The Trump administration made its latest move on immigration Wednesday when it announced that it will end a long-standing rule that limited child detention to 20 days.
The new rule, ending the so-called Flores agreement, will allow officials to hold families in detention indefinitely for the duration of immigration cases, which could be much longer than previous limit. Details of the new rule will be released Friday and will need approval from a federal judge.
At a press conference in Washington, Acting Secretary of Homeland Security Kevin McAleenan told reporters: "No child should be a pawn in a scheme to manipulate our immigration system, which is why the new rule eliminates the incentive to exploit children as a free ticket".
This rule extends the administration's "zero tolerance" policy, requiring all asylum seekers to be held in detention until their case can be processed.
Speaking before his departure to Kentucky Wednesday morning, President Trump again cast blame for the current immigration conditions on his predecessor, saying, "President Obama built the cells, the cages that you people talk about and attribute them to me."
He said abolishing the Flores agreement "will do even more to bring [migrant families] together."
"We already have about 11,000 children — most of them are unaccompanied — being held in a gulag across America," Sen. Jeff Merkley (D-Ore.) told Cheddar in an interview on Tuesday prior to the announcement of the Flores rollback. "I thought we'd never see internment camps promoted again".
The senator also said that Americans have to focus less on Trump's tweets and anti-immigrant banter, and more on the issues that matter to the ideals of what makes the nation so unique.
"Right now what is happening in America, with our money, with our government, on our land, is an abomination on human rights."
Merkley, one of the original members of Congress to bring the detention issue to national attention in 2017, has proposed a solution: bringing back the family case management program.
"By this administration, we found that 99 plus percent of families showed up for their check-ins, showed up for their hearings, when they had a case manager. This administration shut it down," he said. "They are causing families, through lack of communication, who fail to show up and then they are complaining about it."
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi wrote in a statement, "The indefinite and prolonged detention of children would compound the cruelty and accelerate the heart-breaking humanitarian situation at the border, worsening conditions for children already forced to sleep on concrete floors, eat inedible food and be denied basic sanitation and standards of care."
As anti-immigrant rhetoric continues to be a focal point in Trump's 2020 re-election bid, Democratic candidates are pouncing on the current administration, proposing new solutions to the problem.
Although Merkley did not endorse a specific candidate's plan to Cheddar, he explained, "I think all the candidates up there are firmly saying that we cannot count this dark, evil force of mistreating children as a political strategy."
A new report from ProPublica and the Washington Post found that Facebook Groups played a major role in the spread of misinformation linked to the January 6 insurrection with more than 650,000 posts claiming that Joe Biden's election victory was illegitimate.
Millions of Americans with young children have relied on the child tax credit since the federal government began issuing checks in July 2021. The last round of payments was sent out just before the Christmas holiday — at the same time as the omicron variant surged. Leah Hamilton, associate professor of social work at Appalachian State University, joined Cheddar to discuss what the end to the tax credit means as the U.S. sees the end of many relief programs and its highest number of COVID cases since the start of the pandemic. "It'll become harder for families to meet their basic needs, increasing national childhood poverty rates and the proportion of families who have difficulty putting food on the table, maintaining stable housing, and paying their bills," Hamilton said. She also pointed to research that the credit as a long-term investment in children offsets claims that it contributes to macroeconomic impacts like inflation.
U.S. President Joe Biden spoke with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky over the week-end, just days after he spoke with Russian President Vladimir Putin. The call comes as Washington prepares to meet with Moscow on January 10, as tensions mount over Russia's military build up near its border with Ukraine. Cheddar News speaks with Mustafa Tameez, a former advisor to the U.S. Department of Homeland Security, about the issue.
Several Silicon Valley insiders are being accused of contorting a 1990s-era tax break to avoid taxes on millions of dollars of investment profits. The tax break is known as the qualified small business stock exemption, and it allows early investors in certain companies to avoid half of the taxes on up to $10 million in capital gains. A piece recently published in the New York Times says venture capital firms like Andreessen Horowitz replicated the tax exemption by giving shares of companies to friends and family, who would otherwise face a 23.8% capital gains bill. The CEO of Roblox is also accused of replicating the tax break for his family members at least 12 times. Although the loophole known as 'stacking' is considered to be legal, the Times piece implies that the exemption has been manipulated for the ultra-wealthy to become more wealthy. Greycroft co-founder and Chairman Emeritus Alan Patricof joins Cheddar News' Closing Bell to discuss.
Chris Sommerfeldt, City Hall reporter for the New York Daily News, joins Cheddar News' Closing Bell, where he discusses both the wins and losses of Bill de Blasio's eight years as New York City Mayor.
The push to regulate the gig worker economy is gaining steam as the share of workers who participate in freelancing through businesses like Uber and Lyft have also exponentially grown during the pandemic. Employment attorney Mark Kluger, founding partner at Kluger Healey, LLC, joined Cheddar to break down how the battle to reclassify gig workers will continue in the new year, and why the issue continues to generate conflict. "More and more workers are using gig work as their primary source of income and as a result of that they are not like employees in the sense that they don't have benefits like health insurance," Kluger noted.
2021 saw markets continue to be impacted by the onslaught of the coronavirus pandemic -most recently in the form of the Omicron variant- in addition to the global supply chain shortage, and increased inflation. But it wasn't all bad news, as crypto soared throughout the year, and meme stocks continued to have a moment. With the year coming to a close, investors are keeping an eye out to see if they should expect more of the same in the new year. Chris Vecchio, Senior Analyst, at DailyFX tells us what market trends to be on the watch for in 2022.
