California is ready to take on the Justice Department.
That’s according to San Francisco District Attorney George Gascón, who was responding to a lawsuit against the state brought by Attorney General Jeff Sessions over immigration laws.
“I find it very disingenuous that you have people that for generations talk about state rights and all of a sudden their talking about federal supremacy,” he said in a Cheddar interview Wednesday.
The Justice Department and immigration agencies this week sued California over its “sanctuary” laws, which prohibit local and state authorities, as well as private employers, from cooperating with federal immigration officers.
Sessions, who filed the suit Wednesday, said California’s policy threatens national safety.
Gascón, though, said the state doesn’t prevent immigration officials from going into California and doing their jobs. It’s simply not actively cooperating. He argued that immigrants are important to California’s social fabric and provide a “major economic engine.”
“I think that this is an administration that is failing on so many fronts, and what they’re trying to do is create another diversion,” he told Cheddar. “All of this is really a political stunt that is driven by very racist attitude and has nothing to do with public safety.”
For the full interview, [click here](https://cheddar.com/videos/inside-the-sanctuary-city-legal-battle).
President Donald Trump is expected to announce the shipment of millions of rapid coronavirus tests to states this week. He plans to urge governors to use them to reopen schools.
President Donald Trump paid just $750 in federal income taxes the year he ran for president and in his first year in the White House, according to a report Sunday in The New York Times.
President Donald Trump nominated Judge Amy Coney Barrett to the Supreme Court on Saturday, capping a dramatic reshaping of the federal judiciary that will resonate for a generation and that he hopes will provide a needed boost to his reelection effort.
The late Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg lay in state at the U.S. Capitol on Friday, the first woman in American history so honored at the domed building.
From Wall Street to Silicon Valley, these are the top stories that moved markets and had investors, business leaders, and entrepreneurs talking this week on Cheddar.
Dr. Paul Stoffels, chief scientific officer at Johnson & Johnson, joined Cheddar to discuss phase three COVID-19 vaccine trials. More than 60,000 people worldwide have volunteered to be part of the study.
A closer look at some key areas where Ginsburg was most influential reveals a jurist who defied easy ideological categories, especially when it came to business.
The pandemic is now striking cities with much smaller populations, often in conservative corners of America where anti-mask sentiment runs high.
Ohio Rep. Bob Latta joined Cheddar to discuss new safety legislation he's introduced for autonomous vehicles. The Self-Drive Act will create a national standard for operation of self-driving cars.
Democrats are going back to the drawing board on a huge virus relief bill. House Democrats say they are paring back their proposal in an attempt to jump-start negotiations with the Trump administration.
