Los Angeles opposes Donald Trump’s migration policies. He wants a billionaire as NASA boss. All developments in the news blog.
6:32 a.m.: In view of the mass deportation of undocumented migrants announced by Donald Trump, the Californian metropolis of Los Angeles has given itself the status of a “refuge city”. The City Council unanimously voted in favor of the ordinance, which prohibits the city from devoting resources or personnel to enforcing federal immigration laws.
The vote was linked to an urgency clause so that the ordinance could come into force just ten days after Mayor Karen Bass signed it. “We have been an immigrant-friendly city for years, and we know that the new president has us in his sights,” said Councilman Bob Blumenfield. The current “good policy to protect immigrants” will be strengthened in this way.
The Republican Party in Los Angeles criticized the city council’s decision, saying that the term “sanctuary cities” sounds “warm and soft” – but in fact they offer protection “for people who entered the country illegally and have committed other crimes.” Criminals should “under no circumstances be protected by the generosity of hard-working taxpayers.”
3:04 a.m.: Elon Musk’s artificial intelligence startup xAI plans to expand its supercomputer in Memphis, Tennessee, to include at least one million graphics processing units (GPUs) by 2026. The local chamber of commerce, the Greater Memphis Chamber, announced this on Wednesday (local time). The effort represents a massive expansion of the Colossus supercomputer, which currently has 100,000 GPUs to train xAI’s chatbot called Grok. As part of the expansion, Nvidia, which supplies the GPUs, and Dell and Super Micro, which assembled the server racks for the computer, will open offices in Memphis, the chamber said in a statement.
2.30am: The US military reports a rare telephone exchange between the top US military officer, Air Force General CQ Brown, and Russian Chief of Staff Valery Gerasimov. “The two discussed a range of global and regional security issues, including the ongoing conflict in Ukraine,” a spokesman for Brown said in a statement. The phone call had already taken place on November 27th, but had not been announced beforehand at General Gerasimov’s request. The Russian Defense Ministry had requested the interview, the spokesman said.
1.50 a.m.: In Mexico, security forces detained over 5,200 migrants across the country in a single day. The Mexican Navy said on Wednesday that the army, national guard and state police were involved in Tuesday’s action. Security authorities also reported that more fentanyl was confiscated on Wednesday than ever before. In the state of Sinaloa, 1,100 kilograms of the synthetic opioid worth around $400 million were seized.
US President-elect Donald Trump has called on Mexico to take stronger action against illegal migration and drug trafficking. He linked this to the threat of import tariffs on Mexican products.
Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum announced last week that a caravan of migrants heading to the US border would not make it north because migration authorities would “take care” of them. Many people from Latin America and other continents try to get to the USA via Mexico.
1.30am: Donald Trump’s Middle East envoy, Steve Witkoff, wants to push forward the US president-elect’s diplomatic efforts to achieve a ceasefire in the Gaza Strip and the release of the Israeli hostages before he takes office on January 20th. A person familiar with the matter confirmed this to the Reuters news agency.
