Special counsel Jack Smith vacated the remaining deadlines in Donald Trump’s election interference case Friday.
In a new filing, Smith requested that “the Court vacate the remaining deadlines in the pretrial schedule to afford the Government time to assess this unprecedented circumstance and determine the course going forward consistent with Department of Justice policy.”
Department of Justice policy prohibits the government from pursuing charges against a sitting president. Smith’s request cites that Trump is “expected to be certified as president-elect on Jan. 6, 2025, and inaugurated on Jan. 20, 2025.”
Prosecutors asked for the government to file “a status report or otherwise inform the court of the result of its deliberations” by December 2.
With this latest development, it seems Trump will escape all culpability for his role in interfering with the certification of the 2020 presidential election and allegedly inciting the January 6 riot at the U.S Capitol.
The same fate is likely for Smith’s other case against Trump, which concerns the president-elect’s alleged mishandling of classified documents during and after his first administration. That case landed in the lap of a pro-Trump judge who dismissed the case—landing her on the short list for Trump’s next attorney general.
As Smith scrambles to wind down his two cases against Trump, it’s worth noting that the former president has promised to fire Smith on his first day in office, and even threatened to have him deported.
This story has been updated.
Reports of a Latino Democratic exodus may be slightly exaggerated.
Anxiety was high after exit polls showed that 46 percent of Latinos, and 55 percent of Latino men, voted for Donald Trump. While it is a significant blow—Joe Biden and Hillary Clinton won Latinos at 65 and 66 percent respectively—a more detailed breakdown by heritage offered some pushback to the generalized narrative.
The Americas Society Council of the Americas research showed that of the largest Latino groups in the United States, Cuban Americans were the only one in which over half of voters chose Trump, as they went for him by a decisive 58 percent. Mexican Americans—by far the largest Latino community in the country—only went 33 percent for Trump, with Puerto Ricans at 37 percent and Central Americans at 36 percent.
This poll reminds us that, like any group, Latinos are not a monolith. And the “new coalition” that Republicans are celebrating may not be as solid as they think. Democrats just need to sift through the rubble and reevaluate how they message to Latino voters.
Donald Trump plans to enact the largest deportation in U.S. history, and private prisons are already sniffing the air at the “unprecedented opportunity” for moneymaking that a second Trump administration will offer.
It seems that investors are betting big on Trump’s plans to detain and then forcibly deport millions of both undocumented and legal immigrants—a move that could send the U.S. economy tumbling while making those who profit off of human suffering rich beyond their wildest dreams.
Geo Group, the country’s largest private prison company, was the biggest winner in the stock market after Trump’s victory was announced Wednesday, according to economic outlet Sherwood. The company saw a 40 percent jump in shares Wednesday alone, and its share price went from $14.18 the day before the election to $24.43 on Thursday.
In 2023, 43 percent of Geo Group’s top-line revenue, more than $2.4 billion, came from contracts with Immigration and Customs Enforcement.
George Zoley, the founder and executive chairman, could barely contain his excitement during an earnings call Thursday. “We expect the incoming Trump administration to take a much more aggressive approach regarding border security as well as interior enforcement, and to request additional funding from Congress to achieve these goals,” Zoley said, according to Bloomberg.
“This is to us an unprecedented opportunity,” he added.
Private prison executives also talked about expanding their services to meet the demand of the government’s plans. Zoley said that GEO Group was “well-positioned” to more than double its number of ICE detention beds, from 13,500 to “over 31,000 beds,” according to HuffPost.
They also discussed expanding their prisoner transport services, as well as their Intensive Supervision Appearance Program, or ISAP, which presents surveillance programs as “alternatives to detention.”
CEO Brian Evans said that the GEO Group’s ISAP programs currently had around 182,000 participants but could be scaled way, way up, to “several hundreds of thousands of participants, and up to several million if necessary.”
Signs indicate that ICE is already looking to expand this program in anticipation of Trump’s administration. HuffPost reported that CoreCivic, another private prison group, said that ICE had posted a request for information about ISAPs on Thursday, a precursor for contract proposals down the road.
It’s already begun: On........