World Briefing: November 10, 2024
President-elect Donald Trump’s transition team is considering ending two Biden administration programs that have allowed more than 1.3 million immigrants to enter the U.S. legally, making those who entered but have not yet received asylum eligible for deportation, two sources familiar with the plans told NBC News. The exact number of people who could face deportation after arriving in the U.S. legally is not known, but it is estimated to be in the hundreds of thousands. Trump’s transition team is considering plans designed to maximize the scope of the deportations and prioritize certain immigrants as among the first to be forced to leave. While those who entered under the programs may be eligible for deportation, the first people likely to be targeted are those considered to be threats, possibly including Chinese men who are deemed to be of military age living illegally in the United States. This group would also include convicted criminals who are in the U.S. illegally and those with final orders of deportation, the officials said - NBC News
Donald Trump has announced on Truth Social that neither former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo nor U.N. ambassador Nikki Haley will be part of his upcoming cabinet. As for Pompeo, who’s also a former CIA director, the freeze out is surprising as he was positioned to be one of the few remaining ‘grown ups’ in the room who potentially could have swayed Trump’s foreign policies
Donald Trump’s stunning political comeback has created an opening for Russia to shatter Western unity on Ukraine and redraw the global power map, according to several influential members of the Russian elite. “We have won,” said Alexander Dugin, the Russian ideologue who has long pushed an imperialist agenda for Moscow and supported disinformation efforts against Kamala Harris’s campaign. “The world will be never ever like before. Globalists have lost their final combat,” he wrote on X. The deputy speaker of Russia’s upper house of parliament, Konstantin Kosachev, said on his Telegram channel: “The victory of the right in the so-called ‘free world’ will be a blow to the left-liberal forces that dominate it. It is not by chance that Europe was so openly ‘rooting’ for Harris, who would, in fact, preserve the rule of the Obama-Clinton ‘clan.’” Konstantin Malofeyev, the Russian Orthodox billionaire who has funded a conservative agenda promoting traditional Christian values on the far right and far left across the West, crowed on Telegram that it would be possible to negotiate with Trump, “both about the division of Europe and the division of the world. After our victory on the battlefield.” In more immediate terms, Trump’s election victory was expected to have a dramatic impact on Russia’s war in Ukraine, according to Leonid Slutsky, head of the parliament’s foreign affairs committee - Washington Post
Tech billionaire Elon Musk is about to become the most powerful civilian ever, if he hasn’t already. As Axios points out, Musk's juice flows from controlling X, his coming assignment to gut government, and, oh, running Tesla, SpaceX, the brain-interface developer Neuralink and his tunneling technology pioneer, The Boring Company. He’s amassed amazing clout by donating over $119 million to a super PAC to help elect Trump, and parking himself in Pennsylvania for the campaign's closing weeks. Musk was at Mar-a-Lago on election night, and will be back next week. A sign of his everything-influence: Trump put him on the phone with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky during their first call this week.
Live flight tracker over Moscow apparently indicates the temporary closure of two of the city's major airports Sunday morning. Ukraine reportedly attacked the Russian capital on Sunday with at least 25 drones, according to officials.
Russia has suffered its worst ever month for casualties since the start of the war in Ukraine, the UK chief of defence staff has told the BBC. Admiral Sir Tony Radakin said Russia’s forces suffered an average of about 1,500 dead and injured "every single day" in October, bringing its losses to 700,000 since the war began in February 2022. Russia does not disclose the number of its war dead, but Western defence officials have said October's death toll was the heaviest so far. In an interview with BBC One's Sunday with Laura Kuenssberg programme, Sir Tony said the Russian people were paying an "extraordinary price" for Putin's invasion.
Russian President Vladimir Putin appears to be assuming that US President-elect Donald Trump will defer to the Kremlin's interests and preferences without the Kremlin offering any concessions or benefits in return. According to the Institute for the Study of War, Putin stated during his November 7 Valdai Club address that he is open to discussions meant to "restore" US-Russia relations but that the United States must initiate these negotiations, and implied that Russia will only consider a reset in US-Russia relations if the United States drops sanctions against Russia and ceases supporting Ukraine – terms that exclusively benefit Russia and offer no benefit to the United States. Russian opposition outlet Meduza reported that the Kremlin issued a manual to state and pro-Kremlin media with instructions to cover Putin's Valdai statements by highlighting the special role Russia plays in bringing about a proposed "new world order" and portraying Putin as the "world's greatest leader" whose deep thinking, "breadth of political thought," and role as the "voice of the global majority and new world order" distinguish him from Western political leaders, presumably including Trump.[3] Meduza noted that, by contrast, the manual does not mention reporting Putin's statements about Trump or possible future negotiations with the United States about the war in Ukraine, even though Putin largely aimed his Valdai statements at shaping Trump's foreign policy and achieving another reset in US-Russian relations on Russia's terms.
Rudy Giuliani has alleged that he doesn’t have enough money to feed himself after a federal judge ordered him to start paying the $148 million judgment he faces for defaming Georgia poll workers in the wake of the 2020 election. The former New York City mayor and close ally to Donald Trump took to X to whine about his fiscal woes and beg followers to donate to his fundraising campaign. “Wilkie Farr Law firm and Judge Liman are trying to inhibit me from making a living,” he wrote. “They seized my measly checking account so I can’t buy food. Help me fight.” - Daily Beast
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