Today’s notice: Immigration lawyers expect life to get very busy, very soon. There’s a word you can’t say if you want to be taken seriously in Trump’s D.C. And, the people who want Trump to get the Nobel Prize.
How Immigration Lawyers Are Preparing for Next Week
Monday’s inauguration of Donald Trump is the day immigration advocates turn their phone notifications on to the loudest setting and leave them that way for the foreseeable future. They expect an immediate flurry of actions on immigration.
NOTUS’ Casey Murray talked to a lot of folks who fought the Trump White House in court the last time around about what they’re planning for. “We have more experience, but unpredictability,” Thomas A. Saenz, president of the Mexican American Legal Defense and Educational Fund, told Casey. “Because government under Trump is characterized by chaos, [it] makes you pause about whether you’re prepared.”
Casey reports that advocates seasoned from the last administration have been making plans for months and are “prepping for multiple possibilities on birthright citizenship, ICE raids and detention.” (For their part, Trump supporters say they’re more seasoned, too. Ken Cuccinelli, a former acting DHS secretary for Trump, told Puck recently that the administration “will benefit from a lot of that litigation having happened in the first term.”)
There’s also been a change in the Democratic Party that immigration advocates are tracking closely. In his first term, they could count on Democrats to more or less stand full-square behind them as they took on Trump. But even before the election, the party was signaling a shift to the right on immigration policy. The advocates are hoping they can get the public on their side, despite polls showing voters shifting toward Trump on the issue.
“We’re certainly on our own, politically speaking,” attorney Eric Lee, who is running a group to defend the rights of visa applicants, told Casey.
—Evan McMorris-Santoro | Read Casey’s story.
The E-Word in Trump’s Washington
There is no doubt D.C.’s political lexicon is evolving as the inauguration draws closer, and Pete Hegseth’s testimony this week identified one word that is decidedly out among Republicans.
“Our standards will be high and they will be equal,” Hegseth said of the Defense Department he’ll run if confirmed. “Not equitable. That’s a very different word.”
Hegseth is not the only one saying it. “Equitable” is a word that, in the new circles of power, means “reflexively, America is bad,” one GOP consultant advising clients on navigating Trump’s Washington told NOTUS.
DEI (the “E” stands for “equity,” remember) is a powerful rallying cry for conservatives, and anger over it seemingly pops up in every conversation. NOTUS’ Torrence Banks reports today on how the acronym is playing a central role in GOP criticisms of California’s wildfire response.
But there’s more than just rallying going on here. NOTUS’ Violet Jira had this story on a yearslong coordinated MAGAworld campaign to flood the EEOC with “reverse discrimination” complaints. The Biden administration largely ignored them, but new leadership could quickly change tack.
I called Heritage researcher Jonathan Butcher, who has written extensively on the opposition to DEI, to talk about what “equitable” vs “equal” means now.
“You have to sort of set the origination of the words aside, and we have to look at what’s been done over the 20th century with these two terms,” he said. “If you hear ‘equity,’ it means ‘you are aligned with the woke orthodoxy of racial preferences and radical gender policies.’”
—Evan McMorris-Santoro
Front Page
- Republicans Insist They’ll Work Out a Tax Deal by Johnson’s Reconciliation Deadline: But the details are still a long way off.
- Georgia Ethics Commission Fines Stacey Abrams’ Old Group: The voting rights group illegally spent millions on Abrams’ governor campaign.
- New Jersey Democrats and New York Republicans Agree: Congestion Pricing Must End: Some Republicans have already asked incoming President Donald Trump to help stop congestion pricing.
- Republicans Don’t Want to Talk About Scott Bessent’s Work With George Soros: “I’m more interested in what we’re doing going forward,” Sen. Bill Cassidy said.
- Republicans Already Want to Ban This TikTok Alternative: “It provides an opportunity for the CCP to further influence Americans,” Rep. Dan Newhouse said of Xiaohongshu, known as “RedNote” in the U.S.
- Russell Vought, Co-Author of Project 2025, Spent His Hearing Distancing Himself From Project 2025: Democrats focused on the controversial “blueprint” for Trump’s presidency.
Republicans Already Nominating Trump for a Nobel Peace Prize
President Joe Biden announced a ceasefire deal between Israel and Hamas that was more than a year in the making and built upon a framework Biden’s administration presented last May. Biden’s team involved Trump’s team in conversations after the election, and Trump’s Middle East envoy, Steve Witkoff, joined Biden’s negotiator, Brett McGurk, in Doha for the final four days of talks, a Biden official said. So naturally…
“He should get the Nobel Peace Prize,” Rep. Joe Wilson told us of Trump’s role in the ceasefire deal.
(As for Biden, when a reporter asked if Trump should get credit for the deal, the president retorted: “Is that a joke?”)
—John T. Seward | Read the story.
Point, Counterpoint: Democrats’ Money Wars
As candidates for Democratic National Committee chair head to a forum in Detroit today, the party is wrestling with an ideological debate: To take big money, or fight big money?
“It makes no sense to tie one hand behind our back and put ourselves at a disadvantage if our opponents on the other side of the aisle have more resources,” Rep. Marilyn Strickland, a DNC member, told NOTUS’ Calen Razor.
On the other hand, some leading contenders for DNC chair say big corporate donors are exactly what the party needs to stand against.
“We need to stand side by side with those who want to end Citizens United, get corporate money out of politics, overhaul our campaign finance system and return the power to grassroots donors,” Ken Martin said at an Our Revolution candidate forum this week.
Not Us
We know NOTUS reporters can’t cover it all. Here’s some other great hits by… not us.
- Harvard Hires Trump-Linked Lobbying Firm Ahead of Inauguration by Dhruv T. Patel and Grace E. Yoon for The Harvard Crimson
- The Border Propagandist by Francesca D’Annunzio, Melissa del Bosque and Monica Camacho for the Texas Observer
- Maryland needs more power lines. So why does everybody hate this one? by Adam Willis for The Baltimore Banner
- How mega-polluters take advantage of billions in green loans by Sasha Chavkin for The Examination
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