22: Hakeem Jeffries

Elon Musk Gets a Crash Course in How Trumpworld Works The world’s richest person, not known for his humility, is still learning the cutthroat courtier politics of Donald Trump’s inner circle — and his ultimate influence remains an open question. .......... For the first 53 years of his life, Elon Musk barely spent any time with Donald J. Trump. Then, beginning on the night of Nov. 5, he spent basically no time without him. .......... For the world’s richest person — not known for his humility or patience — it is a social engineering challenge far trickier and less familiar than heavy manufacturing or rocket science. ......... What he brings instead are his 200 million followers on X and the roughly $200 million he spent to help elect Mr. Trump. Both of those have greatly impressed the president-elect. Mr. Trump, gobsmacked by Mr. Musk’s willingness to lay off 80 percent of the staff at X, has said the tech billionaire will help lead a Department of Government Efficiency alongside Vivek Ramaswamy. ......... In private meetings at Mar-a-Lago, Mr. Musk shows little familiarity with policy or the potential staff members being discussed, but he returns repeatedly to a central point: What is required, he says, is “radical reform” of government and “reformers” who are capable of executing radical changes, according to two people briefed on the meetings, who insisted on anonymity to describe the internal conversations. .......... Across Silicon Valley, interest in serving in the Department of Government Efficiency is high. Brian Armstrong, the chief executive of Coinbase, described that work on social media this week as “a once in a lifetime opportunity to increase economic freedom in the U.S. and cut the size of government back to health.” ............ And Mr. Musk was a vociferous defender of former Representative Matt Gaetz of Florida, who on Thursday withdrew as Mr. Trump’s pick for attorney general.

What ‘Mass Deportation’ Actually Means The constraints on a mass deportation operation are logistical more than legal. Deporting one million people a year would cost an annual average of $88 billion, and a one-time effort to deport the full unauthorized population of 11 million would cost many times that — and it’s difficult to imagine how long it would take. ..... ......... In fiscal year 2024, Congress gave ICE the money for 41,500 detention beds. This is insufficient for anything that would constitute mass deportation. Extra holding facilities can be spun up as needed, but not immediately — and at higher cost (because of, say, noncompetitive contractor bids) than building a detention facility the usual way. ........... The only people who can be both easily rounded up and deported without a court hearing are those who have already been ordered removed from the United States but are allowed to stay if they come in for regular check-ins. ........ People who have a form of legal status that has lapsed, or legal protections that the Trump administration might try to strip, such as Temporary Protected Status, may be easy to find but won’t be quick to remove. ............... the logistical realities: beds in detention, seats on planes. .......... There are two previous occasions in which the U.S. federal government can be said to have engaged in mass deportation — around the 1930s and the 1950s. Both entailed horrific conditions for those caught and deported, and the tearing apart of families with claims to both the United States and other countries. But in both cases, the federal government ultimately took credit for “deporting” some people it never actually laid hands on — those who had been pressured or terrorized into leaving. .......... making people afraid enough to deport themselves is a convenient and low-cost way to do it. ......... The government will do things that hurt people. It will do things that look scary

China’s Hacking Reached Deep Into U.S. Telecoms The chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee said hackers listened to phone calls and read texts by exploiting aging equipment and seams in the networks that connect systems..