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--:-- Leila Fadel: President-elect Donald Trump has made a lot of promises for the first day of his presidency, and he has made it clear he intends to keep them.
--:-- A Martinez: I will govern by a simple motto. Promises made, promises kept. We're going to keep our promises.
--:-- Leila Fadel: So what are some of those promises and how might he keep them? I'm Leila Fadel, that's A Martinez, and this is a bonus episode of Up First from NPR News.
--:-- A Martinez: For Morning Edition this week, my co-host and I have been taking a deeper look at some of the promises the president-elect has made for his return to the White House.
--:-- Leila Fadel: From a pledge to pardon January 6th rioters and start mass deportations. To a commitment to get rid of the Department of Education, increase fossil fuel production, and rollback protections for transgender people.
--:-- A Martinez: Stay with us to hear more about these day one promises.
--:-- Leila Fadel: President Fernando Madeira describes how BetterHelp Online Therapy has helped him.
--:-- President Fernando Madeira: For me, sometimes I just need to go and talk to somebody that is not going to judge me, right? It's going to be there and they're going to listen to me. And I can start just saying, look, I'm not feeling right today. And it feels natural.
--:-- A Martinez: To get matched with a therapist, visit BetterHelp.com slash NPR for 10% off your first month.
--:-- Leila Fadel: Upfront payment of $45 for a 3-month 5GB plan required. New customer offer for first 3 months only. Then full price plan options available. Taxes and fees extra. See Mint Mobile for details.
--:-- A Martinez: If you're tired of spending hundreds on big wireless bills, bogus fees, and free perks, Mint Mobile might be right for you with plans starting from $15 a month.
--:-- Leila Fadel: Shop plans today at MintMobile.com slash switch.
--:-- Leila Fadel: We start with President-elect Donald Trump's vow to pardon hundreds of people convicted in connection with the attack on the U.S. Capitol.
--:-- A Martinez: I am inclined to pardon many of them. I can't say for every single one because a couple of them probably they got out of control.
--:-- Leila Fadel: To dig deeper on this promise and a recent decision from the Supreme Court, I spoke with Kim Whaley. She's a legal scholar and author of the book Pardon Power.
--:-- Kim Whaley: The Constitution in Article 2 just says that the president has the power to grant reprieves and pardons, and it puts no express limits on a pardon.
--:-- A Martinez: And although there's been some Supreme Court case law putting some constraints on the pardon, there is no law that would limit Donald Trump's ability to pardon the people who participated in the January 6th insurrection and ended up embroiled in the criminal justice system.
--:-- Kim Whaley: So another thing that Trump promised was to fire the special prosecutor investigating him, Jack Smith, right away.
--:-- A Martinez: And the investigations are being wound down now, as we understand it, from the Department of Justice.
--:-- Kim Whaley: But the Supreme Court decision that anything he does as president would be subject to presidential immunity.
--:-- A Martinez: What does that mean?
--:-- Kim Whaley: I think what it means is that Donald Trump could direct his attorney general to abuse the massive power of the Department of Justice and law enforcement.
--:-- Leila Fadel: So that's number one. The second is the pardon.
--:-- Kim Whaley: Of course, the Supreme Court held that if the president uses his official power, law enforcement, surveillance power, investigative power, prosecutorial power, that kind of power cannot be subject to the rule of law.
--:-- A Martinez: But the immunity ruling only applies to the president. It doesn't apply to people around the president.
--:-- Kim Whaley: So he would have to get them to commit crimes on his behalf. And the way to do that would be to promise a pardon and then actually pardon them.
--:-- Leila Fadel: So the pardon, when you add that with this immunity for the president's illegal act, so long as he uses his official power, it's sort of a recipe for a massive criminal enterprise in the White House.
--:-- Kim Whaley: And he has said on the campaign trail that he would go after his political and personal opponents.
--:-- A Martinez: That is what he said for quite a while.
--:-- Kim Whaley: And, you know, law is all about incentives and disincentives.
--:-- Leila Fadel: And we have laws in place to disincentivize behavior we don't like.
--:-- Kim Whaley: We have stop signs to disincentivize driving in a way that's dangerous.
--:-- A Martinez: But people will blow through those limits if there's no consequence.
--:-- Kim Whaley: And right now, what the Supreme Court has done by injecting immunity into a constitution that does not have it is to change the incentives for presidents to basically lift any threat of consequences for abusing the massive power of the office.
--:-- Leila Fadel: And of course the framers of the Constitution understood, as Madison said, if men were angels, we would not need government.
--:-- Kim Whaley: The rules are now lifted.
--:-- A Martinez: And this is a president who has promised with vitriol to prosecute and go after people who he believes have prosecuted him in unfair ways.
--:-- Kim Whaley: So I think we can take him at his word, or at least we should be prepared for that.
--:-- Leila Fadel: Now that's one perspective on what the next president could do. Next up, one of the president-elect's signature campaign promises was on immigration.
--:-- A Martinez: On day one, I will launch the largest deportation program of criminals in the history of America.
--:-- Leila Fadel: That'll lead this effort. Trump has tapped Tom Homan to be his administration's border czar.
--:-- A Martinez: He's the former acting head of Immigration and Customs Enforcement.
--:-- Leila Fadel: Examining what a mass deportation plan might look like, our co-host Steve Inskeep spoke with Andrew Seeley.
--:-- Andrew Seeley: I think the first thing we know he will almost certainly do is cancel humanitarian parole for people that received it.
--:-- A Martinez: People who came through CBP-1, this app that people could use to schedule an appointment to come across the border.
--:-- Andrew Seeley: People who came through the CHNB program for Cubans, Haitians, Nicaraguans, and Venezuelans.
--:-- Leila Fadel: He will go after people in these sort of tenuous statuses and eventually people who have temporary protected statuses, although that may take longer because they have to run their legal course.
--:-- Andrew Seeley: I think the second thing we'll see is changing guidelines for deportation, for immigration customs enforcement officials so that they can arrest anyone and put them into deportation proceedings.
--:-- A Martinez: That is something that changed under the Biden administration where they were primarily pursuing people who had criminal records or people who were a threat to national security.
--:-- Andrew Seeley: I think you're also going to see a shift on workplace raids and looking at places where employers are hiring people without documents, which was not happening for most of the Biden administration.
--:-- Leila Fadel: And then I think we get into the big question marks.
--:-- Andrew Seeley: I mean, he's talked about using expanding detention facilities.
--:-- A Martinez: That will almost certainly happen.
--:-- Andrew Seeley: But whether he'll be able to use military bases or not or other federal facilities and whether he will try and use the military itself.
--:-- Leila Fadel: And that would require going back to the Alien and Sedition Act of 1798.
--:-- Andrew Seeley: And that will almost certainly be litigated in the courts.
--:-- A Martinez: You mentioned the Alien Enemies Act of 1798.
--:-- Andrew Seeley: It gives power to the U.S. government to hold people who are foreign nationals living in the United States.
--:-- Leila Fadel: It is supposed to be designed for a time of war or intense conflict.
--:-- Andrew Seeley: But I don't think there's any doubt that there are at least some people in the network of people around Donald Trump that are thinking that it could be used, you know, in the moment of what they perceive as an immigration crisis.
--:-- A Martinez: I'm not sure the courts would agree with that, but I would not be completely surprised if they try and see how far they can push it.
--:-- Leila Fadel: It sounds like that's the kind of law that would be invoked if you had someone who doesn't have full status to be here, but they're waiting on a court hearing, or they have some reason or permission to remain in the United States for now.
--:-- Andrew Seeley: This would override that?
--:-- A Martinez: That's how you'd use the Alien Enemies Act?
--:-- Andrew Seeley: Well, I think they'd want to use it for two purposes.
--:-- Leila Fadel: One is to override due process, right, to make it easier to detain someone and deport them.
--:-- Andrew Seeley: And also so they could justify using the military, which I think is something that will get a lot of pushback from the U.S. Armed Forces.
--:-- A Martinez: Use the military for what?
--:-- Andrew Seeley: For supporting, rounding up, and holding people who do not have legal status.
--:-- Leila Fadel: Does it matter if someone who's here illegally is in a red state or a blue state?
--:-- Andrew Seeley: Enormously, yes.
--:-- A Martinez: I mean, a lot of what the federal government will want to do in a Trump administration requires cooperation from state authorities.
--:-- Andrew Seeley: And we've seen this before.
--:-- Leila Fadel: We saw this during the last Trump administration.
--:-- Andrew Seeley: There were very successful enforcement efforts against people who are here illegally in red states because local law enforcement was willing to collaborate.
--:-- A Martinez: It worked out much less effectively in blue states where local law enforcement wouldn't necessarily not collaborate at all, but they would not put large amounts of resources in into collaborating on immigration enforcement.
--:-- Leila Fadel: And so I think it will depend on where people live.
--:-- Andrew Seeley: I am curious if red states really want to be rid of their workforce, many of whom may be here without authorization.
--:-- A Martinez: Does Iowa, for example, want to get rid of the workforce in meatpacking plants?
--:-- Andrew Seeley: Well, here's where you get into the tough part of this politically, which is that all the polls tell us that Americans are really concerned about the border, but they're also quite favorable to immigrants that are already integrated in their communities, right?
--:-- Leila Fadel: They depend on them as part of the labor force.
--:-- Andrew Seeley: These are people whose kids go to school with their kids.
--:-- A Martinez: I think if we see real mass deportations, it is going to generate a pushback.
--:-- Leila Fadel: And Trump also promised this. We're going to take the Department of Education, close it.
--:-- A Martinez: I'm going to close it.
--:-- Leila Fadel: So this wouldn't mean your local public school is shuttered.
--:-- A Martinez: It's actually state and local governments that operate public schools and universities.
--:-- Leila Fadel: But the department gives federal assistance for education, and that's everything from college student loans to aid for public school special education.
--:-- A Martinez: For more on Trump's promise to close the department, our co-host Steve Inskeep spoke with John Volant.
--:-- John Volant: The U.S. Constitution doesn't say anything about schools or about education, and it kicks all of that work to the states.
--:-- Leila Fadel: But over time, the federal government has come to play some really important roles.
--:-- John Volant: Things like protecting students civil rights providing some compensatory funding to students in poverty and students with disabilities who would very likely be underserved if we relied entirely on state and local funding
--:-- A Martinez: So it is not an agency that is telling schools what to do.
--:-- John Volant: They're not defining curriculum.
--:-- Leila Fadel: They're not telling schools which teachers they can hire or which books to use.
--:-- John Volant: They're really administering these programs that have been established through law over the last several decades.
--:-- A Martinez: What is the substantive issue that makes this real for people who dislike the Department of Education?
--:-- John Volant: Are they saying, I really don't like the way the DOE is enforcing civil rights in my communities?
--:-- Leila Fadel: I really don't like the way the DOE is making my district spend money on poor people.
--:-- John Volant: So some of the hot button issues that come up over time are really about civil rights enforcement.
--:-- A Martinez: For example, the Biden administration put in some new regulations around Title IX that expanded the prohibition of sex-based discrimination to also include sexual orientation and gender identity.
--:-- John Volant: One of the more likely moves from the Trump administration will be getting rid of those regulations and changing the way that civil rights enforcement happens within the Department of Education.
--:-- Leila Fadel: Aside from the social issues, is the Department of Education just a vehicle for a lot of money going to certain schools?
--:-- John Volant: That's a big part of what it does, particularly when we're talking about K-12 education.
--:-- A Martinez: It is sending resources to schools that would otherwise be severely underfunded.
--:-- John Volant: We have a system in place in the U.S. where we fund schools through a combination of local, state, and federal sources.
--:-- Leila Fadel: And local funding sources tend to be tilted in the direction of schools in higher wealth areas.
--:-- John Volant: And so you get that sort of inequality that is baked in.
--:-- A Martinez: So part of what the federal government's role in this is, is to offset some of those advantages and disadvantages would come from a local and state system like that.
--:-- John Volant: Another way to describe it is that wealthy, more liberal blue areas are subsidizing more conservative, more rural, poorer, redder areas of the country in terms of education.
--:-- Leila Fadel: Am I right?
--:-- John Volant: So the politics of this are really fascinating.
--:-- A Martinez: So programs like Title I, which again provides these resources for students who need it most, they go not just to politically blue areas or big cities, they really go to all parts of the country.
--:-- John Volant: And in fact, if you look at the states that rely the most on Title I funding as a share of their per-pupil education spending, it's actually a bunch of red kind of rural states that get the largest share of funding from Title I.
--:-- Leila Fadel: And so when you start to talk about shutting down the department or scaling back these programs, you run into opposition not just from Democrats who across the board oppose that kind of move, but actually a lot of congressional Republicans see the threat that it poses to their own constituents.
--:-- Leila Fadel: President-elect Donald Trump has also committed to boosting America's fossil fuel industry.
--:-- A Martinez: And we will drill, baby drill. We're going to drill, baby drill.
--:-- Leila Fadel: And scrapping policies and laws that benefit green technologies, such as the Inflation Reduction Act, or IRA, are on the list of things to do.
--:-- A Martinez: Now, for insight into Trump's plans, I spoke with Duke University professor Brian Murray.
--:-- Brian Murray: Trump has said that he will reverse the IRA by deobligating any funds that were unspent.
--:-- Leila Fadel: And eliminating tax credits for zero carbon energy and electric vehicles and other clean energy activity.
--:-- Brian Murray: Let's get into then offshore wind.
--:-- A Martinez: Donald Trump has also talked about eliminating regulations and even killing projects.
--:-- Brian Murray: How feasible would that be?
--:-- Leila Fadel: Trump has been openly hostile to offshore wind for years.
--:-- Brian Murray: And ways that he can camp down on offshore wind in the U.S. would be to offer, of course, no new leases and then could eliminate the IRA tax credits specifically for offshore wind.
--:-- A Martinez: Yeah, and that's one of his day one pledges to end offshore wind right away.
--:-- Brian Murray: Could he end it pretty quickly as he claims he wants to do?
--:-- Leila Fadel: It's one thing to take action quickly.
--:-- Brian Murray: It's another thing to slow down the activity quickly.
--:-- A Martinez: So there are a number of offshore wind facilities now under construction off the coast of Massachusetts, Rhode Island, New York, New Jersey, and Virginia, and many of those will continue.
--:-- Brian Murray: However, if the tax credits are eliminated, that would need to go through Congress and it wouldn't happen on day one.
--:-- Leila Fadel: But if they were eliminated, that would put a lot of the private capital at risk right now because the investors of that private capital are planning on tax credits as part of the return that they're going to have on their investment.
--:-- A Martinez: What about electric vehicles? How much would a Trump administration change what already is in mind for electric vehicle production and ownership?
--:-- Brian Murray: The demand for this has really been spurred a lot by the incentives for electric vehicles.
--:-- Leila Fadel: One of the greatest beneficiaries of the tax credits has been battery manufacturers.
--:-- A Martinez: So it may not be all that politically easy for President-elect Trump to go in and say, we're just going to stop all of the incentives associated with electric vehicles, if it then leads to incentives for battery production in these parts of the country.
--:-- Brian Murray: So let's go to the fossil fuel industry.
--:-- A Martinez: Donald Trump has promised to increase oil and gas production, even though the country has already set new records for oil and gas production under Biden's administration.
--:-- Brian Murray: So what can the new administration do to increase it even more than it already is?
--:-- Leila Fadel: Well, you're right that currently the U.S. is and has been for several years the largest producer of oil and gas in the world.
--:-- Brian Murray: It's done so, though, with some restrictions on leasing and oil and gas extraction on federal lands.
--:-- A Martinez: And so one thing that the Trump administration could do is to reduce those restrictions.
--:-- Brian Murray: They could rapidly increase oil natural gas and coal production on federal lands.
--:-- Leila Fadel: They could also call on Congress to repeal the Antiquities Act which was used to establish national monuments where mineral and oil and gas extraction can occur.
--:-- A Martinez: Would doing any or all of those things lead to lower energy costs for everyone else?
--:-- Brian Murray: So the U.S. is a large and important producer, but it's not the only producer in global markets.
--:-- Leila Fadel: Increasing global supplies will generally reduce prices and increase consumption, and that lead to more emissions.
--:-- A Martinez: And to wrap up our week of Day One Promises, our co-host Michelle Martin took a closer look at this campaign promise.
--:-- Michelle Martin: On Day One, I will sign an executive order instructing every federal agency to cease the promotion of sex or gender transition at any age.
--:-- Leila Fadel: They're not going to do it anymore.
--:-- Michelle Martin: Michelle spoke to Jamie Taylor, a professor at the University of Toledo.
--:-- Jamie Taylor: I just want to start with a clip we just played and Trump's promise to ban federal support for gender transition at any age.
--:-- Leila Fadel: What's he talking about here? Is he talking about Medicaid and Medicare?
--:-- Jamie Taylor: Can he ban certain procedures from being paid for by these programs?
--:-- Michelle Martin: There are several programs that would address health care for transgender people.
--:-- Jamie Taylor: These are Medicare, Medicaid, VA.
--:-- Leila Fadel: And then there are things like the Affordable Care Act, where you have non-discrimination protections that may include trans people, depending on how the term sex is being interpreted.
--:-- Jamie Taylor: So the president can issue an executive order to instruct agencies to do this.
--:-- Michelle Martin: And one of the things that we know with executive action on trans rights is it's not sticky.
--:-- Jamie Taylor: Executive action is going to be very impermanent.
--:-- Leila Fadel: Here is the second part of that quote.
--:-- Jamie Taylor: I will declare that any hospital or health care provider that participates in the chemical or physical mutilation of a minor youth no longer meets federal health and safety standards.
--:-- Michelle Martin: They will be terminated from receiving federal funds effective immediately.
--:-- Jamie Taylor: Now, I think that what he's talking about here is what other people consider gender affirming care for minors.
--:-- Leila Fadel: Do people see this differently from gender affirming care for adults?
--:-- Jamie Taylor: Yeah, I do think we need to make a distinction between health care for minors versus gender affirming health care for adults.
--:-- Michelle Martin: And I think the politics on that is going to be different.
--:-- Jamie Taylor: The state, broadly speaking, has an obligation to protect minors.
--:-- Leila Fadel: And so the politics of that is different for adults.
--:-- Jamie Taylor: I mean, what is the rational basis to deny an adult voluntary procedures to make their life better?
--:-- Michelle Martin: So last year in a campaign speech, Trump made a specific reference to Title IX.
--:-- Jamie Taylor: He said this. The bill will also make clear that Title IX prohibits men from participating in women's sports.
--:-- Leila Fadel: So Title IX is part of the Civil Rights Act.
--:-- Jamie Taylor: It bans discrimination in schools and colleges.
--:-- Michelle Martin: What is he saying he will do? Is he saying that this bill that he is proposing will bar transgender athletes from participating in college sports?
--:-- Jamie Taylor: I mean, can he do that?
--:-- Leila Fadel: This is, again, something that has flip-flopped on how this is going to be interpreted.
--:-- Jamie Taylor: The Obama administration wanted to interpret Title IX inclusively of trans people, and the Trump administration reversed course.
--:-- Michelle Martin: The Biden administration, again, reversed course, but they weren't as willing to be as inclusive on sports.
--:-- Jamie Taylor: And so the Trump administration is almost certainly going to take the view that Title IX does not include protections for trans people in sport.
--:-- Leila Fadel: But again, executive action is impermanent.
--:-- Michelle Martin: And that's it for this Up First bonus episode for Friday, November 15th.
--:-- A Martinez: I'm Leila Fadel.
--:-- Michelle Martin: And I'm A Martinez.
--:-- Leila Fadel: How about giving Consider This from NPR Listen?
--:-- A Martinez: We here at Up First give you the three big stories of the day.
--:-- Michelle Martin: Our Consider This colleagues take a different approach.
--:-- Leila Fadel: They dive into a single news story and what it means to you in just 15 minutes.
--:-- A Martinez: Listen now on the NPR app or wherever you get your podcasts.
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