Biden, during Angola visit, speaks on ‘shared history’ of slavery
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(LUANDA, Angola) — President Joe Biden on Tuesday, during his diplomatic trip to Angola, acknowledged America’s “original sin” of slavery and the slave trade that once connected the United States and the African nation.
“I’ve learned that while history can be hidden, it cannot and should not be erased,” Biden said. “It should be faced. It’s our duty to face our history. The good, the bad and the ugly. The whole truth. That’s what great nations do.”
The remarks were delivered at the National Museum of Slavery, where millions of African slaves were baptized before being chained in ships to travel across the Atlantic Ocean.
“We’re gathering in a solemn location because to fully consider how far our two countries have come in our friendship, we have to remember how we began,” Biden said outside the museum on a rainy afternoon.
“We hear them in the wind and the waves: young women, young men born free in the highlands in Angola, only to be captured, bound and forced in a death march along this very coast to this spot by slave traders in the year 1619,” Biden said.
The White House announced earlier this week, as Biden arrived in Angola, that it was giving a $229,000 grant to help with a restoration of the museum and its conservation.
The diplomatic trip is aimed at deepening the relationship between the two countries, and marks the first-ever visit to Angola by a sitting U.S. president and the first sub-Saharan trip by an American leader since President Barack Obama in 2015.
Biden kicked off the visit with a bilateral meeting earlier Tuesday with President João Lourenco in Luanda.
The two men talked about trade and economic opportunities, protecting democracy and the growth of the U.S.-Angola relationship, according to the White House.
Biden celebrated the partnership further in his remarks, saying it’s as “strong as it’s ever been” and that the “United States is all in on Africa’s future.”
“The story of Angola and the United States holds a lesson for the world: two nations with a shared history in evil of human bondage, two nations on opposite sides of the Cold War defining struggle in the late part of the 20th century,” Biden said. “And now two nations standing shoulder to shoulder, working together every day for the mutual benefit of our people.”
“It’s a reminder that no nation need be permanently the adversary of another testament to the human capacity for reconciliation and proof that from every — from the horrors of slavery and war, there is a way forward,” Biden added.
On Wednesday, Biden will tour part of the Lobito rail corridor, which is being partially financed by the U.S., that will help transport goods and materials across Africa — a development seen as a way to counter China’s influence in the region.
White House National Security Communications Adviser John Kirby touted the project in an interview with ABC News’ Alex Presha.
Kirby said the administration was “very confident that the Lobito corridor is going to be a success,” noting it’s a multilateral effort with support from U.S. allies and benefits American companies that will build part of the railway at home before it’s transported to Africa.
Looming over Biden’s historic visit, though, was the decision to pardon his son Hunter Biden. Biden has not answered reporters’ shouted questions on the pardon while he’s been in Angola.
Asked if the pardon has diverted attention away from Biden’s trip, Kirby said Biden is focused on “how important this is, again, not just to the people of Angola and the continent, but to the American people.”
(WASHINGTON) — Tulsi Gabbard — a military veteran and honorary co-chair of President-elect Donald Trump’s transition team — has been chosen by Trump to be his director of national intelligence.
Gabbard left the Democratic Party in 2022 after representing Hawaii in Congress for eight years and running for the party’s 2020 presidential nomination. She was seen as an unusual ally with the Trump campaign, emerging as an adviser during his prep for his debate with Vice President Kamala Harris, who Gabbard had debated in 2020 Democratic primaries.
“For over two decades, Tulsi has fought for our Country and the Freedoms of all Americans. As a former Candidate for the Democrat Presidential Nomination, she has broad support in both Parties – She is now a proud Republican!” Trump said in a statement announcing his pick, which will need to be confirmed by the Senate.
Gabbard recently said it would be a “honor” to serve in a Trump administration as she waited for Trump to make selections for his administration.
“If there’s a way I can help achieve the goal of preventing World War III and nuclear war? Of course,” she said in an interview with NewsNation on Monday night.
She advocated for war to be the “last resort.”
“Trump ended up with some neocons around him who were trying to undermine his objectives so they could feed their goals of continuing to keep us in a perpetual state of war,” Gabbard said, discussing his previous administration.
“This administration has us facing multiple wars on multiple fronts and regions around the world and closer to the brink of nuclear war than we ever have been before,” Gabbard said when she endorsed Trump during a campaign event in Michigan.
“This is one of the main reasons why I’m committed to doing all that I can to send President Trump back to the White House, where he can, once again, serve us as our commander in chief.”
Throughout Trump’s campaign, Gabbard played an active role, whether it was moderating town halls, touring with the group Women for Trump, or mingling throughout Mar-A-Lago.
Gabbard’s appearances highlighted that the coalition of supporters around Trump had shifted. The campaign pointed to Gabbard and former Democratic and independent presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr. to signify the change in his upcoming administration.
Gabbard said in April she had turned down Kennedy’s offer to be his running mate after meeting with him several times. A person close to him told ABC News, “There were definitely meetings, but it didn’t work out.”
(WASHINGTON) — Vice President-elect JD Vance has been working the phones reaching out to senators trying to gauge support for former Florida Rep. Matt Gaetz — who Trump named for the attorney general role, according to three sources with knowledge of the calls.
Gaetz, who resigned from the House shortly after President-elect Donald Trump announced the pick on Thursday, has also been making calls to senators, sources said.
Vance’s actions underscore that he is expected to be the “eyes and ears” for Trump in Congress, a source told ABC News.
This comes as Senate Republicans have fired off warning shots to Trump that his nominee to head up the Department of Justice faces major hurdles in his path to confirmation.
“I know he’s gonna have an uphill battle,” Republican Sen. Joni Ernst told reporters.
Senate Republicans can only afford to lose four votes to confirm Trump’s nominees in the new Congress next year. Republicans are expected to hold 53 seats in the new Congress.
Republican Sen. Kevin Cramer said he has concerns with Gaetz’s attorney general nomination and thinks the former Florida congressman likely wouldn’t be confirmed if the vote took place imminently.
“There are concerns he can’t get across the finish line and we’re going to spend a lot of political capital — I say ‘we’ — a lot of people will spend a lot of political capital on something that even if it got done, you have to wonder if it’s worth it,” Cramer said.
Earlier this week, Democratic Sen. Richard Blumenthal — who sits on the Senate Judiciary Committee, which oversees the attorney general confirmation process — told reporters that he knew of at least five to 10 senators who currently disapproved of Gaetz as the nominee.
Cramer took that estimation a step further.
“I would guess if we had to vote today on the Senate floor, it might be more than that,” Cramer said.
Gaetz was under investigation by the House Ethics Committee for alleged sexual misconduct and illicit drug use. The committee was in its final stages of its investigation, sources confirmed to ABC News.
The committee was slated to meet on Friday to discuss the status of the Gaetz report, but the chairman of the committee confirmed on Friday that the meeting had been “postponed.”
Since Gaetz left his post in the House, the House Ethics Committee no longer has the jurisdiction to continue its investigation into him.
The Justice Department also spent years probing the allegations against Gaetz, including allegations of obstruction of justice, before informing Gaetz last year that it would not bring charges.
Gaetz has long denied any wrongdoing.
House Speaker Mike Johnson said Friday he does not think the House Ethics Committee should release its report into Gaetz.
“I think it’s a terrible breach of protocol and tradition and the spirit of the rules,” Johnson told reporters at the U.S. Capitol.
Johnson told reporters on Friday he didn’t think it was “relevant” for the public to know what’s in the report.
“The rules of the house have always been that a former member is beyond the jurisdiction of the Ethics Committee. And so I — I don’t think that’s relevant.”
Republican Sen. John Cornyn told ABC News that it’s important to have access to what the House Ethics Committee has found in its investigation.
“I think there should not be any limitations on the Senate Judiciary committee’s investigation, including, whatever the House Ethics Committee has generated,” Cornyn said.
Cornyn said he would “absolutely” want to see the House Ethics Committee’s report on Gaetz during his confirmation process.
Chair of the Senate Judiciary Committee, Sen. Dick Durbin, called for the report to be released on Thursday.
“In light of Donald Trump’s selection of former congressman Matt Gaetz to be attorney general, I’m calling on the House Ethics Committee to preserve and share the report and all relevant documentation on Mr. Gates with the Senate Judiciary Committee,” Durbin, a Democrat, said.
On Thursday, Durbin and Senate Democrats sent a letter officially asking for the House Ethics Committee to release its report on Matt Gaetz, including all other relevant documentation.
“The sequence and timing of Mr. Gaetz’s resignation from the House raises serious questions about the contents of the House Ethics Committee report and findings. We cannot allow this critical information from a bipartisan investigation into longstanding public allegations to be hidden from the American people, given that it is directly relevant to the question of whether Mr. Gaetz is qualified and fit to be the next Attorney General of the United States,” the senators wrote.
Durbin noted there is “substantial” precedent to release the report.
On Friday, Durbin said Trump’s various Justice Department nominees, including Gaetz and his personal attorneys, show his intention to “weaponize” the Justice Department for retribution.
“These selections show Donald Trump intends to weaponize the Justice Department to seek vengeance,” Durbin said in a statement. “Donald Trump viewed the Justice Department as his personal law firm during his first term, and these selections — his personal attorneys — are poised to do his bidding.”
The Senate’s new incoming Republican leader, Sen. John Thune, told reporters that he expects the Senate Judiciary Committee to do its job and for the Senate to provide advice and consent that is required under the Constitution.
Thune and Senate Republicans now face a new challenge in the next Congress, with Trump already daring Senate Republicans to defy him. Thune was just minutes into his election victory on Wednesday when Trump announced his controversial attorney general pick in Gaetz. It quickly became apparent that nominees like Gaetz will struggle to gain majority support from the Senate.
There are already questions about Trump’s other nominees, including Tulsi Gabbard for director of national intelligence, Robert F. Kennedy Jr. for secretary of Health and Human Services, and Pete Hegseth, the Fox News personality, who has been nominated to the top Pentagon post.
ABC News’ Benjamin Siegel, Lauren Peller and Isabella Murrary contributed to this report.
(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.
