WH Claims Migrant Families "Ineligible" For Reunification
Trump officials: Nearly half of young migrants ineligible to reunite with parents. WaPo: "The Trump administration has released more than half of the youngest children separated from their parents at the U.S.-Mexico border, officials said, but continues to hold the rest as a court deadline to reunite a much larger group of older children approaches. U.S. District Judge Dana M. Sabraw in San Diego had given federal officials until Tuesday to reunite children under age 5 who were taken from their parents or other adults as part of a crackdown on people crossing the U.S.-Mexico border illegally. Federal officials say they could not return 45 of the 103 children for safety reasons or because their parents were deported or in criminal custody. One parent could not be found. The family separations — which also involve older children — have sparked international outrage and considerable confusion, with Sabraw warning the government this week to speed the reunification process, including background checks. A report filed with the court late Thursday showed 58 children were reunified across the country, some late at night and across great distances. Children or parents were scattered nationwide, including in Maryland, Texas, New York, Georgia, Louisiana, Arizona and Illinois."
WH Chips Away At ACA
The Trump administration’s latest steps to undermine the Affordable Care Act, explained. Vox: "With another period of Obamacare open enrollment soon to begin, the Trump administration is once again dramatically scaling back outreach for the health care law. The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services announced a 70 percent cut — $26 million — to the “navigators” program that hires people to help qualified individuals sign up for insurance through Obamacare. That follows a 40-percent cut last year. From the last year of the Obama administration to the second year of Trump’s, navigator funding has fallen from $62.5 million to a mere $10 million. This is, of course, just one front in the Trump administration’s multifaceted undermining of the Affordable Care Act even while Republicans in Congress have failed to repeal it. Trump officials have also almost entirely ended advertising for Obamacare but are expanding access to skimpier health plans that will likely weaken the law’s markets. Administration officials defend the navigator cuts as fiscally responsible. And it is true that Obamacare had relatively strong sign-ups for 2018 — just a slight dip to 11.8 million people enrolled from the 12.2 million in 2017 — despite the outreach cuts made by the White House. But things aren’t likely to get any better as the Trump administration keeps rolling back support for the ACA. The law has proved durable, but it has also failed to fully escape peril. Just in the last few weeks, the Trump administration froze critical payments to health insurers while the Justice Department has argued that the law’s protections for preexisting conditions should be ruled unconstitutional in federal court."
DOJ Reopens Emmett Till Case
U.S. reopens Emmett Till investigation, almost 63 Years after his murder. NYT: "The federal government has quietly revived its investigation into the murder of Emmett Till, the 14-year-old African-American boy whose abduction and killing remains, almost 63 years later, among the starkest and most searing examples of racial violence in the South. The Justice Department said that its renewed inquiry, which it described in a report submitted to Congress in late March, was “based upon the discovery of new information.” It is not clear, though, whether the government will be able to bring charges against anyone: Most episodes investigated in recent years as part of a federal effort to re-examine racially motivated murders have not led to prosecutions, or even referrals to state authorities. The Justice Department declined to comment on Thursday, but it appeared that the government had chosen to devote new attention to the case after a central witness, Carolyn Bryant Donham, recanted parts of her account of what transpired in August 1955. Two men who confessed to killing Emmett, only after they had been acquitted by an all-white jury in Mississippi, are dead."
Native Americans Get Longest Sentences For DAPL Protests
Native Americans who protested Dakota Access get handed the longest prison sentences. ThinkProgress: "Among the hundreds of people arrested in North Dakota for protesting the construction of the Dakota Access Pipeline, Native Americans faced the most serious charges. More than two years after the protests began, federal judges are now handing down lengthy prison sentences to the protesters. One of the Standing Rock activists, Red Fawn Fallis, was sentenced Wednesday for her role in a shooting incident during the protests. As part of a plea deal, the 39-year-old will serve the longest prison term of any Dakota Access protester: four years and nine months in federal prison for one count of civil disorder and one count of possession of a firearm and ammunition by a felon."
More From OurFuture.org:
How ‘Janus’ Will Boost Income Inequality in America. Sam Pizzigati: "Last year, trade union leaders from around the world descended on an OECD Ministerial Council Meeting in Paris to make the case that significant progress against inequality will only come when workers have the bargaining power to “benefit from structural and technological change.' The U.S. Supreme Court has totally ignored that union warning with its Janus decision. Come to think of it, the U.S. Supreme Court has totally ignored growing economic inequality. The rest of us? We can’t afford to."
