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WASHINGTON —  For 236 years, ever since George Washington, a newly elected president’s inaugural address has traditionally served several purposes.

One is simply to mark the beginning of a new administration in celebration and hope — and an occasional dose of eloquence.

Another, equally important, is to try to unify the country as far as possible after the rancor of a divisive election campaign.

It shouldn’t be a campaign speech; the time for campaigning is over. It isn’t a list of programs and policies; later speeches like the State of the Union are made for that.

“You want to aim at unifying the country — because if you don’t do that, you’re just the people who won and the people who lost,” said Kathleen Hall Jamieson of the University of Pennsylvania, co-author of two books on presidential speechmaking.

“An inaugural address should focus on the things we have in common, not everything that divides us,” she said. “You want to see a president who is going to be for you even if you didn’t vote for him.”

That has been the basic model since Washington delivered the first, in New York in 1789.

Until Donald Trump, that is.

When Trump began his first term as president in 2017 he offered a few head-fakes toward unity. “We are one nation,” he allowed. But he spent more of his speech attacking politicians in both parties who had opposed him.

And he painted the United States as a crime-ridden hellscape of “rusted-out factories, scattered like tombstones.”

“This American carnage stops right here and stops right now,” he promised.

One of his Republican predecessors, George W. Bush, offered a succinct evaluation afterward: “That was some weird s—,” he told Hillary Clinton, who sat next to him at the ceremony.

Trump’s divisive tone was deliberate.

“We didn’t win an election to bring the country together,” said his advisor Stephen K. Bannon, who helped write the speech. The goal was to “take on the elites … with a blowtorch.”

On Monday, Trump is scheduled to launch his second four-year term with another inaugural address. He promises that this time will be different.

“It’s going to be a message of unity,” he said last month. “No American carnage.”

That would be a pleasant surprise. After all, we’ve seen this movie before, and it turned out to be a bait-and-switch. At the Republican National Convention in August, Trump aides forecast that the former president, who had narrowly escaped death in an assassination attempt days before, would present a new, more contemplative persona — a “softer version,” his daughter-in-law Lara Trump suggested.

That kinder, gentler Trump lasted about 20 minutes. At the beginning of his acceptance speech, New Trump urged both sides not to “demonize political disagreement.” A few minutes later, Old Trump reappeared and demonized “crazy Nancy Pelosi” for “destroying our country.”

To be fair, it was the middle of a hard-fought campaign — one in which Trump also called Democrats “vermin” and accused immigrants of “poisoning the blood of our country.”

Now, however, Trump has finished his last presidential election. (Trump has quipped about seeking a third term, but his nominee for attorney general, Pam Bondi, said last week that the Constitution stands in his way.)

His main goal, presumably, is to make his second term a success — and Monday’s speech gives him an opportunity to start on the right foot by offering an outstretched hand to voters who didn’t support him.

The rationale for such an un-Trumplike move wouldn’t be sentimental. It’s a matter of practical politics.

Trump won the popular vote last year, but fell just short of a majority. His favorability rating in recent polls has reached a record high, but it’s still stuck below 50%. He claims that his election gave him a mandate, but it’s a tenuous one confined mostly to concerns over inflation and immigration.

Still, for the first time, he’s tantalizingly close to majority support. His inauguration gives him an opportunity to build a broader coalition — but only if he acts as a president of all Americans, not only his aggrieved base.

Republican strategist Karl Rove, who worked for the quotable George W. Bush, spelled out the practical case for magnanimity in the Wall Street Journal:

“Trump has an opportunity to solidify … reluctant supporters — and even convert some critics — if he delivers a strong Inaugural Address and sets an optimistic tone,” Rove wrote.

“Americans want Mr. Trump to talk about hope rather than carnage, about bringing the country together to overcome important challenges rather than dividing it over petty issues and threats of retribution,” he added.

Trump’s first term was a failure at passing legislation. He won a big tax cut — the easy part — but stumbled when he tried to repeal Obamacare, and never even presented the big infrastructure bill he promised in his first inaugural address.

If he changes his tone this time, Rove advised, “he’ll find he can get more from both parties in Congress with honey than with vinegar.”

Trump made his core policy goals abundantly clear during the campaign: new tax cuts, high tariffs and a mass deportation campaign.

Those needn’t be the focus of Monday’s speech. The inaugural address is a chance to lay out broad goals, a basic vision and the principles by which he hopes to govern.

The safe bet is still that the Trump who speaks in the Capitol will be the familiar, divisive Old Trump — the man history will remember for putting “American carnage” and “vermin” in our political lexicon.

But an inauguration is an opportunity to offer voters a measure of hope and the promise of a better future.

If Trump wants to swing for the fences, he could model himself after an earlier Republican president who took office in a bitterly divided nation: Abraham Lincoln, whose first inauguration was six weeks before the outbreak of the Civil War.

“We must not be enemies … ,” Lincoln said. “The mystic chords of memory, stretching from every battlefield and patriot grave to every living heart and hearthstone all over this broad land, will yet swell the chorus of the Union, when again touched, as surely they will be, by the better angels of our nature.”

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On Monday, Donald Trump will visit the scene of a crime, laying his hand on a Bible and vowing to preserve and protect the Constitution as he swears a formal oath to become the nation’s 47th president.

The bloodstains of the Jan. 6 insurrection have long ago washed away. The shattered windows of the Capitol are mended, the broken doors replaced. You’d never know the terrible mayhem that was visited on the seat of our national government, or the way our country and democracy were defiled that pitch-black day.

Which is exactly how some would like it.

Trump and his acolytes have spent years rewriting history and burying the uncomfortable truth — the lies about a stolen 2020 election, the violent attempt to overturn the result — beneath a reeking blanket of deception, misinformation and falsity.

The attempted cover-up is so total it extends even to the physical premises, where House Speaker Mike Johnson has single-handedly thwarted legislation calling for installation of a plaque honoring the law enforcement officers who battled pro-Trump rioters to protect the Capitol and its inhabitants — including one Mike Johnson.

Disgraceful doesn’t even begin to describe the affront to their bravery and sacrifice.

“What they went through was just horrendous,” California Rep. Zoe Lofgren said of the men and women who threw their bodies into the breach to protect lawmakers, staff members and reporters covering Congress. “Honestly, they saved us. They saved my life and they saved democracy.”

Trump has said he plans to pardon some of the rioters soon after lifting his hand from the Bible and assuming office. In his up-is-down, ignorance-is-strength mindset, those lawbreakers are the actual victims of the violent assault on our country and its foundational principles.

So it’s worth remembering how on that “day of love,” as Trump has described it, police were set upon by thugs wielding baseball bats, flagpoles, tasers, pepper spray and iron pipes. More than 140 officers were injured. Several died in the aftermath.

The “normal tourist visit,” as one Republican House member described the incursion on the Capitol, caused about $3 million in damage and resulted in criminal charges against more than 1,500 people.

Try behaving that way at Disneyland.

A spending bill passed and signed into law in March 2022 required the creation of the commemorative plaque and its placement on the West Front of the Capitol, where some of the worst violence took place, within a year’s time. Lofgren, a San José Democrat who served on the House committee that investigated the Jan. 6 attack and Trump’s efforts to reverse his 2020 defeat, led the House Administration Committee when the law was enacted.

After more than two years of inaction, she sent Johnson “a polite letter” noting the deadline had long passed and asking the reason for the delay. “I look forward to any information you can share to that end and what is being done to address it,” Lofgren wrote.

To this day, she’s never heard back from the speaker. “Crickets,” Lofgren said in an interview.

Last week, dozens of lawmakers — all Democrats — co-signed yet another letter to Johnson, again urging action and requesting a timeline for his follow-through.

“I haven’t even looked at that,” he wanly told reporters when asked about the plaque. “I need to check on that.”

The speaker, who owes his tenuous hold on the job entirely to Trump, appears to be the sole impediment to the memorial’s rightful installment. The Democratic House and Senate leaders both signed off, as did then-Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell, who has since vacated his leadership post and is expected to retire rather then seek reelection to his Senate seat next year.

Johnson’s motive is as obvious as the Capitol dome set against a blue sky: he’s kowtowing to Trump, lest he damage his eggshell ego or prick the incoming president’s gossamer-thin skin.

Michael Fanone, a former Metropolitan Police officer who was injured during the Jan. 6 attack, put it bluntly. The heinous events of that day are “so politically inconvenient” that Johnson and fellow Republicans are “willing to basically take a s— on their own Capitol Police Department and the other agencies that responded to assist them,” he told the Capitol Hill newspaper Roll Call.

Why should anyone care? Washington is chock-full of statues, markers, memorials and plaques that, with a few notable exceptions, are easily passed on a daily basis with scarcely a glance.

“Imagine how you would feel if your police officer son died as a result of the attack and you’ve got people who he was protecting saying it was just a ‘peaceful protest,’ ” Lofgren said. “How would that make you feel? To have some recognition of the sacrifice is meaningful to some of these officers, and therefore it’s meaningful to me.”

Beyond that, it’s important not to whitewash history simply because it makes some people squirm or undermines a party’s political agenda.

Erasure is a step toward forgetting. Forgetting is a step toward nullification. Nullification is a step toward repeating a despicable event.

“On behalf of a grateful Congress, this plaque honors the extraordinary individuals who bravely protected and defended this symbol of democracy on January 6, 2021,” the memorial tablet reads below a rendering of the U.S. Capitol. “Their heroism will never be forgotten.”

Nor should it be.

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WASHINGTON —  President-elect Donald Trump will likely visit the Los Angeles area this week to view the wildfire damage, he said on Saturday. The trip is expected to be his first outside the nation’s capital after being inaugurated Monday.

“I will be, probably, at the end of the week. I was going to go, actually yesterday, but I thought it would be better if I went as president,” Trump told NBC’s Kristen Welker in a phone interview. “It’s a little bit more appropriate, I suspect.”

Representatives for Trump did not respond to requests for comment on Saturday.

At least 27 people have died and more than 12,000 structures have been destroyed during the catastrophic fires in Pacific Palisades, Altadena and surrounding communities. Asked whether he would sign disaster relief for the region after being inaugurated, Trump said his response will be conditioned to demand policy changes in California.

“We’re going to be [looking] at it from a lot of standpoints,” he said. “We’re going to be demanding that the water be released from the north into the lower parts of California.”

Asked whether he has spoken with Gov. Gavin Newsom, who Trump has called on to resign over his wildfire response, the president-elect said he had not.

Newsom’s office invited Trump to view the devastation last week.

The governor’s office said that the president-elect’s transition team acknowledged receipt of the invitation but had not otherwise responded.

“As our invitation says, we hope Trump comes to California to see the devastation, to meet firefighters and survivors, and to get the facts instead of sniping from the sidelines,” the governor’s office said in a statement Saturday.

Times staff writer Taryn Luna in Sacramento contributed to this report.

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Fox’s Greg Gutfeld proves himself to be one of the more disgusting Trump sycophants once again. While complaining about Sen. Mazie Hirono’s line of questioning during several of Trump’s cabinet nominees’ hearings, Gutfeld basically justified sexual assault while attacking Democrats’ looks and fawning all over Trump’s “hot” cabinet picks:

Fox News host Greg Gutfeld predicted President-elect Donald Trump’s second-term cabinet would excel because all of the nominees are in “great shape” physically.

On Friday’s edition of The Five, Gutfeld praised Trump’s selections for key positions over their physical fitness while slamming President Joe Biden’s cabinet as having been made up of “fat, out of shape losers.”

The show’s panelists discussed questions Sen. Mazie Hirono (D-HI) asked each of Trump’s nominees. The senator opened up her questioning of people such as Doug Bergum by asking if he had ever made “unwanted requests for sexual favors” or otherwise committed sexual assault or harassment.

Here’s more on Gutfeld’s disgusting remarks from Media Matters:

KATIE PAVLICH (CO-HOST): Noem caps off a weeklong confirmation-palooza that has seen some truly bizarre antics by the Democrats, like Hawaii Senator Mazie Hirono. She’s been making and asking Trump cabinet nominees all week this question.

…

So, Greg as a person who is a legal adult, do you want to answer that question?

GREG GUTFELD (CO-HOST): You know the thing is, I think she’s doing research. That’s what I think, you know. “Unwanted requests for sexual favors.” That’s like guys on a first date or a second date. It’s not about assault. It’s like, you know, trying to get to first base. She’s doing research because she’s never experienced an unwanted request for sexual favor in her life.

Mayorkas to Kristi. You’re going from a garden gnome to Kristi Noem. I mean, she’s so hot that shooting a dog isn’t a deal breaker. And I’m telling you this, you look at this crop of nominees and the party, there’s something there, man. They’re all in great shape.

You’ve got to look at people who preserve and maintain what’s important in their lives. If they’re going to do that with their physical self, they’re going to do that in other areas. This is why like a lot of liberals are just bad, out of shape losers, because they don’t believe in structure, discipline.

No surprise given the fact that the Sexual-Assaulter-in-Chief was never a deal breaker for them either, but someone ought to remind him that most of those Democratic senators and Mayorkas are in a lot better shape than Trump.

It’s also more proof that none of these idiots care one iota about the impact on people’s lives from these incompetent idiots Trump wants running our government. It’s all one big stupid reality show to them.

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The Supreme Court has paved the way for TikTok to be banned in the U.S. on Sunday.

The high court on Friday upheld a new law that requires the social media app’s Chinese owner to sell off TikTok’s U.S. business or face a nationwide ban.

“Given just a handful of days after oral argument to issue an opinion, I cannot profess the kind of certainty I would like to have about the arguments and record before us,” Justice Neil M. Gorsuch wrote. “All I can say is that, at this time and under these constraints, the problem appears real and the response to it not unconstitutional.”

The future of the popular short-form video app has been precarious since 2020, when then-President Trump moved to shut it down because of national security concerns. Trump and others raised the prospect that TikTok owner ByteDance could assist the Chinese government by sharing the data it collects from its roughly 170 million American users, embedding malicious software in the app or helping to spread disinformation.

After President Biden signed the law in April, which set a Jan. 19 deadline for the ban to take effect, TikTok responded by suing the U.S. government. The company said a ban would violate 1st Amendment rights and argued that there was “no support for the idea” that its Chinese ownership posed national security risks.

What will happen over the next few days is unclear. On Thursday the Associated Press, citing an unnamed government official, reported that Biden won’t enforce the ban and would leave the app’s fate to Trump, who takes office Monday.

Was the decision expected?

Pretty much. The Supreme Court justices sounded highly skeptical of TikTok’s free-speech defense during oral arguments on Jan. 10, signaling they were not likely to strike down the law.

The justices, both conservative and liberal, said Congress was concerned about the threat to national security because TikTok’s owner, ByteDance, is headquartered in China. They said the law in question was not an effort to restrict freedom of speech.

“Congress doesn’t care about what’s on TikTok,” Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. said. “Congress is not fine with a foreign adversary gathering all this data on 170 million Americans.”

Can I still download the app?

No, as of Sunday, it will be illegal for app stores such as Apple and Google Play to distribute TikTok or issue updates to the social media app. Companies that don’t abide face civil penalties of $5,000 per user.

You won’t be able to access TikTok from your browser, either.

What if I already have TikTok?

You’ll still have the app on your mobile device, but ByteDance might immediately shut it down in the U.S. on Sunday. Even if it doesn’t go dark right away, TikTok is expected to lose utility over time as users leave and updates aren’t rolled out.

What is Trump’s position now?

Trump has reversed course on TikTok since his first term, joining the social media app in June during his presidential election and posting, “Those who want to save TikTok in America, vote for Trump.”

In recent weeks, the president-elect has been trying to prevent the app from being banned in the U.S., submitting an amicus brief to the Supreme Court and asking it to delay the Jan. 19 deadline. He also met with TikTok Chief Executive Shou Chew at Mar-a-Lago last month.

Shortly after the Supreme Court decision was released, Trump posted on his Truth Social account: “The Supreme Court decision was expected, and everyone must respect it. My decision on TikTok will be made in the not too distant future, but I must have time to review the situation. Stay tuned!”

In a TikTok video posted Friday morning, Chew said: “I want to thank President Trump for his commitment to work with us to find a solution that keeps TikTok available in the United States. This is a strong stand for the 1st Amendment and against arbitrary censorship.”

Could Trump stop the ban from going into effect?

The timing of the ban — the day before Trump’s inauguration on Monday — makes things tricky. Only the sitting president can issue a 90-day stay on the ban and can do so only if a buyer has taken concrete steps toward a purchase.

On Wednesday, the New York Times reported that Chew is planning to attend Trump’s inauguration and will be seated on the dais.

Is a last-minute sale of TikTok possible?

It could happen, but ByteDance’s priority had been to get the law struck down and maintain ownership of the app. The company has signaled that it does not want to sell.

Are there any serious bidders out there for TikTok’s U.S. business?

On Jan. 8, an investor group spearheaded by former Dodgers owner Frank McCourt submitted an offer to ByteDance, the group said. The group is calling itself the People’s Bid for TikTok and includes Kevin O’Leary, one of the investors from the reality television show “Shark Tank.”

Terms of the deal were not disclosed.

What is the People’s Bid for TikTok pledging to do with the app?

If its offer is successful, the group would rebuild the platform in a way that prioritizes the privacy of TikTok users, said Tomicah Tillemann, president of Project Liberty, a New York-based organization that assembled the bid.

“What we are focused on is providing a clear path forward that will allow for the preservation of the dynamic, vibrant community that is TikTok under American ownership,” he said.

“Our vision for TikTok is grounded in the idea that people should have a choice in how their data is used, a voice in the way platforms operate and a stake in the economic value that they create online.”

Anyone else?

On Monday, social media personality MrBeast wrote on X: “Okay fine, I’ll buy Tik Tok so it doesn’t get banned.” He later followed up and said he’d had “so many billionaires reach out to me since I tweeted this, let’s see if we can pull this off.”

The same day, Bloomberg reported that the Chinese government was considering selling the U.S. arm of TikTok to Elon Musk. But in a statement to The Times, a spokesperson for TikTok called the report “pure fiction.”

How are TikTok influencers feeling?

Los Angeles is a major hub for content creators, who say they’ve been preparing for this moment for years.

Nathan Kehn, 35, joined TikTok about four years ago, posting cat videos and other funny content. He said he was disappointed that the government could “just come through and wipe out people’s livelihoods like that.”

“It’s super unfair,” he said of the ban. “A lot of my friends are all TikTok and this is about to ruin a lot of people’s lives.”

Kehn, who lives in Sherman Oaks and has about 800,000 TikTok followers, started planning ahead by growing his Instagram, Facebook and Snapchat accounts just in case TikTok was forced to shut down.

“Part of being a social media content creator is I’ve never put my eggs in one basket because I don’t know how long any of it’s ever going to last,” he said. “I learned a long time ago, you can’t trust one platform.”

What would happen to TikTok’s employees locally?

TikTok has a significant presence in Culver City, employing roughly 440 people there, according to city estimates. The company has been an important tool for video creators, small businesses, music artists and Hollywood studios.

In an internal memo obtained by The Verge this week, employees were told that TikTok’s offices would stay open regardless.

“The bill is not written in a way that impacts the entities through which you are employed, only the US user experience [of TikTok],” the memo said.

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WASHINGTON —  The Supreme Court on Friday upheld a law that calls for the shutdown of the U.S. operations of social media app TikTok due to privacy and security concerns related to its Chinese owner.

The justices in a unanimous opinion said the 2024 law does not violate the 1st Amendment or its protection for freedom of speech. The ruling means 170 million Americans may lose access to the popular social media platform as soon as Sunday.

“There is no doubt that, for more than 170 million Americans, TikTok offers a distinctive and expansive outlet for expression, means of engagement, and source of community,” the court said in an unsigned opinion. “But Congress has determined that divestiture is necessary to address its well-supported national security concerns regarding TikTok’s data collection practices and relationship with a foreign adversary. .. we conclude that the challenged provisions do not violate petitioners’ 1st Amendment rights.”

The decision appears to leave the U.S. fate of TikTok to either a last-minute sale by its Chinese owners, or a reprieve from President Biden or President-elect Donald Trump.

Trump takes office on Monday, the day after the shut-down law is due to take effect. Recently, Trump has said he will try to work out a deal that keeps TikTok in operation, presumably by separating it from Chinese government control.

Last year, the House and Senate by large bipartisan votes approved the shut-down law, citing national security fears that ByteDance, TikTok’s parent company, was gathering data on tens of millions of Americans.

Congress decided TikTok must separate itself from its ownership by a “foreign adversary.”

In defense of the law, U.S. Solicitor General Elizabeth Prelogar told the justices that TikTok and ByteDance “collect vast swaths of data about tens of millions of Americans,” which China “could use for espionage or blackmail.”

In its 20-page “per curiam” opinion Friday, the court said the case turned on the ownership and control of TikTok, not free speech.

While TikTok is “operated in the United States by TikTok Inc., an American company incorporated and headquartered in California,” its “ultimate parent company is ByteDance Ltd., a privately held company that has operations in China. ByteDance Ltd. owns TikTok’s proprietary algorithm…and is subject to Chinese laws that require it to ‘assist or cooperate’ with the Chinese government’s ‘intelligence work’ and to ensure that the Chinese Government has ‘the power to access and control private data’ the company holds.”

Second, the court said the shut-down law is not targeted at speech or expression. The 1st Amendment protects against the government’s efforts to control the “content” of the speech, but that is not at issue in this case, the court said.

The law “does not regulate the creators…and directly regulates ByteDance and TikTok only through the divestiture requirement.”

The free-speech advocates who sued to block the law “have not identified any case in which this court has treated a regulation of corporate control as a direct regulation of expressive activity or semi-expressive conduct. We hesitate to break that new ground in this unique case.”

Biden and his administration tried and failed to make progress on a separation agreement. Government lawyers told the court they did not find ByteDance to be trustworthy.

But Trump may see it differently. Though he originally supported efforts to ban TikTok in the U.S., he recently changed his position. “I have a warm spot in my heart for TikTok,” Trump said last month.

One provision of the law allows the president to give TikTok a 90-day extension if it is determined there has been “significant progress” toward arranging a “qualified divestiture” from its foreign owners.

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WASHINGTON —  A historic uptick in migration during Joe Biden’s presidency led to attacks as he ran for reelection, with Donald Trump and fellow Republicans blaming Democrats for the swelling number of people crossing the U.S.-Mexico border.

Now, after campaigning on promises to secure the border and deport undocumented immigrants, President-elect Trump is poised to take office Monday amid a steep drop in border crossings.

Here are five key facts about migration across the U.S.-Mexico border over the last several years.

1. Arrivals at the border are the lowest they’ve been since Trump left office

When Trump left office in January 2021, people were stopped at the southern border more than 78,000 times that month, according to figures from the U.S. Customs and Border Protection. That’s compared with roughly 96,000 stops last month. The highest monthly total during the Biden administration was nearly 302,000 in December 2023, and Trump’s highest total was just over 144,000 in May 2019.

These figures include arrivals at land ports of entry, where asylum seekers wait for appointments to enter legally, as well as those caught crossing illegally elsewhere along the border. Figures from November and December showed, for the first time, more migrants being processed through ports of entry than those who were arrested after entering the U.S. illegally.

In June, the Biden administration began effectively blocking migrants from seeking asylum along the U.S. border with Mexico. The restrictions don’t apply to those who enter at official ports of entry or use other legal means.

For parts of last year, San Diego became the top destination for illegal crossings along the U.S.-Mexico border for the first time in decades. The change reflects how smuggling routes, which used to be consistent for many years, have begun to shift every few months since 2021. That’s in part because of the post-pandemic increase in global migration to the U.S.

The San Diego region saw 10,117 border arrests in December — the second-highest after the Rio Grande Valley in Texas — though that’s down by 70% from a year earlier.

2. There hasn’t been much of an increase in border arrivals ahead of Trump’s inauguration

In the weeks leading up to Trump’s inauguration, most regions across the border have seen little change in arrivals of migrants. But Chief Border Patrol Agent Gloria Chavez of the Rio Grande Valley Sector in south Texas, who posts local arrest numbers on social media every week, reported 1,206 migrant stops over the final weekend of December, and 1,276 the weekend before. That’s double the number in recent weeks of fewer than 600 arrests.

“It is the first quantitative indicator of an increase in migration since the U.S. election, which raised expectations — so far unmet — that many migrants might rush to enter the United States before Election Day,” Adam Isacson, director of defense oversight at the advocacy organization the Washington Office on Latin America, wrote in a recent newsletter.

That trend appeared to have waned in the new year, with Chavez reporting 669 arrests the weekend that ended Jan. 5 and 699 arrests the weekend that ended Jan. 12.

Isacson noted that in 2016, asylum seekers rushed to enter the U.S. before Trump began his first term. But border policies are different now, with Biden administration rules already preventing most people who enter illegally from qualifying for asylum.

“Their only hope is to not be apprehended,” he said. “Some people might be trying, and if they’re successful they won’t show up in the numbers.”

Aaron Reichlin-Melnick, a senior fellow with the left-leaning American Immigration Council, said tens of thousands of migrants are waiting in Mexico.

“Today it is harder for migrants to make it to the border and seek asylum than at any point in modern U.S. history,” he said. “Despite this massively increased infrastructure at the border, the U.S. continues to remain, in the eyes of people around the world, a place of safety and security.”

3. The U.S. border used to draw mostly Mexican and Central American migrants. Now people from all over the world flock here

The U.S. has historically drawn migrants from its southern neighbor. Although Mexicans still make up the highest proportion of those seeking entry, arrivals of people from other countries have shot up over time. During Trump’s first term, people from Honduras, Guatemala and El Salvador flocked to the U.S. border due to instability in their home countries.

That started to change around 2019. Throughout Biden’s presidency, greater numbers of people began to arrive from Venezuela, Cuba and Colombia. People also came from farther away — Afghanistan, Ukraine and China.

The San Diego region has what is considered the most international border, drawing people from all over the world.

Chinese migrants in search of jobs and freedom from the repressive government there started arriving in record numbers — increasing from just 949 arrests in fiscal year 2022 to more than 37,000 last fiscal year. Republicans seized on the increase, painting it as a national security issue.

Numbers began to decrease last year after the Biden administration imposed asylum restrictions and Ecuador began requiring Chinese nationals to have a visa to fly there.

4. Immigrant detention has ramped back up since COVID-19 decreases

The government’s operation for detaining people who violate immigration laws has seen wild swings in recent years. During Trump’s first term, the population detained by Immigration and Customs Enforcement reached historic highs of more than 55,000 people.

As COVID-19 spread through lockups, killing detainees, courts ordered some immigrant detention centers to reduce their populations. The detention population reached a low of about 13,000 people in February 2021, the month after Biden took office. (The Adelanto ICE Detention Facility east of Los Angeles has remained under a COVID-era court order that prevented new detainees, dwindling the population of the nearly 2,000-bed facility to just two people.)

As of Dec. 29, more than 39,000 people (most of whom have no criminal record) are being held in civil immigrant detention facilities, according to TRAC, a nonpartisan data research organization. That number has remained fairly steady for the last year, generally fluctuating between 35,000 and just under 40,000 since late 2023.

Numbers are widely expected to increase again after Trump takes office, as he works to make good on his promise of mass deportations.

5. Historic arrivals under the Biden administration added to the already enormous backlog in immigration court

Immigrants placed in deportation proceedings can plead their case before an immigration judge. With historic arrivals of migrants under the Biden administration, the immigration court backlog now has more than 3.7 million pending cases, according to TRAC.

Biden inherited an already backlogged immigration court system with 1.3 million cases. When Trump assumed office in 2017, just over 542,000 cases were pending.

In fiscal year 2024, immigration courts closed more than 900,000 cases — the most of any single year. New cases have fallen sharply as fewer immigrants are processed at the border.

Los Angeles County has nearly 115,000 cases, the second-highest after Miami-Dade County. Experts say the backlog can’t be eliminated without funding hundreds more immigration judges and support staff, as well as systemic reforms.

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From the start of his campaign to retake the White House, President-elect Donald Trump promised to go big on his first day back in power.

In a series of early videos outlining his plans and in stump speeches across the nation, Trump said he would use executive orders on “Day One” to bypass the normal legislative process and secure major changes to U.S. policy with the simple stroke of his pen.

He promised to unilaterally upend the long-recognized constitutional guarantee of birthright citizenship by signing an executive order informing federal agencies that “under the correct interpretation of the law,” children of undocumented immigrants do not automatically receive U.S. citizenship by being born on U.S. soil.

He said he would “reverse the disastrous effects of Biden’s inflation and rebuild the greatest economy in the history of the world,” place new restrictions on gender-affirming care for transgender youth, halt the transition to electric vehicles in favor of fossil fuels, and use a decades-old public health statute known as Title 42 and the U.S. military to initiate “the largest domestic deportation effort in American history.”

“We will secure our borders and we will restore our sovereignty starting on Day One,” Trump said. “Our country will be great again.”

Trump’s promises have long excited Republicans and set Democrats on edge, but the anticipation has built ahead of his inauguration Monday, especially as media outlets have reported more than 100 executive orders are in the works and conservative members of Congress have said the president-elect intends to move quickly and aggressively — with their encouragement.

“There is going to be shock and awe with executive orders,” Sen. John Barrasso, a Wyoming Republican and the Senate majority whip, said on CBS’ “Face the Nation.” “A blizzard of executive orders on the economy, as well as on the border.”

Rep. August Pfluger, a Texas Republican, told Fox News Digital that a House caucus he leads — the Republican Study Committee — recently received a briefing on what to expect from Trump’s deputy chief of policy, Stephen Miller. The group “is in lockstep with the incoming Trump administration” and “committed to working around the clock to deliver on the promises we made to the American people, especially when it comes to securing our border and enforcing immigration policies,” Pfluger said.

What Trump’s plans will mean for the nation — and on what timeline — is not entirely clear. Executive orders indicate a president’s intention to take swift action without waiting on Congress, but initiating their underlying policies often takes time, experts said — requiring a president’s Cabinet appointments to win confirmation and his administration to settle in first.

“There’s a lot that’s possible, but not on ‘Day One,’” said Bert Rockman, a professor emeritus of political science at Purdue University and an expert on executive and presidential powers. “The expectation that a lot of things are going to be done right off the bat, above and beyond [Trump’s] mouth, is probably precipitous.”

There is also the matter of legal challenges. During Trump’s first term, his efforts to enact policy through executive orders were repeatedly stymied by litigation brought by California and other liberal states — and those states are already gearing up to challenge Trump’s agenda once more, said California Atty. Gen. Rob Bonta.

“We’ve been talking, preparing, planning. We have [legal] briefs on the shelf where we just need to dot the i’s, cross the t’s, press print and file,” Bonta said in an interview with The Times. “We’ve listened to what Mr. Trump has been saying, his inner circle has been projecting, what Project 2025 says in black and white in print, and preparing for all the possibilities.”

Immigrant rights and other advocacy groups have also been preparing for a fight, including in consultation with Bonta’s office and at “Know Your Rights” events throughout the Los Angeles region, said Angélica Salas, executive director of the Coalition for Humane Immigrant Rights, or CHIRLA.

“We had a meeting directly with [Bonta] to really talk about the things that we need to do to prepare and to ensure that we defend access to education, access to healthcare — that our schools, our clinics, our courtrooms, our shelters are all safe from [immigration] enforcement, and that we are ready to participate, as we did in the first Trump administration, as plaintiffs if necessary or as ourselves litigating directly against [these] kind of attacks,” Salas said.

Bonta said firestorms that have decimated some areas of L.A. County in recent days are a major part of his focus now and creating new demands on his staff, but that they will not undercut his team’s readiness to defend Californians’ interests against illegal Trump orders.

“We’re ready, we’re prepared,” Bonta said. “We expect the actions to flow on Day One, immediately — and we’re ready for what comes.”

Trump’s transition team did not respond to requests for comment. However, experts noted that Trump and his team are more prepared than they were at the start of his first term. Trump’s process for nominating Cabinet and other administration leaders is well ahead of where it was at his first inauguration, and that will result in a more efficient and successful start to his second term, they said.

In addition, conservative thought leaders — including those behind the Project 2025 playbook — have been contemplating Trump’s return for years, and have no doubt been helping Trump craft orders that are less vulnerable to legal challenges, the experts said.

“He certainly will have a more experienced administrative team — including himself. He’s been president,” said Mitchel Sollenberger, a political science professor at University of Michigan-Dearborn and author of several books on executive powers.

Still, Sollenberger said, “the realities of government are completely different than snapping one’s fingers.”

Executive orders may be unilateral dictates, but they still must follow a prescribed legal process.

Trump may be able to quickly undo executive orders put in place by President Biden — who himself issued a slate of executive orders in the first days of his administration, some to undo past Trump policies — and could issue orders that are more “symbolic” than prescriptive.

Pro-Trump demonstrators gather outside Manhattan criminal court after the sentencing in Donald Trump’s hush money case in New York on Jan. 10, 2025.

(Julia Demaree Nikhinson / Associated Press)

Trump also could pardon or commute the sentences of his many supporters who were criminally charged and convicted for their role in the insurrection at the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021 — which he repeatedly promised to do on the campaign trail.

However, Trump cannot issue orders that contradict the Constitution or existing laws set forth by Congress. And if he tries to do so, the experts said, he will be challenged in court by advocacy groups and a coalition of liberal states — opening the door for judges to halt his orders from taking effect while the legal battles play out.

California had great success in challenging Trump policies during his first term, filing more than 100 lawsuits against the federal government and winning many. And lawmakers and other leaders in the state have already signaled they are ready to do so again, with Gov. Gavin Newsom scheduling a special legislative session to secure funds for the expected legal fights ahead.

The L.A.-area fires have shifted priorities somewhat, and the special session will now be used in part to address fire needs. But Newsom and other officials have remained adamant that, when called for, they will take the Trump administration to court.

“We will work with the incoming administration, and we want President Trump to succeed in serving all Americans. But when there is overreach, when lives are threatened, when rights and freedoms are targeted, we will take action,” Newsom said recently.

Rockman and Sollenberger said they expect Trump to issue many executive orders. But because such orders are such a heavy and legally fraught lift, they also expect his administration to prioritize — and really come out swinging — on a select handful of orders that they deem most important to Trump’s base.

Orders with “some mass resonance, especially to his base, are the ones that I would expect him to give some priority,” Rockman said. “He’ll try to do the ones that are the most prominent.”

That’s likely to include orders on immigration that speak to border security and Trump’s promise to begin deportations, Rockman said. It may also include efforts to shore up loyalty among the vast federal bureaucracy, including by pushing “Schedule F” — or a plan to replace thousands of career civil servants with Trump loyalists, Rockman said.

Bonta said he also expects Trump to want to “come out with a splash” and to move most quickly, and brashly, on some of his biggest promises, especially around immigration. That includes his promises to end birthright citizenship and begin mass deportations, potentially using the military.

Those are also the sort of measures “that he can’t do” legally, and that California would challenge, Bonta said.

“We know exactly what court we’re going to sue him in and what our arguments are and who’s suing and who we’re suing with and how we create standing,” Bonta said.

The state is also readying responses to Trump challenges to clean-vehicle and other environmental regulations, a proposed ban on mail delivery of abortion pills, a unilateral shuttering of the U.S. Department of Education, the easing of Biden-era regulations on homemade “ghost guns” and other firearms, unlawful orders involving matters such as diversity, equity and inclusion programs or LGBTQ+ rights, the conditioning of emergency wildfire aid for the L.A. area on unrelated conservative demands being met, and more, Bonta said.

Already, Bonta’s office has intervened in court to defend a federal rule expanding healthcare access under the Affordable Care Act to Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals, or DACA, recipients, and separately to defend Clean Air Act regulations on vehicle emissions, in anticipation of the Trump administration deciding to not defend the rules itself.

Bonta acknowledged that Trump’s team may have learned from early mistakes during his first term, when the administration lost policy fights because it tried to sidestep legal protocols for executive orders. But Bonta said he is also banking on the fact that Trump’s “desire to be aggressive” will once again cause him to “stumble.”

“He has not demonstrated discipline, he has not demonstrated compliance with the law, he has not demonstrated the willingness to stay within his actual grant of authority as the president of the United States. He reached outside of it many times under Trump 1.0. He used funding that he shouldn’t have used for a purpose it was not allowed for, he didn’t follow the required procedures and processes under federal law. He did it time and time again and we stopped him time and time again in court,” Bonta said. “I expect that again.”

Bonta said that the recent fires in L.A. County have created new demands on his office, but that it remains in “good shape” to handle those demands and any unlawful Trump administration orders simultaneously — in part thanks to millions of dollars in additional funding that he anticipates will be provided by the state Legislature.

“They’re up for the challenge. They want to do it. They’re mission-driven,” Bonta said of his team. “We are definitely busy, but not overly strained and certainly not over capacity.”

Bonta also stressed that fighting Trump’s agenda was not about “political gamesmanship” but “real outcomes for real Californians” that will also save the state money in the long run.

For example, California successfully fought a plan under Trump’s first administration to add a citizenship question to the U.S. Census, which state officials believed would have stoked fear and produced “an undercount that would have cost us billions of dollars,” given that federal funding for states is tied to population, Bonta said. It also fought off costly changes to environmental regulations and a proposed ban on federal public safety grants going to California’s sanctuary cities, he said.

Defending against unlawful immigration measures and attacks on green energy policies this time around will have a similar effect, Bonta said — protecting the California workers and industries that have made the state the fifth-largest economy in the world.

Salas, of CHIRLA, said she lives in the greater Pasadena area and has family and friends in the immigrant community who lost their homes in Altadena. The fires came right after Border Patrol agents launched one of the largest immigration enforcement sweeps in the Central Valley in years in Bakersfield, she noted — compounding fear and “panic” in the community.

And yet, the response has been one of compassion, generosity and resilience, she said — all of which will come in handy in the days to come.

“I see immigrants across my city helping neighbors, standing with each other, cleaning up debris, opening their doors to neighbors that lost their homes,” Salas said. “That’s the immigrant community that I know, and that’s the immigrant community that is willing to stand up for each other — and against this president.”