is looking out at what’s happening with the L.A. wildfires, certain that it will affect rates even in Mississippi.
Insurance companies buy policies to protect themselves, too. And the reinsurance market is a national and even global one. So the cost of reinsurance could spike to cover claims in California, leading to higher rates for customers in Mississippi.
“Reinsurance is the issue,” Chaney said.
The problems for homeowners are expected to continue. The cost of insurance will continue to rise as companies try to price in the risk from a rising number of climate threats - potentially leading to some homes and locations becoming unaffordable.
“We are marching steadily to an uninsurable future,” said Davis, the former California regulator.
They lost their insurance. Then their homes burned
When Chad Comey heard sirens outside the Palisades condo he lived in with his parents last Tuesday, he didn’t think much of it. Then the fire alerts started.
“I’m holding out hope, I’m rationalizing things, like, we’re right in the heart of the village, this is the last place to make a stand, because if this burns, the whole village is going to burn,” he remembers thinking as he watched the fire approach. “You never would expect that everything you’ve come to know can be gone.”
Comey, a caretaker for his disabled parents, delayed evacuating as long as he could, ultimately enlisting a neighbor to help him carry his mother in her wheelchair down five flights of stairs. When he was able to return to the wreckage of his neighborhood days later, he found his home destroyed, one of the more than 12,000 structures lost in the Los Angeles wildfires.
“We all cried,” he said. “We were distraught.”
Now he and his family face the daunting task of figuring out what lies ahead – made even more difficult by the fact that they don’t have a safety net.
“My family and I have no insurance,” he said. His parents had lived there long enough to pay off their mortgage and were no longer obligated to carry a policy, so they opted out because it was too expensive. “They’re both disabled. They can’t afford it. What they have goes toward medical equipment, food and paying the HOA fees, which are pushing one thousand bucks a month.”
The building where they lived had also just been dropped by its insurance in the last year – deemed too great a fire risk.
An outside view of the condo building where Chad Comey's unit was is pictured on January 9. The garage is shown, as well as a piece of balcony hanging from a tree, where his window was. - Courtesy Chad Comey
“They stopped renewing what they thought was sh*tty risk,” Los Angeles insurance agent Carla Ramirez said of the big carriers, which have declined to renew homeowner policies or stopped writing new policies in the state. “In the last year they reassessed their entire fire risk. Palisades and Malibu before weren’t a fire risk, and they reassessed; they said, we think it’s a threatening, big risk and it’s going to bankrupt us.”
Shya Mousavipour’s parents were dropped by their insurance less than a year before their Malibu home burned to the ground in the fires.
“They got this notice that even though you paid this policy down for 18 years, we’re no longer insuring people in that area, so good luck,” he said. “They were forced to switch to the California FAIR plan. Even though they’re insured, like many victims of this tragedy, they’re underinsured.”
The FAIR plan is supposed to function as an insurer of last resort. Set up by the state, the policies typically have higher premiums and more bare bones coverage than private carriers. Residents often have to patch together the FAIR plan’s fire coverage with policies from other carriers to approximate their prior benefits, which can end up being a much costlier package.
“It doesn’t cover the cost of what it’s going to take to rebuild, what they lost, housing – they need to live somewhere for the next two years, maybe more,” Mousavipour said, anticipating his parents, who are in their late 60s, will get a “fraction” of the cost of rebuilding their house.
“They’ve been paying this off their whole lives. Their net worth is pretty much tied to that home,” he said. “Our life was in that house. It was my mom’s dream house. They worked their whole life for that house.”
Jamie Lite, who lives about an hour outside LA in Acton, got word she would be dropped by her home insurance on the same day her husband and son, both firefighters, were battling the blazes on the frontlines.
“It was like insult to injury,” she said. “Things are burning down and knowing that my insurance is going to be gone as of April 15, it just makes me feel like, what am I supposed to do? These are our homes, these are our lives. Here my family is out there helping the situation, and these companies are preying on everybody.”
In the last three years before she was dropped, Lite says her premiums went from $1,750 to $7,000 a year, costs she expects to rise even further with a new carrier. She feels trapped. “I couldn’t sell my house anyway; someone coming in to buy probably can’t get insurance,” she said. “Who’s going to buy it? It’s a catch-22. You’re stuck.”
The insurance crisis is squeezing homeowners across the state.
An aerial view shows the devastation from the Palisades Fire on beachfront homes on January 15 in Malibu, California. - Jae C. Hong/AP
Celeste Vander Ham, who lives further south in Rancho Capistrano, paid $1,000 a year for insurance for the first 15 years in her home, but, after the 2018 Holy Fire, she says she was told by her insurance broker that her area had become a “10” for fire risk and that “nobody’s going to insure you.” She and her husband were dropped from their wildfire insurance and had to go to the FAIR plan for coverage. They now pay a total of $10,000 a year for the policies needed to insure their home.
The costs are crippling on their limited income – he lives on Social Security benefits, and she is his caretaker. With just eight years left on their mortgage, they had to refinance their home, taking on another 30-year loan to be able to afford insurance. She now expects they’ll need to sell their house and leave the state.
“It’s really heartbreaking,” she said. “We’re going to be forced out because of homeowner’s insurance.”
Ramirez, the insurance agent, said the state’s fire dangers justify the higher premiums and suggested homeowners are not acknowledging “the true costs” of living in these areas. “If your zone was historically not a high fire risk but it’s becoming one, that is the cost of living there,” she said. “If the cost of living there is above your means, then I believe you should move.”
Homeowners in California traditionally had the option of either admitted or non-admitted carriers. Admitted carriers, like State Farm, Allstate and Farmers, are licensed by the state and have to follow regulations around pricing, which they argued made it impossible for them to insure high-risk areas. Non-admitted carriers are typically smaller insurers that operate without the same regulations, so the state does not have to approve their rates or policies. As a result, they often charge higher premiums but can offer coverage in riskier areas.
Farmers and State Farm did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
In a statement, Allstate said the company “paused the sale of homeowners insurance policies for new customers in 2022. We continue to offer coverage to most existing homeowners insurance customers… As it relates to the wildfires, we’ve moved into California with claim personnel and multiple mobile claim centers to give our customers one-on-one support and help them file a claim,” in addition to donations to disaster relief.
A firetruck drives through a neighborhood destroyed by the Eaton Fire on January 14 in Altadena, California. - John Locher/AP
Ramirez said homeowners dropped by these and other carriers were shocked by the prices of the FAIR plan or non-admitted carriers, which can cost between $20,000 and $30,000 a year in fire zones.
“Most people elected to keep their coverage low because of sticker shock,” she said. “Your price just tripled, and we’re telling you to increase it two times more, and people were like, ‘Ehhh not so much, I’m ok here.’” That approach, she said, has left many Californians uninsured or underinsured as they deal with the aftermath of the devastation.
“This is how we have to price now,” she said. “And look, they all just burned, right? The insurance company lost, big time. It was priced accordingly.”
Residents like Comey and Mousavipour say they understand that insurance companies are businesses operating with profits in mind, but that the current model is unsustainable.
“We need a solution where people are fully insured in these areas, and since they are private companies, they need to be incentivized to want to work here,” Mousavipour said. “I don’t think the answer is people shouldn’t live there, but it needs to be addressed and it needs to be a genuine investment into fire preventative measures, so when this happens, we’re prepared.”
Comey pointed the finger squarely at the insurance companies.
“We’re emphasizing the wrong things here where we put corporate profits over people, and these are people’s lives that have been lost and everything they’ve come to know,” he said.
GoFundMe is filled with fundraisers for homeowners in the area who said they either did not have insurance or recently were non-renewed by their plans. A fundraiser for Comey’s family has already raised over $130,000.
“I feel blessed by the generosity that people have expressed,” he said. “I also think it’s a sad state of capitalism and the free market that everyone must rely on GoFundMes to even stay afloat or get back on their feet.”
For more CNN news and newsletters create an account at
Laken Riley Act
GOP-led immigration bill on verge of Senate passage after Democrats join with Republicans in key vote
Clare Foran, Ted Barrett, Lauren Fox and Morgan Rimmer,
CNN
Fri, January 17, 2025 Laken Riley is pictured. The Senate is considering the Laken Riley Act on Friday.
A GOP-led bill to require the detention of undocumented migrants charged with certain crimes is on the verge of passage in the Senate after a significant number of Democrats joined with Republicans to advance the measure in a critical vote on Friday.
The outcome of the vote reflects a major shift for Democrats as the party is under pressure over immigration in the aftermath of Donald Trump’s presidential win, which has led Democrats from competitive states and districts to say the party must do more to address voter concerns.
If the bill — called the Laken Riley Act — is signed into law, it would hand an early legislative win to Trump and congressional Republicans, who chose to bring up the measure as their first bill of the new Congress after winning the House, Senate and White House.
A vote for final passage in the US Senate could come as soon as next week. ADVERTISEMENT
The House passed its version of the Laken Riley Act earlier this month, and it’s expected the chamber will take up and pass the Senate version of the bill once the measure passes out of the Senate, as expected. The Senate has been working to advance its own version of the legislation, which also underwent amendment votes.
The bill would require the detention of undocumented migrants charged with theft or burglary. The legislation is named after Laken Riley, a 22-year old Georgia student who was killed last year while she was out for a run. An undocumented migrant from Venezuela was convicted and sentenced to life without parole in the case that reignited a national debate over immigration and crime.
While the bill won support from a critical mass of Democrats, it also exposed a rift in the party: Some called it a common-sense measure while others argued it would undermine civil liberties and due process and could harm public safety.
Friday’s procedural vote required 60 votes for the bill to advance, which meant that some Democrats needed to cross the aisle to vote with Republicans, who control only a 53-seat majority. The final vote was 61-35.
One controversial provision of the legislation would give state attorneys general the authority to sue in federal court over the decisions by federal officials, including immigration judges, to release certain immigrants from detention. They could also sue to force the State Department to impose visa sanctions against countries that refuse to accept nationals that are eligible for deportation.
A number of Democratic senators had initially voted to proceed to debate on the bill but said they did not support it in its current form and wanted to see a robust amendment process.
Earlier in the week, the Senate passed an amendment to the Laken Riley Act to expand the list of criminal offenses in the bill that migrants can be detained for if they are arrested to include assault on law enforcement officers. That amendment offered by GOP Sen. John Cornyn of Texas, passed with broad bipartisan support, 70-25.
A second amendment, offered by Democratic Sen. Chris Coons of Delaware, aimed to strike portions of the bill that Democratic critics said amounted to a major rewrite of immigration law. But it was rejected 46-49 in the Republican-led Senate.
Republicans set to give Trump big immigration win — while dividing Democrats
Al Weaver Sun, January 19, 2025
THE HILL
Republicans are on the verge of giving President-elect Trump a big win on immigration to kick off his second term — and doing it with the help of Democrats while dividing the minority party on the hot-button issue.
The GOP spent years pillorying the Biden administration for being weak on the border and immigration, with that drumbeat helping them ascend to power this year.
It was no surprise then that the first major bill Republicans put forward was the Laken Riley Act, a bill named after a Georgia college student who was killed last year by a man who had entered the country illegally. The legislation kills two birds with one stone: giving Republicans a win on the border while putting Democrats in a tough spot as they attempt to navigate the issue following the November shellacking.
“Some Democrats seem to have learned from the election that maybe we missed this one. Maybe we missed just how big a deal the open border was to Americans,” Sen. Kevin Cramer (R-N.D.) said. “They have their opportunity now to sort of redeem themselves on it.” As many as 11 Senate Democrats are expected to vote with every Republican to pass the bill this week. Ten voted to end debate and advance the measure Friday. It is also slated to get a vote in the House this week, where it picked up support from 48 Democrats earlier this month.
The legislation would mandate federal detention of immigrants without legal status who are accused of theft, burglary and assaulting a law enforcement officer, among other things.
The political stakes were also immediately clear as four key Senate Democrats who are up in 2026 — Sens. Jon Ossoff (Ga.), Gary Peters (Mich.), Jeanne Shaheen (N.H.) and Mark Warner (Va.) — voted to advance the package. Two Democrats — Sens. John Fetterman (Pa.) and Ruben Gallego (Ariz.) — were among its co-sponsors.
But the past week also brought to the forefront key divisions within the Democratic caucus on an issue that continues to give the party plenty of headaches.
On Tuesday, the Senate Democratic Conference held a longer-than-usual luncheon during which members had what one Democrat described as a “pretty intense discussion” about the bill.
One specific concern centered on the lack of a cohesive plan for how Democrats should handle the legislation. Sen. Michael Bennet (D-Colo.) became animated on that topic during the luncheon, two Senate Democrats told The Hill.
“He was really wound up about the fact that we had no plan that was coherent,” a second Senate Democrat said.
Bennet confirmed that sentiment, saying that he “expressed [his] frustration about our strategy.”
Creating more issues for the party was that at least seven Senate Democrats indicated early on that they were prepared to vote for the Laken Riley Act in its original form. Sens. Mark Kelly (Ariz.), Jacky Rosen (Nev.), Elissa Slotkin (Mich.), Fetterman, Gallego, Ossoff and Peters all indicated as much heading into the initial procedural vote.
Dozens of other Democrats voted to open debate on the bill, saying they hoped to amend it. But that initial show of support effectively zapped any leverage Democrats may have had over the legislation or possible amendments, prompting Senate Majority Leader John Thune (R-S.D.) to only bring two of them to the floor.
“I want to have this [amendment] process as open as possible,” Thune said. “My impression was … the Democrats were sort of anxious to get it behind them.”
The lone Democratic amendment was defeated, and he teed up Friday’s vote to end debate shortly after.
“If a handful of people say, ‘Yeah, I’m going to go along with this,’ then Chuck has lost all of his negotiating leverage before we ever get started. … If we don’t use the little bit of leverage we’ve got, we’re toast,” the second Senate Democrat said, noting that issue and an internal dispute about child imprisonment related to the bill were the main points of contention in the caucus.
“Both of those were intense vectors of dispute,” they added.
Those were both on top of questions surrounding the cost of the bill and how it would be enforced. The Department of Homeland Security said this week that the proposal would cost nearly $27 billion in the first year and that it “would be impossible for [Immigration and Customs Enforcement] to execute within existing resources.” ADVERTISEMENT
Nearly three dozen Democrats voted against ending debate Friday after only two amendments hit the floor. Ten Democrats — not including Fetterman, a co-sponsor — ultimately voted alongside every Republican who was present.
“It’s an issue that I think has tremendous resonance and clearly broad support in the public,” Thune said. “It’s a very hard vote for Democrats.”
Republicans, meanwhile, saw the bill as a way to get off on the right foot this Congress, especially after lawmakers struggled to take any steps on immigration in recent years despite the uptick in border crossings. That included the failed bipartisan border bill that Trump and conservatives killed last year.
Sen. Katie Britt (Ala.), a lead GOP proponent of the Laken Riley Act, complained that the Senate Judiciary Committee did not mark up any immigration or border bills during the 118th Congress.
“I think it’s a big day for America. If you look at what happened on Nov. 5 … people spoke loud and clear that they wanted something different,” Britt said, adding that she was encouraged by the Democratic support for the bill.
To some Republicans, the Laken Riley votes are serving as a solid barometer of the level of cooperation they should expect in the coming weeks and months.
“If people are genuinely supportive of the bill, they should be willing to take the heat that I did when I’m asking a minority of my conference to vote for a bill that all Democrats were going to vote for,” said Sen. Thom Tillis (R-N.C.), who was involved in immigration-related bipartisan talks in recent years.
“This is a great test for that,” he said. “It will give me a great indication whether or not I have anybody to work with.”
Copyright 2025 Nexstar Media, Inc. All rights reserved. Sens. Mark Kelly and Ruben Gallego side with GOP to advance Laken Riley Act
Rey Covarrubias Jr., Arizona Republic Fri, January 17, 2025
Democratic Senators from Arizona voted alongside Republicans on Friday to advance a tough immigration crime bill, the Laken Riley Act.
Sen. Ruben Gallego, D-Ariz., cosponsored the bill that requires authorities to detain undocumented immigrants suspected of theft-related crimes and gives further power to state attorneys general over illegal immigration.
The bill was named after Laken Riley, a Georgia nursing student killed by a man who was in the U.S. illegally, with her case later becoming a topic on the presidential campaign trail.
Ten U.S. Democratic Senators, including Gallego and Sen. Mark Kelly, D-Ariz., voted 61-35 on Friday to advance the bill, narrowly overcoming the 60-vote threshold required to thwart a filibuster. A final Senate vote on the bill could come as early as Monday.
The other eight Democratic senators who crossed the aisle to join their GOP counterparts to advance the bill were: Sens. Catherine Cortez Masto of New Mexico, Maggie Hassan and Jeanne Shaheen of New Hampshire, Jon Ossoff of Georgia, Gary Peters and Elissa Slotkin of Michigan, Jacky Rosen of Nevada, and Mark Warner of Virginia.
Nearly the entirety of votes to block the bill came from Democrats and Democratic-aligned independents, according to the Senate roll call vote.
Once the Senate passes the bill, it will go back to the House, where it will likely be approved, before sending it to President-elect Donald Trump's desk to be signed into law. Trump takes office Monday.
Gallego and Kelly previously voiced support for the immigration crime bill
Gallego earlier voiced his support as a cosponsor of the Laken Riley Act, noting in a written statement that “Arizonans know the real-life consequences of today’s border crisis."
"We must give law enforcement the means to take action when illegal immigrants break the law, to prevent situations like what occurred to Laken Riley," Gallego said.
A Kelly spokesperson cited the senator's previous support for the bill.
“I support this effort because federal authorities need to protect our communities from criminals. Keeping Arizonans safe is my top priority and I’m committed to working with Republicans and Democrats on solutions to secure our border and fix our broken immigration system," he said in a written statement. Critics denounce the Laken Riley Act
Hours after the Senate voted to advance the bill, the American Civil Liberties Union released a statement from Sarah Mehta, the organization's senior border policy counsel who called the Laken Riley Act "an extreme and reactive bill that will authorize the largest expansion of mandatory detention we have seen in decades."
Mehta praised the 35 Senate Democrats who voted no on the bill.
"We need our elected leaders to join these senators who showed political courage and leadership right now, with more attacks on immigrants on the horizon," Mehta said.
In Arizona, Democratic state Senate leaders previously ripped the bill passing the House of Representatives.
State Senate Minority Leader Priya Sundareshan of Tucson and Assistant Democratic Leader Flavio Bravo of Phoenix condemned the vote on Jan. 10 in written statements.
"Congressional Republicans opened the 119th Congress by forcing a vote on H.R. 29, which is a far cry from that bipartisan deal and accomplishes far less while placing communities at risk," Sundareshan said.
Bravo, the assistant Democratic Senate leader, said the bill opens the door for "widespread racial discrimination and mass detention."
The Arizona Republic's Ronald J. Hansen and USA TODAY's Riley Beggin and Lauren Villagran contributed to this article.
How Trump plans to cement control of government by dismantling the 'deep state'
James Oliphant, Steve Holland Updated Sat, January 18, 2025 U.S. President-elect Donald Trump arrives at Washington Dulles International Airport in Dulles
By James Oliphant, Steve Holland
WASHINGTON (Reuters) -President-elect Donald Trump is poised to seize greater control of the federal government than any modern president before him when he takes office on Monday, charging ahead with plans to dismantle what he and his allies call the "deep state," according to two sources familiar with transition discussions.
The effort could get underway as early as Trump's first day as president, according to one of the sources, with an executive order aimed at stripping job protections from an estimated 50,000 career federal employees, allowing their replacement by handpicked loyalist appointees.
The Trump administration will also push to fill the thousands of political appointments across government as soon as possible, another source told Reuters. ADVERTISEMENT
The goal is to inject political loyalists deep into the workings of government, perhaps more so that any other recent president.
In a harbinger of what may lie ahead, Trump's team has requested the resignation of three senior career diplomats who oversee the U.S. State Department's workforce and internal coordination, Reuters reported this week.
Trump allies blame bureaucrats they deem disloyal for thwarting his agenda during his first term in the White House by slow-walking initiatives in the Justice Department, the Department of Education and other agencies.
Nearly a dozen of Trump's top appointees for his second term have been given an explicit mandate to shake up the federal workforce or expressed support for those plans, according to personnel announcements and media interviews reviewed by Reuters.
Russell Vought, nominated by Trump to return as director of the Office of Management and Budget, played a central role in crafting an earlier version of the reclassification order, known as Schedule F, as Trump was leaving office in 2020. ADVERTISEMENT
The revived executive order on Schedule F would allow agency officials to reclassify positions from career posts to political appointments, one of the sources familiar with transition planning said.
That would enable the agencies to fire career employees without cause and replace them.
Vought will be aided during Trump's second term by Sergio Gor, who was nominated to head the White House personnel office, and James Sherk, another Schedule F architect who Trump on Saturday named as a special assistant to the president.
In 2021, Sherk prepared a report for the America First Policy Institute, a conservative think tank, that detailed episodes in which he argues the federal bureaucracy intentionally frustrated Trump’s policy goals during his first term.
FIRING LINES
Others tasked with eradicating the "deep state" include Attorney General nominee Pam Bondi, the possible next FBI director, Kash Patel, Secretary of State nominee Marco Rubio, national security adviser, Mike Waltz, education nominee Linda McMahon, and Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy, who will head up Trump's government efficiency effort, the Reuters review found. ADVERTISEMENT
When asked, Trump's transition team would not provide details on a timeline for the planned shakeup, which could take months due to federal rule-making procedures.
"The Trump Administration will have a place for people serving in government who are committed to defending the rights of the American people, putting America first, and ensuring the best use of working men and women's tax dollars," said spokesperson Brian Hughes.
Critics and the unions that represent federal workers say there is no such thing as a "deep state," and that Trump and his allies are trafficking in a conspiracy theory to justify an executive-branch power grab.
James Eisenmann, a lawyer and expert on federal workforce policy, said in an interview that Trump is mistaken that most government employees harbor an ideological agenda and noted that under current law, underperforming or insubordinate workers can be fired.
Schedule F, he said, would create a culture of silence and fear that could affect job performance. ADVERTISEMENT
"People are going to be afraid to speak up or even suggest something helpful out of fear of getting fired," Eisenmann said. "When people are afraid, it's not easy to get them to do stuff."
Steve Lenkart, executive director of the National Federation of Federal Workers, said in an interview that the new classification was aimed at creating "a secret police" within the federal government.
"The incoming administration admits they will use Schedule F to subject professional employees to professional or to political loyalty tests and will get rid of the undesirables," he said.
Hughes, the Trump transition spokesperson, did not respond to questions about what role individual nominees would play in carrying out Trump's agenda, or to the "secret police" allegation.
FINDING TARGETS
During Senate confirmation hearings on Wednesday, Vought and Bondi expressed support for the policies behind Schedule F.
Vought testified that he believes portions of the federal government have been "weaponized."
He declined to answer questions about whether he had advised Trump to conduct mass firings, but said reclassifying career employees would ensure the president has individuals in a policy-making role "who are responding to his views, his agenda."
Bondi, during her hearing, said Special Counsel Jack Smith's probe of Trump was evidence of partisanship within the Justice Department.
She vowed not to use the department to target people based on their politics, but dodged direct questions about investigating Trump's political adversaries.
The Biden Justice Department has long denied that it pursued criminal cases against Trump for political reasons. It did not respond to a request for comment on Friday.
The process of identifying members of the federal bureaucracy whose views could be at odds with the incoming administration has already begun.
In December, the American Accountability Foundation, which operates with support from the conservative Heritage Foundation, sent a letter to Pentagon nominee Pete Hegseth naming 20 leaders across the U.S. military whom it deemed to be overly focused on diversity and inclusion initiatives.
Outgoing Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin has defended such efforts, saying the diverse military reflects the diversity of the United States.
The Pentagon referred a request for comment to the Trump transition team.
The American Accountability Foundation also published a "Top 10 Targets" list on its website of career employees at the Department of Homeland Security and the Justice Department it claims are resistant to increased border-security efforts.
There are more names to come, said Yitz Friedman, a spokesperson for the group.
(Reporting by James Oliphant and Steve Holland Additional reporting by Nandita Bose and Gram Slattery; Editing by Colleen Jenkins and Suzanne Goldenberg)
.jpg)
