It Could Get Bad Quick

Donald Trump’s earliest personnel announcements show how swiftly he’s forging ahead with his mass-deportation plans.

ABC News reports:

The judge in Donald Trump’s criminal hush money case in New York is set to decide Tuesday whether to throw out Trump's conviction based on the U.S. Supreme Court's recent decision on presidential immunity . . .

If Judge Juan Merchan upholds the conviction, sentencing in the case is scheduled for Nov. 26, less than two months ahead of Trump's inauguration.

Happy Tuesday.

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(Photo by Jabin Botsford / The Washington Post via Getty Images.)

A New Type of Operation Warp Speed

by Andrew Egger

Here’s the bedrock question that dictates how the early days of Donald Trump’s second term will go: Did voters go in with clear eyes about what he was promising? Or did they simply vote out the party holding the bag on inflation, pushing a big button with “CHANGE” printed on it with only a gauzy idea of what would come next?

It won’t take long to find out.

On the campaign trail, Trump routinely pledged to begin “the biggest mass deportation in history” on his first day in office. His earliest personnel announcements make clear he plans to be as good as his word.

Stephen Miller, perhaps the most rabidly anti-immigration (legal and illegal) voice in Trump’s first term, will quarterback Trump’s policy agenda as deputy chief of staff. The New York Times reports that Miller’s portfolio “is expected to be vast and to far exceed what the eventual title will convey.”

Miller will be aided by Tom Homan, Trump’s former acting director of Immigration and Customs Enforcement, whom Trump has now tapped as his “border czar.”

During Trump’s first term, Homan was most notable as the intellectual father of Trump’s most controversial immigration move: the “zero tolerance” policy that separated thousands of migrant parents and children in 2017 and 2018. Ripping families apart, Homan told the Atlantic in 2022, would help discourage other families from making the trek: “Most parents don’t want to be separated.”

Today, he’s setting his sights higher. Last month, a CBS reporter asked Homan whether it would be possible to carry out mass deportations without separating families. “Of course there is,” Homan replied. “Families can be deported together.”

The subtext here, of course, is that many illegal immigrants have U.S.-born children who are American citizens under the 14th Amendment. But Trump has also promised a day one executive order “ending” the constitutional doctrine of birthright citizenship, daring the courts to stop him.

Last night, Homan appeared on Fox News for an interview with Sean Hannity, who floated a possible way Trump could make his deportations at least appear more humane: Why not encourage illegal immigrants to self-report for deportation in exchange for some cash to help them restart their lives, and the possibility of a pathway to return legally within a year or two? Homan didn’t bite. “The ones that want to go home on their own—they found their way across the world to come to the greatest nation on earth. They can find their way home.”

Polling regularly suggested throughout the year that a majority of the public supports mass deportations: a Scripps/Ipsos poll in September put the proposal at 54 percent support, 42 percent opposition. But there’s also reason to believe that public support is a mile wide and an inch deep—that people believe unchecked immigration is out of control but lack a concrete sense of what a mass-deportation operation would look like in practice.

One poll taken by Data for Progress last month presented respondents with a number of hypothetical border-crossers, then asked them simply: Should this person be deported? In two of these hypothetical cases—a person who recently crossed the border without legal status, and a person who crossed the border with a criminal record for a non-violent offense—strong majorities favored deportation. But strong majorities opposed deportation for each of the other hypothetical immigrants: an educated person who had overstayed a visa, a longtime illegal resident with U.S.-born children, a person currently in the United States under Temporary Protected Status, a person awaiting an asylum decision, and a person brought to the United States as a child who has lived here for 20 years.

If 65 percent of Americans oppose deporting non-citizens who have lived here since childhood, with only 19 percent supporting such deportations, how many would cheer the far more berserk policy of deporting U.S. citizens to countries they’ve never even seen?

Voters’ opinions are always in flux. Joe Biden spent the first six months of his presidency enjoying respectable approval ratings—but they cratered in the wake of his first serious policy embarrassment, the botched withdrawal from Afghanistan, and never recovered. Voters who liked a hypothetical Trump return may find themselves repulsed when they see it in action. We’ll soon find out.

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The Policy Matters More Than the Personnel

by William Kristol

You know what can drive you kind of crazy? Looking in the rear view mirror and second-guessing every tactical decision the Harris campaign made.

You know what comes in second in craziness inducement? Trying each day to interpret the tea leaves of Trump’s appointments to his new administration.

Both of these analytical exercises do need to be done. But as I wrote yesterday, the backward looking micro-analysis of the last campaign may be of limited utility. And too much fixation on each announcement of a new Trump apparatchik may also be of limited help going forward.

Following the appointments can be head-spinning:

There’s Stephen Miller at the White House in charge of policy, and Tom Homan at the White House as border czar. Terrible! A powerful and awful White House team!

But Mike Waltz as national security adviser? Could be worse. Same with Lil’ Marco as secretary of state!

And what’s up with Kristi Noem at DHS and Lee Zeldin at EPA? Are these Cabinet secretaries going to matter at all?

Who knows how all the appointments and power relationships and jockeying in Trump world will shake out? It’s interesting, and can be important, and we’ll be covering it all in The Bulwark. Personnel is to some degree policy, so it does matter.

But most of it probably won’t matter too much. It’s Trump world, and the personnel who matter most are Trump and JD Vance and Elon Musk. And it’s MAGA world, so there’ll be a wacky mix of crazies along with opportunists, fanatics along with careerists, populating the new administration.

Some of it will be awful, and much of it merely depressing. There may even be some flashes of light. But my advice would be: Generally, don’t sweat all the appointments.

Do sweat the big and disastrous policies—the mass deportations, the betrayal of Ukraine, and the January 6th pardons.

And do pay attention to the attempted destruction of the civil service and government norms and the rule of law with Schedule F and related Project 2025 efforts, and to the attempt to turn the power ministries—Justice and Defense and CIA—into personal fiefdoms for Trump and Trumpism.

So pay attention when Mark Paoletta, Ginni Thomas’s lawyer, who apparently is in charge of the transition at the Department of Justice for Trump, and who could be White House Counsel or the Attorney General, says: “Career employees are required to implement the president’s plan. . . . If these career DOJ employees won’t implement President Trump’s program in good faith, they should leave.”

So get ready for the attempted purges. Get ready to defend those whom the Trumpists will try to purge. And get ready to explain to the public why it’s important that in the United States civil servants do not swear an oath to President Trump. They do swear an oath to “support and defend the Constitution against all enemies, foreign and domestic” and to “well and faithfully discharge the duties of the office” on which they will enter.

Honoring the Constitution and the office—not Trump and his whims. Administering the rule of law—not carrying out the Leader’s diktats. Those differences matter. They are worth fighting for.

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Quick Hits 

PRESIDENT MUSK: In the wake of Trump’s weekend call for the next Senate majority leader to clear the way for him to make unconfirmed recess appointments, his MAGA allies spent much of yesterday rallying the troops. Foremost among them was Elon Musk: “The new Senate Majority Leader must respond to the will of the people,” he tweeted.

It’s bleakly funny, watching the remaining non-MAGA members of Conservative, Inc. trying to stem the tide. “The ‘will of the people’ is not embodied in the president,” wrote Ed Whelan of the Ethics and Public Policy Center, responding to Musk. “The people also elected senators and House members to do the jobs they are supposed to do. For senators, that includes reviewing and voting on executive-branch nominations.”

Whelan is absolutely right. Naturally, they will pay him zero mind. Maybe Musk will send him a Michael Jordan crying-face meme.

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LINKS DIPLOMACY: Trump’s decisive win last week has forced political recalibrations across the globe, in a variety of odd directions. But perhaps the most hilarious is South Korea President Yoon Suk Yeol who, according to his office, “recently began practicing golf again for the first time in eight years, in preparation for ‘golf diplomacy’ with President-elect Trump.” This seems both smart politics and a hilariously new form of excuse to get some holes in. Sorry, hon. Gonna need you to watch the kids for a few more hours. I need to play a full 18 today. We got the trilateral summit coming up and I need to impress Trump with my short game. You understand, right?

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