Trump vows to use military to help carry out mass deportations

Plus, the Republican candidate for Wisconsin’s open Senate seat finally admits defeat. 

Today on his social media platform Truth Social, President-elect Donald Trump confirmed a report that he would be bringing in military personnel to aid in his efforts to deport a million migrants a year. 

Trump responded with an enthusiastic “TRUE!!!” in response to a post by conservative commentator and Judicial Watch president Tom Fitton. 

“Reports are the incoming @RealDonaldTrump administration prepared to declare a national emergency and will use military assets to reverse the Biden invasion through a mass deportation program,” Fitton originally wrote earlier this month.

However, the feasibility of Trump’s proposal has always been in doubt. For reference, the largest raid under his first term involved the arrest of some 680 workers in Mississippi. In order to deport every undocumented person in the country, raids of this scale would have to be conducted 11 times a day for four years. 

This is to say nothing of how such a large number of migrants will be transported, housed and processed, which remains unclear. Civil rights groups like the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) have already sought to elucidate what the program entails. Today, they announced a federal lawsuit to assess the means by which Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) will use aviation contractors, known as ICE Air, to transport detained migrants. 

“Despite the critical role these flights play in the removal system — in many instances, serving as the mechanism for deportation — ICE Air remains shrouded in secrecy,” the lawsuit, filed by the ACLU’s Southern California chapter, reads. “This secrecy has masked responsibility for serious abuses and danger on ICE Air flights.”

There are also economic conditions that would hinder mass deportation. Such efforts could undermine Trump’s campaign rhetoric concerning the lowering of grocery prices, as food production costs are directly connected to migrant labor in the agriculture sector. 

Nevertheless, anti-immigration pundits who back mass deportations immediately sought to downplay Trump’s promise to deploy military service members and technology in a domestic setting. 

"There is a lot of fearmongering from the left and many in the media," Alfonso Aguliar, the one-time chief of the U.S. Office of Citizenship under George W. Bush, told Fox News. "These are not going to be sweeps of neighborhoods, these are going to be targeted arrests … initially going after criminals."

But it’s hard to imagine that the levels of removals being submitted wouldn’t fundamentally upend American society, and require a substantial amount of human rights abuses. 

“There is no way to engage in mass deportation without fundamentally changing the federal government, the national economy, and, ultimately, America itself,” Jeremy Robbins, Executive Director of the American Immigration Council, said following the release of the Council’s report on the financial, social and political costs of mass deportations. 

“Any administration that pursues mass deportation of more than 3 percent of the U.S. population would be pursuing a radical and extremist vision that could break down the very fabric of our society. Rather than proposals that would tear communities apart, politicians should focus on addressing the bipartisan issues facing our immigration system.” 

California banker Eric Hovde concedes Wisconsin Senate election after 12 days

By Richard Eberwein 

California businessman Eric Hovde has conceded Wisconsin’s U.S. Senate race, nearly two weeks after he lost to Sen. Tammy Baldwin (D).

Hovde made his concession via a video posted to the X social media platform on Monday morning.

In the video, Hovde continued to make baseless claims about the race, where he lost to Baldwin by 29,116 votes. A slew of absentee ballots from Milwaukee that were reported in the early hours on Nov. 6 pulled Baldwin ahead of her opponent, which Hovde has falsely labeled as evidence of fraud. Officials routinely said before Election Day that Milwaukee’s absentee ballots wouldn’t be counted until late into election night or early the next day.

Hovde said he refused to call for a recount because according to him, officials would be counting the same ballots “regardless of their integrity.” Hovde also provided no evidence for his claim that “Democratic operatives” placed third-party candidates on the ballot to “siphon votes” from his campaign (American First candidate Thomas Leager received around 400 fewer votes than the margin between Baldwin and Hovde.)

A spokesperson for Baldwin’s office told Heartland Signal that Hovde has not called Senator Baldwin to officially concede the election or congratulate her. Despite repeatedly bashing Baldwin and her partner’s personal lives, Hovde says his supporters think he conducted his campaign with integrity and morality.

Most news organizations, including the Associated Press and ABC News, called the race during the afternoon of Nov. 6. But Hovde had used those baseless claims to delay conceding. Even when he admitted that he lost last Tuesday, he said he would consider a recount before conceding.

In her victory speech from Nov. 7, Baldwin did not mention Hovde but called for politics with less division and fewer lies.

Since jumping into the Senate race in February, Hovde has downplayed the fact that he operates a bank headquartered in Utah and owns a mansion in California worth $7 million. When reports of foreign governments depositing money in his bank, Hovde’s eventual response was “who cares?” Hovde repeatedly called for Baldwin to release her partner’s financial records despite no requirement to do so.

The former candidate also made a series of disparaging statements against groups like the elderly, women and overweight people.