A majority of Texas House Republicans asked President Joe Biden to declare an emergency at the southern border, according to a letter obtained by the Daily Caller News Foundation Wednesday. Fourteen of Texas’ 23 Republican representatives signed on to the letter penned by Rep. Lance Gooden asking Biden to approve Republican Gov. Greg Abbott’s request for a federal emergency declaration in response to the border crisis, according to the letter. The Republicans cited a massive influx of around 16,000 migrants, mostly from Haiti , who established a temporary camp under an international bridge in Del Rio, Texas, over the weekend. “The crisis at the border has reached a tipping point. The president can no longer deny an emergency exists, and Texas cannot be expected to continue shouldering the cost of securing our southern border,” Gooden told the DCNF. “President Biden must grant the governor’s request for a federal emergency declaration.” Texas National Guard Soldiers & …
A majority of school districts are now open. But not everyone wants to return.
Elementary students returned to classrooms in Long Beach, Calif., on Monday and campuses from Los Angeles to Boston prepared for significant expansions of in-person instruction as a majority of the nation’s districts have now begun to reopen school buildings, many of which have been closed for more than a year. On Monday, Burbio, which monitors some 1,200 districts including the largest 200 in the country, reported that 53.1 percent of students were in schools offering daily, in-person classes, and that for the first time, the proportion of students attending school virtually or in hybrid classes had dropped. The change, Burbio officials said, appeared to be driven by the return in elementary and middle schools to in-person classes, and by the new rules from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention permitting schools to allow three feet of social distance instead of six feet in elementary schools. But a number of roadblocks to reopening remain. On the West Coast, …
UK Govt Looks to 30k Migrants from Belarus, Russia, Etc for Farms
Boris Johnson’s government is scrapping the ‘Pick for Britain’ drive for British farm workers and increasing migrant recruitment to 30,000, with hundreds to come from the likes of Belarus and the Russian Federation. The Tory government launched the ‘Pick for Britain’ campaign in 2020 as the COVID-19 pandemic began in earnest, resulting in restrictions on international travel despite their own efforts to put off halting travel from coronavirus hotspots such as Italy, Iran, China, and even Wuhan itself until well after the disease had become endemic. With hundreds of thousands out of work or furloughed on reduced pay across the country, the government made a great show of inviting people to come into the fields, with the Queen’s heir, Prince Charles, backing the scheme in a public message which recalled the wartime Land Army . Tens of thousands of Britons answered the call — but few, in the end, were actually recruited by bosses, with the Tories making arrangements for them …
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Why Business Lawyers Are a Necessary Expense
Lawyers can be expensive. I myself am a victim’s attorney, so my contingent fees come at the end of my cases, out of money that I recover for my clients, not up-front. But I also happen to be a business owner, so I know that in order to be successful, you must be willing to spend money on a good business attorney. Despite the significant initial expense, not having the right lawyer to advise you about your new business can end up being far more expensive in the long run. So how do you find that attorney, what should you expect, and how do you get the most bang for your buck? When do you need an attorney? The moment you decide to start a business is the moment when you need an attorney. You should have a lawyer for your business before you face a lawsuit or an audit. Once you’re in a courtroom, the costs of a litigation specialist will dwarf what you may have spent on an attorney to set your company up properly. A small-business lawyer who works with startups can help you …
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Bernie Sanders and Hillary Clinton—more alike than you think
U.S. Bernie Sanders Hillary Clinton 2016 Presidential Campaign 2016 Presidential Election The financial system was in a meltdown, and Bernie Sanders was on the Senate floor inveighing against the financial bailout known as the Troubled Asset Relief Program, or TARP, in October 2008. "The masters of the universe, those brilliant Wall Street insiders who have made more money than the average American can even dream of, have brought our financial system to the brink of collapse," Sanders railed in his now-familiar Brooklyn accent, in which jobs becomes jawbs and dollars sounds like dah-llahs . Now "these multimillion-ahhs ," he continued, "are demanding that the middle class...pick up the pieces that they broke!" As Sanders spoke, a young aide behind him propped up posters featuring sinister-looking close-ups of select fat cats. Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson ("Goldman Sachs rewarded him with a $35 million bonus in 2005," the caption read) and Richard …
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The Uber Battle on California’s Ballot
Good morning. Some of California’s ballot propositions are expensive campaigns driven largely by deep-pocketed special interests . Some ballot propositions ask voters complex questions with potentially broad national implications. Proposition 22 — whose supporters and opponents have collectively raised a staggering $204 million , according to the California Secretary of State’s office — is both. Most of that has come from three companies : Uber, Lyft and DoorDash, whose leaders have spent months locked in a bitter battle with the state over a law passed last year meant to give gig workers more benefits and protections by requiring that they be classified as employees rather than contractors. [Read more about the new law .] The ballot initiative, and all the money they and other gig work companies have thrown at it, would allow those companies to essentially exempt themselves from that requirement, but give drivers some benefits. A poll released …
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What Alex Padilla Wants California Voters to Know
Good morning. Early voting, including voting by mail, in this election has decimated records in states across the country, including California , where more than 6.5 million ballots have already been returned, according to the state . Still, over the weekend, California voters lined up to cast their ballots early at dozens of newly open polling places, including, for the first time , Staples Center , home of the Los Angeles Lakers. Hundreds more will open on Oct. 30. On Thursday, I talked with California’s secretary of state, Alex Padilla , about what voters should know in the homestretch, especially if they’re planning to vote in person. Here’s our conversation, lightly edited for clarity: How are things going? What’s the biggest challenge on your mind right now? Californians are voting in big numbers. We’re about 2.5 times where we were at this point in 2016, if that’s any indicator. We’ve been planning and preparing for months. And if voter …
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Dorothy Height, Largely Unsung Giant of the Civil Rights Era, Dies at 98
Dorothy Height, a leader of the African-American and women’s rights movements who was considered both the grande dame of the civil rights era and its unsung heroine, died on Tuesday in Washington. She was 98. The death, at Howard University Hospital, was announced jointly by the hospital and the National Council of Negro Women , which Ms. Height had led for four decades. A longtime Washington resident, Ms. Height was the council’s president emerita at her death. One of the last living links to the social activism of the New Deal era, Ms. Height had a career in civil rights that spanned nearly 80 years, from anti-lynching protests in the early 1930s to the inauguration of President Obama in 2009. That the American social landscape looks as it does today owes in no small part to her work. Originally trained as a social worker, Ms. Height was president of the National Council of Negro Women from 1957 to 1997, overseeing a range of programs on issues like voting rights, poverty and …
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Column: You want the house, so you write the owner a love letter. But the practice is under fire
It’s the perfect house in the right neighborhood, so the competition is stiff, but you’ve absolutely got to have it. So what do you do? You make your bid, offering more than the list price because that’s how insane the California real estate market can be in many neighborhoods, and then you sit down and write a love letter. “We cannot express to you how much we love your home,” says an internet letter-writing primer that includes tidbits about 20-month-old Jimmy, “a wild, fun, curious boy” who’s going to love the backyard, while family felines Bubba and Mr. Cat “will love basking in all the natural light.” Advertisement Business For Subscribers How the pandemic helped scatter $1-million homes across L.A. COVID-19 unleashed new demand for homes, made the well-off wealthier, and fueled extreme bidding wars. The result? The $1-million home is everywhere. This practice has always struck me as creepy — a fawning essay contest in the …
The environmental impact of the U.S.-Mexico border wall
Tech & Science Mexico Border control Illegal Immigration Immigration A line of 18-foot-tall steel posts placed four inches apart cuts like a scar across the Lower Rio Grande Valley National Wildlife Refuge near McAllen, Texas. It's a stretch of a barrier extending intermittently across 650 miles of the U.S.-Mexico border from California to Texas, and presidential candidates Ted Cruz, Donald Trump and Marco Rubio vow to enlarge it if elected. The barrier is intended to deter illegal immigration and smuggling. Whether it has achieved those aims remains unclear, but what is clear in this part of Texas is that sections of the barrier bisect and isolate public and private lands, threatening to decimate wildlife habitats and leaving communities on both sides of the border that rely on wildlife tourism to wither. The Rio Grande traces the entire 1,254-mile border between Mexico and Texas. Alongside a 120-mile stretch of the river that ends at the Gulf of Mexico, more …
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