Trump threatens U.S. expansion as foreign students called back to campus: Live

Some of Donald Trump’s most prominent critics are bracing for impact.

“By going after me they’re just going to give me a platform,” George Conway told The Independent.

More from The Independent’s White House correspondent Andrew Feinberg on the critics preparing for a fight:

At least 38 people were killed when an Azerbaijan Airlines passenger jet bound for Russia crashed in Kazakhstan in an incident that officials are speculating was caused by a Russian air defense.

One Republican member of Congress appeared to downplay the possibility.

“If reports are true, that Russia did down it, if reports are true, it’s not the first one they did,” Rep. Ryan Zinke told Fox Business on Thursday.

He then went on to suggest that Ukrain should not be in NATO and should conceded the Crimean peninsula to Russia to avoid further attacks.

“It’s … a melting pot, without an answer, unless we have clearly defined objectives. What’s our plan? My position is I don’t think Ukraine is ready for NATO. They’d have to do a massive political reform that they’re not willing to do,” he said.

“And the Crimean peninsula has been, you know, a sticking point … Quite frankly, there’s been 14 wars fought over that Crimean peninsula. I don’t think you’re gonna wrestle it out of the hands of Russia any time soon, and I don’t think you should be going to NATO,” Zinke added.

“I think that’s where President Trump has been starting, I have not talked with him about this specific issue, but in my judgment that would be a good start,” he said.

Former congressman Adam Kinzinger shared the clip, writing: “I seriously dislike these people.”

“I know Zinke. He never would have said this except for now, because he has no soul. He simply wants power and will debase himself for it,” Kinzinger wrote. “History will look on these people with scorn.”

The Trump administration is planning to jail immigrant families together in detention centers before they are removed from the country.

“We’re going to need to construct family facilities,” Tom Homan told The Washington Post in a recent interview. “How many beds we’re going to need will depend on what the data says.”

Trump and Homan have repeatedly said that even U.S. citizen children of non-citizen parents are expected to be deported along with their families.

“Here’s the issue,” Homan told The Post. “You knew you were in the country illegally and chose to have a child. So you put your family in that position.”

Democratic Rep. Ann McLane Kuster didn’t seek re-election this year particially because she feared Trump’s return to office, she told Roll Call.

Kuster was among the last members of Congress in the House gallery on January 6, 2021, and security footage showed that there was only “30 seconds from when I was able to evacuate that the insurrectionists were in that hallway hunting for us with zip ties and bear mace and who knows what else,” she said.

“I just felt like, he tried to kill me once. I’m not available for it again,” she told Roll Call.

“I’m not prepared to be the gladiator, if you will, again for him, with his attack on women and undermining the social fabric,” she added. “I’ve worked very hard on mental health and addiction treatment and on the environment. I’ve done a lot of work on tackling sexual assault and the whole ‘Me To’ era of protecting women in the military and in the workplace, and it appears his approach is to tear that all down.”

Incoming Trump administration official and world’s wealthiest person Elon Musk posted a photograph of himself dressed as Santa Claus “Ozempic Santa” and revealed he’s taking the antidiabetic drug Mounjaro for weight loss.

The “Tools to Address Known Exploitation by Immobilizing Technological Deepfakes on Websites and Networks Act” was attached to a broader bipartisan government funding bill with support from both Republican and Democratic members of Congress.

Elon Musk’s X platform was even involved in lobby efforts to support the legislation, including other actions on child safety.

But his pressure campaign against that government funding bill prompted Republicans to strike that language from the measure altogether. Efforts to revive the spending bill did not include it.

Gustaf Kilander has the details.

More than 1,500 people who have been criminally charged in connection with a mob’s assault on the Capitol — fuelled by his bogus narrative that the 2020 presidential election was rigged and stolen from him — are now awaiting potential pardons for alleged crimes live-streamed to millions of viewers.

Trump could issue mass amnesty to hundreds of defendants as soon as his first day in office, maintaining that even violent offenders could be granted clemency on a “case-by-case” basis.

Here are some of their stories:

More than 1.1 million international students are enrolled in U.S. colleges and universities in the 2023 and 2024 year, and many schools are calling them back to campus before Trump returns to the White House, according to CNN.

International students typically rely on nonimmigrant visas that allow them to study in the U.S. but are not a legal pathway for permanent resident status.

At Cornell University, students who are traveling abroad have been advised to return for the spring semester by January 21 or to “communicate with an advisor about your travel plans and be prepared for delays.”

“A travel ban is likely to go into effect soon after inauguration,” the university warned students late last month, according to a memo obtained by CNN. “The ban is likely to include citizens of the countries targeted in the first Trump administration: Kyrgyzstan, Nigeria, Myanmar, Sudan, Tanzania, Iran, Libya, North Korea, Syria, Venezuela, Yemen, and Somalia. New countries could be added to this list, particularly China and India.”

More than 17,000 international students studied at the University of Southern California during the last academic year — the largest number of international students in the state — and school administrators have urged foreign students in an email to return to campus one week before Trump’s presidency, according to an email reviewed by CNN.

“One or more executive orders impacting travel … and visa processing” may be issued, the email said.

Trump has promised to reinstate a ban on travel into the United States from majority-Muslim countries he implemented in his first administration through a series of executive actions targeting immigration. Joe Biden later rescinded them.

On the campaig trail, the president-elect threatened to take aim at students involved in campus protests against the Israel-Hamas war, and then students who would otherwise be eligible for permanent resident status after graduation will be screened to “exclude all communists, radical Islamists, Hamas supporters, America haters and public charges.”

Trump has also promised to “ban refugee resettlement from terror-infested areas like the Gaza Strip” and to launch an aggressive nationwide deportation operation targeting people living in the country illegally.

“We didn’t take people from certain areas of the world because I didn’t want to have people ripping down and burning our shopping centers and killing people,” he said earlier this year.