Number 4. AP News. Pentagon is sending 1,500 active duty troops to help secure the US-Mexico border.
Wasting no time in beginning to make good on a campaign promise, the Trump White House has dispatched soldiers and Marines to the southern border to augment police and Border Patrol. While military assets will not be utilized for traditional law enforcement, they will provide a visible presence to deter unauthorized border crossings into the US.
Military resources will be significantly engaged in constructing border barricades and in transporting civilian law enforcement as needed. The president has also made clear than an additional 2,000 troops and Marines can be made available.
This is in connection with Trump’s order this week to designate Mexican cartels as terrorist organizations. This frees up federal resources and makes a legal path forward in resisting cartel activity in such efforts as smuggling immigrants into the US.
It is yet to be seen if US forces will take offensive action against cartels across the border. However, earlier this week an active gunfight occurred across the Rio Grande between cartel operatives and US Border Patrol.
That does not strike me as a wise tactical move on the part of the cartel, especially in light of that new “terrorist designation” thing… but I’m just an armchair observer.
The surge of US forces into southern Texas, New Mexico, Arizona and California is only one small part of an enormously active White House administration flush with hundreds of new executive actions.
Consider other actions under way in the first week of the new administration:
Border Czar Tom Homan has swept up more than a thousand of what we are once again calling illegal aliens, including 50 Tren de Aragua constituents from a Denver night club. Homan also intends to conduct legal raids in schools and churches which harbor such individuals.
Pardons were issued for pro-life protesters. Trump also pardoned J6 detainees, which caused some discomfort among certain MAGA-ites, or maybe the discomfort was ginned up by news media desperately trying to cling to relevance amongst the turbulence of a suddenly ramped-up news cycle. Hard to tell which.
Columbia suddenly backed down and accepted repatriated citizens. This, based on a simple social media post by the new president from his golf cart, when given the news that Columbia was being uncooperative.
I think all cabinet appointments have been confirmed so far. It is virtually impossible for this humble reporter to keep up with all the appointments. Like President Biden, I need my afternoon nap. A lot can happen during an afternoon nap, because Trump apparently does not sleep. Golf yes, sleep no.
Secretary Hegseth at DOD has killed DEI in the armed services and has begun to reinstate vax-rejecting service members. Diversity, Equity and Inclusion programs are being dismantled throughout the government. Much of private industry — dependent on government contracts — is following suit. Even Target is rolling back their DEI program.
Trump has proposed an “Iron Dome” initiative for the US homeland. Welcome back, Star Wars, which was a snarky term from the Reagan administration’s unsuccessful effort along the same lines.
Trump announced a new External Revenue Service to manage the tariffs he means to collect.
A sweeping order issued to halt federal funds for all programs which conflict with the president’s “DEI, woke gender ideology and the Green New Deal” prohibitions was issued Monday night. Certain factions missed (or ignored) the limiting “which conflict with” clause, and immediately proclaimed this meant no school lunches would be delivered on Tuesday and all hospital emergency rooms would be closed forthwith. These assertions were roundly rejected by the president’s new, articulate, energetic, 20-something Press Secretary. Meanwhile, a federal judge issued a 1-week stay while the order can be studied for impact.
I have missed more than I have included — as I said, my naptime must be preserved — but President Trump is, politely stated, moving his initiatives forward with gusto. It’s almost like he has been planning this for the last four years.
For those dweebs among you — and I happen to know many of you by name — there are basically three types of unilateral executive actions available to a president. (Thanks to NPR for this summary.)
An executive order has the strength of law, cannot be overturned by Congress, and must not conflict with any existing statutes. It must be published in the Federal Register, which makes it de facto law.
An executive memorandum is generally used to manage internal administration procedures. It does not need to be documented in the Federal Register. Obama used memoranda to implement things like gun control procedures and overtime regulations.
A presidential proclamation is usually ceremonial and does not carry the force of law. Biden issued a proclamation to lower flags to half-staff at the death of President Jimmy Carter. However, some historically significant events have been legitimized by proclamation: Washington proclaimed Thanksgiving; Lincoln issued the Emancipation Proclamation; Ford pardoned Nixon in a proclamation.
Meanwhile, there are some likely Trump initiatives that remain subjects of speculation:
Will DOJ investigate the J6 investigators? Biden gave them all immunity… if that sticks. They haven’t been accused of anything yet, and it’s a little murky whether or not a pardon can apply for a past action that has not yet been identified. (And maybe this investigation has already begun. The news cycle is hard to keep up with.)
Will DOJ investigate the Biden family? Same issue. They have blanket pardons, but presumably their business associates do not. As I understand it, accepting the pardon means that your testimony will not lead to penalties for you; but it does NOT mean that your testimony cannot be compelled. At least one attorney opines, “…An individual who has received a pardon may not have any basis for invoking the Fifth Amendment.”
Will 14th Amendment birthright citizenship be challenged? I expect this one to happen, but it will take a while to grind through the courts. The language of the 14th says: “All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States…” (emphasis added). The thought is that the key phrase is “subject to the jurisdiction thereof.” A foreign diplomat’s child born in the US is not considered a US citizen because he/she is not “subject to” US jurisdiction. Likewise, a child born to a US diplomat serving in, say, Russia, does not become a Russian citizen. The 14th was about protecting the citizenship status of the offspring of former slaves, not about encouraging a pregnant foreigner to make it across the border so that her baby could become eligible for US citizenship. (And benefits.) I expect a legal challenge, escalated to SCOTUS.
Will the Fair tax come up? This would basically remove federal income tax and rely on retail sales tax instead. This would probably do away with the IRS and may therefore require repeal of the 16th Amendment. I do not expect this to make it through the US Senate, because Trump only has 53 out of 100 Republicans. 60 votes, not a simple majority, are required to stop debate and go to a vote. This does create some speculation about Democrats who may defect to the Republicans (Fetterman, maybe?) and highlights the importance for both D’s and R’s to defend seats up for re-election in 2026: 13 Democrats and 20 Republicans. Also, the incumbent party usually loses House seats in a mid-term, which could put the House back under Democrat control in 2 years. On the other hand, almost nothing else in this 10-day-old administration has followed much in the way of historical example.
Will Mark Levin have his way and convene a Convention of States? The COS is allowed under US Constitution Article 5. It requires 2/3 of state legislatures to call for it. The Convention has the power to bypass the federal government and directly propose amendments to the Constitution. 34 states are required to call for the Convention — which every state is obligated to attend — and 38 to ratify proposed amendments. Today there are about 30 states who are generally in favor of such a Convention. (Levin has proposed 11 new amendments. Read about them at heritage dot org.)
Trump has announced project Stargate, a combination of three private investment firms, to fund the development of artificial intelligence in what appears to be a joint public-private partnership. OpenAI (Sam Altman), Softbank (Masayoshi Son) and Oracle (Larry Ellison) will be the principal investors taking an equity stake in the new venture.
Details in this article are sparse, but it appears the money is to build out physical data center infrastructure and hire perhaps 100,000 computer geeks to develop AI.
With that crowd, I’ll bet the cocktail mixers will be a lot of fun; maybe I can get an invitation.
But wait! There’s more!
On the heels of the Stargate announcement comes word from the People’s Republic that China has launched operation DeepSeek, it’s own home-grown AI initiative. It is claimed that DeepSeek will compete for market share with American AI projects such as those offered by SalesForce (Einstein AI), IBM (Gen AI), OpenAI (ChatGPT and ChatGPT-4), Apple, Adobe, Meta, Google, Amazon, Microsoft and Nvidia.
A Rogue’s Gallery, to be sure.
The kicker, however, is that China’s DeepSeek R1 artificial intelligence program is claimed to be much cheaper than any of the US offerings. Using a much less sophisticated chip structure, R1 claims that it will deliver AI capabilities at a price point far below any US competitor. This news is what accounted for a 10% drop in the Nvidia stock price last weekend. It rebounded early this week, but left the market rattled.
This move by China follows their traditional approach to commerce and manufacturing: Make it fast and cheap so that Americans cannot afford not to buy it. That is the way of the world, but we are not talking about a set of cookware here… we are talking about extremely intricate programming code that can have lots of things hidden inside.
For example, Congress last year found that huge numbers of construction cranes operating in US ports utilized Chinese-built electronic components. These included hidden communications capabilities that allowed spying on the movement of cargo. Why would anyone care? I haven’t a clue, but somebody devious probably does.
It will be at least entertaining — if not downright threatening — to watch the DeepSeek vs Stargate AI competition play out.
Late-breaking news, however, suggests that DeepSeek is not prepared to answer everything that might interest Americans. When prompted with a query about their president, the response was, “Sorry, that’s beyond my current scope. Let’s talk about something else.”
Strava strikes again! You may have read here in the ANR two weeks ago about the French sailors who gave away classified information about their submarine by letting their fitness app post their location to social media.
Same song, second verse. This one involves NATO soldiers in Poland, and includes active-duty US National Guard troops from the Midwest. By posting workout schedules and personal running routes to Strava, they have unwittingly revealed travel histories of their units.
The same problem has cropped up in Ukraine.
Maybe it’s not a big deal, but there is no good reason to identify the names and locations of actual military personnel deployed in various places around the globe.
This world is risky enough as it is. One retired Army officer commented to me about his time serving in an un-named south-of-the-border country: “When you are wearing the uniform,” he said, “you can just assume there is someone there who wants to kill you.”
So maybe US soldiers should quietly do their pushups and run their daily routine without documenting it online. Maybe a spiral notebook back in the barracks would be just as good?
Number 1. The Guardian. You’ve always wondered, here’s the answer: Do dogs actually watch TV?
Okay, enough politics and technology. I liked this one.
Here at the Alligator household, our evenings usually involve some “TV Time,” when Mrs. Alligator and I take our places amid the panoply of pampered hounds — a yellow Labrador, a Princess Beagle and an actual full-throated Beagle — who gather in various chairs, couches and pillows.
Everybody watches TV, except that several of us sometimes fall asleep while doing so.
If the TV is not fired up by 7:00 PM, the dogs get noticeably restless. They collect in front of the couch and begin to watch the Big People expectantly, tongues out, eyes following our every move.
Newer, high resolution television screens are much improved in the last two decades. The old TV broadcast standard, in use from the 1950s up until 2009, was called NTSC, for National Television Systems Committee. (Those in the technology business often referred to this as “Never Twice the Same Color.)
Today the ATSC standard (Advanced Television Systems Committee) is deployed in either 1080i or 720p format. I would wax intelligent about those, and about HDTV and other stuff, but I am already in way over my head. You probably don’t care anyway, and if you do, you have already skipped this part.
Anyway, today there is less flicker in the TV screen, probably making it more pleasant to the canine eye. As we all recall from Middle School science class, our eyes have rods and cones. I can’t remember which one does what — and I do not ever expect to have to know that detail — but dogs have more rods. This apparently helps their night vision — at least the ones that are not going blind from old age — and also makes them more sensitive to movement.
This probably means they like things like action-adventure fare. Tom Cruise’s Mission Impossible probably beats out Tim Allen’s Shifting Gears or Tom Huddleston’s The Night Manager.
Dogs generally appear to like watching other dogs on the screen. Subjects have been known to check behind the TV to see if the critter is hiding there, or looking out a window to see if they can find where it went.
One study shows that 3/4 of dogs moved closer to the TV screen when action attracted them.
There is the caution in the article not to leave your dog alone with the TV if your critter happens to be a little more high-strung. Action on the screen can provoke excitement, with unexpected — though perhaps not unpredictable — results.
Clean-up on aisle 7.
Also, an interesting observation is that dogs generally calm down with classical piano music. Brahms is maybe a good choice. Chopin, Debussy. Probably not Wagner or Tchaikovsky. It’s a dog’s life.
And thanks for following The Alligator News Roundup for Friday, January 31, 2025. It’s probably time to get started on your taxes, unless you’re waiting for the Fair Tax to be adopted by the Convention of States in the next 60 days. It might be a real plus, but if you’re hoping for it, good luck with that.
Find something entertaining for the dogs on TV this weekend. Maybe an old Lassie re-run. Or one of those war dog movies recommended by Be Chewy dot com. I would not, however, suggest Old Yeller, or that first John Wick movie. Yeeesh… that one spoiled my whole day.
Have a good weekend! Don’t forget to share!
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