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Trump Spokesperson Affirms Day 1 Plans for Nation’s ‘Largest Mass Deportation Operation’

Original article by Olivia Rosane republished from Common Dreams under Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0). 

A Mexican migrant holds her daughter while being apprehended by U.S. Customs and Border protection officers after crossing over into the U.S. on June 26, 2024 in Ruby, Arizona. (Photo: Brandon Bell/Getty Images)

“As always, we will go to court to challenge illegal policies, but it is equally essential that the public push back, as it did with family separation,” one rights advocate said.

President-elect Donald Trump is set to begin his promised mass deportation of undocumented immigrants as soon as he takes office on January 20, 2025, even as rights groups are mobilizing to stop him.

Trump national press secretary Karoline Leavitt told Fox News Wednesday morning that “the American people delivered a resounding victory for President Trump.”

“It gives him a mandate to govern as he campaigned, to deliver on the promises that he made, which include, on Day 1, launching the largest mass deportation operation of illegal immigrants that Kamala Harris has allowed into this country,” Leavitt said.

“We have a simple message for President-elect Trump or his deputies if they decide to make good on their despicable plans: We will see you in court.”

Trump has pledged to conduct the largest deportation in U.S. history, with running mate and now Vice President-elect JD Vance promising 1 million deportations each year. The plan would likely rely on mobilizing federal agencies, the military, diplomats, and Republican-led states while using federal funds to pressure uncooperative states and cities into complying.

The stocks of private prison companies like GEOGroup and Core Civic rose significantly after Trump’s win, and private contractors had already been discussing ahead of the election how to build enough detention space to accommodate Trump’s plans.

A study released by the American Immigration Council in October found that a massive, one-time deportation program of the estimated 13.3 million migrants in the country without legal status would cost the government at least $315 billion while a 1-million-a-year approach would cost $88 billion a year for a total of $967.9 billion. It would also shrink the nation’s gross domestic product by between 4.2 and 6.8%, not to mention the massive human cost to immigrant families, as around 5.1 million children who are U.S. citizens live with an undocumented family member.

The council also warned that such a program would likely threaten the well-being of all immigrants and increase vigilantism and hate crimes.

“As bad as the first Trump administration was for immigrants, we anticipate it will be much worse this time and are particularly concerned about the use of the military to round up immigrants,” Lee Gelernt, a lawyer with the American Civil Liberties Union who fought the first Trump administration on family separation and other policies, told The Washington Post. “As always, we will go to court to challenge illegal policies, but it is equally essential that the public push back, as it did with family separation.”

Exit polls show that 56% of U.S. voters favor offering immigrants already in the U.S. a pathway to citizenship, while Data for Progress found that survey respondents did not favor deportation for 7 out of 9 categories of people who might be caught up in a mass deportation scheme.

The ACLU has urged cities and states to take steps to protect their undocumented residents ahead of January 20.

“They should prepare for mass deportations because those will wreak havoc on the communities,” Noreen Shah, director of government affairs at the ACLU’s equality division, told Newsweek. “It will mean kids who go to school and their parents are gone and not there to pick them up at the end of the day.”

In particular, legal groups are gearing up for Trump to potentially evoke the Alien Enemies Act of 1798, which authorizes the country to deport noncitizens of a hostile nation. It has only been used three times, most recently to detain Japanese Americans during World War II.

“Many fear that a second Trump administration would seek to use this law to justify indefinite detention and remove people from the country swiftly and without judicial review,” Shah told Reuters.

The Brennan Center for Justice has called on Congress to repeal the act.

“This law was shameful and dangerous back when it was created 200 years ago,” the center’s Marcelo Agudo wrote in October. “It’s even more so today. It must be repealed or overturned.”

Several other organizations pledged to continue defending immigrants and refugees after Trump declared victory.

“We have a simple message for President-elect Trump or his deputies if they decide to make good on their despicable plans: We will see you in court,” Karen Tumlin, founder and director of Justice Action Center, said in a statement. “And, we have a message of love to immigrant communities, we see you, we are you, and we will stand with you.”

Calling Trump’s win “one of the most dangerous moments in our country’s history, National Immigration Law Center president Kica Matos said the organization had led a “movement-wide effort to plan for this moment.”

“Trump and his allies told us what he plans to do: mass deportations, ending birthright citizenship, ending the right to public education for immigrant children, internment camps, and using the military to hunt down immigrants. We should take him at his word,” Matos said.

She continued: “One thing is certain: we cannot and will not retreat. For more than 40 years, NILC has been steadfast in our fight to defend the rights of low-income immigrants and their loved ones. We successfully fought Donald Trump before, and we will do it again.”

The American Immigrant Lawyers Association (AILA) pledged to continue working for its clients.

“If implemented, the anti-immigrant policies avowed by candidate Trump will inflict lasting damage to the American economy, communities, and character,” AILA Executive Director Benjamin Johnson said in a statement. “AILA and its more than 16,000 members will continue to defend the Constitution and stand against laws and policies that violate due process, undermine civil rights, or denigrate the contributions of immigrants. Our future prosperity depends on not giving up. We must stand together and work towards a brighter future.”

Refugees International also promised to continue with its “shared commitment to rights and refuge for people forced from their homes.”

“Amid historic levels of global displacement, the incoming Trump administration plans to enact an anti-refugee, anti-asylum agenda that will endanger millions of people—both those threatened by crises overseas and those who have been welcomed as neighbors into communities across the United States,” the group’s president, Jeremy Konyndyk, said in a message to supporters. “Yet we hold on to hope, even as we are clear-eyed about the daunting struggles ahead.”

Knowndyk added: “As we do under any presidential administration, we will work tirelessly with all of you to defend and advance the rights, protection, and well-being of all people forced to flee their homes.”

United We Dream, the largest U.S. organization led by immigrant youth, committed to building the “largest pro-immigrant movement this country has ever seen.”

“Immigrant young people of United We Dream declare ourselves hopeful and clear eyed about the fight ahead,” said the group’s executive director Greisa Martínez Rosas. “With Trump pledging to carry out the largest deportation effort in our country’s history—activating the military to raid our communities, schools, hospitals, and more in order to round up our people into concentration camps—young, Black, brown, and queer leaders who have been at the vanguard of our movement and of creating meaningful change are ready move mountains to protect our communities.”

Original article by Olivia Rosane republished from Common Dreams under Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0). 

Continue ReadingTrump Spokesperson Affirms Day 1 Plans for Nation’s ‘Largest Mass Deportation Operation’

Record Amazon Basin Drought Impacts 420,000 Children: UNICEF

https://www.ecowatch.com/amazon-basin-drought-impacts-children-unicef.html

In Brazil’s Amazon region, more than 1,700 schools and 760 health centers have been shuttered or become inaccessible due to drought. A scene from Tabatinga, Amazonan State, Brazil in October 2024. UNICEF / UNI671256 / Diogenes

A drought in much of South America impacts more than 420,000 children living in the Amazon basin, according to new estimates from UNICEF.

The record-breaking drought — ongoing since last year — has left rivers in the region at an all-time low, a press release from UNICEF said.

The lack of rain has affected river transportation and water supplies for Indigenous children and their communities in Colombia, Brazil and Peru. Families use the rivers to access and transport water, food, fuel and medical supplies. The children also use them to travel to school.

“For centuries the Amazon has been home to precious natural resources. We are witnessing the devastation of an essential ecosystem that families rely on, leaving many children without access to adequate food, water, health care and schools,” said Executive Director of UNICEF Catherine Russell in the press release.

Food insecurity caused by the drought has increased malnutrition risk in the region’s children, while restricted access to drinking water could lead to an increase in infectious diseases, UNICEF said, as AFP reported.

“Food insecurity caused by drought increases the risk of malnutrition, stunting and wasting, and death in children,” the press release said. “Research has also found that pregnant women who experience droughts are likely to have children with lower birth weights.”

In the Brazilian Amazon, more than 760 medical clinics and over 1,700 schools have become inaccessible or were forced to close due to low river levels.

…

Article continues at https://www.ecowatch.com/amazon-basin-drought-impacts-children-unicef.html

Continue ReadingRecord Amazon Basin Drought Impacts 420,000 Children: UNICEF

National Grid’s £2bn profits ‘lay bare’ Britain’s broken energy system, campaigners say

https://morningstaronline.co.uk/article/national-grid-2bn-profits-lay-bare-britain-broken-energy-system-campaigners-say

‘It is time our energy infrastructure was brought back into public ownership,’ Unite general secretary says

CAMPAIGNERS intensified their demands for energy infrastructure to be brought back into full public ownership today after the National Grid posted a 14 per cent increase in underlying profits.

The firm, which builds and runs power grids and cables across Britain, reported an underlying operating profit of £2.05 billion for the six months until September 30, surpassing £1.8bn in the same period last year.

The grid charges energy suppliers for network use. Costs are then passed on to consumers through their bills, which rose by another 10 per cent last month.

In 2023, National Grid shareholders received £1.6bn in dividends, while six million households remained trapped in fuel poverty amid skyrocketing costs.

Unite general secretary Sharon Graham said National Grid’s profits “lay bare” Britain’s broken energy system.

She said: “Energy profiteers like National Grid are extracting cash for overseas shareholders through ever more expensive bills.

“It is time our energy infrastructure was brought back into public ownership so that the British people and economy benefit rather than foreign wealth funds.”

…

Article continues at https://morningstaronline.co.uk/article/national-grid-2bn-profits-lay-bare-britain-broken-energy-system-campaigners-say

Continue ReadingNational Grid’s £2bn profits ‘lay bare’ Britain’s broken energy system, campaigners say

Tory Leader Kemi Badenoch’s Views on Climate Change

Original article by Adam Barnett republished from DeSmog

Conservative Party leader Kemi Badenoch. Credit: Credit: HM Treasury (CC BY-NC-ND 2.0)

The new leader of the opposition has regularly criticised the UK’s green ambitions.

The Conservative Party has elected Kemi Badenoch as its new leader, who describes herself as a “net zero sceptic” and has received funding from the head of a climate science denial campaign.

Badenoch was announced as the winner of the Tory leadership contest on Saturday, beating her rival Robert Jenrick by 56 percent to 44 percent.  

The former business and trade secretary campaigned for leader as a straight-talking conservative who would tackle the “woke” left. 

But as DeSmog has reported, Badenoch has also repeatedly suggested that the UK’s net zero targets would “bankrupt the country”, has boasted of standing up to “the green lobby” while in government, and has called Labour’s ban on new North Sea oil and gas licences “foolish”. 

Badenoch has also received money and office space from Neil Record, the chair of the climate denial group Net Zero Watch (NZW), and produced a leadership manifesto which attacked the “radical environmental policies” previously introduced by the Conservative Party.

Net Zero Sceptic

Making her pitch to Conservative MPs at the party’s annual conference on 2 October, Badenoch described herself as a “net zero sceptic” but “not a climate change sceptic”. 

Badenoch said in 2022 that the UK’s 2050 legally-binding target for achieving net zero emissions was “arbitrary” and last year suggested she would support delaying it. 

In her Conservative conference speech, Badenoch said that net zero is “making energy more expensive and hurting our economy”, a claim which the International Energy Agency, a leading authority on energy policy, says is false. 

Badenoch did not confirm in her speech that she would delay or scrap the UK’s net zero targets but said, “I did not become an MP to deliver an agenda set by Ed Miliband”, who currently serves as the secretary of state for energy security and net zero.

She has repeatedly said that she wants to reduce emissions but not in a way that would “bankrupt” the country.

The Climate Change Committee, which advises the government on its net zero policies, has estimated that the cost of achieving net zero will be less than one percent of UK GDP. 

The government independent spending watchdog – the Office for Budget Responsibility (OBR) – has said that, “the costs of failing to get climate change under control would be much larger than those of bringing emissions down to net zero”.

Badenoch claimed during the Tory leadership campaign that, while serving as business secretary, she “had to work hard to push back against the green lobby”, and condemned Labour’s “foolish decision to ban new licences for North Sea oil production” as part of its “fanatical approach to net zero”.

As DeSmog revealed, during the leadership contest Badenoch published a 40-page manifesto which cited the Committee to Unleash Prosperity, a U.S. group led by former advisors to Donald Trump, which has likened climate science to believing the earth is flat. 

Badenoch used evidence produced by the Committee to Unleash Prosperity to claim that net zero policies are only supported by high-earning graduates living in cities.

Badenoch’s document, titled ‘Conservatism in Crisis: Rise of the Bureaucratic Class’, attacked what it called “radical environmental politics” – such as the ban on the sale of new petrol and diesel cars introduced by the previous Tory government – and praised fracking, the controversial method adopted in the U.S. to extract more oil and gas. 

Scientists at the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), the world’s foremost climate science body, have said that without “immediate and deep emissions reductions across all sectors” limiting global heating to 1.5C is beyond reach.

Restricting global temperatures to this target, which was agreed as part of the 2015 Paris Agreement, would prevent the worst and most irreversible impacts of climate change.

Climate Denial Ally

In August, DeSmog revealed that Badenoch had received £10,000 towards her leadership campaign from Neil Record, a millionaire Tory donor and chair of Net Zero Watch (NZW), the campaign arm of the Global Warming Policy Foundation, the UK’s principal climate science denial group. 

Bloomberg further revealed that Badenoch was running her leadership campaign out of Record’s London home.  

NZW has called for “rapid” new North Sea oil and gas exploration, and for wind and solar power to be “wound down completely”. 

Record – who is also lifetime president of the Institute of Economic Affairs (IEA), a think tank that received funding from oil giant BP every year from 1967 to at least 2018 – in July wrote that achieving net zero by 2050 “will restrict our freedom, and is likely to be eye-wateringly expensive”. Record has donated to both the IEA and GWPF.

The GWPF has claimed that carbon dioxide has been mischaracterised as pollution, when in fact it is a “benefit to the planet”. The group has been accused of spreading “daft conspiracy yarns” about net zero.

Original article by Adam Barnett republished from DeSmog

Continue ReadingTory Leader Kemi Badenoch’s Views on Climate Change