Donald Trump won’t be sworn in as our 47th president for two more months, but he’s already pleasing his base in one way:

Undocumented immigrants and their allies are running scared.

The former and future commander in chief repeatedly vowed during his campaign to start mass deportations the moment he enters office. Those affected are taking Trump at his word. Nonprofits and community leaders dedicated to helping immigrants are strategizing about how to mount a defense. Sanctuary cities such as Los Angeles and Santa Ana are readying for lawsuits by the Trump administration or the withholding of federal funds.

Meanwhile, the migrants themselves are prepared for the worst. I know people who are making plans to leave for their home countries, U.S.-born children in tow, by Inauguration Day. The terror of not knowing what’s coming is leaving too many people I care about depressed and with little to no hope for the future.

As the son of a man who first entered this country in the trunk of a Chevy in the 1960s, I have lived a life where people without papers were the norm instead of a Fox News talking point, and I’m angry. I’ve spent my career as a journalist — in articles and books, on radio and television — trying to convince skeptics through stats, anecdotes and appeals to reason that people who entered the country illegally are no different from native-born citizens in the content of their character. That nearly all of them embody the spirit of those who came here under the gaze of the Statue of Liberty so long ago, no matter how much Trump and his future vice president, JD Vance, railed to the contrary.

With sentiment against undocumented immigrants higher than it has been in decades — especially among Latinos — writing positive stories about the estimated 11 million U.S. residents who aren’t supposed to be here can feel as futile as screaming into a hurricane.

That doesn’t mean I’m giving up.

That’s why, as this country readies for Thanksgiving, I want to give gracias to undocumented immigrants. It’s a sentiment they don’t hear nearly enough.

Thank you to the estimated 42% of farmworkers who lack legal authority to work in this country, according to the latest U.S. Department of Labor’s National Agricultural Workers Survey. There’s a good chance that the bounty on your table this Thursday passed through their hands.

Thank you to the undocumented immigrants who pay $96.7 billion in federal, state and local taxes in 2022, according to the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy, which also found that they paid $25.7 billion into Social Security and $6 billion into Medicare. They contribute to systems that they cannot benefit from but that critics of illegal immigration tap into without a second thought.

Thank you to the estimated half-million Mexican nationals and their American-born children spurred to leave this country by federal and local officials during the Great Depression because undocumented immigrants weren’t worthy of economic relief. Those repatriated people left behind nearly everything but their dignity.

To the hundreds of thousands of Mexican men deported in the 1950s under Operation Wetback, a federal program Trump has praised despite its offensive name: Thank you for not keeping quiet about the abuse and humiliation you all endured.

To the Cubans who entered the U.S. on makeshift rafts, knowing you wouldn’t get deported if you landed in Florida while the same privilege wasn’t extended to Haitians: Thank you for exposing the hypocrisy of this nation’s immigration policy.

To the unaccompanied minors who have come from Central America for the last quarter of a century: Thank you for showing more bravery in your young lives than anyone in Trump’s administration can ever dream of.

To the so-called paper sons and daughters, Chinese nationals who stayed in the U.S. by pretending you were related to American citizens: Thank you for the ingenuity you showed in circumventing sanctioned racism.

Thank you to the Chinese migrants escaping mass lynchings during the Mexican Revolution, whose mere intent of entering this country led to the creation of the Border Patrol — you showed how Americans welcome persecuted people only if it suits the political climate.

To the so-called ship jumpers, migrants from Southern and Eastern Europe — but especially Greece — who arrived at port cities and sneaked past immigration authorities after the U.S. in effect barred migration from the region in 1924: Thank you for the reminder that this country discriminated against people we now consider white but who were seen as subhuman at the time.

To the people who came here without papers as children — long known as Dreamers — who are culturally American and now face the prospect of being sent to countries you have only faint memories of, or no memories at all: Gracias for forcing politicians to carve out protections for ustedes, protections Trump’s cronies have vowed to end even as their boss has expressed some sympathy in the past.

To Marine Cpl. Jose Angel Garibay, Orange County’s first casualty of the Iraq war: You came here illegally as an infant, grew up in Costa Mesa as a legal resident and became a citizen only after losing your life in 2003: Thank you for your sacrifice.

To the undocumented people who were and are my friends, my classmates, my interns and co-workers: Thank you for teaching me that citizenship is usually wasted on the ungrateful and not granted enough to those who deserve it.

Thank you to the thousands who are planning to take to the streets in the coming days and weeks, hoping against hope that mass protests will make a difference to a man with a shriveled heart and the people who elected him. Hope must spring eternal even in the face of gloom — especially in the face of it.

And to my father, of course, who came to this country illegally multiple times, who still proudly calls himself a mojado — a wetback — as a reminder of where he came from and how.

Papi: Gracias for leaving Mexico as an 18-year-old ne’er-do-well with no chance of getting a green card through the proper channels and proving that anyone can succeed in this country if they have the drive.

I can never forsake undocumented immigrants because of all of you, public opinion be damned.

Washington governor-elect Bob Ferguson, a Democrat, announced Monday that he is creating a subcommittee in his transition team that will have the sole purpose of fighting Project 2025.

The transition team expects Project 2025 to be pushed by the Trump Administration despite President-elect Trump’s efforts during his campaign to distance himself from the controversial proposal.

Ferguson’s committee will be co-chaired by Planned Parenthood Alliance Advocates CEO Jennifer Allen and King County Councilmember Jorge L. Barón, who is also a former executive director of the Northwest Immigrant Rights Project, Fox 13 reported.

“We are preparing in case President Trump attacks Washingtonians’ core freedoms,” Ferguson said, according to the outlet. “We will keep Washington moving forward no matter what happens at the federal level.”

WASHINGTON STATE DEMOCRAT PUSHES TO GIVE HOMELESS SPECIAL CIVIL RIGHTS

Project 2025 is a controversial initiative organized by conservative think tank the Heritage Foundation that was authored by a number of conservatives, including some former Trump administration officials.

The initiative offered right-wing policy recommendations for Trump’s second term, including replacing civil service employees with Trump loyalists, abolishing the Department of Education, criminalizing pornography, eliminating DEI programs, cutting funding for Medicaid and Medicare, rejecting abortion as health care, carrying out mass deportations and infusing the government with Christian values.

During his campaign, Trump had sought to distance himself from the initiative, which has been criticized as being an authoritarian and Christian nationalist plan that would undermine civil liberties, saying he knew nothing about it, that parts of it are “absolutely ridiculous and abysmal” and that its backers are on the “radical right.”

PRESIDENT-ELECT TRUMP APPOINTS THREE KEY POSITIONS IN WHITE HOUSE OFFICES

Washington governor-elect Bob Ferguson announced Monday that he is creating a subcommittee in his transition team to fight Project 2025. (Getty Images)

Former Trump officials also told POLITICO ahead of Election Day that people involved in Project 2025 would be blacklisted from his administration.

But Trump has selected authors and contributors for Project 2025 to serve in his next administration, including Russell Vought as director of the Office of Management and Budget, Tom Homan as “border czar,” Stephen Miller as deputy chief of policy and Brendan Carr as chair of the Federal Communications Commission.

“This is a critical time in our nation as we look to the possibility of our communities being under attack from many different directions,” Allen said, according to Fox 13. “I’m honored to serve on Governor-elect Ferguson’s transition team and to co-chair this subcommittee to support his leadership in our state and country in championing and safeguarding reproductive rights and all of the rights of Washingtonians.”

U.S. President-elect Donald Trump attends a viewing of the launch of the sixth test flight of the SpaceX Starship rocket on Nov. 19, 2024, in Brownsville, Texas. (Brandon Bell/Getty Images)

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Barón said he is “honored to assist Governor-elect Ferguson in his transition into this new role and to co-chair this important subcommittee,” Fox 13 reported.

“As an immigrant and as the proud parent of a trans daughter, I am particularly grateful that the Governor-elect is committed to protecting all Washington state residents, and especially those communities at greatest risk of having their rights attacked by the incoming federal administration,” Barón continued.

Ferguson’s office said the subcommittee will establish policy priorities for his first 100 days in office, according to Fox 13, although specific policy proposals have not been released.

In George Orwell’s classic depiction of an authoritarian society, “Nineteen Eighty-four,” a key component of political control is the state’s erasure of history: “Every record has been destroyed or falsified, every book has been rewritten … every date has been altered. … After the thing is done, no evidence ever remains.”

That is the state of affairs Donald Trump would like to produce with respect to the federal cases against him, which special counsel Jack Smith has developed in painstaking detail over the last two years.

Given Trump’s impending return to the White House, Smith now has two months to wrap up his cases. The primary question left for him and the Justice Department’s leadership is whether to produce a report of the Jan. 6 and classified documents cases and, if so, what it should look like.

The special counsel regulations that govern Smith require him to provide a confidential report to Atty. Gen. Merrick Garland explaining his decisions for or against prosecution. Garland has already made it clear that if he gets a report from Smith, he will exercise his discretion to make it public.

Given what Smith and other prosecutors have described as the “unprecedented circumstances” of the defendant’s election, the regulatory prescription is an imperfect fit. Smith obviously decided to bring charges against Trump in both cases and likely prepared a prosecution memo at the time explaining his thinking to Garland and others. But political events force him to close up shop in the midst of those prosecutions.

So what considerations should guide his and the department’s thinking about the preparation and content of a report?

First and foremost, the public interest dictates that we have the fullest possible historical account of what happened, which is a recognized justification for special counsel reports. Special counsel Robert S. Mueller III, for instance, declined to charge then-President Trump but provided a detailed and damning account of his findings that ultimately became public.

Smith has developed extensive evidence of truly grievous crimes, the worst ever allegedly committed by a president. The core of the Jan. 6 case is a breathtaking effort to exhort supporters to commit an insurrection and prevent the peaceful transfer of power, the sine qua non of a democracy. And the classified documents case presents probably the gravest violation of national security by a president, augmented by an extended and brazen campaign of obstruction of justice to impede the return of government property that Trump had no right to possess.

In my mind, the need for a detailed report on the latter is greater. The House Jan. 6 committee developed a detailed public record of the plot that culminated in the insurrection. Moreover, the Justice Department’s filings in the Jan. 6 case, especially its lengthy brief explaining the evidence it intended to present and why it was not foreclosed by the Supreme Court immunity decision, also left the public with a detailed account of Trump’s conduct.

No such public account exists in the documents case. That’s because U.S. District Judge Aileen Cannon has made a series of dubious rulings that have disrupted the department’s presentation. One of them, dismissing the case on the fringe theory that Smith was not properly appointed as special counsel, is pending before the U.S. 11th Circuit Court of Appeals.

The holes in the historical account are significant. What was Trump’s purported justification for spiriting the documents away to his Florida estate, Mar-a-Lago? How did he store them? Could they have been seen by foreign adversaries? Did he in fact show them to anyone, as the evidence that has become public suggests? And how did he and his co-defendants, Mar-a-Lago staff members Carlos De Oliveira and Walt Nauta, conspire to resist the government’s lawful demands to return the documents?

Trump and his circle are already adopting the stance that the election provided a decisive mandate for nullifying the prosecutions. We can be certain that when he takes the reins of government, he will have no compunction about destroying every last shred of information about them. In the style of Orwell’s Big Brother, he will likely try to scrub the pages of history of his misdeeds.

That would be a travesty and a rank disservice to the American people and history.

Trump’s argument for popular nullification doesn’t hold water in the first place. Far short of securing some decisive mandate, Trump appears to have received less than 50% of the vote, edging out Vice President Kamala Harris by one of the smallest popular-vote margins in history. Moreover, there is scant evidence that his winning coalition was moved by objections to the cases against him.

Not that it would matter if they were. History is not a plebiscite in which 50% of the current population decides what’s true and important. An accurate historical account is an independent value of a free society. That’s especially true in cases of heated disagreement about what happened. From that vantage point, it would be in the interest even of Trump and his co-defendants to have a full public record available.

One strong case for the importance of an accurate historical record of contentious, searing events was offered by the 9/11 Commission. The report it produced, as the commission noted, was essential for historical understanding, preventing the spread of misinformation, reforming national security and readiness, and maintaining public confidence in government.

All of these goals should be articles of faith in a democratic society. But it seems increasingly clear that this is not the sort of society Trump intends to foster. If he gets his way, history’s record of his crimes will be replaced by blank pages.

Harry Litman is the host of the “Talking Feds” podcast and the “Talking San Diego” speaker series. @harrylitman