WASHINGTON: US President Donald Trump is offering a path to citizenship for up to 1.8 million young illegal immigrants but insists on measures that would curb some legal immigration programs and provide a border wall with Mexico, senior White House officials said on Thursday.
The White House offered to more than double the number of “Dreamers” — people brought to the country illegally as children — who would be protected from deportation, describing it as a major concession aimed at attracting enough votes for an immigration deal from Democrats.
But the plan comes with significant strings attached to appeal to Republicans, including requirements to slash family sponsorship of immigrants, tighten border security and provide billions of dollars in funding for a border wall with Mexico that Trump made one of his major campaign promises.
The package was immediately panned by pro-immigration groups, which said the plan was a bad trade-off. It was also slammed by some conservative groups, which decried the expansion of “amnesty” for illegal immigrants.
The head of the Congressional Hispanic Caucus, Democratic Representative Michelle Lujan Grisham, said the Trump plan used Dreamers as “bargaining chips for sweeping anti-immigrant policies.”
Early reaction from Republicans in the Senate — where the plan may receive a vote in early February — was positive. Conservative Republican Senator Tom Cotton called the plan “generous and humane, while also being responsible.” Republicans narrowly control the chamber by 51-49 and need Democratic votes to pass legislation.
The fight over protections for Dreamers, which are set to expire in March, was part of the standoff between Republicans and Democrats in the Senate that resulted in a three-day government shutdown that ended on Monday.
They agreed to extend funding until February 8, leaving a small window to come to a deal on immigration. Trump’s plan will help provide guidance for those talks, Republican Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell said in a statement.
Negotiations will be tough. Democratic Senator Dick Durbin, who has championed the cause of the Dreamers, said the plan put Trump’s “entire hard-line immigration agenda — including massive cuts to legal immigration — on the backs of these young people.”
Trump, whose tough immigration stance was a key part of his 2016 presidential campaign, said in September he was ending the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals, or DACA, program for Dreamers that was created by Democratic predecessor Barack Obama.
The DACA protections apply to about 700,000 people, but White House officials said there were at least that many illegal immigrants who qualified for the program but did not sign up for it.
Officials said the 1.8 million people could apply to become citizens in 10 to 12 years providing they had jobs and did not commit crimes.
Trump’s plan would require Congress to set up a $25 billion “trust fund” to build a wall on the southern border with Mexico, and invest in better protections at the northern border with Canada.
Congress would have to allocate additional money to border guards and immigration judges, a figure that the Republican president pegged at $5 billion on Wednesday, but which White House officials said was up for further discussion.
The White House also wants Congress to change rules to allow for the rapid deportation of illegal immigrants from countries other than Mexico and Canada who arrive at the US border, the officials said.
White House officials made clear that a deal could not only address DACA and the border wall but must also end a visa lottery program for certain countries and limit family sponsorship of immigrants to spouses and minor children — ending sponsorship for parents, older children and siblings.
Stephen Legomsky, who was chief counsel at US Citizenship and Immigration Services in the Obama administration, called the plan a “horrendous tradeoff” and predicted Democrats would reject it.
“It offers a one-time citizenship path to innocent Dreamers and expects in return a massive permanent cut to family immigration, the permanent elimination of the entire diversity program, and a huge expenditure for a border wall,” said Legomsky, now at Washington University Law School in St. Louis.
A group of immigrant youth called United We Dream said the deal was “pitting us against our own parents, Black immigrants and our communities.”
Groups that oppose allowing illegal immigrants to remain in the United States also voiced criticism, and urged Congress to take its time.
“While it includes a number of tough immigration enforcement provisions, it includes an amnesty that is more than twice the size of the DACA population,” said Jessica Vaughan, director of policy studies at the Center for Immigration Studies, which favors restrictions.
To become law, the measures would also need to pass the House of Representatives, where Republicans have a bigger majority. A senior White House official declined to speculate on whether the plan would pass the chamber.
“I think the House will have an independent vehicle,” the second official said. “We’re not trying to force something on the House.”
Representative Mario Diaz-Balart, a Republican Cuban-American from Miami and longtime advocate of immigration reform, praised Trump for putting forward a “serious proposal.”
Democratic Representative Luis Gutiérrez said, however, that the plan “doesn’t pass the laugh test.
“It would be far cheaper to erect a 50-foot concrete statue of a middle finger and point it toward Latin America, because both a wall and the statue would be equally offensive and equally ineffective,” the Illinois lawmaker said on Twitter.
Trump offers ‘Dreamers’ a path to US citizenship, but wants other immigration curbs
Trump offers ‘Dreamers’ a path to US citizenship, but wants other immigration curbs
US has not stopped military aid to Ukraine, Zelensky says
- Trump had previously said Ukraine's President Zelensky should have made a deal with Putin to avoid the conflict
- But he recently threatened to impose stiff tariffs and sanctions on Russia if an agreement isn’t reached to end the fighting in Ukraine
KYIV: Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said Saturday the US has not stopped military aid to Ukraine after newly sworn in US Secretary of State Marco Rubio announced he would pause foreign aid grants for 90 days.
Zelensky did not clarify whether humanitarian aid had been paused. Ukraine relies on the US for 40 percent of its military needs. “I am focused on military aid; it has not been stopped, thank God,” he said at a press conference with Moldovan President Maia Sandu.
The two leaders met in Kyiv on Saturday to discuss the energy needs of Moldova’s Russian-occupied Transnistria region, which saw its natural gas supplies halted on Jan. 1 due to Ukraine’s decision to stop Russian gas transit. Ukraine has said it can offer coal to the Transnistrian authorities to make up for the shortfall.
The future of US aid to Ukraine remains uncertain as President Donald Trump begins his second term in office. The American leader has repeatedly said he wouldn’t have allowed Russia’s invasion of Ukraine to start if he had been in office, although he was president as fighting grew in the east of the country between Kyiv’s forces and separatists aligned with Moscow, ahead of Putin sending in tens of thousands of troops in 2022.
On Thursday, Trump told Fox News that Zelensky should have made a deal with Putin to avoid the conflict. A day earlier, Trump also threatened to impose stiff tariffs and sanctions on Russia if an agreement isn’t reached to end the fighting in Ukraine.
Speaking in Kyiv on Saturday, Zelensky said he had enjoyed “good meetings and conversations with President Trump” and that he believed the US leader would succeed in his desire to end the war.
“This can only be done with Ukraine, and otherwise it simply will not work because Russia does not want to end the war, and Ukraine does,” Zelensky said.
Grinding eastern offensive
With Trump stressing the need to quickly broker a peace deal, both Moscow and Kyiv are seeking battlefield successes to strengthen their negotiating positions ahead of any prospective talks.
Opinion
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For the past year, Russian forces have been waging an intense campaign to punch holes in Ukraine’s defenses in the Donetsk region and weaken Kyiv’s grip on the eastern parts of the country. The sustained and costly offensive has compelled Kyiv to give up a series of towns, villages and hamlets.
Russia’s Defense Ministry claimed Friday that Russian troops had fought their way into the center of the strategically important eastern of Velyka Novosilka, although it was not possible to independently confirm the claim.
Elsewhere, three civilians were killed Saturday in shelling in the Russian-occupied area of Ukraine’s Kherson region, Moscow-installed Gov. Vladimir Saldo said.
He urged the residents of Oleshky, which sits close to the frontline in southern Ukraine, to stay in their homes or in bomb shelters.
Russia also attacked Ukraine with two missiles and 61 Shahed drones overnight Saturday. Ukrainian air defenses shot down both missiles and 46 drones, a statement from the air force said. Another 15 drones failed to reach targets due to Ukrainian countermeasures.
The downed drones caused damage in the Kyiv, Cherkasy and Khmelnytskyi regions, with Ukrainian emergency services saying that five people had to be from a 9-story apartment block in the Ukrainian capital.
Russia also struck Ukraine’s eastern Kharkiv region with drones causing casualties and damage, local authorities said Saturday.
Drones targeted the city’s Shevchenkivskyi, Kyivskyi and Kholodnohirskyi districts, said Mayor Ihor Terekhov.
Russia used a Molniya drone – an inexpensive weapon that has been developed and recently deployed by Russia – in the Shevchenkivskyi district, sparking a fire. The attacks disrupted the city’s water and electricity supplies, the mayor said.
Terekhov said the number of victims was still being determined, while Kharkiv’s governor, Oleh Syniehubov, said three people, two women and a man, were injured in the strikes.
US teacher put on leave after allegedly calling Palestinian child an extremist
- “I do not negotiate with terrorists,” the teacher reportedly remarked when a Palestinian American student asked for a seat change
- Recent incidents involving Palestinian American children include an attempt to drown a 3-year-old girl in Texas and the fatal stabbing of a 6-year-old boy in Illinois
WASHINGTON: A public teacher in Pennsylvania was put on leave after allegedly calling a Palestinian American middle school student an extremist, the school district and a Muslim advocacy group said.
Why It’s Important
Human rights advocates say there has been a rise in anti-Muslim, anti-Palestinian and antisemitic hate in the US since the start of Israel’s war in Gaza following an Oct. 7, 2023, attack by the Palestinian militant group Hamas.
Key Quotes
The Central Dauphin School District said on Saturday it had learned about the allegations that the teacher made the derogatory comment last week in an after-school program.
“The teacher involved in the alleged incident is on administrative leave pending our investigation,” the district said in a statement, adding it had no tolerance for racist speech.
The Council on American Islamic Relations said the allegation was that the teacher had remarked, “I do not negotiate with terrorists,” when the Palestinian American student asked for a seat change.
The district and CAIR did not name the teacher or the student. CAIR said it was in touch with the child’s parents.
Context
Recent US incidents involving children include the attempted drowning of a 3-year-old Palestinian American girl in Texas and the fatal stabbing of a 6-year-old Palestinian American boy in Illinois.
Other incidents include the stabbing of a Palestinian American man in Texas, the beating of a Muslim man in New York, a violent mob attack on pro-Palestinian protesters in California and the shooting of three Palestinian American students in Vermont.
Incidents raising alarm over antisemitism include threats of violence against Jews at Cornell University that led to a conviction and sentencing, an unsuccessful plot to attack a New York City Jewish center and physical assaults against a Jewish man in Michigan, a rabbi in Maryland and two Jewish students at a Chicago university.
Rubio threatens bounties on Taliban leaders over detained Americans
- The new top US diplomat issued the harsh warning via social media, days after the Afghan Taliban government and the US swapped prisoners in one of the final acts of former president Joe Biden
WASHINGTON: US Secretary of State Marco Rubio on Saturday threatened bounties on the heads of Afghanistan’s Taliban leaders, sharply escalating the tone as he said more Americans may be detained in the country than previously thought.
The threat comes days after the Afghan Taliban government and the United States swapped prisoners in one of the final acts of former president Joe Biden.
The new top US diplomat issued the harsh warning via social media, in a rhetorical style strikingly similar to his boss, President Donald Trump.
“Just hearing the Taliban is holding more American hostages than has been reported,” Rubio wrote on X.
“If this is true, we will have to immediately place a VERY BIG bounty on their top leaders, maybe even bigger than the one we had on bin Laden,” he said, referring to the Al-Qaeda leader killed by US forces in 2011.
Rubio did not describe who the other Americans may be, but there have long been accounts of missing Americans whose cases were not formally taken up by the US government as wrongful detentions.
In the deal with the Biden administration, the Taliban freed the best-known American detained in Afghanistan, Ryan Corbett, who had been living with his family in the country and was seized in August 2022.
Also freed was William McKenty, an American about whom little information has been released.
The United States in turn freed Khan Mohammed, who was serving a life sentence in a California prison.
Mohammed was convicted of trafficking heroin and opium into the United States and was accused of seeking rockets to kill US troops in Afghanistan.
The United States offered a bounty of $25 million for information leading to the capture or killing of Osama bin Laden shortly after the September 11, 2001 terror attacks, with Congress later authorizing the secretary of state to offer up to $50 million.
No one is believed to have collected the bounty for bin Laden, who was killed in a US raid in Pakistan.
Trump is known for brandishing threats in his speeches and on social media. But he is also a critic of US military interventions overseas and in his second inaugural address Monday said he aspired to be a “peacemaker.”
In his first term, the Trump administration broke a then-taboo and negotiated directly with the Taliban — with Trump even proposing a summit with the then-insurgents at the Camp David presidential retreat — as he brokered a deal to pull US troops and end America’s longest war.
Biden carried out the agreement, with the Western-backed government swiftly collapsing and the Taliban retaking power in August 2021 just after US troops left.
The scenes of chaos in Kabul brought strong criticism of Biden, especially when 13 American troops and scores of Afghans died in a suicide bombing at the city’s airport.
The Biden administration had low-level contacts with Taliban government representatives but made little headway.
Some members of Trump’s Republican Party criticized even the limited US engagements with the Taliban government and especially the humanitarian assistance authorized by the Biden administration, which insisted the money was for urgent needs in the impoverished country and never routed through the Taliban.
Rubio on Friday froze nearly all US aid around the world.
No country has officially recognized the Taliban government, which has imposed severe restrictions on women and girls under its ultra-conservative interpretation of Islam.
The International Criminal Court’s chief prosecutor on Thursday said he was seeking arrest warrants for senior Taliban leaders over the persecution of women.
China tells Trump’s top diplomat to behave himself in veiled warning
- A China Foreign Ministry statement said FM Wang Yi issued the veiled warning in a phone call with US Secretary of State Marco Rubio
- Rubio, a long-time vocal critic of China, earlier expressed “serious concern over China’s coercive actions against Taiwan and in the South China Sea”
BEIJING: China’s veteran foreign minister has issued a veiled warning to America’s new secretary of state: Behave yourself.
Foreign Minister Wang Yi conveyed the message in a phone call Friday, their first conversation since Marco Rubio’s confirmation as President Donald Trump’s top diplomat four days earlier.
“I hope you will act accordingly,” Wang told Rubio, according to a Foreign Ministry statement, employing a Chinese phrase typically used by a teacher or a boss warning a student or employee to behave and be responsible for their actions.
The short phrase seemed aimed at Rubio’s vocal criticism of China and its human rights record when he was a US senator, which prompted the Chinese government to put sanctions on him twice in 2020.
It can be translated in various ways — in the past, the Foreign Ministry has used “make the right choice” and “be very prudent about what they say or do” rather than “act accordingly.”
The vagueness allows the phrase to express an expectation and deliver a veiled warning, while also maintaining the courtesy necessary for further diplomatic engagement, said Zichen Wang, a research fellow at the Center for China and Globalization, a Chinese think tank.
“What could appear to be confusing is thus an intended effect originating from Chinese traditional wisdom and classic practice of speech,” said Wang, who is currently in a mid-career master’s program at Princeton University.
Rubio, during his confirmation hearing, cited the importance of referring to the original Chinese to understand the words of China’s leader Xi Jinping.
“Don’t read the English translation that they put out because the English translation is never right,” he said.
A US statement on the phone call didn’t mention the phrase. It said Rubio told Wang that the Trump administration would advance US interests in its relationship with China and expressed “serious concern over China’s coercive actions against Taiwan and in the South China Sea.”
Wang was foreign minister in 2020 when China slapped sanctions on Rubio in July and August, first in response to US sanctions on Chinese officials for a crackdown on the Uyghur minority in the Xinjiang region and then over what it regarded as outside interference in Hong Kong.
The sanctions include a ban on travel to China, and while the Chinese government has indicated it will engage with Rubio as secretary of state, it has not explicitly said whether it would allow him to visit the country for talks.
He’s emboldened, he’s organized and he’s still Trump: Takeaways from the president’s opening days
- Within hours of being sworn in, Trump pardoned more than 1,500 people who were convicted or charged in the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol by his supporters
- In a matter of days he uprooted four years of diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives across the federal government
- He has acted to try to end civil service protections for many federal workers and overturn more than a century of law on birthright citizenship
WASHINGTON: President Donald Trump’s first week in office isn’t over yet, but already it offers signals about how his next four years in the White House may unfold.
Some takeaways from the earliest days of his second term:
He’s emboldened like never before
Within hours of being sworn in, Trump pardoned more than 1,500 people who were convicted or charged in the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol by his supporters. Those pardoned include people who attacked, bloodied and beat police officers that day. The Republican president’s decision was at odds with earlier comments by his incoming vice president, JD Vance, and other senior aides that Trump would only let off those who weren’t violent.
The pardons were the first of many moves he made in his first week to reward allies and punish critics, in both significant and subtle ways. It signaled that without the need to worry about reelection — the Constitution bars a third term — or legal consequences after the Supreme Court granted presidents expansive immunity, the new president, backed by a Republican Congress, has little to restrain him.
Trump ended protective security details for Dr. Anthony Fauci, his former COVID-19 adviser, along with former national security adviser John Bolton, former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and his onetime deputy. The security protections had been regularly extended by the Biden administration over credible threats to the men’s lives.
Trump also revoked the security clearances of dozens of former government officials who had criticized him, including Bolton, and directed that the portrait of a former Joint Chiefs of Staff chairman, retired Gen. Mark Milley be removed from the Pentagon walls.
He’s way more organized this time
In his first days in office, Trump demonstrated just how much he and his team had learned from four often-chaotic years in the White House and four more in political exile.
A president’s most valuable resource is time and Trump set out in his first hours to make his mark on the nation with executive orders, policy memoranda and government staffing shake-ups. It reflected a level of sophistication that eluded him in his first term and surpassed his Democratic predecessors in its scale and scope for their opening days in the Oval Office.
Feeling burned by the holdover of Obama administration appointees during his first go-around, Trump swiftly exiled Biden holdovers and moved to test new hires for their fealty to his agenda.
In a matter of days he uprooted four years of diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives across the federal government, sent federal troops to the US-Mexico border and erased Biden’s guardrails on artificial intelligence and cryptocurrency development.
In his first term, Trump’s early executive orders were more showpieces than substance and frequently were blocked by federal courts. This time, Trump is still confronting the limits of his constitutional authorities, but is also far more adept at controlling what is within them.
But Trump is still Trump
An hour after concluding a relatively sedate inaugural address in the Capitol Rotunda, Trump decided to let loose.
Speaking to an overflow crowd of governors, political supports and dignitaries in the Capitol Visitor Center’s Emancipation Hall, Trump ripped in to Biden, the Justice Department and other perceived rivals. He followed it up with an even longer speech to supporters at a downtown arena and in more than 50 minutes of remarks and questions and answers with reporters in the Oval Office.
For all of Trump’s experience and organization, he is still very much the same Donald Trump, and just as intent as before on dominating the center of the national conversation. If not more.
Courts may rein Trump in or give him expansive new powers
He has acted to try to end civil service protections for many federal workers and overturn more than a century of law on birthright citizenship. Such moves have been a magnet for legal challenges. In the case of the birthright citizenship order, it met swift criticism from US District Judge John Coughenour, who put a temporary stay on Trump’s plans.
“I’ve been on the bench for over four decades. I can’t remember another case where the question presented was as clear as this one is,” Coughenour, who was nominated by Republican President Ronald Reagan, told a Justice Department attorney. “This is a blatantly unconstitutional order.”
How those court cases play out will determine not only the fate of some of Trump’s most controversial actions, but just how far any president can go in pushing an agenda.
Trump is betting that oil can grease the economy’s wheels and fix everything
The president likes to call it “liquid gold.”
His main economic assumption is that more oil production by the United States, OPEC would bring down prices. That would reduce overall inflation and cut down on the oil revenues that Russia is using to fund its war in Ukraine.
For Trump, oil is the answer.
He’s betting that fossil fuels are the future, despite the climate change risks.
“The United States has the largest amount of oil and gas of any country on Earth, and we’re going to use it,” Trump said in a Thursday speech. “Not only will this reduce the cost of virtually all goods and services, it’ll make the United States a manufacturing superpower and the world capital of artificial intelligence and crypto”
The problem with billionaires is they’re rivals, not super friends
Trump had the world’s wealthiest men behind him on the dais when he took the oath of office on Monday.
Tesla’s Elon Musk, Amazon’s Jeff Bezos, Meta’s Mark Zuckerberg and LVMH’s Bernard Arnault were all there. SoftBank billionaire Masayoshi Son was in the audience. Later in the week, Oracle’s Larry Ellison and OpenAI’s Sam Altman appeared with Son at the White House to announce an artificial intelligence investment of up to $500 billion.
Musk, the Trump backer who is leading the president’s Department of Government Efficiency effort, posted on X that SoftBank didn’t have the money. Altman, a rival to to Musk on AI, responded over X that the funding was there.
By surrounding himself with the wealthiest people in tech, Trump is also stuck in their drama.
“The people in the deal are very, very smart people,” Trump said Thursday. “But Elon, one of the people, he happens to hate. But I have certain hatreds of people, too.”
Trump has a thing for William McKinley
America’s 25th president has a big fan in Trump. Trump likes the tariffs that were imposed during Republican William McKinley’s presidency and helped to fund the government. Trump has claimed the country was its wealthiest in the 1890s when McKinley was in office.
But McKinley might not be a great economic role model for the 21st century.
For starters, the Tax Foundation found that federal receipts were equal to just 3 percent of the overall economy in 1900, McKinley’s reelection year. Tax revenues are now equal to about 17 percent of the US economy and that’s still not enough to fund the government without running massive deficits. So it would be hard to go full McKinley without some chaos.
As Dartmouth College economist Douglas Irwin noted on X, the economic era defined by McKinley was not that great for many people.
“There was a little something called the Panic of 1893 and the unemployment rate was in double digits from 1894-98!!” Irwin wrote. “Not a great decade!”
