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).
Handling successive protests has required a careful balancing act for Gretchen Whitmer, Democratic governor of Michigan.
Hundreds of mourners packed a Houston church Tuesday for the funeral of George Floyd, the black man whose death has inspired a worldwide reckoning over racial injustice.
IBM says it is getting out of the facial recognition business over concern about how it can be used for mass surveillance and racial profiling.
Janee Harteau, former Minneapolis police chief, talks disbanding police dept in Minneapolis and how we can effectively reform policing in the U.S.
Stocks scrambled even higher Monday on Wall Street's enthusiasm about the reopening economy, and the Nasdaq composite set a record.
Democrats in Congress are proposing a far-reaching overhaul of America's police procedures and accountability.
After three gloomy months and 21,000 deaths that made it the nation's most lethal hot spot, New York City slowly began reopening Monday in the biggest test yet of Americans' ability to keep the coronavirus in check.
The U.S. economy entered a recession in February, a group of economists declared Monday, ending more than a decade of steady if slow growth.
Dr. Patrice Harris, speaking to Cheddar the day after her tenure at the American Medical Association ended, leaves the nation’s largest association of physicians at a time of remarkable upheaval for the medical community.
Cheddar followed the ongoing demonstrations in New York City on Thursday as protesters vowed to continue pushing back against police brutality and systemic racism.
