Dispatches

BORDER PATROL RECORDS FEWEST MIGRANTS SINCE 2021 ON SOUTHERN BORDER. The number of migrants apprehended by federal authorities after illegally crossing the border into Texas decreased roughly 32% in June — a sharp drop seen across the entire U.S.-Mexico border, according to federal statistics released in July, the Texas Tribune reported (7/16).

U.S. Customs and Border Protection officials in Texas apprehended 30,771 migrants between ports of entry in June, down from 45,139 in May. Border Patrol agents apprehended 83,536 migrants in June across the southern border, down from 117,901 in May. That marked the fewest monthly apprehensions since January 2021, the month President Joe Biden took office, according to CBP figures.

The new statistics are among the first released since Biden’s executive order that widely stopped granting asylum to migrants went into effect June 5.

“Recent border security measures have made a meaningful impact on our ability to impose consequences for those crossing unlawfully,” acting CBP Commissioner Troy A. Miller said in a statement. “We are continuing to work with international partners to go after transnational criminal organizations that traffic in chaos and prioritize profit over human lives.”

The number of migrants entering the country illegally was already decreasing when Biden issued his order, which excludes unaccompanied minors as well as asylum-seekers who secure an appointment with U.S. officials through a phone application.

Apprehensions so far this year in Texas peaked in March at 54,172 and have dropped each month since. Across the southern border, apprehensions this year peaked in February at 140,638, according to the latest data — a large drop from the record-high 249,785 apprehensions recorded by Border Patrol in December.

The decrease suggests migrants have adopted a “wait and see” approach in response to Biden’s order, which accelerated a slowdown that began in January, said Aaron Reichlin-Melnick, policy director at the American Immigration Council, a Washington, D.C., a group that advocates for immigrants.

It also highlights the efforts of the Mexican government to help the U.S. clamp down on immigration, Reichlin-Melnick said. He noted the number of unaccompanied minors, who are not included in Biden’s asylum restrictions, continued decreasing in June.

STUDENT LOAN PAYMENTS PAUSED FOR MILLIONS AMID COURT FIGHT OVER RELIEF PLAN. The Biden administration responded to an appellate court temporarily blocking one of its student debt relief programs by pausing payments for the 8 million borrowers already enrolled—a move welcomed by advocates, even as some called for further action. Jessica Corbett reported at CommonDreams (7/19).

U.S. Secretary of Education Miguel Cardona acknowledged in a statement that the 8th Circuit Court of Appeals’ ruling against President Joe Biden’s Saving on a Valuable Education (SAVE) plan “could have devastating consequences for millions of student loan borrowers crushed by unaffordable monthly payments if it remains in effect.”

“It’s shameful that politically motivated lawsuits waged by Republican elected officials are once again standing in the way of lower payments for millions of borrowers,” Cardona continued. “Borrowers enrolled in the SAVE plan will be placed in an interest-free forbearance while our administration continues to vigorously defend the SAVE plan in court. The department will be providing regular updates to borrowers affected by these rulings in the coming days.”

The appellate court’s July 18 ruling was just the latest in a series of legal decisions endangering one of the administration’s surviving policies to help Americans with burdensome student loans. Biden’s attempt to roll out a broader debt cancellation program last year was thwarted by the U.S. Supreme Court’s right-wing justices.

Despite that setback, the Democratic president has continued to pursue relief programs as former Republican President Donald Trump seeks a second term in the November general election. Analysts have warned that Trump’s return to the White House would worsen the U.S. student debt crisis.

RFK JR. FLOATED JOB IN TRUMP WHITE HOUSE AS HE WEIGHED ENDORSING TRUMP. Robert F Kennedy Jr reportedly held talks with Donald Trump about endorsing Trump’s campaign for a second presidency and – if successful – Kennedy taking a job in Trump’s new administration.

The talks, reported by the Washington Post (7/22), come days after Kennedy publicly apologized for a video posted online that showed part of a private phone call between him and Trump. The clip included Trump sharing his thoughts about childhood vaccines and being in broad agreement with Kennedy, a noted vaccine sceptic. In the video, Trump seemingly invited Kennedy to endorse his campaign.

But the Post reported that it was Kennedy – a Democratic candidate who became independent in October last year – who later sought a post overseeing health and medical issues under any new Trump administration in exchange for his support.

At a meeting in Milwaukee during the Republican national convention, the Post said, discussions between the two included possible jobs that Kennedy could be given at the cabinet level – or posts that do not require Senate confirmation. The talks also explored the possibility of Kennedy dropping out and endorsing the former president.

Trump advisers were reportedly concerned that such an agreement could be problematic – but they did not rule it out.

The idea surfaced after Kennedy, with about 9% voter approval in the presidential race and both major parties fearing he could win vital independent votes, was denied the opportunity to debate Joe Biden and Trump in June.

Kennedy told the Post the Trump campaign had been more open to him than the Democratic party apparatus. His uncle, President John F Kennedy Jr, was assassinated in 1963 and his father, Senator Robert F Kennedy, was assassinated in 1968.

“I am willing to talk to anybody from either political party who wants to talk about children’s health and how to end the chronic disease epidemic,” Kennedy Jr. said, adding that he had “a lot of respect for president Trump for reaching out”.

TRUMP CAMPAIGN PLANS POST-ELECTION MAYHEM. A senior Trump campaign adviser delivered a not-so-subtle threat about November’s election in an interview with Politico July 18: “It’s not over until he puts his hand on the Bible and takes the oath. It’s not over until then,” Chris LaCivita told Politico’s Jonathon Martin.

“It’s not over on Election Day, it’s over on Inauguration Day, ’cause I wouldn’t put anything past anybody.”

This follows an increasing trend of sometimes violent rhetoric and pre-election denial coming from Republicans, setting the stage for a contested election, Joan McCarter noted at Daily Kos (7/19). “As things stand right now, there’s a zero percent chance of a free and fair election,” said Mike Howell, executive director of the Heritage Foundation’s Oversight Project, according to The Washington Post.

That followed an election war game by the “2024 Transition Integrity Project,” a Heritage organization that is technically independent but has a large number of Heritage employees. One of the scenarios in that exercise was the FBI arresting a victorious Donald Trump the day after the election.

Trump himself continues to refuse to say he will accept the results of the election, conditioning it on what he calls a “free and fair” result. In his Republican National Convention acceptance speech (7/18), Trump veered off from lying about his successful handling of Iran and China to nurse his biggest grudge.

“And then we had that horrible, horrible result that we’ll never let happen again,” Trump complained. “The election result. We’re never going to let that happen again. They used COVID to cheat. We’re never going to let it happen again.”

REPORT SHOWS HOW LAWMAKERS IN GOP-DOMINATED SOUTH HARM WORKERS. “For at least the last 40 years, pay and job quality for workers across the South has been inferior compared to other regions—thanks to the racist and anti-worker Southern economic development model,” Chandra Childers, a senior policy and economic analyst at the Economic Policy Institute (EPI), wrote in a new publication in her “Rooted in Racism and Economic Exploitation” series, Jessica Corbett noted at CommonDreams (7/18).

Previous documents in the series have discussed how “Southern politicians claim that ‘business-friendly’ policies lead to an abundance of jobs and economic prosperity” but in reality, their failed model is designed “to extract the labor of Black and brown Southerners as cheaply as possible” and has resulted in “economic underperformance.”

The report dives into various elements of the Southern economic development model, which “is characterized by low wages, limited regulations on businesses, a regressive tax system, subsidies that funnel tax dollars to the wealthy and corporations, a weak safety net, and staunchly anti-union policies and practices.”

Childers uses a U.S. Census Bureau definition of the South, which includes: Alabama, Arkansas, Delaware, Florida, Georgia, Kentucky, Louisiana, Maryland, Mississippi, North Carolina, Oklahoma, South Carolina, Tennessee, Texas, Virginia, West Virginia, and the District of Columbia.

The EPI report highlights that “Southern states have lower median wages than other regions,” “low-wage workers make up a larger share of the workforce across the South,” and “every state that lacks a state minimum wage” is in the region.

The publication also points out the decline of coverage from employer-provided health insurance and pensions in the South, as well as how workers there “have less access to paid leave than their peers in other regions” and “Southern state lawmakers have also disempowered local communities.”

“Across the South, most states have passed so-called right-to-work laws, with the exceptions of Delaware, Maryland, and the District of Columbia,” Childers detailed. “Right-to-work laws do not, in any way, guarantee workers will have access to a job if they want one. They simply make it harder for unions to be financially sustainable.”

“In addition to right-to-work laws and the overall opposition from political leaders across the region, workers seeking to organize a union typically face intense opposition from employers,” she continued. “Further, because of the political opposition to unions, when workers try to organize, employers know that they can illegally intimidate them, refuse to recognize the union, or negotiate a contract in bad faith—with little to no fear of being held accountable by political leaders.”

While “there are city and county officials who support higher minimum wages and access to pensions and paid leave for workers” in the South, she explained, their ability to take action is limited by preemption, which “is when state policymakers either block a local ordinance or dismantle an existing ordinance” intended to help the working class.

Childers’ report doesn’t explicitly point fingers at particular political parties, but the region has been largely dominated by Republican officials during the past four decades covered by the analysis.

FEDERAL AGENCY AIMS TO PROTECT WORKERS FROM PAYCHECK ADVANCE FEES. With inflation rising in recent years, driven by corporate greed according to numerous analyses, the number of people in the U.S. who have relied on paycheck advance products has skyrocketed—but a rule introduced July 18 by the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau is aimed at ensuring that lenders who provide these products are transparent with financially struggling workers about the fees they can incur, Julia Conley noted at CommonDreams (7/18).

The CFPB proposed a rule clarifying that paycheck advances, sometimes marketed as “earned wage” products, are consumer loans and are therefore subject to the Truth in Lending Act.

The federal law requires lenders to disclose all fees, interest, and total costs consumers will incur before they use the product.

According to a study released by the CFPB as it announced the new proposed rule, the number of paycheck advance transactions processed by employer-partnered firms ballooned by 90% from 2021-22. More than 7 million workers used paycheck advances to access $22 million over that time period in order to pay for their housing, utilities, and other essentials.

The study notes that “the mismatch between when a family receives income and when a family must make payments for expenses” is a major driver of demand for consumer credit and other products like paycheck advances.

“To reduce their costs, employers have a strong incentive to delay the payment of compensation to workers, which drives demand for short-term credit,” reads the analysis.

As such, said Rohit Chopra, director of the CFPB, paycheck advances “are often marketed to and designed for employers, rather than employees.”

“The CFPB’s actions will help workers know what they are getting with these products and prevent race-to-the-bottom business practices,” he said.

The bureau’s report focuses on employer-sponsored paycheck advances, which have been increasingly used over and over by the same workers. Employees took out an average of 27 paycheck advance loans per year, according to the CFPB, with the average transaction totaling $106.

“The share of workers in our sample using the product at least once a month increased from 41% in 2021 to nearly 50% in 2022,” wrote the CFPB.

The bureau noted that while employers sometimes make paycheck advances fee-free for their employees, workers usually pay fees themselves, including expedited service fees and “tips” that the online services request when completing the transaction.

In the sample the CFPB reviewed, employers paid for less than 5% of the fees incurred by workers.

PROJECT 2025 WILL AFFECT EVERY PART OF LIFE, EVEN WEATHER UPDATES. A lot of disaster is packed into the 900+ pages of the Heritage Foundation’s Project 2025, Mark Sumner noted at Daily Kos (7/17). Between the scheme to turn the federal government into the servant of an imperial president, and the plan to force Christian nationalism into every aspect of American life, it’s easy to get lost in the details.

One of those details is the plot to gut the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, including the National Weather Service. Project 2025 calls for that agency to “be dismantled and many of its functions eliminated, sent to other agencies, privatized, or placed under the control of states and territories.”

Why get rid of an agency providing such singularly useful information not only used by many Americans daily, but also the basis for forecasts that appear on most local radio and television stations? There are three reasons. One of these is profit. The other two are … also profit.

Project 2025 doesn’t hesitate to explain the primary reason why it has put such a vital agency in the crosshairs. According to Heritage, the various components of NOAA:

“... form a colossal operation that has become one of the main drivers of the climate change alarm industry and, as such, is harmful to future U.S. prosperity. This industry’s mission emphasis on prediction and management seems designed around the fatal conceit of planning for the unplannable. That is not to say NOAA is useless, but its current organization corrupts its useful functions. It should be broken up and downsized.”

In other words, the problem with the weather service is that it tries to predict the weather. And all too often that involves making people aware that we are experiencing an unprecedented period of rising heat around the globe. That’s something Project 2025 means to stop.

Protecting the fossil fuel industry is a key feature of the plan. Blocking any expression of concern about the climate crisis is so important to Project 2025 goals that it calls on the National Security Council to block promotion of any military officer who expresses concern over climate change or “other polarizing policies.” (This is currently on page 52 of the plan, but page numbers have been altered several times since the plan’s first publication, making it more difficult to reference components of Project 2025.)

As The Atlantic reports, the NWS provides Americans with current weather conditions; short-term and long-term forecasts; and warnings for tornadoes, hurricanes, severe storms, floods, and excessive heat. It does all this at a cost of about $4 per person.

Project 2025 wants to hand over these tasks to commercial services. It admits that services like AccuWeather completely depend on data provided by NOAA, and wants that to continue; but hide the government service behind the commercial product. That way commercial services get the profit, and the credit, while what remains of the government agency toils thanklessly in the background.

Also, Americans don’t get exposed to the idea that government bureaucrats and scientists are doing something of value.

BIDEN PROPOSES NATIONAL RENT CONTROL PLAN. President Joe Biden proposed to cap annual rent increases at 5% for tenants of major landlords, Jessica Corbett noted at CommonDreams (7/15).

The White House called on Congress to pass legislation giving “corporate landlords” — defined by the White House as those with over 50 rental units — a choice to cap annual rent increases on existing units at 5 percent annually or lose federal tax breaks based on property depreciation.

The president proposed taking a tax benefit away from landlords who hike rents by more than 5% annually, according to the reporting. The plan would only apply to the existing housing stock of landlords who own more than 50 units and would require congressional approval—so it is not expected to go anywhere unless Biden wins in November and Democrats secure majorities in both chambers of Congress.

As the Washington Post detailed:

The Biden administration is also pushing numerous policies to increase housing construction, through incentives to local governments to change their zoning codes and new federal financial incentives for builders.If implemented, they could bring 2 million new units to the market in addition to the 1.6 million already in the pipeline.

“It would make little sense to make this move by itself. But you have to look at it in the context of the moves they propose to make to expand supply,” said Jim Parrott, nonresident fellow at the Urban Institute and co-owner of Parrott Ryan Advisors. “The question is: Even if we get all these new units built, what do we do about rising rents in the meantime? Coming up with a relatively targeted bridge to help renters while new supply is coming online makes a fair amount of sense.”

While housing industry representatives criticized the reported proposal, Diane Yentel, president and CEO of the National Low Income Housing Coalition, told The Associated Press that having it in effect in recent years could have helped renters.

TWICE-DIVORCED TRUMP’S NEW RUNNING MATE WANTS TO RESTRICT DIVORCE. No one goes into a marriage hoping for a divorce. It’s an unhappy end to what should be a source of happiness. However, like abortion, divorce is a personal choice—one that is sadly sometimes necessary to protect life or health.

And divorce, like abortion, is something that conservative Republicans are now trying to take away.

Among conservatives, there’s a longing for a time when divorce was both difficult and shameful. Divorce, especially no-fault divorce, has long been fingered by some conservatives as the root of many, if not all, evils. Some of the worst in Congress, like Missouri Sen. Josh Hawley, have advocated the idea of ending no-fault divorce.

Now those conservatives think they have their champion in Donald Trump’s running mate, J.D. Vance, who insists that women should be locked into “even violent” marriages, Mark Sumner noted at Daily Kos (7/17).

In 1969, the first no-fault divorce law in the United States was signed by a divorced former actor turned governor of California, Ronald Reagan. Over the next forty years, no-fault divorce laws spread across the United States, with New York being the last state to sign on, in 2010. These laws ended a period in which any party filing for divorce had to not simply give some reason for the dissolution of marriage—like adultery, cruelty, or abuse—but also provide evidence to support these claims. Some couples would even risk faking adultery or subject themselves to unnecessary moves to achieve a divorce. In many cases, women facing domestic violence would be blocked by the financial or social costs of mounting a case for divorce, or forced to stay with abusers by judges who didn’t accept their pleas.

The result of no-fault divorce was immediately visible, not just in an increase in divorce but also in a sharp decrease in domestic violence. States where no-fault divorce laws were passed saw around a 30% drop in domestic violence between 1976 and 1985. In addition, the number of women murdered by domestic partners decreased by 10%. Even suicide among women declined once no-fault divorce made it possible to dissolve failed marriages without an extended legal fight and public shame.

But among conservative Christians, no-fault divorce was looked on as an enormous mistake. The Heritage Foundation, authors of the authoritarian Project 2025 agenda, have railed against no-fault divorce for decades, arguing that parents of children under 18 should not be allowed to divorce without proving it wouldn’t be harmful to the children or arguing more recently that it “was no-fault divorce, not same-sex marriage, that first redefined marriage in the United States.” According to Heritage, “No-fault divorce stripped marriage of its durability and security. Instead, marriage lasts until feelings depart or spouses decide it’s no longer allowing them to ‘live their best life.’”

Somehow, they view using state power to keep people in a relationship that they no longer want as a good thing.

As Salon reports on Tuesday, Vance has been among those with the harshest view of divorce, taking a position that might sound extreme even to extremists.

Speaking to an audience at Pacifica Christian High School in Southern California, Vance called no-fault divorce “one of the great tricks … that the sexual revolution pulled on America.” According to Vance, ending marriages that were “maybe even violent” somehow harmed the children more than suffering through those violent marriages.

The result of no-fault divorce, Vance said, was that people were not “doggedly determined to stick it out” as they had been during his grandparent’s generation. Note that this is coming from the same man who wrote a book saying that his “family tradition” was poverty. Getting out of relationships involving unhappiness and abuse might not have changed that, but it certainly could not have hurt.

Spurred on by right-wing Christian groups, anti-divorce legislation is now spreading through red-state legislatures just as anti-abortion and anti-LGBTQ rights bills did earlier. Proposals in Louisiana, Nebraska, Oklahoma, and Texas would eliminate no-fault divorce in those states. Missouri currently does not allow women to seek a divorce while pregnant, even when trapped in an abusive relationship.

From The Progressive Populist, August 15, 2024

Populist.com