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As the full picture of the 2024 election results begins to take shape, we bring you some key criminal justice takeaways regarding President-elect Donald Trump’s criminal cases, proposed immigration policies, justice reform and these ubiquitous and misleading television advertisements about transgender people in prison.

Trump’s criminal cases are unlikely to continue.

Trump’s victoryvirtually guarantees that he will never face serious legal liabilities” in one of four separate criminal cases he was charged with, Politico reports.

Friday morning, special prosecutor Jack Smith called for a break the two federal lawsuits against Trump over his alleged retention of classified documents and his role in the January 6, 2021 insurrection. It is a long-standing Department of Justice policy that a sitting president cannot be prosecuted, and cases cannot be concluded before Trump takes office. Trump said he would fire Smith immediately after taking office, but Smith should resign before inauguration day. Black-smith could choose to publish its findings before he leaves, and it remains to be seen whether Trump will attempt to impose legal consequences on Smith for leading the prosecution. Trump has already declared that Smith should “go to jail” and “be kicked out of the country.”

In New York, where Trump was convicted of multiple counts of falsifying business records earlier this year, experts predict that Judge Juan Merchan will likely be not Trump on November 26, as currently planned. Even if he receives a conviction, it will be suspended until he leaves office, and it remains possible that the courts will overturn his conviction on the grounds of presidential immunity.

A a similar outcome is also likely in Georgiawhere Trump and a number of his allies face charges related to alleged efforts to overturn the results of the 2020 election in the state. THE case blocked for a long time should be postponed until he leaves office or expelled on the same grounds.

However, experts say several ongoing civil lawsuits against Trump could theoretically continue while in office, highlighting a 1997 Supreme Court decision allowing a civil suit against then-President Bill Clinton.

Those convicted of crimes related to the Jan. 6 insurrection also expect their legal woes to disappear under Trump. “queuing” to obtain a presidential pardon. In a case this week where a defendant asked to have his sentencing delayed upon news of Trump’s election, the the request was quickly rejected by the judge.

The backlash against criminal justice reform was evident, but it was not exhaustive either.

California voters approved proposition 36which strengthens criminal penalties for certain property and drug crimes in the state. The measure adopted on strength of lingering fear and frustration with crime and unrestparticularly the viral incidences of retail theft and more visible unhoused populations and open drug use – although actual crime rates continue to decline. The effort is largely aimed at rolling back reforms that voters approved a decade ago that aimed to reduce the state’s prison population.

A analysis from the state’s nonpartisan tax advisor found that the change would likely result in “a few thousand” more people in prison and costs on the order of “a few hundred million” dollars per year.

Cristine Soto DeBerry, executive director of Attorneys Alliance Action, a progressive reform group, said in a statement that the passage was disappointing, but said it was not evidence that Californians had become embittered toward reform. “If anything, it shows that Californians favor policies that prioritize treatment and rehabilitation,” DeBarry said, pointing to an aspect of the law that requires people charged with multiple drug charges to complete treatment or to serve a sentence.

DeBerry continued: “Unfortunately, Prop 36 will fail to deliver the support promised,” a conclusion reprinted by the Los Angeles Times editorial board this week.

In the state’s largest city, Los Angeles District Attorney George Gascón lost to his Republican challenger Nathan Hochman, who pledged to cancel the “social experiment” of his predecessor in progressive prosecutorial practices. Hochman ran well on the right of Gascón but also pledged to maintain some of the reforms introduced by the officeincluding maintaining a Conviction Integrity Unit to review the overturning of old and erroneous convictions.

It wasn’t all bad news for criminal justice reform advocates. Reform prosecutors too won races against opponents promising more punitive approaches in places like Lake County, Illinois; Oakland County, Michigan; and Albany County, New York. And in Florida, Monique Worrell got his job back after Gov. Ron DeSantis kicked her out of office last year, saying she had failed in her duty by choosing not to prosecute certain cases.

The remaining reform-minded prosecutors could face new political forces aligned against them in the future. The Houston Chronicle reports that after financially supporting the Trump campaign, billionaire Elon Musk is now he sets his sights on the prosecutors. Trump also promised to crack down on what he calls “radical Marxist prosecutors” in a second term.

Trump allies say planning for the promised immigration crackdown has already begun. Meanwhile, migrants share mixed feelings about his victory.

Trump’s team plans to act quickly on promises to strengthen border controls and start the mass deportation of undocumented immigrants. Senior advisers told CNN they intending to begin by restoring border policies from Trump’s first termstarting with the expulsion of immigrants who have committed crimes. They are also considering how and whether to pursue deportation of people brought to the United States as young children, commonly known as Dreamers. Trump’s advisers expressed confidence that Americans would be willing to tolerate more extreme border policies than under Trump’s first presidency, based on bitterness. public attitudes toward immigration. Meanwhile, immigration advocates are bracing for a likely avalanche of legal challenges to the policies of the Trump administration.

Immigrant detention is primarily run by private companies, and the country’s two largest, CoreCivic and GeoGroup, have both seen their stock prices have been soaring since election day.

Some migrants in New York expressed terror in response to Trump’s election and the increased likelihood of being deported to dangerous conditions in their home countries. Many members of the Haitian community in Springfield, Ohio, about whom Trump spread false rumors, are also thinking about their fate now.

Meanwhile, the Atlanta Journal-Constitution spoke with several Latinos migrants without permanent legal status delighted by Trump’s victory. Some said they didn’t take Trump’s expulsion threats literally, that they thought Kamala Harris was too left-wing, or that they thought Trump would be good for the economy. Some New York immigrants who have been in the United States longer and are eligible to vote, shared similar sentiments with DocumentedNY.

NBC News reported this week that the Biden administration was preparing for possibility of an increase in arrivals at the borders by migrants trying to cross before Trump took office in January. Others may already be giving up. According to Reuters, a group of around 3,000 migrants crossing Mexico towards the US border decreased by about half since the announcement of the election results.

The Trump campaign has invested heavily in ads attacking Kamala Harris over her stance on gender-affirming transgender care in prisons and immigration detention centers.

In the months leading up to the election, viewers across the country, especially soccer fans, saw hundreds of ads claiming, “Kamala supports taxpayer-funded sex changes for prisoners.” An announcement featured a clip of Harris herself telling an interviewer, “every transgender inmate in the prison system would have access.”

Some on the right commentators now argue that this single announcement “may have moved the needle toward Trump.” A Trump advisor told the Washington Post that “trans issues and men in women’s sports, that whole topic is the hottest topic at the Trump rallies, but I was a little surprised that it trickled down to the Democrats and everyone, including the black men.”

As with most political ads, the reality is more nuanced than the ad claims. Prisons are required by law to provide medical care to incarcerated people. The Supreme Court declared prison officials cannot show “deliberate indifference”» at substantial risk of serious harm – and lower courts have repeatedly found that failing to properly treat gender dysphoria does exactly that. That said, transgender people represent a tiny fraction of people held in federal prisons – the only prisons over which the president has authority – about 1%, according to Bureau of Prisons data. Of these, the number of people seeking gender affirmation surgery is even lower. The federal prison system has only offered such surgery twice — both during the Biden-Harris administration, only after a judge ordered officials to do so. Other gender-affirming care, like hormone therapy, accounts for about a tenth of 1 percent of the prison system’s health budget, according to office numbers – and was also provided to federal prisoners under the first Trump administration.

The irony is that Harris said Trump’s ad was called outrageous — that under his presidency, “every transgender inmate in the prison system would have access” — as some kind of apology to the trans community after she argued against propose gender affirmation surgery to people incarcerated in California during her tenure as Attorney General.