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🇺🇸 42 in the Rearview

🇺🇸 42 in the Rearview

Plus, how to tell if your frozen food has gone bad (without testing it)...

May 15, 2023

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Good morning, and happy Monday! Both of their sons died from a rare heart condition. But 1 came back to life...

Plus, how to tell if your frozen food has gone bad (without testing it)...

Also, collectively all of us are doing more online than ever before — shopping, banking, work — making us vulnerable to fraud and online threats. Secure your digital life with Aura.

FLAG POLLS

🐎 Wednesday, May 10: General Election: Trump vs. Biden: Trump 43, Biden 45 (Yahoo News)

🐎 Wednesday, May 10: General Election: Biden vs. DeSantis: Biden 45, DeSantis 42 (Yahoo News)

🐎 Wednesday, May 10: Pennsylvania: Biden vs. DeSantis: Biden 48, DeSantis 39 (Susquehanna)

🐎 Wednesday, May 10: Pennsylvania: Kennedy vs. DeSantis: Kennedy 42, DeSantis 38 (Susquehanna)

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QUICK CLICKS

Biden Talks Border, Turkey and Thailand Elections, Underwater Ultimate

US: Biden downplays border crisis, telling press the chaos is 'much better than you all expected' (Fox News)

US: North Carolina Gov. Roy Cooper vetoes 12-week abortion ban (NPR)

Sports: Rockies' Ryan Feltner suffers concussion, skull fracture after being hit by frightening line drive (New York Post)

World: Turkey faces runoff election with Erdogan leading (Reuters)

World: Thailand election results: What we know so far (Al Jazeera)

US: ‘Brace yourselves, folks!’: Former Biden aide predicts SCOTUS could outlaw black history (Daily Wire)

US: He likes to be, under the sea: Florida man sets record for living underwater (ABC News)

Business: New Twitter CEO 'inspired' by Elon Musk's vision for 'brighter future' (Insider)

IMMIGRATION

42 in the Rearview

Last Friday, Title 42 expired, changing how migrants seeking asylum along the southern border are processed. The pandemic-era policy made it easier for officials to turn asylum seekers back due to concerns associated with the potential spread of disease.

Reporting from The Left: What is Title 42, why is it ending and what’s happening now at the border? Catherine Shoichet, CNN

Reporting from The Right: Title 42 expiration could be an environmental catastrophe, experts warn Thomas Catenacci, Fox News

From The Flag: Title 8 is now in effect, allowing for more time to lodge asylum claims. Migrants have been gathering along the Mexican side of the border for weeks in anticipation, and experts have predicted thousands will cross the border each day. Here's more from both sides.

LEFT-LEANING SENTIMENT

Whether Title 42 or Title 8, US Immigration Policy Is Cruel and Ineffective

The US has abandoned its responsibility to provide asylum, as evidenced by the poorly-constructed app that is supposed to facilitate meetings with CBP.
In reality, the US lacks a functioning immigration system — this is just the latest reminder.
Biden reneged on his campaign promise to roll back the Trump agenda on immigration, and now he's imperiled the asylum system as well.

The US has a legal responsibility to those seeking refuge ‍Alejandra Oliva, New York Times Opinion: "... these days the door to stability, much less economic growth, has been shut against asylum seekers even before they’re allowed to enter the country. ... The new measures will, among other things, bar from asylum all non-Mexican migrants who arrive at the southern US border without having first sought and been denied asylum in at least one of the countries they passed through on their journey. In order to apply for asylum ... they must first make an appointment through a notoriously glitchy phone app run by US Customs and Border Protection ... proved to be a crash-prone nightmare with facial recognition tech that often fails to accurately identify dark-skinned faces. This measure, instituted in January, is intended to replace Title 42, a Covid-era emergency measure that allowed border agents to turn away asylum seekers, under the justification of helping to prevent the spread of the virus."

With little help from Congress, Biden is doing his best on the border Editorial Board, Washington Post: "For more than three years, the Biden and Trump administrations have relied on an obscure public health law to manage illegal crossings at the southern border. That measure, whose legal justification was as flimsy as its health utility, did little or nothing to impede the pandemic — its stated purpose — but plenty to accelerate the expulsion of well over 2 million migrants, most of them Mexican and Central American. ... The Biden administration’s overall immigration policy has been waffling and contradictory, but the overdue lifting of the public health measure issued under Title 42 has forced a reckoning. ... The dismaying truth about the US immigration system is that it is hardly a system at all. That failure has been caused by political dysfunction in Congress, which for years has been unable to fashion major reforms."

One more opinion piece from the Left: Biden will never get us out of the Trump era like this Jacob Hamburger & Stephen Yale-Loehr, Slate

RIGHT-LEANING SENTIMENT

Biden Let the Border Situation Fester, and Now the Crisis Will Grow To New Heights

The White House has deluded itself into thinking that border security is a fringe political issue, inviting a crisis that's now materialized.
President Biden's post-Title 42 plan is to release illegal immigrants into communities away from the border since CBP has no more room with which to detain them.
The scale of the border crisis is simply too large for most of us to comprehend, and it will only get worse now that Title 42 has expired.

Biden’s border bungling is a gift to Trump ‍Jason Riley, Wall Street Journal Opinion: "The (Biden) administration has been telling itself that illegal immigration isn’t a pressing issue but rather a fetish of hard-hearted GOP governors in border states and Fox News viewers who are already lost to the Democratic Party. Department of Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas has stated repeatedly that the border is secure. Yet US Customs and Border Protection data continue to give the opposite impression, as do images of hordes of migrants crossing the Rio Grande and entering the country illegally. The latest figures available from DHS show that apprehensions, a proxy measure for unlawful entries, numbered more than 162,000 at the southwest border in March. That represents a 25% rise over the previous month and is more than three times the March average for apprehensions under the Obama and Trump administrations. Illegal border crossings in the past fiscal year surpassed 2.3 million, the most ever."

Biden’s 'Closing Time' border policy ‍Conn Carroll, Washington Examiner Opinion: "More than 11,000 migrants were apprehended crossing the southern border (last) Tuesday. Thousands more illegally crossed without arrest and are now camping out in border communities such as El Paso, Texas. ... Border Patrol agents began clearing out migrant encampments ... But instead of taking anyone into custody, agents simply instructed migrants to turn themselves in at the Border Patrol station in El Paso, where they could then be processed and allowed into the country. The reason (is) simple: The government has no room to detain them. ... they will be given a piece of paper telling them to report to an Immigration and Customs Enforcement office inside the US, then released to go wherever they want... Biden’s post-Title 42 border security plan is now becoming clear: Open the border and let everyone in, but then push them away from border communities ... so a humanitarian crisis doesn’t materialize on the border."

One more opinion piece from the Right: “We’re already breaking and we haven’t hit the starting line” ‍David Strom, Hot Air

FLAG THIS

Biden's Numbers Keep Lagging, Immigration a Concern

Polling conducted in key Electoral College battleground states last month shows 58% of voters disapprove of how the Biden administration is handling immigration, compared with 32% who say they approve.

A majority (52%) said President Biden is ignoring problems at the border, while half of all respondents said he's ignoring the situation surrounding "undocumented immigrants" (Global Strategy Group).

In a separate survey, which puts Biden's approval rating at 40%, just 26% of respondents said they approved of the administration's immigration policies.

Over half (54%) said they opposed an increase in the number of migrants allowed into the country each year, including 77% of Republicans and 34% of Democrats (Reuters/Ipsos).

Should Title 42 have been kept in place as an emergency measure?

FLAG FINDS

Simulation Security, Better Bottles, Simple Pleasure

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WATERCOOLER

Gasoline Rationing, Easing Work Anxiety, So Long Fast Food Dining

The U.S. Food Administration managed the wartime supply and distribution of food and promoted a voluntary austerity program that supported the war effort.

On May 15, 1942, gasoline rationing began in 17 Eastern states as an attempt to help the American war effort during World War II. By the end of the year, President Franklin D. Roosevelt had ensured that mandatory gasoline rationing was in effect in all 48 states.

QZ: The 15-Minute Weekly Habit That Eased My Work Anxiety and Made My Boss Trust Me More

The Conversation: Pollen Season Is Getting Longer and More Intense—Here’s What Allergy Sufferers Can Expect in the Future

Vox: You may never eat inside a fast food restaurant again

Today I Learned modern fruit is becoming too sweet for zoo animals after years of genetic modification.

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