NBCTexas
Goldstein: 7.0Tone: 100.0CAMEO 07
DENVER — Texas Sen.-elect James Talarico told a gathering of Democrats Thursday that voters are expecting them to immediately deliver, and that means making President Donald Trump’s last two years in office the “most productive of any presidency in American history.”
Talarico, who just made history by becoming the first Democrat elected senator in Texas since 1988, urged his party to put aside vitriol and distractions and immediately provide economic relief to Americans. Democrats won both chambers of Congress, but Trump will remain in the White House — and wield the veto pen — until 2029.
“The American people cannot wait two years for change. So we must work with President Trump,” Talarico said. “If President Trump wants the same plaques and portraits and busts as LBJ, we can help make that a reality.”
It was a reference to President Lyndon B. Johnson, who was from Texas.
Talarico spoke at the two-day What’s Next conference, an event organized by the group Majority Democrats, tapping into campaign themes he stressed on the trail. Then, Talarico said his goal wasn’t to turn all of Texas blue because he believes voters want a divided, but balanced, government. He also spoke against politicians who pit communities against one another, saying those in power wanted Americans to focus on the “wrong 1%,” instead of billionaires who were growing their wealth.
In his speech, Talarico noted his historic win and what he described as a Democratic mandate “the size of Texas,” but stressed the need to reach across the aisle, and down Pennsylvania Avenue, to deliver results, even if it means Trump takes some of the credit.
“We should make the final two years of his presidency the most productive of any presidency in American history, because this moment is so much bigger and so much more important than the red team or blue team,” Talarico said. “It’s so much bigger than a party. We are tired of being pitted against each other. We’re tired of being told to hate each other. It’s been 10 years of this kind of politics.”
Whether Democrats deliver on an agenda and to what extent they focus on investigations of Republicans remains a central debate within the party. The White House has signaled it plans to fight attempts by Congress to investigate the administration.
Talarico has previously called not only for accountability for the Trump administration, but also for Democrats to work with Trump.
“It is not an either-or choice,” Talarico told NBC News earlier this month. “We need accountability and we need to deliver.”
Talarico swept into office after campaigning against corruption and framing himself as David versus Elon Musk, the Goliath, who single-handedly spent more than $168 million to support Talarico’s Republican opponent, Ken Paxton.
“We went up against the richest man in the world, and we won,” Talarico said at Thursday’s event.
Natasha Korecki is a senior national political reporter for NBC News.
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Goldstein: -1.5Tone: -5.0
Immigration arrests have continued across the United States in the week since the midterm elections, even as President Donald Trump has said his enforcement campaign may have been "too tough" and suggested he wants to work with Democrats on the issue. Advocates reported arrests from California to Michigan to Massachusetts, and the Department of Homeland Security has said its orders have not changed.
Trump made the comments after Republicans lost control of both chambers of Congress on Nov. 3. "I'd love to do something on immigration," he said in a television interview recorded Friday, indicating that it was time to sit down with the other party. He did not describe what a deal might include, and the White House has not announced any change in enforcement policy.
Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin was direct. "Deportations will continue," he wrote in an online post the day after the election, adding that U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement takes no days off, including on Thanksgiving, Christmas and Election Day. ICE has not released arrest figures for the period since the vote, so the pace of enforcement cannot be measured against earlier weeks.
The accounts that have emerged describe operations in a range of settings. In Los Angeles, masked immigration officers in body armor blocked the driveway of a hospital emergency room in a heavily Latino neighborhood early Saturday. Erick Gasca, 31, who lives near Adventist Health White Memorial Medical Center, said he saw an "unprecedented" number of vehicles with tinted windows and no license plates near the emergency entrance. "I thought they were going to raid the hospital or something," he said.
The Department of Homeland Security declined to explain why the officers were there. Bill Essayli, the top federal prosecutor in Los Angeles, said they were bringing a detainee for medical treatment and that two people were arrested for assaulting federal agents. The hospital said it was not involved. The scene drew protesters.
In central Alabama, twin 19-year-old brothers from Venezuela were arrested at a traffic stop the day after the election as they drove back to college from a visit with their parents. The brothers have pending asylum cases, according to advocates, and both are being held in an immigration detention facility.
In Florida, state highway patrol officers working with ICE agents have detained people in their cars and at supermarkets, pharmacies and gas stations. Immigrants who are under supervision have also been arrested when they reported to ICE's Miami office for scheduled appointments, a practice advocates say discourages people from complying with the check-ins the government requires.
Other cases have drawn attention in the Southwest. In Phoenix, a couple seeking asylum was arrested. In San Diego, an 8-year-old boy from Haiti was taken into custody after accompanying a relative to a routine immigration check-in, according to his family, who said they had not been told where he was being held. The government has not publicly commented on the case.
The administration's position is that it is enforcing existing law and that anyone in the country without authorization is subject to arrest. Officials have said throughout Trump's second term that their priority is removing people with criminal records, while also making clear that others encountered during operations will be detained. Supporters of the crackdown say voters in 2024 backed stricter enforcement and that a midterm result does not change the law.
Critics say the gap between the president's words and his agencies' actions shows that no change of course is under way. Immigrant advocacy groups said arrests during traffic stops, at an airport and at scheduled appointments continued through the week, and some activists reacted angrily to the Alabama detentions. Democrats, who take control of Congress in January, have said they intend to examine immigration enforcement as part of a broader oversight agenda.
The political calculation behind Trump's comments is not hard to read. Republicans lost seats in districts with large Latino populations, and several of the party's own officials have cited the war with Iran and the economy as the main reasons for the defeat while acknowledging that enforcement tactics hurt them in some places. Trump himself has offered different explanations on different days, at one point questioning whether the election was honest.
What a negotiation would look like is unclear. Past attempts to pair tougher border measures with legal status for some immigrants have failed in Congress under presidents of both parties. Democrats will hold majorities in both chambers but would need the president's signature for any law, and Republicans retain the ability to block legislation in the Senate. Neither side has put forward a proposal since the election.
For now, the measure of whether anything has changed is what happens on the ground. If ICE publishes arrest and detention figures for November, they will show whether the pace has slowed. Until then, the administration's stated policy is the one its homeland security secretary set out the day after the vote, and the president's remark stands as an expression of interest in a deal that has not yet taken any concrete form.
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