Trump Immigration Crackdown; Battle Over Birthright Citizenship; Record Snow In South; Soup Cough Drops?

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3:39this week. Here's today's episode.

3:45Hey, everybody. It is Wednesday, January 22nd, 2025. You're listening to the Mo News Podcast. I'm Mo Shununu. And I'm Jill Wagner. This is the place where we bring you just the facts. And we read all the news and read between the lines so you don't have to. And Jill, in your household, celebrations continue over the big national championship win in college football. That's right. Ohio State, the national champions, as we reported on Tuesday. And my husband soaking it all in and enjoying it. Yeah. Much productivity in the household in the past 24 hours? Zero. No, just pure celebrations. First win in like a decade for the Buckeyes, right?

4:25Yeah. And it comes after the big loss to Michigan in the regular season. So the lesson, I guess, to take away from it is never give up, because who would have thought that the Ohio State Buckeyes would wind up winning it all? Yeah, it's a cool setup now in college football, a 12-team playoff. So it gives an opportunity to teams that wouldn't typically have gotten a chance to play in the National Championship game, specifically this year in Notre Dame and Ohio State. They both made their runs, and then Ohio State's just lasted a bit longer. So congrats to all the Buckeye fans, including a couple on our team here at Mo News.

5:00and good luck to the Fighting Irish, who they haven't won a championship, Jill, since the 80s. They'll get it one day. All right, Motion, I think you and I need to start getting used to a different news cycle because we're busy. Jill, I will note, I was talking to friends in the White House press corps. In the first 48 hours of the, it's not even been 48 hours as we record this, in the first 36 hours of the Trump presidency, they believe he has now taken more questions from the media than Biden did in a year. And so just a remarkable amount of news coming out of Washington right now. Right. Whatever your thoughts are on Donald Trump, he is accessible.

5:38He's accessible. He's talking about everything. But of course, you know, there are people who vehemently disagree with some of the things that he's doing. Nonetheless, he is talking and explaining why he's doing what he's doing. And so we'll try to get to some of the headlines made in the last 24 hours here on this podcast. All right. And let's get to those headlines, starting with politics and the first full day of the second Trump term. His plans to crack down on illegal immigration, specifically in Chicago, and pushback on his order to end birthright citizenship. Twenty two states have already filed suit.

6:09Also, some pushback on Trump's sweeping pardons of everyone charged in the January 6th storming of the Capitol. In other Trump news, a massive investment in AI and his first cabinet pick, Marco Rubio for secretary of state, now confirmed. to the weather where there's historic snow in Florida, Louisiana and Texas. Moshe, it's being called a once in a generation storm. Jill, we had to look twice outside Cafe Du Monde in New Orleans. What you thought were streets full of powdered sugar, totally understandable. Actual snow there down in Nola. In a prisoner swap, the Taliban has released two American citizens.

6:48And in much lighter news, chicken noodle soup. But make it a sucking candy. We'll explain. We haven't got a chance to try these, we will admit. And Mosh has on this day in history. Jill, we'll tell you about the most famous Super Bowl commercial of all time here as we near this year's Super Bowl. OK, starting with all the news related to illegal immigration. Trump's incoming border czar Tom Homan has been telling Chicagoans that the largest deportation operation in history was set to start on Tuesday. However, as of Tuesday night, it was uncertain whether the Chicago raids will actually begin as planned, given the extremely cold temperatures and leaks about the operation.

7:30Areas in Chicago with big Latino populations were pretty empty during most of the day Tuesday. Federal authorities are planning to go after several hundred people in this country illegally with criminal records. Jill, there is talk that all the leaks about the depredations beginning might have made things more challenging for Immigrations and Customs Enforcement. So it appears while they had planned to be in Chicago there, the heads up didn't make life easy for federal authorities. So they're reconsidering right now how they're going to do this to ensure that all the places they plan on going don't leak out in the media in advance.

8:04It comes as Trump signed a number of executive orders related to the issue in just his first 24 hours in office. That includes him calling for the State Department to start the process of designating certain cartels as global terrorists and foreign terrorist organizations. So the reason for this is because it would give his administration more power to impose economic penalties, travel restrictions and potentially even take military action inside of foreign nations. In the executive order he issued on Monday, Trump named two gangs in particular that operate inside of the United States, the Venezuelan Tren de Aragua and the El Salvadoran MS-13, which is very active here on Long Island.

8:44Using the International Emergency Economic Powers Act, the government could take additional steps to disrupt the financial networks of the gangs. Trump was asked about whether this means the U.S. military will move inside of Mexico and other countries. Take a listen to this exchange from inside of the Oval Office as journalists asked him questions on Monday night. Cartels are now going to be seen as foreign terror organizations. Would you think about ordering U.S. Special Forces into Mexico to take them out? Could happen. Stranger things have happened. So it's interesting here, Jill, naming the drug cartels as terror groups and what that opens up to the U.S.

9:22military here, what it means to U.S.-Mexico relations, and other side of this, asylum seekers. You can now make a claim in the U.S. that you live in an area controlled by a terrorist group and make a claim that you should have a right to seek asylum here in the U.S. So there have been some people internally within the Trump administration who were pushing back on the idea of making drug cartels terror groups, especially with asylum seekers in mind, that there's a downside here to naming the drug cartels as terror groups. Nonetheless, significant move here, putting an MS-13 and other cartels at the rank of an Al-Qaeda or Hamas or ISIS or any other terror group around the world here.

10:03It comes as there was just a slew of Trump executive orders in the past day here, including some that involve U.S. procedures here in the country. You mentioned the potential deportation raids in Chicago. Well, there are now new directives from the Trump administration on where raids can happen. For years now, going back to the Obama years, federal immigration authorities had policies they would not do raids in areas like churches and schools, what they call sensitive areas. Well, according to Trump, criminals will no longer be able to hide in America's schools and churches to avoid arrest. The idea before was they didn't want to stoke fear in immigrant communities that would keep children from going to school, stop people from going to hospitals.

10:45Nonetheless, it appears those directives have changed. One of the immigration moves getting the most attention and now the most lawsuits. Monday, President Trump signed an executive order aiming to end birthright citizenship. Now a group of 18 Democratic state attorneys general joined the legal fight to block the move, describing it as unconstitutional. Democratic state attorneys general from New Jersey to California signed on to the lawsuit filed Tuesday in Massachusetts. The city of San Francisco and Washington, D.C. are also suing. The case could end up becoming the first major Supreme Court showdown for Trump's second term agenda.

11:22In short, Trump is trying to end the fact that any baby born in America is automatically a citizen. The 14th Amendment, which was ratified in 1868 after the Civil War, says that all persons, quote, born or naturalized in the United States and subject to the jurisdiction thereof are automatically citizens. So this language was crafted and added to the Constitution to establish full citizenship rights for black Americans. But since then, it has been interpreted for more than a century by courts as also granting rights to all children born on U.S. soil. And this is regardless of their parents' immigration status.

12:01In his executive order, however, Trump interpreted the amendment's language as excluding babies born in the United States to parents who are unlawfully present or who have lawful but temporary status. Trump called birthright citizenship ridiculous, claiming that we are the only country that does it. However, dozens of other nations, including Canada, Brazil and Mexico, also have forms of birthright citizenship that are comparable to the United States. On Monday, there was a second legal action against this. The American Civil Liberties Union filed a lawsuit aimed at blocking Trump's order. The executive director there saying denying citizenship to U.S.-born children is not only unconstitutional, it is also a reckless and ruthless repudiation of American values.

12:45This is an expert Trump administration, even conservative legal scholars, even those who are sympathetic. Trump, who agree with him overall on the issue, know that this is an uphill fight in the courts. Trump is effectively trying to overturn a constitutional amendment, the 14th Amendment, with a simple executive order. I was watching an appearance by the former Trump attorney general, Bill Barr, from his first term over on Fox News, who was like, listen, the executive order sounds great, but doesn't have that much authority. You do need at least Congress to pass a law here, but you potentially need a constitutional amendment, given how many cases the courts have faced related to the 14th Amendment over the course of more than a century here, There are years of precedent that if you were born here, regardless of your parents' legal status, you are an American.

13:31And so that is the interpretation of the 14th Amendment. And you can't just sign an order. Otherwise, you do need Congress to get involved or even, again, further an amendment to the Constitution that revises the 14th Amendment. However, at the same time, the Trump order here gets the ball rolling on a national conversation. This is one of his goals about birthright citizenship that could lead to an eventual constitutional amendment here. Now, amending the Constitution, we've only done it a few times in American history. It's incredibly challenging. You need a majority of states to sign on. You need Congress to go through it.

14:08That's an option. And so this will be difficult. And Trump sort of acknowledged it in the Oval Office as he was asked about it as he was going through all of his executive orders. He had media in the room. And they're like, well, what about this one? What about this one? He's like, we'll see about this one, you know. One of the many things he signed related to immigration. Jill, before we leave the issue, a remarkable moment yesterday in Washington as part of inauguration festivities. There's a prayer breakfast at the National Cathedral. Trump and Vance and their families, among a number of officials, were there on Tuesday.

14:39And that's where there were a number of religious officials who spoke, including a bishop. This is the Right Reverend Marion Edgar Budde. and she made a point with the president in the room of speaking directly to him, speaking critically of him. We should note that Buddy has been critical of Trump in the past and so she's a bishop there and she took the opportunity to say, it's incumbent upon us to speak the truth and I want you, Mr. President, to show mercy to Americans who are scared right now. Those include LGBTQ Americans. She included illegal immigrants in there. Here, take a listen to a bit of what she had to say.

15:13There are gay, lesbian and transgender children in democratic, republican and independent families. Some who fear for their lives. And the people, the people who pick our crops and clean our office buildings, who labor in poultry farms and meatpacking plants, who wash the dishes after we eat in restaurants and work the night shifts in hospitals, They may not be citizens or have the proper documentation, but the vast majority of immigrants are not criminals. They pay taxes and are good neighbors. They are faithful members of our churches and mosques, synagogues, Wadara, and temples. I ask you to have mercy, Mr.

16:08President, on those in our communities whose children fear that their parents will be taken away. Jill, pretty remarkable that this bishop was like, you know what? I'm going to go for it here in the ceremony. A lot of people, if you read the comments, we posted the clip over on Instagram where you see the side by side of Trump staring at her in one camera while she speaks. People who are big advocates of hers being like, yeah, you know, I'm so glad she spoke to him. Others who are like she was completely out of line. That was not something she should have been doing at the prayer breakfast. You know, she was very policy oriented here at a time where she had just been praying for the country.

16:43Trump, nonetheless, was asked about it afterwards and told the media as he was walking on White House Browns. He didn't like the service. They need to do better over there at the church. Yeah, they thought this was the easy part, right? You just got to show up. You're not going to really have to deal with politics at all. Well, yeah, you know, he's in a prayer breakfast. He thought it was just like being, you know, like we're going to pray for the country. We're going to pray for the president, etc. etc. And the bishop here was like, no, I have thoughts for you and I want to talk to you about how some people are feeling about your presidency.

17:12Trump not one to enjoy being effectively lectured from the pulpit. OK, now let's talk about presidential pardons, both President Trump and President Biden coming under fire for broadly using their unique power to make comprehensive pardons. So we reported on this yesterday, but we want to talk about some of the reaction here On Monday, then President Biden preemptively pardoned people that he thought would be targeted by the incoming Justice Department, including five of his family members. The concern, even from some Democrats, is that this was a massive overreach and sends a very bad precedent for future presidents going forward.

17:50Jill, media was running around Capitol Hill yesterday trying to ask Democrats about it. And the repeated phrase from Chuck Schumer and others was, we're focused on the future. We're focused on the future. We're focused on the future. They did not want to talk about it. Hours later, President Trump entered the Oval Office and pardoned approximately 1 ,500 individuals convicted for their involvement in the January 6th, 2021 U.S. Capitol attack. So he commuted the sentences of 14 others and directed the Justice Department to dismiss all pending cases related to January 6th. The bottom line, all January 6th defendants had their slate wiped clean by Trump.

18:25Trump said that he was going to pardon the January 6th rioters. So that wasn't a huge surprise, but it wasn't clear if he would pardon all of them. The thinking was that maybe he would pardon the ones that were charged with nonviolent crimes. But no, this was a blanket pardon for everyone charged with their actions that day, including those who committed violence. So looking here at who got pardoned, more than 100 were convicted of assaulting officers, including Patrick McKay, who was found guilty during a bench trial of assaulting a metropolitan police officer with a dangerous weapon. Robert Scott Palmer, a Florida man who admitted to assaulting officers with a wooden plank and a fire extinguisher.

19:04Daniel Caldwell, he pleaded guilty to spraying officers who were guarding the Capitol with pepper spray. The two longest sentences were handed to former Proud Boys leader Enrique Tarrio. He was sentenced to 22 years and Oath Keepers founder Stuart Rhodes, who is serving 18 years. Both are currently free. Tarrio was not actually in Washington on January 6th, but he was convicted of directing the attack remotely. Rhodes was convicted of seditious conspiracy for assembling$20 ,000 worth of assault weaponry that was intended to be used at the Capitol. Again, both of those men currently out of prison.

19:40Pretty remarkable move here. Again, not a surprise. I think that surprised for a number of Republicans at Capitol Hill was they were hoping that some of these guys, literally there's video of them assaulting police officers, beating them up with their own shields. And the hope was that they would distinguish between all of them. But it appeared the priority at the Trump White House was all about just doing this as quickly as possible. And it would have taken a lot of time to go through the various cases, I guess. They didn't do it in advance of his presidency. So they decided to go with this blanket pardon, despite the fact that Trump, you know, talks about, you know, protect the blue, protecting police officers here.

20:16And so Trump was actually asked about this during one of his many media appearances in the first 36 hours here saying, hey, how does this jive with the fact that, you know, you're all about defending police officers? And he's just like, these people have served their time. There's other people out there who do worse things. You don't get prison time. You know, sort of made it a sort of a what about argument. But nonetheless, he's like, these people have served their time. I have no issue with this. You know, this needed to happen. Nonetheless, media running around Capitol Hill yesterday talking to Republicans.

20:45A number of Republican senators disappointed in the lack of discernment here between those who were pardoned for nonviolent offenses and those who were pardoned for violent offenses. Basically, just wiping them all clean. Lisa Murkowski, Republican senator from Alaska, said, I was disappointed to see this. I do fear the message that is sent to these great men and women that stood by us. Speaking of police officers, you also had Bill Castee. He's a Republican senator from Louisiana. He said it's wrong to assault anybody, certainly a police officer. I'm a big back the blue guy. He was disappointed.

21:18Josh Hawley, Republican, big Trump guy from Missouri, said that if he were president, he would not have offered pardons to individuals who committed violence. But nonetheless, this was what Trump campaigned on. I could go on here. Tom Tellis, Republican from North Carolina. Susan Collins, Republican from Maine. All of them said, yeah, don't love this. But then they were quick to say, well, remember the Biden pardons of his family? Can we talk about that right now? Many of them just want to look forward here. But a major move among all the various moves Trump is making right now. All right. Time for the speed read from CNN.

21:53historic snowfalls burying parts of the Gulf Coast amid dangerous cold as a once-in-a-generation winter storm wreaks havoc on travel in a region wholly unaccustomed to winter weather. On Tuesday, snow fell from southeast Texas through Louisiana and into parts of Mississippi and Alabama, creating treacherous conditions. An area stretching from Houston into southern Louisiana has already recorded widespread one to three inches of snow, a few areas top six inches. A record amount of snow also hit New Orleans and other cities along the Gulf Coast. Most incredible pictures of people cross-country skiing on Bourbon Street.

22:30There were attempts for urban skiing along Bourbon Street. A priest and nuns snowball fight outside a church down there. Snowboarding behind a golf cart. Sledding down these snow-covered Mississippi River levees on kayaks, cardboard boxes, inflatable alligators. people enjoying themselves with snow in places where they never see this sort of thing. The first ever blizzard warning issued for parts of the Gulf Coast, including Southeast Texas, Southern Louisiana. Mid-city New Orleans recorded nearly 10 inches of snow as of this recording. Areas of Baton Rouge and New Orleans also got five inches of snow.

23:07You saw a blanket of snow in places like Houston with 20 degree weather. Schools and airports were closed. They're not equipped down there at Bush International like They would be at O 'Hare, LaGuardia or JFK. The governor of Georgia warning people to stay off the roads because of the onset of snow and ice. Again, it's the South. They're not really prepared for snow and ice. So everyone there, be careful as this thing melts. From Fox Business, President Trump unveiled a massive artificial intelligence infrastructure project from the private sector on his first full day of his second term in office Tuesday.