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Yahoo
a day ago
- Business
- Yahoo
Russ Vought: key Project 2025 figure set to continue Trump cuts after Musk exit
Russ Vought's years-long quest to dismantle the federal workforce and consolidate power for the president is coming to fruition, and he may be given a major boost when he reportedly takes on Elon Musk's cost-cutting efforts as the billionaire bows out of the federal government. The director of the office of management and budget has worked alongside Musk's 'department of government efficiency' to slash through the federal government since Trump took office. The Wall Street Journal reported this week that Vought would take on an increased public role in Washington as Musk transitions out and the president's budget process advances. The outlet reported that Vought could use the budget process to make some of Doge's cuts permanent. Vought embraces Christian nationalism and is more ideologically driven than Musk. He knows more intimately how to use the levers of government to enact his goals. He was a key figure in Project 2025, the conservative manifesto to guide a second Trump term, and authored a chapter on how to lead the agency he's again tasked with leading. His distaste for civil servants, the so-called 'deep state' that prevented Trump from carrying out his full agenda the first time, is profound. 'We want the bureaucrats to be traumatically affected,' Vought said in a video obtained by ProPublica and the research group Documented in October. 'When they wake up in the morning, we want them to not want to go to work, because they are increasingly viewed as the villains. We want their funding to be shut down … We want to put them in trauma.' Musk and Vought have forged a 'quiet alliance', Politico reported in March. Musk served as the public face of cutting the government, the wrecking ball whose team forced its way into federal agencies to access data to underpin cuts to spending. Vought and his team had the knowledge and precision to then parse that data and figure out whether and how to cut, Politico reported. A former official told the outlet that Vought was a ''by any means necessary' guy', grasping the political moment to serve his vision. Max Stier, who leads the Partnership for Public Service, a non-profit that seeks to advance the federal workforce, told Politico that the difference between the two men is that 'Vought wants to reshape our government into a bludgeon for his ideological vision, while Musk seems much more focused on destruction without understanding or care for the many harmful consequences of his actions'. Vought told the conservative commentator Tucker Carlson he thought Doge was 'bringing an exhilarating rush' and creativity to slashing the government, praising the agency's 'outside- the-box thinking [and] comfortability with risk and leverage'. Vought is expected to work on the new version of Schedule F, a proposal he advanced in Trump's first term that was revived, which would eliminate job protections for tens of thousands of career civil servants, making it easier to fire them and replace them with loyalists. Vought wants to flex executive power and exert the president's role over the federal budget by impounding funds, or not spending money Congress has already appropriated in its role as budget-maker. He's spoiling for a court battle on the topic, hoping the US supreme court will overturn the Impoundment Control Act, which limits impoundment. Before he was confirmed in his role, the office of management and budget sent a memo that created confusion and chaos nationwide when it called for a mass freeze on federal grants and funds in the early days of the Trump administration. That memo had 'Russ's name written all fucking over it', a Republican aide told Politico, though Vought was not formally tied to it. Vought served in Trump's first term as deputy director of the agency, then director, ending when Trump left office. Before his White House tenure, Vought was a fixture in rightwing politics in Washington, holding a variety of roles in Republican offices. Related: Russell Vought: Trump appointee who wants federal workers to be 'in trauma' After his time in the White House, Vought started the Center for Renewing America, an organization with a mission to 'renew a consensus of America as a nation under God' that has railed against critical race theory and progressive ideology. The center has recommended invoking the Insurrection Act and ending the Impoundment Control Act. The center, and Vought, contributed to Project 2025, which was helmed by the conservative thinktank the Heritage Foundation. In Project 2025's chapter on the office of the president, Vought lays out how the federal government is not beholden to the president's plan and is instead 'carrying out its own policy plans and preferences – or, worse yet, the policy plans and preferences of a radical, supposedly 'woke' faction of the country'. The bureaucracy believes it has independent authority and protection, making it too powerful to be reined in, Vought said. 'The great challenge confronting a conservative President is the existential need for aggressive use of the vast powers of the executive branch to return power – including power currently held by the executive branch – to the American people,' he wrote. As for his own role, the budget director 'must view his job as the best, most comprehensive approximation of the president's mind as it pertains to the policy agenda'. Vought, and the project writ large, call for mass firings of federal employees to better stock the workforce with Trump loyalists who will not stand in the way of his agenda. 'The overall situation is constitutionally dire, unsustainably expensive, and in urgent need of repair,' he wrote of the federal bureaucracy. 'Nothing less than the survival of self-governance in America is at stake.' Since Trump has taken office, a host of Project 2025-aligned proposals have been introduced or put in place, cementing the role the ideological document plays in the advancement of the rightwing agenda. The first wave of Project 2025-aligned actions has been conducted largely by executive orders. A second wave of recommendations requires the rule-making process at agencies, and others would require congressional action. In this more precise stage, Vought would carry out his plans to create long-term changes to how the federal government functions and operates. He has written the budget office plays a 'vital role in reining in the regulatory state'.
Boston Globe
2 days ago
- Automotive
- Boston Globe
Connecticut reforms towing laws to protect drivers from predatory practices
The bill, which Advertisement 'It's reform that ensures transparency, it ensures fairness and accountability, but does all of this without undercutting the essential work that ethical and professional tow operators do each and every day for us, keeping our roads safe and our properties accessible,' said Transportation Committee Co-chair Sen. Christine Cohen, D-Guilford. 'We've learned over the years, and particularly over the last year due to some investigative reporting, of some particularly egregious circumstances.' A spokesperson for Gov. Ned Lamont said the governor plans to sign the bill into law. Republican Sen. Tony Hwang, ranking member of the Transportation Committee, also spoke in favor of the bill. The bill got about a half hour of debate ahead of passage, and there were no comments in opposition. Hwang, who represents Fairfield, said the bill strikes the right balance between the interests of towers and consumers. Advertisement 'I want to acknowledge that our press had an important part to bring out transparency and some of the bad actions, and I think in this bill we address some of those issues,' Hwang said. 'We took measures to ensure that there is due process, and what has been discovered to have occurred in a criminal action, I believe, should never, ever happen again, to undermine the trust that we have to have in this process.' Connecticut's law allows tow companies to begin the process to sell vehicles after just 15 days. CT Mirror and ProPublica found that it is one of the shortest windows in the nation, and that the law has particularly impacted people with low incomes. Reporters spoke with people who said towing companies required them to pay in cash or wouldn't allow them to get personal belongings out of their vehicles. Many couldn't afford to get their towed vehicles back and lost transportation or jobs because of it. After weeks of negotiations, lawmakers said they came to a compromise with the towing industry. Two bills were merged to include massive reforms to towing procedures from private property and rate increases for highway tows that typically follow car accidents. The bill that passed and would take effect Oct. 1 requires tow companies to accept credit cards and doesn't allow them to tow vehicles immediately just because of an expired parking permit or registration. Vehicles can't be towed from private property without notice unless they're blocking traffic, fire hydrants or parked in an accessible spot. Under the bill, towing companies can still start the sales process for vehicles worth $1,500 or less after 15 days, but they would now have to take more steps to give the owner a chance to claim the vehicle. The Department of Motor Vehicles would be required to check whether the driver filed any complaints about the tow before approving the sale, and the tower would have to send a notice ahead of the sale to the registered owner and lienholders via certified mail, with receipts of delivery. Advertisement The actual sale couldn't go through until 30 days after the tow. The bill also requires that towers take at least two photos before they tow a vehicle — one of the violation that resulted in a tow and another of any damage to the vehicle. Cohen said this would help determine if vehicles had any missing parts before the tow, a seeming nod to the news organizations' story about a DMV employee who the agency's investigators found schemed with a towing company to The bill also establishes a working group to study how to handle proceeds from the sales of towed vehicles. State law requires that towing companies hold profits in escrow for a year in case the vehicle owner claims them, then remit that money to the state. But CT Mirror and ProPublica found Additionally, it calls for the DMV to work with the state's attorney general to develop a consumer bill of rights on towing. Advertisement Tow companies have to be available after hours and on weekends to allow people to get their vehicles or personal property. In a story published this month, CT Mirror and ProPublica reported that Under the new law, drivers will be allowed to retrieve their belongings from their vehicles, even if they haven't paid the towing fees. State regulations currently allow vehicle owners to retrieve only 'personal property which is essential to the health or welfare of any person.' Cohen listed many of the issues outlined in the news outlets' reporting as 'some of the worst abuses of predatory towing practices.' Timothy Vibert, president of Towing and Recovery Professionals of Connecticut, said the industry initially opposed the bill because towers believed it would impede their ability to tow cars and clear traffic. He also said towers weren't involved enough in the original draft. But they worked with lawmakers on the bill over several weeks, and he issued a statement in support this week. 'The people of Connecticut deserve safety, accountability and transparency when their cars are towed, and so do the people who work for Connecticut's towing companies who risk our lives every day to make our roads safe,' Vibert said. 'We all need clear, easy-to-follow rules.' DMV Commissioner Tony Guerrera commended the House and Senate. 'The DMV fully supports this initiative, as it not only enhances the framework for fair and equitable enforcement of towing laws but also provides a clear path forward for our agency to advance these efforts,' Guerrera said in a statement. Cohen said that the bill aims to 'fix a broken process,' and that lawmakers had worked on some aspects of it for years before the bill passed. Advertisement News of the bill's passage brought relief to Melissa Anderson, who was featured in a CT Mirror and ProPublica story after her car was towed and sold from her Hamden apartment because of an expired parking permit. The bill requires a 72-hour grace period before a car can be towed for an expired parking sticker to allow people time to get a new one. 'I'm glad we made a difference,' Anderson said. 'This is going to help a lot of people.' The bill next heads to Lamont's desk. 'The Governor appreciates all the work that went into this legislation, which provides greater protections for the public and their vehicles,' Lamont's spokesperson, Rob Blanchard, said in a text message. 'He plans on signing the legislation once it reaches his desk.'
Boston Globe
3 days ago
- Politics
- Boston Globe
An overwhelming majority of Venezuelans sent to Salvadoran prison were not convicted of US crimes. Trump admin was fully aware.
Get Starting Point A guide through the most important stories of the morning, delivered Monday through Friday. Enter Email Sign Up The data indicates that the government knew that only six of the immigrants were convicted of violent crimes: four for assault, one for kidnapping and one for a weapons offense. And it shows that officials were aware that more than half, or 130, of the deportees were not labeled as having any criminal convictions or pending charges; they were labeled as only having violated immigration laws. Advertisement As for foreign offenses, our own review of court and police records from around the United States and in Latin American countries where the deportees had lived found evidence of arrests or convictions for 20 of the 238 men. Of those, 11 involved violent crimes such as armed robbery, assault or murder, including one man who the Chilean government had asked the U.S. to extradite to face kidnapping and drug charges there. Another four had been accused of illegal gun possession. Advertisement We conducted a case-by-case review of all the Venezuelan deportees. It's possible there are crimes and other information in the deportees' backgrounds that did not show up in our reporting or the internal government data, which includes only minimal details for nine of the men. There's no single publicly available database for all crimes committed in the U.S., much less abroad. But everything we did find in public records contradicted the Trump administration's assertions as well. ProPublica and the Tribune, along with Venezuelan media outlets Cazadores de Fake News (Fake News Hunters) and Alianza Rebelde Investiga (Rebel Alliance Investigates), also obtained lists of alleged gang members that are kept by Venezuelan law enforcement officials and the international law enforcement agency Interpol. Those lists include some 1,400 names. None of the names of the 238 Venezuelan deportees matched those on the lists. The hasty removal of the Venezuelans and their incarceration in a third country has made this one of the most consequential deportations in recent history. The court battles over whether Trump has the authority to expel immigrants without judicial review have the potential to upend how this country handles all immigrants living in the U.S., whether legally or illegally. Officials have suggested publicly that, to achieve the president's goals of deporting millions of immigrants, the administration was considering suspending habeas corpus, the longstanding constitutional right allowing people to challenge their detention. Advertisement Hours before the immigrants were loaded onto airplanes in Texas for deportation, the Trump administration invoked the Alien Enemies Act of 1798, declaring that the Tren de Aragua prison gang had invaded the United States, aided by the Venezuelan government. It branded the gang a foreign terrorist organization and said that declaration gave the president the authority to expel its members and send them indefinitely to a foreign prison, where they have remained for more than two months with no ability to communicate with their families or lawyers. Lee Gelernt, the lead attorney in the American Civil Liberties Union's legal fight against the deportations, said the removals amounted to a 'blatant violation of the most fundamental due process principles.' He said that under the law, an immigrant who has committed a crime can be prosecuted and removed, but 'it does not mean they can be subjected to a potentially lifetime sentence in a foreign gulag.' White House spokesperson Abigail Jackson said in response to our findings that 'ProPublica should be embarrassed that they are doing the bidding of criminal illegal aliens who are a threat,' adding that 'the American people strongly support' the president's immigration agenda. When asked about the differences between the administration's public statements about the deportees and the way they are labeled in government data, DHS Assistant Secretary Tricia McLaughlin largely repeated Advertisement As for the administration's allegations that Tren de Aragua has attempted an invasion, an analysis by Our investigation focused on the 238 Venezuelan men who were deported on March 15 to CECOT, the prison in El Salvador, and whose names were on a list first published by We interviewed about 100 of the deportees' relatives and their attorneys. Many of them had heard from their loved ones on the morning of March 15, when the men believed they were being sent back to Venezuela. They were happy because they would be back home with their families, who were eager to prepare their favorite meals and plan parties. Some of the relatives shared video messages with us and on social media that were recorded inside U.S. detention facilities. In those videos, the detainees said they were afraid that they might be sent to Advertisement They had no idea they were being sent to El Salvador. Among them was 31-year-old Leonardo José Colmenares Solórzano, who left Venezuela and his job as a youth soccer coach last July. His sister, Leidys Trejo Solórzano, said he had a hard time supporting himself and his mother and that Venezuela's crumbling economy made it hard for him to find a better paying job. Colmenares was detained at an appointment to approach the U.S.-Mexico border in October because of his many tattoos, his sister said. Those tattoos include the names of relatives, a clock, an owl and a crown she said was inspired by the Real Madrid soccer club's logo. Colmenares was not flagged as having a criminal history in the DHS data we obtained. Nor did we find any U.S. or foreign convictions or charges in our review. Trejo said her brother stayed out of trouble and has no criminal record in Venezuela either. She described his expulsion as a U.S.-government-sponsored kidnapping. 'It's been so difficult. Even talking about what happened is hard for me,' said Trejo, who has scoured the internet for videos and photos of her brother in the Salvadoran prison. 'Many nights I can't sleep because I'm so anxious.' The internal government data shows that officials had labeled all but a handful of the men as members of Tren de Aragua but offered little information about how they came to that conclusion. Advertisement McLaughlin, the DHS spokesperson, said the agency is confident in its assessments of gang affiliation but would not provide additional information to support them. John Sandweg, a former acting director of Immigration and Customs Enforcement, said, 'for political reasons, I think the administration wants to characterize this as a grand effort that's promoting public safety of the United States.' But 'even some of the government's own data demonstrates there is a gap between the rhetoric and the reality,' he said, referring to the internal data we obtained. The government data shows 67 men who were deported had been flagged as having pending charges, though it provides no details about their alleged crimes. We found police, court and other records for 38 of those deportees. We found several people whose criminal history differed from what was tagged in the government data. In some cases that the government listed as pending criminal charges, the men had been convicted and in one case the charge had been dropped before the man was deported. Our reporting found that, like the criminal convictions, the majority of the pending charges involved nonviolent crimes, including retail theft, drug possession and traffic offenses. Six of the men had pending charges for attempted murder, assault, armed robbery, gun possession or domestic battery. Immigrant advocates have said removing people to a prison in El Salvador before the cases against them were resolved means that Trump, asserting his executive authority, short-circuited the criminal justice system. Take the case of Wilker Miguel Gutiérrez Sierra, 23, who was arrested in February 2024 in Chicago on charges of attempted murder, robbery and aggravated battery after he and three other Venezuelan men allegedly assaulted a stranger on a train and stole his phone and $400. He pleaded not guilty. Gutiérrez was on electronic monitoring as he awaited trial when he was arrested by ICE agents who'd pulled up to him on the street in five black trucks, court records show. Three days later he was shipped to El Salvador. But the majority of men labeled as having pending cases were facing less serious charges, according to the records we found. Maikol Gabriel López Lizano, 23, was arrested in Chicago in August 2023 on misdemeanor charges for riding his bike on the sidewalk while drinking a can of Budweiser. His partner, Cherry Flores, described his deportation as a gross injustice. 'They shouldn't have sent him there,' she said. 'Why did they have to take him over a beer?' of ProPublica contributed data analysis. Adriana Núñez and Carlos Centeno contributed reporting.
Yahoo
4 days ago
- Politics
- Yahoo
12-Year-Old Tennessee Boy Arrested for Instagram Post Says He Was Trying To Warn Students of a School Shooting
After posting a screenshot of two people planning to "shoot up" a Nashville school, a 12-year-old DuPont Tyler Middle School student was arrested and charged with threats of mass violence. Although his charges were later dismissed, school officials opted to expel the boy without properly assessing whether the threat was valid or whether he had authored the messages himself. Directly following a school shooting at Antioch High School earlier this year, which resulted in the death of two students and injury to a third, Nashville School District officials were on high alert for other potential threats. The day after the shooting, James, a seventh grade student, was flagged by the FBI for a concerning Instagram post. According to ProPublica, the post depicted a text conversation between two individuals: One said they would "shoot up" a Nashville school if the second would attack another. "Yea," the second replied, "I got some other people for other schools." When asked about the post, James told school officials he had reposted a screenshot from a Spanish-language news site. He was subsequently arrested and charged with making threats of mass violence. Under Tennessee law, when a student is suspected of threatening mass violence, a threat assessment is required "to determine whether the threat of mass violence made by the student was a valid threat." If the director of schools determines the threat is not valid, the school is not allowed to expel the student. However, records obtained by ProPublica show that school officials failed to conduct a proper threat assessment and missed crucial steps. Melissa Nelson, a national school safety consultant who trains schools on managing threats, told ProPublica that James' assessment was "gross mismanagement of a case." Rather than seek out information to help confirm whether the threat was valid—like notifying and interviewing James' parents—or pursue options provided by the threat assessment tool to deescalate potential future violence, school officials jumped straight to expulsion after he was arrested. "Even if a child is expelled, what I always train is: Out of sight, out of mind doesn't help," she said. "Expelling a child doesn't de-escalate the situation or move them off the pathway of violence. A lot of times, it makes it worse." John Van Dreal, a former school administrator who helped the Nashville School District set up its current threat assessment process, agreed. Choosing to skip directly to expulsion is "actually about the most dangerous thing you can do for the student," Van Dreal said, "and honestly for the community." During an appeal hearing, James maintained that he was not the original author of the texts. When asked if he understood that the screenshot in question appeared to be a conversation he, himself, was having, he replied, "I just wanted to let people know, feel heroic. I didn't want more people to get hurt." When pressed during that same hearing on why the school chose to expel James without additional investigation, Assistant Principal Angela Post said that it was up to law enforcement, not the school, to investigate the threat. She also admitted that the assessment did not make a determination whether James was the original author of the text, and she couldn't recall whether school staff investigated the origin of the original threat. By her logic, James' arrest was evidence enough that the threat was valid, and therefore, expulsion was necessary. But since James' arrest, law enforcement hasn't treated him like a violent threat. After serving a night in a juvenile detention facility, James agreed to six months of pretrial diversion and court supervision. His supervision was lifted earlier than expected after he completed his pretrial diversion terms, and his case has been dismissed. However, following his appeal with the Nashville School District, officials found that the decision to immediately expel James "was not a due process violation." The post 12-Year-Old Tennessee Boy Arrested for Instagram Post Says He Was Trying To Warn Students of a School Shooting appeared first on
Yahoo
4 days ago
- General
- Yahoo
Trump Knew ICE Was Arresting Innocent People. He Deported Them Anyway.
Donald Trump's administration was well aware that many of the 238 Venezuelan immigrants it shipped off to a notorious megaprison in El Salvador had no criminal records at all, according to a Friday report from ProPublica. While Trump officials claimed that the deportees were brutal gang members and 'the worst of the worst,' only 32 of the deportees had actually been convicted of crimes, and most of them were minor offenses such as traffic violations, according to data from the Department of Homeland Security reviewed by ProPublica, The Texas Tribune, and a team of journalists from Venezuelan media outlets. One of the men, 23-year-old Maikol Gabriel López Lizano, faced a misdemeanor charge after he was arrested in 2023 for riding his bike and drinking a can of beer. Little more than half of the deportees, 130 of the 238, were charged only with violating U.S. immigration laws. Twenty of them had criminal records from other countries. The U.S. government data showed that 67 individuals had pending charges, with only six being for violent crimes. In several cases, the government data about the pending charges differed from what ProPublica was able to find. In some cases, the men had actually been convicted, and in one, the charges had been dropped. But in many cases, these individuals were remanded to a foreign prison before their criminal cases were ever resolved. The Trump administration has touted allegations of gang affiliation as a justification for denying the deportees their due process rights. But none of the mens' names appeared on a list of roughly 1,400 alleged Tren de Aragua members kept by the Venezuelan government, ProPublica reported. Trump's border czar Tom Homan tried desperately in March to downplay reporting that many of these individuals did not have criminal records. 'A lot of gang members don't have criminal histories, just like a lot of terrorists in this world, they're not in any terrorist databases, right?' Homan said on ABC News. But the methods the government relies on to classify individuals as gang members—such as identification of gang-affiliated tattoos—have been disproven by experts. Not only were many of the men who were deported not proven gang members, they weren't even criminals, and by denying them the right to due process, they were remanded to a foreign prison notorious for human rights abuses without ever getting to prove it. Trump has continued to pressure the Supreme Court to allow him to sidestep due process as part of his massive deportation campaign, claiming that the judiciary has no right to intrude on matters of 'foreign policy.' But immigrants residing on U.S. soil—who are clearly not the bloodthirsty criminals the administration insists they are—are still subject to protections under U.S. law.
