National Populist Newsletter
February 2nd-9th
United States
Immigration
El Salvadoran President Nayib Bukele and Secretary of State Marco Rubio have struck a deal where El Salvador will house violent US criminals and receive deportees of any nationality. Human rights groups have decried the entire agreement because of El Salvador’s treatment of prisoners and the fact that they don’t get a thousand appeals to liberal judges who let them back out on the street. (CNN)
Border Czar Tom Homan announced that the administration deported 11,000 illegal aliens in the first 18 days of the administration. ICE has arrested around 130,000 people a year over the last eight years, or more than 300 each day. The Trump administration is on pace to surpass those totals in the first year of the president’s second term, especially if it meets the reported daily arrest quotas of 1,200 to 1,500 people a day. Homan has said repeatedly that he wants to increase the number of illegal aliens being deported and is frustrated that the numbers have been so low so far. (News Nation)
Gov. Ron DeSantis has struck a deal with Republican lawmakers and the Trump Administration, making Florida the first state in the country to have state law enforcement be given expanded power for immigration enforcement. DeSantis said he's directed the Florida Department of Highway Safety and Motor Vehicles and Florida Highway Patrol to fulfill the agreement which will have state troopers trained and approved by Immigration and Customs Enforcement to carry out those duties. (South Florida 6)
The Trump Administration is using federal prisons to house illegal immigrants as part of an expansive deportation operation. In a statement, the Federal Bureau of Prisons said it is helping Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) "by housing detainees and will continue to support our law enforcement partners to fulfill the administration's policy objectives." (Fox News)
The Justice Department announced they’re suing the state of Illinois and city of Chicago over their sanctuary city laws. (The Washington Post)
Mayor Eric Adams’ administration issued a memo to migrant shelter operators, telling them to work with ICE agents and allow them to enter shelters without a warrant, undercutting both the City's longstanding "sanctuary laws" and previous guidance that the administration issued in early January. (Hell Gate NY)
Economy
Tech giants like Microsoft, Meta, and Google now have a combined capital expenditures of at least $215 billion for their current fiscal years on the data centers that power artificial-intelligence systems. Amazon.com didn’t provide a full-year estimate but indicated on Thursday that total capex across its businesses is on course to grow to more than $100 billion, and said most of the increase will be for AI. (WSJ)
A study on the world’s 10 leading chatbots found that they produce more false claims in Russian, Chinese, and Spanish than in English, with Russian and Chinese registering failure rates (percentage of responses containing false claims or offering a non-response) of over 50 percent, according to a NewsGuard audit conducted in seven languages.
Trump Administration
U.S. District Judge Carl Nichols, a Trump appointee, has ordered an immediate halt from Secretary of State Marco Rubio from lacing 2,200 agency employees on leave and ordering the reinstatement of 500 others. The ruling also blocked the “expedited” effort to recall 1,400 USAID foreign service officers within 30 days. (Politico)
U.S. District Judge Paul Engelmayer, an Obama appointee, temporarily restricted access by Elon Musk’s government efficiency program to the Treasury Department’s payment and data systems, saying there was a risk of “irreparable harm.” Judge Engelmayer ordered any such official who had been granted access to the systems since Jan. 20 to “destroy any and all copies of material downloaded from the Treasury Department’s records and systems.” He also restricted the Trump administration from granting access to those categories of officials. (The New York Times)
A Reagan-appointed judge blocked an executive order to stop trans men from being transferred to biological women’s prisons. Exactly how many judges from Reagan’s presidency are still making decisions for our country? (The Guardian)
Trump has halted all federal aid to South Africa because of their law, which allows the government to seize the land of white farmers. He also said that the administration will prioritize the resettling of white “Afrikaner refugees” into the United States because of what he called actions by the country’s government that “racially disfavored landowners.” In addition to the halt in foreign aid, Mr. Trump ordered officials to provide “humanitarian” assistance to Afrikaners and to allow members of the white South African minority to seek refuge in the United States through the American refugee program. For years now, South Africa has been practicing reverse apartheid on the white minority, where they are the last to get employment, have their lands seized without just compensation, and have a series of roving gangs who have attacked white farmers for years. Furthermore, Secretary Rubio announced he would not attend the G20 meeting in Johannesburg to protest the policies. (The New York Times)
Trump is making an effort to reach across the aisle. He’s supporting a bill proposed by Democrats like Tammy Baldwin to close the carried interest loophole on taxes. The loophole, predominantly used by bankers, hedge funds, and private equity. (CBS News)