Trump’s Sleazy $1 Billion Shakedown of Oil Execs Gives Dems an Opening
Greg Sargent – May 11, 2024
Ever since Donald Trump descended that golden escalator in 2015, a central tenet of his bond with his supporters has been a simple promise to them: I have seen elite corruption and self-dealing from the inside, and I will put that know-how to work for you.
During that campaign, for instance, Trump could boast that not paying taxes “makes me smart,” knowing supporters would hear it in exactly those terms. More recently he has told the MAGA masses that in facing multiple criminal prosecutions, “I am being indicted for you,” as if he’s bravely journeying into the belly of the corrupt system mainly to expose how it’s victimized them.
A new Washington Post report that Trump made explicit policy promises to a roomful of Big Oil executives—while urging them to raise $1 billion for his campaign—is a powerful story in part because it wrecks what’s left of that mystique. In case you didn’t already know this, it shows yet again that if Trump has employed that aforementioned knowledge of elite corruption and self-dealing to any ends in his public career, it’s chiefly to benefit himself.
That counter narrative is a story that Democrats have a big opportunity to tell—if they seize on this news effectively. How might they do that?
For starters, the revelations seem to cry out for more scrutiny from Congress. Democratic Senator Sheldon Whitehouse of Rhode Island, who has been presiding over hearings into the oil industry as chair of the Budget Committee, says it’s “highly likely” that the committee will examine the new revelations.
“This is practically an invitation to ask more questions,” Whitehouse told me, describing this as a “natural extension of the investigation already underway.”
There’s plenty to explore. As the Postreports, an oil company executive at the gathering, held at Trump’s Mar-a-Lago resort last month, complained about environmental regulations under the Biden administration. Then this happened:
Trump’s response stunned several of the executives in the room overlooking the ocean: You all are wealthy enough, he said, that you should raise $1 billion to return me to the White House. At the dinner, he vowed to immediately reverse dozens of President Biden’s environmental rules and policies and stop new ones from being enacted, according to people with knowledge of the meeting, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to describe a private conversation.
Giving $1 billion would be a “deal,” Trump said, because of the taxation and regulation they would avoid thanks to him, according to the people.
Obviously industries have long donated to politicians in both parties in hopes of governance that takes their interests into account, and they explicitly lobby for this as well. But in this case, Trump may have made detailed, concrete promises while simultaneously soliciting a precise amount in campaign contributions.
For instance, the Post reports, Trump vowed to scrap Biden’s ban on permits for new liquefied natural gas exports “on the first day.” He also promised to overturn new tailpipe emission limits designed to encourage the transition to electric vehicles, and he dangled more leases for drilling in the Gulf of Mexico, “a priority that several of the executives raised.”
“The phrase that instantly came to mind as I was reading the story was ‘quid pro quo,’” Whitehouse told me. He also pointed to a new Politico report that oil industry officials are drawing up executive orders for Trump to sign as president. “Put those things together and it starts to look mighty damn corrupt,” Whitehouse said.
So what would be the legislative aim of a congressional inquiry into all this, and what might it look like? One argument is that knowing what transpired between those executives and Trump could inform an analysis of what’s wrong with our campaign finance laws—and how to fix them, says Noah Bookbinder, president for Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington.
The rub here is this: It’s likely that what transpired between the executives and Trump is perfectly legal. It may not have risen to a solicitation of something of value directly in exchange for an official act. But determining whether it was as egregious as it seems, and examining how it may be permissible under current laws, would illuminate the gaping problems with them, Bookbinder noted.
“There’s a clear legislative purpose in determining what happened at the meeting,” Bookbinder said. If this really constituted “an attempt to link significant campaign contributions with specific policy promises,” Bookbinder continued, “that suggests a huge loophole that needs to be closed.”
Or, as Fred Wertheimer, the president of the watchdog group Democracy 21, told me, this episode “certainly looks like an offer of an exchange of policy for money.” Given that this was probably legal, Wertheimer added, Congress could “look at this as an example of what kind of corrupt campaign finance system exists today.”
Such a move could have second-order political effects. Republicans understand that when they use their power in Congress to kick up a lot of noise about something, it induces the media to make more of it than they otherwise might. Democrats could apply that lesson here.
Democrats could also highlight this affair as a clear indication of Trump’s broader priorities. This would entail pointing out that Trump has vowed to roll back Biden’s whole decarbonization agenda, meaning he’d cancel billions of dollars in subsidies and tax incentives fueling a manufacturing renaissance in green energy. This boom is happening in red areas, too: As Ron Brownstein reports, new Brookings Institution data shows that counties that backed Trump in 2020 are reaping outsize gains—including investments and jobs—from the transition to electric vehicles.
Yet Trump would like to see all this reversed, and he’s apparently dangling this before fossil fuel donors while demanding enormous campaign contributions from them. Making this all even more sordid, recall that Trump is channeling millions in donor money to high-priced lawyers who are defending him against multiple criminal prosecutions.
“Hundreds of thousands of good clean energy jobs have been announced, and whole communities are being revitalized as factories are being rebuilt,” Jesse Lee, a Democratic strategist who advises various climate groups, told me. “Trump is promising to crush it all in exchange for a $1 billion check from oil companies to pay his legal fees.” Trump also recently promised billionaire donors he’d keep their taxes low at another recent gala.
As The Atlantic’s David Graham details, Trump has long presented himself as an outsider—despite being a billionaire himself—by purporting to speak traitor-to-his-class blunt truths about how the rich buy politicians. This was always a transparent scam. Yet it seems even harder to sustain now that Trump has apparently placed himself at the center of that very same scam so conspicuously, making his own corrupt self-dealing as explicit as one could imagine.
If elected, Trump would throw into reverse our transition to a decarbonized future, one that’s creating untold numbers of manufacturing jobs—including in the very places that Trump has attacked Democratic elites for supposedly abandoning—all in exchange for mega-checks from chortling fat cats right out of the most garish of Gilded Age cartoons. For good measure, some of that loot could help Trump secure elite impunity for his own corruption and alleged crimes. We can’t say we weren’t warned. Trump has told us all this himself.
Report: Trump may face a $100 million-plus tax bill if he loses IRS audit fight over Chicago tower
Josh Boaks – May 11, 2024
Republican presidential candidate former President Donald Trump speaks at a campaign rally on Wednesday, May 1, 2024, at the Waukesha County Expo Center in Waukesha, Wis. (AP Photo/Morry Gash) (ASSOCIATED PRESS)
WASHINGTON (AP) — Former President Donald Trump may face an IRS bill in excess of $100 million after a government audit indicates he double-dipped on tax losses tied to a Chicago skyscraper, according to a report by The New York Times and ProPublica that drew on a yearslong audit and public filings.
The report’s findings could put renewed focus on Trump’s business career as the presumptive Republican nominee tries to regain the White House after losing in 2020.
Trump used his cachet as a real estate developer and TV star to build a political movement, yet he has refused to release his tax filings as past presidential candidates have. The tax filings that the public does know about have come from past reporting by the Times and a public release of records by Democrats on the House Ways and Means Committee in 2022.
Trump’s presidential campaign provided a statement in son Eric Trump‘s name saying the IRS inquiry “was settled years ago, only to be brought back to life once my father ran for office. We are confident in our position.”
The tax records cited by the report indicate that Trump twice deducted losses on the Trump International Hotel and Tower, which opened in 2009 near the banks of the Chicago River that cuts through that city’s downtown.
The report said Trump initially reported losses of $658 million in his 2008 filings under the premise that the property fit the IRS definition of being “worthless” because condominium sales were disappointing and retail space went unfilled amid a deep U.S. recession.
But in 2010, the published report said, Trump transferred the ownership of the property to a different holding company that he also controlled, using the move to save money on taxes by reporting an additional $168 million in losses over the next decade on the same property.
The report did not have any updates on the status of the IRS inquiry since December 2022, but said Trump could owe more than $100 million, including penalties, if he were to lose the audit battle.
Trump, meanwhile, is appealing a New York judge’s ruling from February after a civil trial that Trump, his company and top executives lied about his wealth on financial statements, conning bankers and insurers who did business with him. In early April, Trump posted a $175 million bond, halting collection of the more than $454 million he owes from the judgment and preventing the state from seizing his assets to satisfy the debt while he appeals.
Democrat President Joe Biden has said that Trump largely owes his fortune to an inheritance from his father, rather than through his own financial acumen. Biden has gone after Trump for not wanting to pay taxes, while his administration has increased IRS funding in order to increase audits of the ultra-wealthy and improve compliance with the federal tax code.
Trump May Owe $100 Million From Double-Dip Tax Breaks, Audit Shows
A previously unknown focus of an I.R.S. audit is a dubious accounting maneuver that effectively meant taking the same write-offs twice on a Chicago skyscraper.
By Russ Buettner andPaul Kiel – May 11, 2024
The I.R.S. believes that former President Donald J. Trump violated a law meant to prevent double-dipping on tax-reducing losses.Credit…Jamie Kelter Davis for The New York Times
This article was published in partnership with ProPublica. Russ Buettner of The New York Times has spent years reporting on the former president’s finances, including decades of his tax returns. Paul Kiel of ProPublica has reported on the I.R.S. and the ways the ultra-wealthy avoid taxes since 2018.
Former President Donald J. Trump used a dubious accounting maneuver to claim improper tax breaks from his troubled Chicago tower, according to an Internal Revenue Service inquiry uncovered by The New York Times and ProPublica. Losing a years long audit battle over the claim could mean a tax bill of more than $100 million.
The 92-story, glass-sheathed skyscraper along the Chicago River is the tallest and, at least for now, the last major construction project by Mr. Trump. Through a combination of cost overruns and the bad luck of opening in the teeth of the Great Recession, it was also a vast money loser.
But when Mr. Trump sought to reap tax benefits from his losses, the I.R.S. has argued, he went too far and in effect wrote off the same losses twice.
The first write-off came on Mr. Trump’s tax return for 2008. With sales lagging far behind projections, he claimed that his investment in the condo-hotel tower met the tax code definition of “worthless,” because his debt on the project meant he would never see a profit. That move resulted in Mr. Trump reporting losses as high as $651 million for the year, The Times and ProPublica found.
There is no indication the I.R.S. challenged that initial claim, though that lack of scrutiny surprised tax experts consulted for this article. But in 2010, Mr. Trump and his tax advisers sought to extract further benefits from the Chicago project, executing a maneuver that would draw years of inquiry from the I.R.S. First, he shifted the company that owned the tower into a new partnership. Because he controlled both companies, it was like moving coins from one pocket to another. Then he used the shift as justification to declare $168 million in additional losses over the next decade.
The issues around Mr. Trump’s case were novel enough that, during his presidency, the I.R.S. undertook a high-level legal review before pursuing it. The Times and ProPublica, in consultation with tax experts, calculated that the revision sought by the I.R.S. would create a new tax bill of more than $100 million, plus interest and potential penalties.
Mr. Trump’s tax records have been a matter of intense speculation since the 2016 presidential campaign, when he defied decades of precedent and refused to release his returns, citing a long-running audit. A first, partial revelation of the substance of the audit came in 2020, when The Times reported that the I.R.S. was disputing a $72.9 million tax refund that Mr. Trump had claimed starting in 2010. That refund, which appeared to be based on Mr. Trump’s reporting of vast losses from his long-failing casinos, equaled every dollar of federal income tax he had paid during his first flush of television riches, from 2005 through 2008, plus interest.
Mr. Trump at the tower in 2008, with his three eldest children. The project kept falling short of its predicted success, with condo units unsold and retail space sitting empty.Credit…Amanda Rivkin/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images
The reporting by The Times and ProPublica about the Chicago tower reveals a second component of Mr. Trump’s quarrel with the I.R.S. This account was pieced together from a collection of public documents, including filings from the New York attorney general’s suit against Mr. Trump in 2022, a passing reference to the audit in a congressional report that same year and an obscure 2019 I.R.S. memorandum that explored the legitimacy of the accounting maneuver. The memorandum did not identify Mr. Trump, but the documents, along with tax records previously obtained by The Times and additional reporting, indicated that the former president was the focus of the inquiry.
It is unclear how the audit battle has progressed since December 2022, when it was mentioned in the congressional report. Audits often drag on for years, and taxpayers have a right to appeal the I.R.S.’s conclusions. The case would typically become public only if Mr. Trump chose to challenge a ruling in court.
In response to questions for this article, Mr. Trump’s son Eric, executive vice president of the Trump Organization, said: “This matter was settled years ago, only to be brought back to life once my father ran for office. We are confident in our position, which is supported by opinion letters from various tax experts, including the former general counsel of the I.R.S.”
An I.R.S. spokesman said federal law prohibited the agency from discussing private taxpayer information.
The outcome of Mr. Trump’s dispute could set a precedent for wealthy people seeking tax benefits from the laws governing partnerships. Those laws are notoriously complex, riddled with uncertainty and under constant assault by lawyers pushing boundaries for their clients. The I.R.S. has inadvertently further invited aggressive positions by rarely auditing partnership tax returns.
The audit represents yet another potential financial threat — albeit a more distant one — for Mr. Trump, the Republicans’ presumptive 2024 presidential nominee. In recent months, he has been ordered to pay $83.3 million in a defamation case and another $454 million in a civil fraud case brought by the New York attorney general, Letitia James. Mr. Trump has appealed both judgments. (He is also in the midst of a criminal trial in Manhattan, where he is accused of covering up a hush-money payment to a porn star in the weeks before the 2016 election.)
Beyond the two episodes under audit, reporting by The Times in recent years has found that, across his business career, Mr. Trump has often used what experts described as highly aggressive — and at times, legally suspect — accounting maneuvers to avoid paying taxes. To the six tax experts consulted for this article, Mr. Trump’s Chicago accounting maneuvers appeared to be questionable and unlikely to withstand scrutiny.
“I think he ripped off the tax system,” said Walter Schwidetzky, a law professor at the University of Baltimore and an expert on partnership taxation.
The old Chicago Sun-Times building, which would be replaced by Mr. Trump’s 92-story, glass-sheathed skyscraper.Credit…Tim Boyle/Getty Images
From ‘$1.2 Billion’ to ‘Worthless’
Mr. Trump struck a deal in 2001 to acquire land and a building that was then home to the Chicago Sun-Times newspaper. Two years later, after publicly toying with the idea of constructing the world’s tallest building there, he unveiled plans for a more modest tower, with 486 residences and 339 “hotel condominiums” that buyers could use for short stays and allow Mr. Trump’s company to rent out. He initially estimated that construction would last until 2007 and cost $650 million.
Mr. Trump placed the project at the center of the first season of “The Apprentice” in 2004, offering the winner a top job there under his tutelage. “It’ll be a mind-boggling job to manage,” Mr. Trump said during the season finale. “When it’s finished in 2007, the Trump International Hotel and Tower, Chicago, could have a value of $1.2 billion and will raise the standards of architectural excellence throughout the world.”
As his cost estimates increased, Mr. Trump arranged to borrow as much as $770 million for the project — $640 million from Deutsche Bank and $130 million from Fortress Investment Group, a hedge fund and private equity company. He personally guaranteed $40 million of the Deutsche loan. Both Deutsche and Fortress then sold off pieces of the loans to other institutions, spreading the risk and potential gain.
Mr. Trump planned to sell enough of the 825 units to pay off his loans when they came due in May 2008. But when that date came, he had sold only 133. At that point, he projected that construction would not be completed until mid-2009, at a revised cost of $859 million.
He asked his lenders for a six-month extension. A briefing document prepared for the lenders, obtained by The Times and ProPublica, said Mr. Trump would contribute $89 million of his own money, $25 million more than his initial plan. The lenders agreed.
But sales did not pick up that summer, with the nation plunged into the financial crisis that would become the Great Recession. When Mr. Trump asked for another extension in September, his lenders refused.
Two months later, Mr. Trump defaulted on his loans and sued his lenders, characterizing the financial crisis as the kind of catastrophe, like a flood or hurricane, covered by the “force majeure” clause of his loan agreement with Deutsche Bank. That, he said, entitled him to an indefinite delay in repaying his loans. Mr. Trump went so far as to blame the bank and its peers for “creating the current financial crisis.” He demanded $3 billion in damages.
At the time, Mr. Trump had paid down his loans with $99 million in sales but still needed more money to complete construction. At some point that year, he concluded that his investment in the tower was worthless, at least as the term is defined in partnership tax law.
Mr. Trump’s worthlessness claim meant only that his stake in 401 Mezz Venture, the L.L.C. that held the tower, was without value because he expected that sales would never produce enough cash to pay off the mortgages, let alone turn a profit.
When he filed his 2008 tax return, he declared business losses of $697 million. Tax records do not fully show which businesses generated that figure. But working with tax experts, The Times and ProPublica calculated that the Chicago worthlessness deduction could have been as high as $651 million, the value of Mr. Trump’s stake in the partnership — about $94 million he had invested and the $557 million loan balance reported on his tax returns that year.
When business owners report losses greater than their income in any given year, they can retain the leftover negative amount as a credit to reduce their taxable income in future years. As it turned out, that tax-reducing power would be of increasing value to Mr. Trump. While many of his businesses continued to lose money, income from “The Apprentice” and licensing and endorsement agreements poured in: $33.3 million in 2009, $44.6 million in 2010 and $51.3 million in 2011.
Mr. Trump’s advisers girded for a potential audit of the worthlessness deduction from the moment they claimed it, according to the filings from the New York attorney general’s lawsuit. Starting in 2009 Mr. Trump’s team excluded the Chicago tower from the frothy annual “statements of financial condition” that Mr. Trump used to boast of his wealth, out of concern that assigning value to the building would conflict with its declared worthlessness, according to the attorney general’s filing. (Those omissions came even as Mr. Trump fraudulently inflated his net worth to qualify for low-interest loans, according to the ruling in the attorney general’s lawsuit.)
Mr. Trump had good reason to fear an audit of the deduction, according to the tax experts consulted for this article. They believe that Mr. Trump’s tax advisers pushed beyond what was defensible.
The worthlessness deduction serves as a way for a taxpayer to benefit from an expected total loss on an investment long before the final results are known. It occupies a fuzzy and counterintuitive slice of tax law. Three decades ago, a federal appeals court ruled that the judgment of a company’s worthlessness could be based in part on the opinion of its owner. After taking the deduction, the owner can keep the “worthless” company and its assets. Subsequent court decisions have only partly clarified the rules. Absent prescribed parameters, tax lawyers have been left to handicap the chances that a worthlessness deduction will withstand an I.R.S. challenge.
There are several categories, with a declining likelihood of success, of money taxpayers can claim to have lost.
The tax experts consulted for this article universally assigned the highest level of certainty to cash spent to acquire an asset. The roughly $94 million that Mr. Trump’s tax returns show he invested in Chicago fell into this category.
Some gave a lower, though still probable, chance of a taxpayer prevailing in declaring a loss based on loans that a lender agreed to forgive. That’s because forgiven debt generally must be declared as income, which can offset that portion of the worthlessness deduction in the same year. A large portion of Mr. Trump’s worthlessness deduction fell in this category, though he did not begin reporting forgiven debt income until two years later, a delay that would have further reduced his chances of prevailing in an audit.
The tax experts gave the weakest chance of surviving a challenge for a worthlessness deduction based on borrowed money for which the outcome was not clear. It reflects a doubly irrational claim — that the taxpayer deserves a tax benefit for losing someone else’s money even before the money has been lost, and that those anticipated future losses can be used to offset real income from other sources. Most of the debt included in Mr. Trump’s worthlessness deduction was based on that risky position.
Including that debt in the deduction was “just not right,” said Monte Jackel, a veteran of the I.R.S. and major accounting firms who often publishes analyses of partnership tax issues.
After declaring the tower “worthless,” Mr. Trump claimed as much as $651 million in losses on the project. He later claimed $168 million more.Credit…Jamie Kelter Davis for The New York Times
A Second Bite at the Apple
Mr. Trump continued to sell units at the Chicago Tower, but still below his costs. Had he done nothing, his 2008 worthlessness deduction would have prevented him from claiming that shortfall as losses again. But in 2010, his lawyers attempted an end-run by merging the entity through which he owned the Chicago tower into another partnership, DJT Holdings L.L.C. In the following years, they piled other businesses, including several of his golf courses, into DJT Holdings.
Those changes had no apparent business purpose. But Mr. Trump’s tax advisers took the position that pooling the Chicago tower’s finances with other businesses entitled him to declare even more tax-reducing losses from his Chicago investment.
His financial problems there continued. More than 100 of the hotel condominiums never sold. Sales of all units totaled only $727 million, far below Mr. Trump’s budgeted costs of $859 million. And some 70,000 square feet of retail space remained vacant because it had been designed without access to foot or vehicle traffic. From 2011 through 2020, Mr. Trump reported $168 million in additional losses from the project.
Those additional write-offs helped Mr. Trump avoid tax liability for his continuing entertainment riches, as well as his unpaid debt from the tower. Starting in 2010, his lenders agreed to forgive about $270 million of those debts. But he was able to delay declaring most of that income until 2014 and spread it out over five years of tax returns, thanks to a provision in the Obama administration’s stimulus bill responding to the Great Recession. In 2018, Mr. Trump reported positive income for the first time in 11 years. But his income tax bill still amounted to only $1.9 million, even as he reported a $25 million gain from the sale of his late father’s assets.
It’s unclear when the I.R.S. began to question the 2010 merger transaction, but the conflict escalated during Mr. Trump’s presidency.
The I.R.S. explained its position in a Technical Advice Memorandum, released in 2019, that identified Mr. Trump only as “A.” Such memos, reserved for cases where the law is unclear, are rare and involve extensive review by senior I.R.S. lawyers. The agency produced only two other such memos that year.
The memos are required to be publicly released with the taxpayer’s information removed, and this one was more heavily redacted than usual. Some partnership specialists wrote papers exploring its meaning and importance to other taxpayers, but none identified taxpayer “A” as the then-sitting president of the United States. The Times and ProPublica matched the facts of the memo to information from Mr. Trump’s tax returns and elsewhere.
The 20-page document is dense with footnotes, calculations and references to various statutes, but the core of the I.R.S.’s position is that Mr. Trump’s 2010 merger violated a law meant to prevent double dipping on tax-reducing losses. If done properly, the merger would have accounted for the fact that Mr. Trump had already written off the full cost of the tower’s construction with his worthlessness deduction.
In the I.R.S. memo, Mr. Trump’s lawyers vigorously disagreed with the agency’s conclusions, saying he had followed the law.
If the I.R.S. prevails, Mr. Trump’s tax returns would look very different, especially those from 2011 to 2017. During those years, he reported $184 million in income from “The Apprentice” and agreements to license his name, along with $219 million from canceled debts. But he paid only $643,431 in income taxes thanks to huge losses on his businesses, including the Chicago tower. The revisions sought by the I.R.S. would require amending his tax returns to remove $146 million in losses and add as much as $218 million in income from condominium sales. That shift of up to $364 million could swing those years out of the red and well into positive territory, creating a tax bill that could easily exceed $100 million.
The only public sign of the Chicago audit came in December 2022, when a congressional Joint Committee on Taxation report on I.R.S. efforts to audit Mr. Trump made an unexplained reference to the section of tax law at issue in the Chicago case. It confirmed that the audit was still underway and could affect Mr. Trump’s tax returns from several years.
That the I.R.S. did not initiate an audit of the 2008 worthlessness deduction puzzled the experts in partnership taxation. Many assumed the understaffed I.R.S. simply had not realized what Mr. Trump had done until the deadline to investigate it had passed.
“I think the government recognized that they screwed up,” and then audited the merger transaction to make up for it, Mr. Jackel said.
The agency’s difficulty in keeping up with Mr. Trump’s maneuvers, experts said, showed that this gray area of tax law was too easy to exploit.
“Congress needs to radically change the rules for the worthlessness deduction,” Professor Schwidetzky said.
Susanne Craig contributed reporting. Read by Eric Jason Martin. Narration produced by Anna Diamond and Krish Seenivasan. Engineered by Steven Szczesniak
Russ Buettner is an investigative reporter. Since 2016, his reporting has focused on the finances of Donald. J. Trump, including articles that revealed tax avoidance schemes evidenced on several decades of his tax returns. In 2019, he shared a Pulitzer Prize for work that revealed the vast inheritance Mr. Trump had received from his father.
California sisters were offered $5,000 from insurance for storm damage. A jury awarded them $18 million
Nathan Solis – May 10, 2024
The San Bernardino Justice Center is shown. Two San Bernardino women said they lived in their home for over five years without heat because of a dispute with their insurance company. (Google Maps)
Two San Bernardino sisters who sued their insurance company for failing to pay to repair flood damage on their home are now $18 million richer after a jury found in their favor and imposed emotional and punitive damages on the insurance company.
The $18-million verdict announced April 18 by a San Bernardino County jury was a far cry from the $5,000 an insurance adjuster had initially offered the women.
Jennifer Garnier’s and Angela Toft’s home in Piñon Hills was flooded by rainwater in February 2019. Muddy water damaged their home, including the heating and air conditioning ducts. The rainwater also damaged the electrical system in their prefabricated home, according to their attorney, Michael Hernandez.
The sisters estimated they needed more than $100,000 to fix the damage, but when they filed a claim with their insurance company, American Reliable, an insurance adjuster instead offered Garnier and Toft only $5,000, Hernandez said.
The sisters sued American Reliable in September 2020 for a breach of contract, claiming that the adjuster did not conduct a proper inspection of the home. The home was uninhabitable, according to their lawsuit, but Garnier and Toft continued to live there because they did not have anywhere else to go.
Arizona-based American Reliable and its parent company, Pennsylvania-based Global Indemnity Group, did not respond to requests for comment.
But in court filings, American Reliable argued that Garnier and Toft repeatedly delayed inspection of their home and, after they filed their lawsuit, they were slow to respond to requests made by the company’s legal team. The women also repeatedly asked for all communication from the insurance company to be made in writing, Hernandez said.
More than four years after they filed their claim, American Reliable said an oversight was made on their end and they offered the sisters $140,000 in October 2023, just a few months before the trial was slated to start. The company explained to Garnier and Toft that they learned about the sisters’ living conditions while deliberating the evidence in the trial, Hernandez said.
“We argued that they had known about those conditions for a long time, but they made the decision to pay my clients because they knew that they would be facing a jury,” Hernandez said.
Garnier and Toft moved ahead with the trial and received estimates to repair their home, but postponed repairs until after the trial was over, because they would be forced to relocate during construction, according to Hernandez.
After a six-week trial, a jury found in favor of the women and awarded them each $3 million for emotional damages. They were awarded $2 million in punitive damages from American Reliable and $10 million in punitive damages from Global Indemnity Group, according to court documents.
The verdict arrives during a tumultuous time in California as insurance companies flee the Golden State, claiming they are unable to provide insurance to homes under threat of wildfires and other natural disasters.
While climate-change-related liability coverage did not overtly factor into Garnier’s and Toft’s case, their home was damaged by floodwaters from a Southern California rainstorm. Forecasts show that climate change will exacerbate flooding in California in the coming years.
In March, State Farm announced that it would not renew policies for 72,000 property owners across the state, citing high inflation, catastrophe exposure, reinsurance costs and the limitation of decades-old insurance regulations as reasons for scaling back policies.
The California Department of Insurance announced a new strategy in September to streamline the rate approval process for insurers in the homeowners, auto and other markets. That process was last changed in 1988.
Suspicious Frying Oil From China Is Hurting US Biofuels Business
Kim Chipman, Tarso Veloso and Michael Hirtzer – May 7, 2024
(Bloomberg) — China is flooding the US with used cooking oil that the biofuel industry says may be tainted, hurting American farmers and President Joe Biden’s push to promote climate-friendly energy.
US imports of used cooking oil, an ingredient to make renewable diesel, more than tripled in 2023 from a year earlier, with more than 50% coming from China, according to the US International Trade Commission. American industry groups and biofuel executives are becoming increasingly worried that a significant amount of those supplies are fraudulent, and are urging the government to tighten scrutiny on the imports.
The heightened suspicions come after the European biofuel industry expressed similar concerns about cooking oil from China last year. Used cooking oil has a better carbon intensity score than feedstocks widely produced in the US like fresh soybean oil, so any potentially tainted imports are benefiting from Biden’s renewables incentives at the expense of American farmers.
Read More: Asia Floods Europe with Green Fuel Suspected to Be Fraudulent
“We’re putting more pressure on the US government to say what are we really importing,” said Todd Becker, chief executive officer of Green Plains Inc., which through its production of ethanol sells distillers corn oil, also a green diesel ingredient. “Somebody’s got to figure out that that’s not all Chinese used cooking oil.”
Tainted used cooking oil would exacerbate a challenging situation for farmers and agriculture companies. Companies including Bunge Global SA and Archer-Daniels-Midland Co. have been counting on soaring demand for crop-based green diesel feedstocks, but competition from foreign imports is eating into profits and jeopardizing ambitious expansion plans. More broadly, there is a risk that illegal shipments could worsen trade tensions between China and the US.
Imports of used cooking oil, or UCO, amounted to 1.4 million metric tons (3.1 billion pounds) in 2023 — equivalent to the oil squeezed from more than 6% of US soybeans crushed to make soyoil last season. In addition to having a more favorable carbon intensity score, UCO is also priced about a third cheaper than refined soyoil.
Read More: Soaring Imports of Green Diesel Feedstocks Disrupt US Soy Market
One of the biggest concerns is that China shippers are adding UCO to fresh palm oil. Palm, the world’s most widely used vegetable oil, is a bane to environmentalists and many countries because the industry is a key driver of deforestation in places like Indonesia as well as tied to labor abuses.
China’s Ministry of Commerce didn’t respond to a faxed request for comment.
The Environmental Protection Agency has had discussions with industry stakeholders, including the National Oilseed Processors Association, about concerns over increased imports of UCO and other food wastes, according to agency spokesman Nick Conger. He said the EPA is aware of the increased imports and that will be a factor in establishing volumes for and implementing the Renewable Fuel Standard Program, a law that mandates how much biofuel must be blended into the country’s fuel supply each year.
Under RFS, producers using UCO or animal waste such as beef tallow are required to keep records that vow the ingredients meet the legal definition of “renewable biomass” as well as describe the ingredient and identify the process used to obtain it.
“We are concerned that unless EPA and other agencies get a handle on this pretty quickly, it could potentially undermine the integrity of the Renewable Fuel Standard,” Geoff Cooper, chief executive officer of Renewable Fuels Association, said in an interview.
The surge in UCO imports is a top issue for NOPA, the trade group representing US seed processing industries for soybeans, canola and other crops. CEO Kailee Tkacz Buller said the group has had talks with federal lawmakers and agencies including the EPA and US Department of Agriculture.
Asia is by far the world’s biggest UCO supplier, led by China. The European Union initiated a probe into Asian imports last year at the request of European biodiesel producers, but the request was dropped. While the producers didn’t explicitly provide a reason for the change, they noted that biodiesel shipments to the EU from China’s Hainan Island — a green-fuel hot spot — immediately stopped after the start of the investigation.
“There is plenty of suspicion and lots of stories and anecdotes floating around,” said Cooper. “It appears to be one of the worst kept secrets out there that this is happening.”
–With assistance from Jennifer A. Dlouhy and Gerson Freitas Jr..
Scientists sound alarm as growing threat looms over coastal states: ‘We are preparing for the wrong disaster’
Doric Sam – May 7, 2024
Scientists have issued a stern warning over the ongoing threat of rising sea levels caused by the ever-changing climate.
What’s happening?
A detailed report by The Washington Post revealed that coastal communities across eight states in the U.S. are facing “one of the most rapid sea level surges on Earth.” Since 2010, satellite data shows that the Gulf of Mexico has experienced twice the global average rate of rising sea levels, with more than a dozen tide gauges spanning from Texas to North Carolina registering sea levels that are at least six inches higher than they were 14 years ago.
While many understandably assume that extreme weather events like hurricanes are the source of these changes, experts revealed that rising water levels face a “newer, more insidious challenge” of accumulation caused by smaller-scale weather events.
“To me, here’s the story: We are preparing for the wrong disaster almost everywhere,” said Rob Young, a professor at Western Carolina University and director of the Program for the Study of Developed Shorelines. “These smaller changes will be a greater threat over time than the next hurricane, no question about it.”
Charleston, South Carolina recorded its fourth-highest water level since measurements began in 1899, with the city’s average rising by seven inches since 2010. Jacksonville, Florida has seen an increase of six inches during that period, but Galveston, Texas experienced a whopping eight-inch increase in 14 years.
Why is this concerning?
These rapidly increasing water levels are uncommon, and to make matters worse, experts believe they are here to stay even if the rate of the rise tapers off eventually.
“Since 2010, it’s very abnormal and unprecedented,” said Jianjun Yin, a climate scientist at the University of Arizona who has studied the changes. “It’s irreversible.”
Rising global temperatures have caused warmer currents that cause water to expand. However, human-induced climate change caused by harmful gases and a lack of care for the environment have also contributed to these concerning issues.
The rising levels have particularly impacted the state of Louisiana, where wetlands that are meant to act as a natural barrier to catastrophic storms are now in a state of “drowning.” This issue would make the state more vulnerable to future major weather events.
Across the rest of the American South, failing septic systems can lead to contaminated water sources. During big storms, roads can fall below the highest tides and leave residents in the community cut off from essential services like medical care. Also, the future value of homes in flood-prone areas is being impacted by rising rates and limited policies from insurance companies.
What can be done about it?
Officials are trying to figure out ways to combat these issues. In Galveston, for example, there is a plan to install several pump stations over the next few years using funding provided through federal grants. However, it was noted that each pump is expected to cost over $60 million, which is likely to exceed the city’s annual tax revenue.
We can help by taking steps to reduce our own carbon footprint, like switching to electric vehicles, supporting local food sources, choosing native species when planting or volunteering for local cleanup projects in areas where rising sea levels pose a threat.
Join our free newsletter for cool news and cool tips that make it easy to help yourself while helping the planet.
Oldest living Japanese American, 110, shares her longevity tips and the 1 food she eats every day
Aryelle Siclait,TODAY – May 7, 2024
With 110 years of life behind her, Yoshiko Miwa isn’t going to wallow in the negative, and she doesn’t want you to either.
The oldest living person of Japanese descent in the United States, according to the Gerontology Research Group, Miwa prefers to focus on the times when she was happiest. She’s lived through the Spanish flu, prohibition, Black Tuesday, World War II, and the losses of her parents, siblings and friends, and still the supercentenarian’s go-to piece of longevity advice is: Don’t dwell.
Miwa is part of the nisei — the second-generation Japanese Americans sent to internment camps during World War II — who often say “gaman,” which translates to “enduring the seemingly unbearable with patience and dignity,” Alan Miwa, her son, tells TODAY.com. It’s often loosely translated to “perseverance,” “patience,” or “tolerance.”
These feelings, Alan Miwa suspects, are born from the resilience of many from his mother’s generation — who had much to endure. Shikata ga nai (仕方がない), a Japanese phrase meaning, “It cannot be helped,” or, “Nothing can be done about it,” is a common saying among them, too, he adds.
Yoshiko Miwa was born Yoshiko Tanaka on Feb. 28, 1914, in Guadalupe, California, to Japanese immigrants. She was the fifth of seven children. When her mother and infant brother died in 1919, her father struggled to care for his family and tend to the farm he owned. So Yoshiko Miwa and her siblings were sent to live at the children’s home founded by their parish, Guadalupe Buddhist Church.
She went on to graduate from Santa Maria High School in 1932, and she studied business at the University of California, Berkeley, graduating in 1936. She married Henry Miwa in 1939.
During the Second World War, the pair and their families were sent to Poston Internment Camp in Arizona before relocating to Hawthorne, California, after the war. When they, along with many other Japanese people, had difficulty finding work upon their release in 1945, her husband founded a plant nursery business, and in 1963, Yoshiko Miwa got her nursing license.
Yoshiko Miwa has three sons, 10 grandchildren, 20 great-grand children and one great-great-grandchild.
Yoshiko Miwa (Alan Y. Miwa)
These days, Alan Miwa says she’s in good health and lives in a care facility, where she gets her hair done weekly and attends church services on Sundays.
In addition to a positive spirit, keeping your mind and body active is the key to a long life, Yoshiko Miwa has said in the past. Ahead she shares a few other aspects of her life that she believes have led to her longevity.
She keeps an ever-expanding roster of hobbies
When Yoshiko Miwa retired, she’d walk 4 miles each morning. In 1990, at 76, she walked a 20K as part of the March of Dimes Walkathon. She’s an avid reader, she practices ikebana (flower arranging), sumi-e (Japanese ink art), sashiko (Japanese stitching), sewing, furniture refinishing and reupholstery.
These days, though, her favorite activity is sleeping, she tells TODAY.com via email.
She wrote an autobiography
After taking a writing course, Yoshiko Miwa penned an autobiography. In it, she recalls her travels to Rome, Japan, Paris and Niagara Falls. She describes life in the children’s home and the long walks to school, her siblings and her childhood with her parents.
“We had a big pasture for the horses and cows to graze on,” she wrote of her family’s farm her in autobiography. “Some days, my sister and I would wander around the pasture to pick wild violets that grew there.”
She loves to eat noodles
Yoshiko Miwa’s a fan of any kind of noodles, eating them every day. “When I was in the children’s home, the cook used to make noodles and I used to love them,” she says. “Today, I like spaghetti, udon, ramen, soba and any other kind of noodles.”
Her faith energizes her
Yoshiko Miwa is grateful to Rev. and Mrs. Issei Matsuura of the Guadalupe Buddhist Church, who took her in when her mother died of the Spanish flu.
Family and friends of Yoshiko Miwa at her 110th birthday celebration at the Gardena Buddhist Church. (Courtesy Alan Y. Miwa)
Yoshiko Miwa was 4 years old when her father turned to the church for help. “The church then started a children’s home and taught us Buddhism, Japanese language, Japanese culture and responsibility,” she recalls. “I’ve always been indebted to Rev. and Mrs. Matsuura.”
… And her family does, too
The Miwa family travels together and hosts reunions. “I’ve been fortunate that my sons, my grandchildren, my great grandchildren and relatives have always been there for me,” says Yoshiko Miwa.
“Because my mother died so young, I have never enjoyed the warmth and love of a family unit,” she wrote in her autobiography. “Later, when I had my children, I keenly felt the wholesomeness of a complete family.”
New EV tax credit rules mean cars with Chinese materials won’t qualify — but there’s a catch
‘Impracticable-to-trace’ elements like Chinese graphite will be temporarily excluded from EV tax credit rules, a boon for US automakers.
Pras Subramanian, Senior Reporter May 6, 2024
New rules from the Treasury Department will make it harder for vehicles to qualify for the full federal electric vehicle tax credit of $7,500 if key components are sourced from China.
But the rules also offered a two-year reprieve on some materials that are mostly sourced from China.
Late last week Treasury released new rules mandating that manufacturers not use critical materials that originate from a Foreign Entity of Concern (FEOC) — including China, Russia, North Korea, or Iran — by 2025 if they want to receive the full EV tax credit.
The federal government, however, is giving automakers some important leeway in sourcing some rarer materials, like graphite.
“The final regulations also identify certain impracticable-to-trace battery materials,” the Treasury said, adding that “qualified manufacturers may temporarily exclude these battery materials from FEOC due diligence and FEOC compliance determinations until 2027.”
Currently, the Inflation Reduction Act’s (IRA) federal EV credit requires that manufacturers ramp up sourcing of battery “critical materials” such as nickel and cobalt from the US and its trade partners and ensure that battery components are increasingly built in North America.
The White House’s goal with the mandates was to reduce the industry’s reliance on battery materials and components from China.
China’s chokehold over battery mineral production is the main concern for automakers who need to diversify supply chains and for the federal government as it looks to boost domestic production of these minerals. Morgan Stanley estimated that 90% of the EV battery supply chain originates from China, with Chinese companies like CATL and BYD dominating the space.
The “impracticable-to-trace” exemption is a boon for automakers in sourcing low-value and hard-to-trace elements like graphite, which is a critical component of a battery’s anode and comes mainly from China.
The automakers and their main trade group, the Alliance for Automotive Innovation (AAI), cheered the 2027 exemption for non-traceable elements.
“This updated guidance from the Treasury Department is something we recommended. It makes good sense for investment, job creation and consumer EV adoption,” said John Bozzella, AAI president and CEO.
This photo taken on Dec. 8, 2022, shows the graphitization process of cathode materials for lithium-ion batteries at a workshop of a company in Hegang City, northeast China’s Heilongjiang Province. (Photo by Xie Jianfei/Xinhua via Getty Images) (Xinhua News Agency via Getty Images)
Bozzella also noted that the EV tax credit was hard enough to qualify for; only 20% of EVs received the credit, and on top of that, requirements will get harder next year. Currently, only 22 vehicles sold in the US qualify for the tax credit, and only 13 of them qualify for the full $7,500.
A restriction on trace or low-value minerals would have meant even fewer (if not all EVs) would no longer qualify for the credit.
“Imagine an EV that complied with all IRA eligibility requirements but is kicked out of the program because of a trace amount of a critical mineral from an FEOC,” Bozzella said. “That makes no sense — especially when you consider the massive investments automakers and suppliers are making in domestic EV manufacturing.”
Sen. Joe Manchin questions Education Secretary Miguel Cardona during a hearing in Washington, on Tuesday, April 30, 2024. (AP Photo/Susan Walsh) (ASSOCIATED PRESS)
“President Biden’s Inflation Reduction Act has unleashed an investment and manufacturing boom in the United States,” Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen said in a statement.
“I’ve seen firsthand in Tennessee, North Carolina, and Kentucky how ecosystems have developed in communities nationwide to onshore the entire clean vehicle supply chain so the United States can lead in the field of green energy.”
The White House also noted that 15 battery gigafactories have been commissioned in the US since the start of Biden’s term in office.
But critics, like Senator Joe Manchin (D-W.Va.), who helped push IRA legislation through the Senate back in 2022, see this loophole as the White House “breaking the law.”
“With this final rule for the consumer credit, their creation of loopholes in the commercial vehicle credit, and their EPA tailpipe rules, the Administration is effectively endorsing ‘Made in China,'” the Democratic senator from West Virginia said in a statement, adding that the White House is “blatantly breaking the law by implementing a bill that they did not pass.”
Manchin has vowed to lead a Congressional Review Act resolution of disapproval for the IRA’s tax credit implementation, which could lead to the repeal of Treasury’s guidance for untraceable elements.
Donald Trump puts America on notice again: If he loses, he won’t go quietly
Doyle McManus – May 6, 2024
Insurrectionists storm the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, after then-President Trump urged them to march to the building where lawmakers were certifying Joe Biden’s election win. (Associated Press)
Donald Trump has put America on notice: If he loses the presidential election, he reserves the right to encourage his followers to fight.
When Time magazine asked Trump whether the election would end in political violence if he loses, the former president replied: “If we don’t win, you know, it depends. It always depends on the fairness of an election.”
“If everything’s honest, I’ll gladly accept the results,” he later told the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel. “If it’s not, you have to fight for the right of the country.”
When Trump says “it depends,” here’s the problem: He has never competed in an election that he acknowledged as fair.
Even when he won the presidential election of 2016, he claimed that Hillary Clinton and the Democrats rigged the count to deny him a popular-vote landslide, contending without evidence that millions of noncitizens had voted in California. The official inquiry he ordered up found no significant irregularities.
In 2020, when he lost to President Biden by 7 million votes, Trump not only claimed the result was illegitimate; he worked for months to overturn it, demanding that state officials “find” thousands of new votes in his favor. When his court challenges failed, he summoned supporters to Washington and urged them to march on the Capitol.
He returned to that apocalyptic theme last week, when he told supporters in Wisconsin that if Biden wins a second term, “we won’t have a country left.”
“Joe Biden is destroying our country,” Trump said at a rally. “The enemy from within is more dangerous than China and Russia. … I actually think our country is not going to survive.”
It was as if he was priming his followers for extreme measures if he doesn’t prevail.
And it was part of a long pattern. In January, he warned that if his four criminal indictments prevent him from winning, the result will be “bedlam in the country.”
“It’s the opening of a Pandora’s box,” he warned.
In March, he posted a video on his social media account showing an image of Biden hog-tied like a prisoner.
“He’s telling us what his intentions are, as he did before Jan. 6,” Juliette Kayyem, a terrorism expert at Harvard University, said recently on PBS. “The language is the language of incitement. … If he loses, we certainly know from what Trump has said — and we also know from what the FBI is telling us — that there are large groups and organizations that are preparing to continue the fight.”
As matters stand in the presidential campaign, that kind of 2020-style crisis may not recur, since Trump stands a good chance of winning.
The average of public opinion polls published by fivethirtyeight.com shows a dead heat in the national popular vote — but it shows Trump winning in all six of the most important swing states: Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Nevada, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin.
Trump used a day off from his New York criminal trial Wednesday to campaign in Michigan and Wisconsin, where he returned to his warnings about an unfair election process.
“The radical-left Democrats rigged the presidential election in 2020,” he claimed untruthfully yet again. “We’re not going to allow them to rig the presidential election in 2024. We won’t have a country left … 2024 is our final battle.”
For months, Biden has sought to remind voters that Trump, if reelected, would run roughshod over the norms of American government and politics.
By reminding voters that he doesn’t accept the duty to recognize the result of an election he loses, Trump has paradoxically bolstered Biden’s case.
For some voters, this election may come down to a choice between preserving democracy and hoping for a return of the low inflation of the Trump years. They may not find it an easy choice.
A survey last year by the Public Religion Research Institute found that 38% of Americans believe the country needs “a leader who is willing to break some rules if that’s what it takes to set things right.” That substantial minority included 48% of Republicans.
When Time’s reporter asked Trump whether his rhetoric about overriding the Constitution and ruling as a “dictator for a day” might alienate voters, the former president disagreed.
No issue in U.S. politics is more contentious right now than the situation at America’s southern border.
Since President Biden took office in 2021 and reversed some of former President Donald Trump’s hard-line restrictions, illegal crossings have surged to a record high of more than 2 million per year, on average.
Democrats and other defenders of Biden’s record say the causes are complicated and predate his presidency: foreign violence, economic hardship and cartels that profit from crossings.
Republicans and other Biden critics argue that the president has effectively encouraged migrants to try their luck by using immigration parole at a historic scale and ordering a pause on most U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) arrests and deportations.
But how could the differences between Biden and Trump reshape U.S. border policy going forward?
November’s election will be the first since 1892 to feature two presidents — one former, one current — competing as the major-party nominees. As a result, this year’s candidates already have extensive White House records to compare and contrast.
Here’s what Biden and Trump have done so far about the border — and what they plan to do next.
Part two in an ongoing series. Read part one: Abortion.
Where they’re coming from
Trump: More than anything else, Trump built his political following on a hard-line approach to immigration.
Starting in 2011, Trump boosted his profile on the right by positioning himself as the leading proponent of the false conspiracy theory that then-President Barack Obama — whose father was from Kenya — wasn’t born in Hawaii as stated on his birth certificate. In 2016, Trump finally admitted that so-called birthers (those who believe Obama isn’t a native-born citizen) were wrong and that “Obama was born in the United States.”
Trump spent much of 2016 vowing to build a physical wall along the border between the U.S. and Mexico — possibly fortified with spikes, electricity and an alligator moat — and make Mexico pay for it.
According to the New York Times, “the idea [of a border wall] was initially suggested by a Trump campaign aide … as a memory aid to prompt the candidate to remember to talk about immigration in his speeches. But it soon became a rallying cry at his events.”
“You know, if it gets a little boring, if I see people starting to sort of, maybe thinking about leaving,” Trump told the Times editorial board, “I just say, ‘We will build the wall!’ And they go nuts.”
Mexican immigrants weren’t the only ones in Trump’s crosshairs. In late 2015, after domestic terrorists Syed Rizwan Farook (a U.S. citizen born in Chicago) and his wife, Tashfeen Malik (a native of Pakistan who’d lived in the U.S. for years), killed 14 people in San Bernardino, Calif., Trump called for “a total and complete shutdown of Muslims entering the United States.”
Around the same time, Trump said he would create a “deportation force” that would expel millions of unauthorized immigrants. “We have at least 11 million people in this country that came in illegally,” he claimed during one primary debate. “They will go out.”
Biden: Biden entered the 2020 Democratic presidential primary under pressure from the left on immigration.
As Obama’s vice president, Biden could claim partial credit for 2012’s Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program, which shielded from deportation about 700,000 immigrants (known as Dreamers) who were brought to the country as children.
“[Obama’s] title of deporter in chief was earned,” Domingo Garcia, president of the League of United Latin American Citizens, said at the time.
As a result, Biden sought to mend ties to Latino voters by calling Obama’s deportation approach a “big mistake” and pledging to reverse Trump’s border policies — while making DACA permanent and providing a pathway to citizenship for millions of undocumented immigrants.
“We’re going to immediately end Trump’s assault on the dignity of immigrant communities,” Biden said in his acceptance speech at 2020’s “virtual” Democratic National Convention. “We’re going to restore our moral standing in the world and our historic role as a safe haven for refugees and asylum seekers.”
What they’ve done as president
Trump: During his four years in office, Trump issued more than 400 executive actions on immigration.
The changes started almost immediately. On Jan. 27, 2017, Trump signed an order seeking to block travelers from seven majority Muslim countries for 90 days while suspending refugee resettlement and prohibiting Syrian refugees indefinitely. Challenged in court, the administration issued revised travel bans as time went on, removing or adding certain countries.
Trump quickly zeroed in on his signature border wall as well. But Congress refused to meet his funding demands, sparking a lengthy government shutdown. Ultimately, Trump managed to build just 458 miles of barrier along the 1,954-mile U.S.-Mexico border — nearly all of them in areas where older barriers already stood.
Mexico did not pay for any of Trump’s border wall.
Frustrated with the continued crush of illegal border crossings, Trump green-lit a plan in 2018 to separate migrant children from their parents or caregivers at the border and then criminally prosecute the adults. Trump eventually ended his “family separation” policy — but only after images of crying, traumatized kids detained in crowded facilities sparked a national outcry.
Despite Trump’s vow to expel “millions” of immigrants, deportations by ICE officers — who were given broad latitude to go after anyone without legal status — averaged just 80,000 per year during his presidency (significantly lower than the annual rate under Obama).
Why? Trump supporters and critics largely agree that the former president’s strict policies — including narrowing who is eligible for asylum; making it more difficult to qualify for permanent residency or citizenship; rolling back DACA; and forcing Central American asylum seekers to wait in Mexico while their cases are processed — “deterred” some migrants from even trying to cross the border.
But while Trump’s supporters described this as deterrence through strength, Trump’s critics called it deterrence through cruelty.
In March 2020, Trump implemented the emergency health authority known as Title 42, which allowed border officials to rapidly turn away asylum seekers on the grounds of preventing the spread of COVID-19 — without giving them a chance to appeal for U.S. protection.
Biden: Biden vowed to reverse Trump’s immigration policies on “day one” of his administration — and it’s a promise he largely kept.
In early 2021, the new president halted construction of the border wall; ended his predecessor’s travel bans; created a task force to reunify migrant families separated under Trump; reinstated DACA; ended Title 42 expulsions for unaccompanied minors; and ordered a pause on most ICE arrests and deportations, issuing new guidelines directing officers to prioritize national security threats, serious criminals and recent border crossers.
At the same time, Biden warned that without more funding and stronger “guardrails,” such as additional asylum judges, the U.S. could “end up with 2 million people on our border” and “a crisis on our hands that complicates what we’re trying to do.”
“Migrants and asylum seekers absolutely should not believe those in the region peddling the idea that the border will suddenly be fully open to process everyone on day one,” said Susan Rice, Biden’s domestic policy adviser. “It will not.”
Initially, Biden kept Title 42 in place (until May 2023), expelling five times more border crossers than Trump did (in large part because more migrants were trying to cross the border illegally).
As a result, national surveys show that voters are unhappy about the border situation and prefer Republicans to handle it. A February Gallup survey found that nearly 20% of those who disapproved of Biden’s job performance cited “illegal immigration/open borders” as the biggest reason — more than any other issue.
What they want to do next
Trump: More of the same — with the emphasis on more.ADVERTISEMENT
Among the ramped-up policies Trump is reportedly planning, according to the New York Times:
“round[ing] up undocumented people already in the United States on a vast scale and detain[ing] them in sprawling camps while they wait to be expelled”
reviving his Muslim travel ban and his COVID-era Title 42 restrictions on the basis “that migrants carry other infectious diseases like tuberculosis”
and “scour[ing] the country for unauthorized immigrants and deport[ing] people by the millions per year” by redirecting military funds and deploying federal agents, local police officers and National Guard soldiers to help ICE.
In an April interview with Time magazine, Trump confirmed that he is plotting “a massive deportation of people” using “local law enforcement” and the National Guard — and “if they weren’t able to,” he added, “then I’d use [other parts of] the military.”
He also refused to “rule out” detention camps, saying “it’s possible that we’ll do it to an extent.”
His inspiration, he has said, is the “Eisenhower model” — a reference to President Dwight D. Eisenhower’s 1954 campaign, known by the ethnic slur “Operation Wetback,” to round up and expel Mexican immigrants in what amounted to a nationwide “show me your papers” rule.
Trump has also said he would suspend refugee resettlement, revive his “Remain in Mexico” policy and end DACA. He has even left the door open to resuming “zero tolerance” family separations.
Biden: Most Democrats spent 2023 avoiding border politics while privately fretting about how the issue might affect the 2024 election. But the president finally bowed to GOP pressure last fall, agreeing to bipartisan border talks; the hope was that “a deal might take the issue off the table for his reelection campaign,” according to the New York Times.
In January, Senate negotiators actually struck a $20 billion bipartisan deal — a deal that gave the GOP much of what it had asked for, including provisions that would restrict claims for parole, raise the bar for asylum, speed the expulsion of migrants and automatically shutter the border if attempted illegal crossings reach a certain average daily threshold.
But Trump balked — and following his lead, Republicans on Capitol Hill effectively doomed the legislation.
“We can fight about the border — or we can fix it,” Biden said during his State of the Union address. “I’m ready to fix it. Send me the border bill now.”
In lieu of legislation, Biden is also considering using the same section of the federal code behind Trump’s most controversial actions, known as 212(f), to issue a “nuclear” executive order that would unilaterally crack down on migrants’ ability to seek asylum at the border after crossing illegally — but that would also risk legal challenges and left-wing backlash.
“Some are suggesting that I should just go ahead and try it,” Biden said in a recent interview with Univision. “And if I get shut down by the court, I get shut down by the court.”
