Biden commutes sentences for 1,500, pardons 39 convicted of non-violent crimes
(Official White House Photo by Adam Schultz)
(WASHINGTON) — President Joe Biden said Thursday that he was pardoning 39 people who were convicted of non-violent crimes and was commuting the sentences of 1,500 people on home confinement, who he said have “shown successful rehabilitation and have shown commitment to making their communities stronger and safer.”
The White House described the actions as the “largest single-day grant of clemency in modern history.”
“These commutation recipients, who were placed on home confinement during the COVID pandemic, have successfully reintegrated into their families and communities and have shown that they deserve a second chance,” Biden said in a statement.
According to the White House fact sheet, some of those getting clemency on Thursday include a military veteran who spends time helping church members in poor health, a nurse who has helped in emergency response and an addiction counselor who volunteers to help young people.
The White House hinted that this isn’t the last of Biden’s pardons during his final months in office, saying that “in the coming weeks, the President will take additional steps to provide meaningful second chances and continue to review additional pardons and commutations.”
This is a developing story. Please check back for updates.
(WASHINGTON) — A jobs report scheduled to be released on Friday will mark the final piece of major economic data before Election Day.
Hiring data typically provides a clear-eyed snapshot of the nation’s labor market, but the latest report could prove one of the murkiest in recent memory.
Last month, two hurricanes and a major labor strike at Boeing may have disrupted the survey of employers that the government uses to estimate the nation’s hiring.
Economists expect the U.S. to have added 90,000 jobs in October. That figure would mark a sharp slowdown from 254,000 jobs added in September, but the new report is widely expected to be an undercount due to the one-off disturbances last month.
“Workers who weren’t paid during the survey period due to work disruptions won’t be counted as employed, and workers and businesses may be too busy dealing with the aftermath of the storms to respond to surveys,” Martha Gimbel, executive director of the Budget Lab at Yale University and former director of economic research at Indeed, told ABC News in a statement.
The unemployment rate is expected to have ticked up to 4.2% in October from 4.1% in September.
Hurricane Milton made landfall in Florida as a Category 3 hurricane on Oct. 9. It ultimately left millions without power and much of the state’s gas stations without fuel. In late September, Hurricane Helene made landfall in Florida, prompting recovery efforts that have continued for weeks afterward.
Additionally, roughly 33,000 Boeing workers walked off the job in mid-September, an action that’s expected to manifest as missing jobs for the first time on the October report.
In all, the combination of hurricanes and work stoppages is estimated to have pushed the level of hiring 50,000 jobs lower than where it otherwise would have stood, Bank of America Global Research said in a note to clients this week.
“This probably weighed on payrolls across the board, especially leisure and hospitality,” Bank of America Global Research said, pointing to Hurricane Milton. “There was also likely a minor drag from Helene,” the bank added.
The hiring data is set to arrive at the end of a week in which new releases showed an economy growing at a robust pace while inflation returns to normal levels.
U.S. GDP grew at a 2.8% annualized rate over three months ending in September, U.S. Bureau of Economic Analysis data on Wednesday showed. That figure fell slightly below economists’ expectations, but demonstrated brisk growth that was propelled by resilient consumer spending.
On Thursday, the Federal Reserve’s preferred inflation gauge showed that prices rose 2.1% over the year ending in September. Inflation has slowed dramatically from a peak of about 9% in 2022, though it remains slightly higher than the Fed’s target of 2%.
The jobs report is set to arrive four days before Election Day. It also marks the last piece of significant economic data before the Fed announces its next interest rate decision on Nov. 7.
The Fed is expected to cut interest rates by a quarter of a percentage point, according to the CME FedWatch Tool, a measure of market sentiment.
(WASHINGTON) — Former President Donald Trump has vowed, if he’s elected, to conduct a large-scale deportation operation that some immigration and military experts agree is theoretically possible but also problematic, and could cost tens — even hundreds — of billions a year.
In FY 2023, Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) officers conducted 170,590 administrative arrests, representing a 19.5% increase over the previous year, and more than any year of the Trump presidency.
Should he win a second term, Trump has promised to exponentially increase this work and suggested deporting all of the estimated 11 million people living in this country without legal immigration status.
His team, at various points, has suggested starting with “criminals,” though they have provided few specifics about who would be prioritized.
One cost estimate: $88B – $315B a year
A new report from the American Immigration Council, an immigration rights research and policy firm, estimates that to deport even one million undocumented immigrants a year would cost over $88 billion dollars annually, for a total of $967.9 billion over more than ten years.
The report acknowledges there are significant cost variables depending on how such an operation would be conducted and says its estimate does not take into account the loss of tax revenue from workers nor the bigger economic loss if people self-deport and American businesses lose labor.
A one-time effort to deport even more people in one year annually could cost around $315 billion, the report estimates, including about $167 billion to detain immigrants en masse.
The two largest costs, according to the group, would be hiring additional personal to carry out deportation raids and constructing and staffing mass detention centers. “There would be no way to accomplish this mission without mass detention as an interim step,” the report reads.
Trump campaign official agree one of the biggest logistical hurdles in any mass deportation effort would be constructing and staffing new detention centers as an interim solution.
Stephen Miller, a senior adviser to Trump, has repeatedly said that should Trump win the White House, his team plans to construct facilities to hold between 50,000 – 70,000 people. By comparison, the entire U.S. prison and jail population in 2022, comprising every person held in local, county, state, and federal prisons and jails, is currently 1.9 million people.
The American Immigration Council report estimates that to deport one million immigrants a year would require the United States to “build and maintain 24 times more ICE detention capacity than currently exists.”
There are currently an estimated 1.1 million undocumented immigrants in the country who have received “final orders of removal.” Those individuals, in theory, could be removed immediately by ICE agents, but because of limited resources ICE agents have instead focused lately on those people who have recently arrived or who have dangerous crimes
“I think it is possible that they could execute on this. The human resources would be the hardest for them to overcome. They would have to pull ICE agents from the border if they want to go into cities,” Katie Tobin, a scholar at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace who served as President Joe Biden’s top migration adviser in the National Security Council, told ABC News.
ICE agents currently help Customs and Border Patrol agents on the border, carrying out expedited deportations of new arrivals who have recently crossed into the country illegally and provide logistical support to the Department of Homeland Security.
A new mandate to round up and deport individuals who have been living in the country for some time could mark a significant change for the law enforcement agency.
The American Immigration Council report estimates that to carry out even one million deportations a year, ICE would need to hire around 30,000 new officers, “instantly making it the largest law enforcement agency in the federal government,” the report reads.
Trump campaign: Deportation cost less than migrant costs
The Trump campaign has argued the cost of deportation “pales in comparison” to other costs associated housing and providing social services to recent migrants. “Kamala’s border invasion is unsustainable and is already tearing apart the fabric of our society. Mass deportations of illegal immigrant criminals, and restoring an orderly immigration system, are the only way to solve this crisis,” Karoline Leavitt, national press secretary for Trump’s campaign, told ABC News in a statement.
Trump has promised to mobilize and federalize National Guard units to help with the deportation effort, which would likely be a first for the military.
Under U.S. law, military units are barred from engaging in domestic law enforcement, although Trump has proposed invoking the Insurrection Act, a sweeping law, that could give him broader powers to direct National Guard units as he sees fit.
“We don’t like uniform military in our domestic affairs at all,” William Banks, professor at Syracuse University and Founding Director of the Institute on National Security and Counter Terrorism, told ABC News in a phone interview. “The default is always have the civilians do it. The cops, the state police, the city police, the sheriffs,” he went on.
Using the military for domestic law enforcement would be a fundamental shift, one which Banks argues too few Americans have considered or grappled with.
“It would turn out whole society upside down … all these arguments about him being an autocrat or dictator, it is not a stretch,” he said. For example, uniformed military officers are not trained in law enforcement and if they were asked to conduct civilian arrests there could be significant civil liberties conflicts and violations.
In order to, target and deport immigrants whose have not received “final orders of removal” but whose cases are still pending, Trump has discussed using another rare legal maneuver to himself broad authority to target and detain immigrants without a hearing, specifically invoking the Alien Enemies Act of 1798, a wartime law last used during World War II to detain Japanese Americans.
Trump would also need other nations to accept deported individuals and allow deportation flights to land back on their soil.
Katie Tobin, a scholar at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace who served as President Joe Biden’s top migration adviser on the National Security Council, told ABC News, “Last time the Trump administration did not hesitate to threaten punitive action to countries that didn’t cooperate with them on immigration, but there are some practical issues there in terms of just how many flights a country like Guatemala or Colombia can accept per week.”
There would likely be less tangible and more indirect costs of a mass deportation effort as well. Inevitably there would be ripple effects throughout the economy. In 2022 alone, undocumented immigrant households paid $46.8 billion in federal taxes and $29.3 billion in state and local taxes, according to the report, and “undocumented immigrants also contributed $22.6 billion to Social Security and $5.7 billion to Medicare.”
The human toll
Experts also predict that if a future Trump administration were to follow through with some large, initial and highly visible deportation operation, a significant number of individuals and families would likely choose to self-deport in order to avoid family separations or having to spend time in a military-style detention center.
The authors of the American Immigration Council report argue that the effect of a mass deportation program, as described by Trump and his advisers, would “almost certainly threaten the well-being” of even those immigrants with lawful status in the United States and “even, potentially, naturalized U.S. citizens and their communities.”
“They would live under the shadow of weaponized enforcement as the U.S. went after their neighbors, and, as social scientists found under the Trump administration, would be prone to worry they and their children might be next,” the report says.
In recent interviews and conversations with reporters, Trump’s running mate Ohio Sen. JD Vance has dodged the question of whether a future Trump administration would separate families during a new deportation effort or in detention centers along the border.
“If a guy commits gun violence and is taken to prison, that’s family separation, which, of course, is tragic for the children, but you’ve got to prosecute criminals, and you have to enforce the law,” Vance told reporters in September when visiting the border.
(WASHINGTON, D.C.) — President-elect Donald Trump announced on Wednesday that he has chosen Rep. Matt Gaetz as his pick for attorney general, a move that, if he’s confirmed by the Senate, would place a firebrand and one of Trump’s most loyal allies at the head of the Justice Department.
“Matt is a deeply gifted and tenacious attorney, trained at the William & Mary College of Law, who has distinguished himself in Congress through his focus on achieving desperately needed reform at the Department of Justice,” Trump said in his social media post.
Gaetz is an explosive selection by Trump to be the chief law enforcement officer of the federal government, leading the very same executive branch of government that spent years investigating allegations regarding the Florida congressman. Gaetz was informed that the Justice Department would not seek changes just last year. He has long denied any wrongdoing.
House Speaker Mike Johnson announced later Wednesday that Gaetz offered his resignation from Congress effective immediately.
Johnson said the resignation took him by “surprise” but that the Florida congressman did so to “start the clock” on the process for Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis to call a special election to fill the vacancy.
“So Matt would have done us a great service by making that decision, as he did, on the fly. And so we’re grateful for that so we move forward,” Johnson added.
Gaetz’s resignation will narrow the slim majority that Republicans will have in the new Congress in January, but he represents a reliably Republican district in the Florida Panhandle.
Gaetz has been a member of Congress since winning in 2017, riding the MAGA wave that brought Trump to Washington eight years ago. Over the years, Gaetz has become one of Trump’s most ardent, and according to some allies, effective, defenders in Washington while also growing close to Trump.
Gaetz has been down at Trump’s residence in Mar-a-Lago almost every day since Election Day, helping make suggestions and input on other administration selections, sources tell ABC News. Gaetz was also seen traveling with Trump in his motorcade during his visit to Washington on Wednesday.
Notably, Gaetz is very close with Trump’s newly selected chief of staff, Susie Wiles, who also has deep and storied roots in Florida politics.
Beginning in 2019, Gaetz faced a yearslong Justice Department investigation into allegations related to sex trafficking and obstruction of justice. Gaetz has long denied any wrongdoing, and the Justice Department informed Gaetz in 2023 that it was declining to bring charges against him after its investigation.
The investigation into Gaetz stemmed from a probe into the Florida congressman’s one-time friend, former Seminole County Tax Collector Joel Greenberg, who was sentenced in 2022 to 11 years in federal prison after pleading guilty to multiple charges, including sex trafficking a minor and introducing the minor to other “adult men.”
Since the Justice Department declined to charge Gaetz following its investigation, the Florida congressman has faced an ongoing probe by the House Ethics Committee regarding the same allegations.
In September, Gaetz released a lengthy statement concerning the ongoing House Ethics probe into his alleged conduct. Gaetz stated that he would no longer voluntarily participate in the probe and included a string of answers seemingly to questions the committee asked the Florida congressman earlier that month.
The House Ethics Committee drops an investigation into a member once they leave Congress, House Ethics Committee Chairman Michael Guest told ABC News.
“You know, once a member is no longer a member of Congress, then ethics has no jurisdiction. So if Matt Gaetz were to be appointed as the Attorney General, the ethics investigation is currently ongoing, would cease at that point,” Guest said.
House Republicans were meeting behind closed doors when Trump announced he would be nominating Gaetz to serve as attorney general. There was an audible gasp in the room, several members who were inside told ABC News.
Many House Republicans on Capitol Hill are reacting to Trump’s pick of Gaetz.
House Majority Leader Steve Scalise and Rep. Guest expressed support for Trump’s selection of Gaetz as attorney general. Republican Rep. Max Miller, a former aide to Donald Trump who was particularly critical of Gaetz following Florida congressman’s efforts to oust former Speaker Kevin McCarthy last year, said the pick was “silly” and that Gaetz would “never get confirmed by the Senate.”
“I believe that the President is probably rewarding him for being such a loyal soldier to the president, but the President is smart enough, and his team is smart enough to know that Mr. Gaetz will never get confirmed by the Senate. Whatsoever,” Miller said.
ABC News’ Rachel Scott, Lauren Peller and Isabella Murray contributed to this report.
