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 @ISIDEWITHNewsElon MuskDonald TrumpVice PresidentJD VanceVivek RamaswamyMuskDaily DiscussionOhio•••20hrs ago

Trump Picks Vivek For Ohio Senate Seat

President-elect Donald Trump has encouraged billionaire biotech entrepreneur Vivek Ramaswamy to consider filling Ohio’s vacant Senate seat should the post be offered to him, according to two people with knowledge of the matter, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to describe the private deliberations.Ramaswamy publicly withdrew his name from consideration for the post in November, after Trump chose him to lead the “Department of Government Efficiency” panel along with billionaire executive Elon Musk. But the Ohio native has reemerged in recent days as one of the leading contenders for the Senate seat and is in advanced discussions with GOP leaders about the position, the people said.

JD Vance, who previously held the seat, officially resigned Friday to serve as Trump’s vice president. Under Ohio law, Gov. Mike DeWine (R) will appoint a replacement for the next two years, and then a special election on Nov. 3, 2026, will decide who serves until the term expires in 2029.

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 @ISIDEWITH submitted…2mos2MO

Trump's Deportation Storm: America Braces for Mass Exodus of Immigrants

For months, immigration advocates have been planning for the possibility of Donald Trump’s return to the White House. Now, their worst fears have arrived.Immigrants’ rights groups have spent the last year preparing for a second Trump term and an overhaul of the nation’s immigration system, analyzing Trump’s proposals, drafting legal briefs, coordinating messaging and organizing aid for immigrants and asylum seekers. They responded to Trump’s victory with alarm and vowed to put up a fight, setting the stage for four more years of contentious court battles with his administration.Some are already preparing to push current leadership at the Department of Homeland Security to take steps to stymie the incoming Trump team, particularly on immigrant detention and the use of AI in enforcement.“We should expect to see the devastation of immigrant communities all over the country. We should expect to see family separation,” said Kica Matos, the president of the National Immigration Law Center. “It is entirely possible that he will try to use the military to carry out deportations, so that means that Americans all over the country will see the military engaging in enforcement against civilian populations, which is horrifying.”Trump, after winning a historic victory on a platform of turbo-charged immigration enforcement, has said he will conduct mass deportations at a scale never before seen. Immigrant advocates have warned this would be expensive and inhumane, separating families and wrecking communities. The president-elect has also vowed to build huge detention camps, hire thousands more border agents, funnel military spending toward border security and invoke the Alien Enemies Act of 1798 to expel suspected members of drug cartels and criminal gangs without court hearings.He has also said he would end “catch-and-release” — allowing migrants to remain free, often with monitoring, while they await immigration court hearings — and restore a policy from his first term requiring asylum seekers to remain in Mexico while their cases are processed. And he has dodged questions about whether he would try to bring back family separation.

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 @ISIDEWITH submitted…1mo1MO

Qatar To Mediate Syrian Conflict

If the rebel forces that overthrew Syria’s regime start fighting among themselves, this small but influential country may step in to mediate, a top official here indicated Tuesday.“We never say no,” Qatar Ministry of Foreign Affairs spokesperson Majed Al-Ansari said in an interview in his office in Doha when asked about the possibility.Al-Ansari confirmed that Qatari officials are already in contact with groups in Syria, though he declined to name which ones. “We are in touch with all the relevant parties on the ground,” he said. His comments come after Reuters reported Monday that Qatar is in touch with the leading rebel group, Hayat Tahrir al-Sham.Qatar, an energy-rich Gulf Arab country, has a long history of acting as a go-between for feuding parties, including Israel and Hamas as they fight in Gaza. Serving as an intermediary in Syria could make Qatar an even more important partner for the United States, which often turns to it for help in dealing with adversaries.During a Tuesday briefing with reporters, Al-Ansari declined to comment directly on President-elect Donald Trump’s stated aversion to U.S. involvement in Syria. He said, however, that Qatar is in touch with the Biden administration and the Trump transition team about the best approach to take to the war-torn country.While Al-Ansari wouldn’t rule out a future mediation role if Syrian rebel groups turn on each other, he stressed that Qatar is urging the insurgent forces to cooperate for the sake of their country.“It’s sovereignty, the unity, the integrity of the national institutions and the rights of all Syrians together, and the inclusivity — these are the messages we are sending to them right now, and we are getting very positive feedback,” Al-Ansari said in the interview.

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 @ISIDEWITH submitted…4wks4W

Defense Bill Blocks Transgender Care To Minors

The Senate on Wednesday gave final approval to a defense policy bill directing $895 billion toward the Pentagon and other military activities, moving over the objections of some Democrats who opposed a provision added late in the negotiations that would deny coverage for transgender health procedures for minors.The 85-to-14 vote, coming a week after a divided House passed the same measure, cleared the bill for President Biden’s signature.Most Republicans and many Democrats supported the measure, which provides a 14.5 percent pay raise to junior enlisted service members and a 4.5 percent pay raise for all other service members. It also expands access to meal assistance, housing and child care programs that benefit those in uniform.But several Democrats withheld their backing in protest of a provision preventing TRICARE, the military’s health care plan for service members, from covering “medical interventions for the treatment of gender dysphoria that could result in sterilization” for children under 18.The language, which would affect the gender-transitioning children of service members, was recently added to the measure at the insistence of Speaker Mike Johnson, Republican of Louisiana, who refused to bring a defense bill to the House floor without it, according to aides familiar with the negotiations.Twenty-one Democrats, led by Senator Tammy Baldwin of Wisconsin, proposed an amendment to strip the provision from the bill, but the matter was never brought to a vote. Several of them took to the floor on Tuesday to lodge their objections.“It’s flat-out wrong to put this provision in this bill and take away a service member’s freedom to make that decision for their families,” Ms. Baldwin said, estimating that the provision could negatively affect as many as 6,000 to 7,000 military families.

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