George Santos live updates: Congressman in custody, indicted on 13 counts

May 10, 2023 by WDNY Radio

Nathan Howard/Bloomberg via Getty Images

(NEW YORK) — Rep. George Santos, R-N.Y., has been indicted on 13 counts, including seven counts of wire fraud, three counts of money laundering, one count of theft of public funds, and two counts of making materially false statements to the House of Representatives, federal prosecutors in the Eastern District of New York said Wednesday.

The embattled congressman was taken into custody Wednesday morning on Long Island, New York.

Here’s how the news is developing. All times Eastern:

May 10, 12:52 PM EDT
Several House Republicans reiterate calls for Santos to resign

About a dozen GOP members of the House had previously called on Santos to resign or be expelled from Congress in the face of allegations against him, and several of them are reiterating that stance today.

In a statement today, fellow New York Rep. Nicole Malliotakis, said, “The charges against Rep. Santos are extremely serious and deeply disturbing and as I’ve previously said, he simply doesn’t have the trust of his constituents or colleagues. The sooner he leaves, the sooner his district can be represented by someone who isn’t a liar and fraud.”

Rep. Marc Molinaro, R-N.Y., told reporters on his way into a conference meeting this morning, “I can’t wait for him to be gone.”

Rep. Tony Gonzales, R-Tex., tweeted, “George Santos should be immediately expelled from Congress and a special election initiated at the soonest possible date,” while Rep. Steve Womack, R-Ark., told reporters, “This has been going on now since we took the majority. Frankly, I would have hoped along the way that Mr. Santos would have done what I believed was the right thing and not force leadership to force his action, but for him to do it on his own.”

The office of Rep. Max Miller, R-Ohio, says his position remains unchanged from the his Jan. 12 statement which said, in part, “I do not believe George Santos can effectively serve and should resign.”

In other statements released Tuesday night by Santos’ fellow New York Republicans, Rep. Nick LaLota said, “These charges bring us one step closer to never having to talk about this lying loser ever again,” while Rep. Mike Lawler said, “I reiterate my call for George Santos to step down” and Rep. Anthony D’Esposito said, “As a retired NYPD Detective, I am confident the justice system will fully reveal Congressman Santos’ long history of deceit, and I once again call on this serial fraudster to resign from office.”

Other GOP House members from New York who have previously called for Santos to step down include Rep. Nick Langworthy and Rep. Brandon Williams.

Rep. French Hill, R-Ark., told CNN Tuesday night, “I do believe that if a member of Congress is charged with a federal crime they should resign,” and Rep. Nancy Mace, R-S.C., told CNN, “We should really hold our own accountable and recruit someone who’s going to be better.”

-ABC News’ Lauren Peller, Gabe Ferris, Katherine Faulders and Jay O’Brien

May 10, 11:16 AM EDT
House GOP leadership standing by Santos

House Republican leadership is continuing to stand by Santos following the 13-count indictment. Among the House’s GOP leadership, there have been no calls today for Santos to resign.

Speaker of the House Kevin McCarthy says that Santos, “like every American,” will have his “day in court.”

“He will go through his time in trial and let’s find out how the outcome is,” McCarthy said.

The speaker said that Santos “was never put on committee, so he won’t serve on committee.”

Asked if money laundering, wire fraud, and lying to Congress concerns him, McCarthy responded, “It always concerns me.”

House Majority Leader Steve Scalise, during a press conference this morning, said that the charges were serious — but did not call on Santos to resign.

“There’s a presumption of innocence, but the charges are serious,” Scalise said. “He’ll have to go through the legal process.”

-ABC News’ Gabe Ferris, Lauren Peller and Katherine Faulders

May 10, 10:33 AM EDT
Santos misled House about finances, indictment says

In addition to being charged with defrauding campaign donors and falsely applying for unemployment benefits, the indictment alleges that Santos mislead the House of Representatives about his finances, specifically in to two financial disclosure forms he filed as a candidate.

in May 2020, during his first unsuccessful campaign, Santos overstated one source of income while failing to disclose his investment firm salary, the indictment says.

And in September 2022, while running again, Santos again included falsehoods in his financial disclosure forms, according to the indictment.

Santos lied about earning a $750,000 salary and between $1 million and $5 million in dividends from his company, the Devolder Organization, according to the indictment, and falsely claimed to have a checking account that held between $100,000 and $250,000, and a savings account with deposits of between $1 and $5 million.

“These assertions were false. Santos had not received from the Devolder Organization the reported amounts of salary or dividends,” prosecutors said in the indictment.

May 10, 10:17 AM EDT
Santos to be arraigned this afternoon, could face 20 years

Santos was placed under arrest this morning and will be arraigned on the indictment this afternoon.

He was placed under arrest on a 13-count, 19-page indictment that outlines three main schemes.

If convicted on all counts, he faces up to 20 years in prison — though it’s by no means certain he would serve that much time.

May 10, 10:11 AM EDT
Santos defrauded campaign donors, prosecutors say

Federal prosecutors in Central Islip, New York, accuse Santos of engaging in a “scheme to defraud” his campaign donors.

According to the indictment, Santos solicited donations for his run for office “under the false pretense” that those funds would actually be used for politics.

Instead, prosecutors said Santos spent “thousands of dollars of the solicited funds on personal expenses, including luxury designer clothing and credit card payments.”

Santos is also charged with illegally receiving unemployment benefits during the pandemic even though “he was employed and was not eligible for unemployment benefits,” the indictment said.

Santos is also charged with lying to the House of Representatives on his financial disclosures. Taken together, U.S. Attorney Breon Peace said. Santos relied on “repeated dishonesty and deception to ascend to the halls of Congress and enrich himself.”

May 10, 9:59 AM EDT
Santos received unemployment while working: Docs

Among the accusations in the charging documents are allegations that Santos applied for unemployment benefits during the pandemic, falsely claiming to have been unemployed since March 2020, according to prosecutors.

He collected money from then until April 2021, “when Santos was working and receiving a salary on a near-continuous basis and during his unsuccessful run for Congress,” referring to his first run for the job, which he lost. In total, prosecutors say he collected more than $24,000 in benefits.

He was actually being paid a $120,000 salary as regional director of an investment firm at the time, according to prosecutors.

Lionel Richie denies he’s had work done: “That s*** always goes wrong”

May 10, 2023 by WDNY Radio

After Lionel Richie performed at King Charles‘ coronation concert over the weekend, some fans took to social media to comment on how youthful the 73-year-old Rock & Roll Hall of Famer looked. While some said he’d likely had some sort of plastic surgery, Lionel says he hasn’t — and he wouldn’t want to, either.

Speaking to the Daily Mail, Lionel said having work done means you have to take time off to heal and then if you don’t like it, you’re kinda stuck.

“‘[It] locks you in for that year [while you recover] – and after that you can’t go [back] naturally, you’re staying right there … You try and go back to reset, and you can’t,” he said. He added, “And, that s*** goes wrong!”

And the other reason Lionel says plastic surgery isn’t for him? “God might not recognize me, so I want to make sure he knows me,” he joked.

So how does the American Idol judge maintain his youthful appearance? The Daily Mail quotes what Lionel said at the Hollywood Beauty Awards recently.

“Water, sleep, and sweat, not too much red meat. I know it’s real boring. [Sex] will work also and it’s good for your heart.”

And that’s advice he seemingly wants to share with his pal the king. Lionel told the BBC that he and Charles, who’s 74, “have a little joke between us.”

“He says, ‘How do you look the way you look and I look the way I look?’” Lionel revealed. “I said, ‘You come to Hollywood and I can help you.’”

Hailey Whitters, Zach Bryan named ACM New Artists of the Year

May 10, 2023 by WDNY Radio

Hailey Whitters and Zach Bryan have notched their first-ever ACM wins.

Hailey was named the ACM’s New Female Artist of the Year, while Zach picked up the award for ACM New Male Artist of the Year. This news arrived ahead of the 2023 ACM Awards on Thursday, May 11.

Hailey released her critically acclaimed third studio album, Raised, in 2022. The autobiographical project features Hailey’s jubilant debut single, “Everything She Ain’t,” which is approaching the top 20 on the country charts. As a songwriter, Hailey has penned songs for Alan Jackson, Brandy Clark, Little Big Town, Martina McBride and more.

Meanwhile, Zach dropped his major label debut record, American Heartbreak, with Belting Bronco Records/Warner Records in 2022, as well. The expansive 34-track collection includes his single “Something in the Orange,” which is number 26 on the country charts. The song, which Zach penned by himself, was also a six-week chart-topper on Billboard‘s Hot Country Songs chart.

The 58th Academy of Country Music Awards, hosted by Dolly Parton and Garth Brooks, will stream live on Prime Video May 11 at 7 p.m. ET.

Santos indicted on 13 counts, including wire fraud, money laundering

May 10, 2023 by WDNY Radio

Investigators have been focusing on Santos’ financial disclosures, according to sources.

In a series of campaign disclosure amendments filed in January, Santos marked two loans that he had previously reported as loans from himself — $500,000 from March 2022 and $125,000 from October 2022 — as not from “personal funds from the candidate.”

In a previous version of his campaign disclosure, the $500,000 was reported as a loan from George Anthony Devolder-Santos, with a checked box indicating it was from “personal funds of the candidate.” But in an amendment to that report filed earlier this year, that box was left unchecked.

Santos, who was elected in November to represent New York’s 3rd Congressional District, has been under mounting scrutiny over his finances — with 2022 disclosures indicating millions in assets after previously disclosing less than $60,000 in income in 2020.

Additionally, as ABC News previously reported, the FBI contacted a Navy veteran, Richard Osthoff, about a GoFundMe campaign Santos established to raise money for the veteran’s service dog.

Santos established the GoFundMe account under the auspices of a charity, Friends of Pets United, and raised $3,000 to help Osthoff pay for surgery to remove a tumor from the dog, sources said.

But Osthoff told ABC News Santos did not come through with the money and ignored text messages about it. The dog, Sapphire, subsequently died.

Santos insisted earlier this year he would serve out his term despite mounting controversies surrounding his past falsehoods, scrutiny of his finances, and multiple investigations.

Santos, who has admitted to fabricating parts of his biography, has denied any criminal wrongdoing.

Quinta Brunson says fashion is an “extension of me”

May 10, 2023 by WDNY Radio

Quinta Brunson flaunted different fashion looks during awards show season, but says before meeting stylist Bryon Javar it wasn’t easy to find someone who understood her or was willing to dress her frame.

“Not only am I 4-foot-11, [but] I’m 4-foot-11 with breasts and a butt. And that’s just the cardinal sin: to be short and have the nerve to have any type of curve,” she tells InStyle. “Before working with Bryon, there were times where I would work with other stylists and I just have to be like, ‘I’m not this young,’ or ‘this feels too young for me.’ And it would be like, ‘No, you can pull it off.’ And I was like, ‘But it’s not about pulling it off. It’s about what I want to represent when I come to certain award shows or certain events I have to do.'”

“I want to make sure I can convey who I am through what I wear,” the star continued, adding fashion is a way for her to show who she is without talking.

Quinta learned to love her body thanks to her experience as a trained dancer. As a woman with curves, she thought it’d be fitting to include some others in her show Abbott Elementary.

“This is a mockumentary, I feel they do better when you have people who look more familiar,” she says. “I wanted to portray people who looked real. And that inherently comes with, in my opinion, women who have curves.”

Though she knows she may upset people, she embraces Beyoncé‘s “I was born free” lyric in “Church Girl,” noting, “This is starting to really be my ministry. I was born free. I can do what I want.”

‘Outsourcing’ border enforcement: Biden’s migration policies rely on Mexico despite its grim record

May 10, 2023 by WDNY Radio

(MEXICO CITY) — When Emiliano, 51 years old, finally reached Mexico from his native Venezuela, he was detained by Mexico’s immigration authority, known by its Spanish-language initials as INM.

Imprisoned in a crowded room, he said he and other migrants were never given medications or access to their phones, even to let family know where they were.

“When you enter that place, you lost your human rights,” Emiliano, identified by only his last name to protect his identity, told Human Rights Watch, per the human rights monitor’s recent report. “There were so many of us, we slept one on top of the other … Half of us have COVID-19 symptoms. I was afraid I would die.”

Emiliano’s experience is one of hundreds of thousands of migrants who have overwhelmed Mexico’s migration authorities. But in an 11th-hour deal with the Biden administration, Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador has agreed to an unprecedented step — accepting non-Mexican migrants expelled by the U.S. under normal legal conditions.

“This agreement now where people of many nationalities can be expelled from the United States to Mexico is going to expose tens of thousands or hundreds of thousands of people to danger, to abuses, to violence in ways that we’ve seen now for years,” said Tyler Mattiace, the Mexico researcher for Human Rights Watch and one of the authors of that recent report.

President Joe Biden and López Obrador, often known by his initials as AMLO, spoke Tuesday as the U.S. prepares for an influx of migrants following the end of Title 42 restrictions, a public health policy used by the Trump and Biden administrations to expel migrants nearly 2.8 million times, even before they could request asylum.

“We’ve gotten overwhelming cooperation from Mexico,” Biden said after their hour-long call, pointing to the joint statement the U.S. and Mexico released last week announcing the new agreement.

But critics, including some U.S. lawmakers and human rights groups, say the U.S. has been shirking responsibility for enforcing immigration policy under Title 42, the Trump-era policy that authorized the rapid expulsion of migrants in a purported effort to avoid the spread of COVID-19.

“Title 42 was the latest example of the U.S. outsourcing law enforcement and migration and refugee policies not only to Mexico, but also to other countries,” said Erika Guevara Rosas, Amnesty International’s Americas director, adding Biden is now “taking advantage of the apparatus that was left by the Trump administration.”

That outsourcing takes different forms, from pushing other countries to increase their border security and deportations to increasing visa restrictions for foreigners to creating processing centers in other countries.

But Mexico in particular has taken on unprecedented responsibility for U.S. migration policies, and with the country overwhelmed by record numbers of migrants, critics like Guevara Rosas say the results are increasingly deadly and in violation of U.S. and international law.

“The government of Mexico, including President López Obrador’s administration and the previous administration from different political parties, have been complicit in the committing of human rights violations against migrants and refugees that include massive pushbacks, forcibly returning people to countries where they are in danger, and not committing to provide protection to people who are stuck at the border in these communities that are experiencing high levels of violence,” she told ABC News.

After Title 42 ends Thursday, the U.S. will soon shift to new, more restrictive asylum policies, including making migrants ineligible if they enter the U.S. without permission or even fail to apply for protection in another country. For migrants from Cuba, Haiti, Nicaragua and Venezuela, that could mean immediate expulsion to Mexico, rather that removal flights to their own countries — a policy that started under Title 42, but Mexico has now agreed to continue.

A spokesperson for the Mexican Foreign Ministry did not respond to ABC News’ questions. A Biden administration official didn’t address questions about the risks to migrants in Mexico, saying only, “President Biden has led the largest expansion of legal pathways for protection in decades.”

The latest example of that violence came just six weeks ago when at least 39 migrants detained by INM were killed in a fire. The doors at the facility were locked, and guards were seen on surveillance footage fleeing without opening them.

INM’s chief, a close AMLO ally, was charged earlier this month for “unlawful exercise of public office,” although he remains out of jail and in his role. Mexico’s attorney general’s office said he and another high-level official failed “to complete their obligations to monitor, protect, and provide security to people and facilities under their charge, promoting crimes committed against migrants.”

But the detention center in Ciudad Juárez is not the first fire to kill detained migrants, and it’s not the only one where migrants have complained of severe overcrowding and poor conditions.

Mexico detained nearly 450,000 migrants in 2022 — an increase of 44% over the year before and the highest ever recorded — but its roughly five-dozen detention centers have capacity for less than 7,000 people, according to federal data. That makes Mexico’s migrant detention program one of the largest in the world, with monitoring groups reporting some facilities — like the one Emiliano was detained in — lack access to running water, electricity, or medical care.

Mexico’s own National Human Rights Commission has documented similar poor conditions, especially overcrowding, as well as the detention of children in violation of Mexican law.

López Obrador has repeatedly cast himself as a friend to migrants and rhetorically defended the right to seek asylum. But under U.S. pressure, he’s increasingly relied on the military to act as immigration enforcement, deploying tens of thousands of National Guard troops to help detain migrants who are in the country illegally. Those detentions, including at checkpoints across the country and through random raids and searches, were declared unconstitutional by Mexico’s Supreme Court last year, particularly for targeting Black, brown, or Indigenous people.

But little has changed since that ruling, and migrants’ rights advocates say INM agents continue to mistreat migrants. A 2022 Human Rights Watch report documented INM agents expelling migrants seeking asylum, pressuring would-be asylum-seekers to sign papers to accept deportation, using violence to stop migrants’ movements and extorting migrants for money.

More than INM, however, most of those abuses have been carried out by criminal groups, who have trafficked, kidnapped, assaulted, extorted and killed thousands of migrants traveling through Mexico — especially those who have been waiting at the U.S.-Mexican border for a chance to cross.

Since President Joe Biden took office, there were at least 13,480 reports of murder, torture, kidnapping, rape and other violent attacks on migrants and asylum-seekers blocked in or expelled to Mexico under Title 42, according to the human rights group Human Rights First. Their report documenting those incidents, published in December, was “just a small fraction of the true number,” according to Julia Neusner, the group’s research and policy associate attorney.

“Organized crime is the one that has benefited more from these policies than anyone,” Guevera Rosas told ABC News.

Biden administration officials have said their rollout of additional legal pathways, their encouragement to migrants to not travel to the border, and their plans to open refugee processing centers in Latin America are all meant to undercut organized crime, including the coyotes who traffic migrants.

While migrants’ rights groups welcome those pathways, they argue it shouldn’t undercut migrants’ rights to seek asylum in the U.S. as well — a right that is enshrined under U.S. law, even if a migrant crosses the border illegally.

“It doesn’t seem that the goal of any of these policies is to streamline asylum. It seems like the goal of these policies is to make it more complicated for people to apply for asylum,” said Mattiace, adding, “It’s clear that Mexico’s immigration policies are centered around preventing people from reaching the U.S. border.”

Cyberattacks on hospitals are growing threats to patient safety, experts say

May 10, 2023 by WDNY Radio

(BURLINGTON, Vt.) — Jes Kraus was supposed to be going to the University of Vermont Medical Center every day for aggressive radiation and chemotherapy treatments to fight stage three colorectal cancer, for which he was diagnosed in September 2020.

But at the end of October 2022, the hospital called to tell him not to come in for his appointments until further notice. The medical center had just been hit by a cyberattack, which infected computer systems across the state and locked out health care workers from his treatment plan and other critical tools.

“Radiation was canceled for a week,” Kara Kraus, Jes’s wife, told ABC News. “We were afraid. We weren’t sure if that would affect the outcome. Again, the tumor, would it start growing back within that week? What was going to happen?”

The Kraus family’s experience is an increasingly common one, research shows. Hospitals have become a top target for ransomware gangs, which take control of vulnerable online networks and demand a ransom to unlock them, severely disrupting patient care in the process.

The number of attacks on U.S. hospitals each year doubled between 2016 and 2021, from 43 to 91, according to research published in the Journal of the American Medical Association.

Last year saw an even greater number of incidents, the American Hospital Association said.

Health care systems are often underprepared to stop these attacks, cybersecurity experts said, even though research shows they come with very real health risks for patients.

“These are direct threats to patient safety,” John Riggi, national advisor for cybersecurity and risk at the American Hospital Association, told ABC News.

When ransomware attacks hit hospitals, internet-based tools critical to patient care, which can include patient health records, imaging and lab results, communication links with other departments and hospitals and more, are suddenly frozen.

When UVM Medical Center’s computers went down, the impact on patient care was “significant,” hospital President and COO Dr. Stephen Leffler, who was seeing patients as electronic communications went down, said.

“When the laboratory had a critical lab result on someone, they couldn’t put it in the electronic medical record,” he told ABC News. “They couldn’t call the floor. And so we literally had our administrators start going in the lab, standing there and running a paper result to the floors.”

“Everything that we do and rely on was down,” he said. “We actually sent some staff to Best Buy to buy Walkie Talkies!”

The attack disrupted UVM systems for 28 days, costing more than $50 million in damage.

For years, discussion of cyberattacks at hospitals has focused on threats to privacy. Hacks could expose personal information about patients and subject hospitals to fines under the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act, or HIPAA. But experts now say privacy concerns are increasingly overshadowed by potential harm to patients when a medical facility is forced to delay treatments and divert ambulances.

“This is not just a patient privacy issue,” Josh Corman, a leading expert on cybersecurity and health care, told ABC News. “This is a patient safety issue.”

Using data from the state of Vermont during the UVM ransomware attack, Corman and colleagues found that hospitals experiencing a ransomware attack hit a stress level linked to more patient deaths. The findings were published by the U.S. Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency.

And cyberattacks don’t just affect an individual hospital hit with the ransomware.

Newly published research in the journal JAMA Network Open documents a ripple effect that can impact health care and the patient experience across an entire region.

The study looked at fallout from a single ransomware attack on a single San Diego hospital in 2021. It found that emergency rooms at adjacent hospitals had more ambulances arrive and saw more patients than normal, and had longer wait times for all patients seeking care. The number of situations where a patient left without being seen by a doctor rose by 127%.

“Patients don’t stop getting sick just because a hospital is hit by a ransomware attack,” Dr. Christian Dameff, lead author on the study and emergency physician at the University of California, San Diego, told ABC News. “They have to go somewhere. So what this research shows is that those patients go to neighboring hospitals that can be overwhelmed.”

Dameff calls it the blast radius.

“It truly affects the entire community,” he said.

The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services concluded in an April report that cyberattacks are the single “largest threat” to America’s hospitals, deserving “immediate attention” because of the “threat to life.”

Most hospitals still aren’t adequately prepared to prevent and respond to the threat, experts say. Bigger hospitals generally have the resources to invest in cybersecurity, but smaller ones don’t — particularly after the financial strain of the pandemic. Nearly all hospitals surveyed in the HHS report said they use software with “known vulnerabilities;” only half said they had a plan to address those shortcomings.

“We’re not yet in a place where we can reliably say the hospital your family depends upon in most of America is, at a minimum, cyber hygiene-level sufficient to fend off preventable attacks,” Corman says.

It’ll take investment and more federal regulation to fill those gaps, Corman said. There’s some movement: the U.S. Food and Drug Administration now requires that medical devices meet cybersecurity standards, and members of Congress are considering introducing legislation that would set mandatory cybersecurity minimums for hospitals.

There also needs to be more cybersecurity and preparedness education for healthcare workers, Dameff said, so that doctors and nurses are prepared for a situation when their networks do go down and they’re not able to rely on digital tools.

“It can happen to you – even when you think it’s impossible,” said Leffler of his message to other hospital administrators.

Raising awareness and encouraging action around health care cybersecurity has been difficult, Dameff said. People in the field worry that talking about it will discourage patients from trusting healthcare institutions, for example, he said.

But more and more leaders in health care are starting to recognize the issue.

“These attacks are becoming so frequent and so sophisticated. Hospital defenses aren’t nearly up to snuff to prevent these types of things from happening,” Dameff said.

Hospitals are, instead, left scrambling when an attack hits. That’s what happened with Jes Kraus’ care at UVM. Luckily, his oncologist was able to get his radiation treatments moved to another hospital, and his cancer is currently in remission. Still, it was stressful to figure out and coordinate a new way to get care.

“In the grand scheme of things, it’s easy to look at it now and say, okay, yeah, it was a week delay [in treatments] and it didn’t really impact [my prognosis], but I hope that it’s been a lesson learned to hospitals,” Kraus said.

Could Tom Cruise have eyes for Shakira?

May 10, 2023 by WDNY Radio

Tom Cruise and Shakira sparked dating rumors over the weekend when they were photographed together at the Formula 1 Grand Prix in Miami, according to Page Six.

“He is extremely interested in pursuing her,” and even sent her flowers, a source tells the outlet.

“There’s chemistry,” adds the insider.

The romance rumors follow Shakira’s split from her longtime boyfriend Gerard Piqué last June amid allegations he was cheating on her with his now-girlfriend, Clara Chia Marti.

“Shakira needs a soft pillow to fall on, and that could be Tom,” says the source, adding that the 60-year-old Top Gun: Maverick star is “a nice-looking guy, and he is talented.”

“And she isn’t taller than him,” joked the source, noting that Cruise is 5-foot-7, while the “Hips Don’t Lie” singer is 5-foot-2.

Shakira, 46, and Piqué were together for 12 years and share two children: Sasha, 8, and Milan, 10.

Biden administration officials preview plans for end of Title 42

May 10, 2023 by WDNY Radio

(WASHINGTON) — Amid concerns over a looming immigration surge at the southern U.S. border, Biden administration officials have revealed what they described as a “comprehensive, multi-agency, multi-country plan” to “humanely manage the border” when a Trump-era policy known as Title 42 lifts this week.

The officials acknowledged that the policy placed “significant conditions” on the existing rule.

Under the finalized policy, migrants will be required to either first apply for protection in a third country or apply for admission via the CBP One App while also presenting at a legitimate port of entry to be considered, one official confirmed. Those who don’t follow those steps, the official said, would be quickly removed.

“We are also significantly expanding, starting on Thursday, our use of expedited removal at the border. This is our traditional title eight consequences for individuals who are encountered between ports of entry,” the official said. “We have spent much of the last year building out additional interview rooms and adding phone lines to both CBP and ICE facilities in order to facilitate the interviews that are required under the expedited removal process for asylum officers. We have retained and will be ready to deploy up to 1,000 asylum officers to handle credible fear interviews at the border again starting this Thursday.”

The official did not specifically say how the finalized rule differed exactly from the proposed policy previously revealed.

“I can’t talk about the specifics of changes that were made. I will note that they were not major changes, we did receive many thousands of comments, we worked feverishly to address and respond to it and all of that will be available for public inspection early tomorrow,” they advised.

Officials said that the finalized version of the sweeping restriction on asylum, first proposed by the Biden administration earlier this year, would be published Thursday morning, acknowledging that the policy — which has drawn considerable criticism from the president’s own party — placed “significant conditions” on the existing rule.

The change is almost certain to be challenged in court.

Following up on the announcement that the administration would stand up regional processing centers across Latin America last month, one official shed additional light on the initiative, saying they would eventually open more than 100.

“In the coming days, we will launch an online platform for individuals to make appointments to be able to visit a center near them and in many cases within their home countries,” they said, adding that over 140 federal personnel as well as NGO staffers would “be deployed to support the activities at the centers.”

It is currently unclear how long turnaround times for appointments might be or how long the whole process might take.

“We’re continuing to work those details but I’m quite certain that we will be have additional updates in the next several days,” the official said.

When asked whether the efficacy of the centers might be too little or too late to assuage the wave from the end of Title 42, the official pledged more would be done to facilitate legal migration.

“This will not be the last and certainly was not the first legal pathway made available in an innovative fashion by the administration to deal with this unprecedented challenge,” they said.

Stating that they had been preparing for the end of Title 42 for over a year, the officials sought to showcase that readiness with statistics.

“We have more than 24,000 law enforcement personnel deployed to the border, along with another 1,100 new border patrol processing coordinators, which has doubled the number we had last year,” one official said. “Thousands of contracts personnel have been hired over the last year and a half. And we have 400 volunteers who have put their hands up to help our frontline personnel manage what will be challenging conditions in some of our facilities.”

They added that the administration had also deployed over 1,400 medical support staff to the border, increased its capacity to hold individuals at border patrol facilities by more than 7,000 beds over the last two years, and increased repatriation flight capacity by more than 70% over the last year.

But despite it all, the administration officials — as the president himself did earlier — sought to set expectations low, saying they were bracing for a “rough couple of weeks.”

Here, the executive branch officials point the finger squarely at Congress, namely Republicans, for proving only “limited resources to address the moment at hand.”

“We have asked Congress for an updated framework. We have asked Congress as well for additional resources. Specifically, we asked Congress for $4.9 billion for border security and management. And Congress only gave us half of that,” one said.

Price hikes cooled slightly in April, continuing monthslong slowdown

May 10, 2023 by WDNY Radio

(NEW YORK) — Consumer prices rose 4.9% last month compared to a year ago, extending a monthslong slowdown and bolstering hopes that inflation will continue its return back to normal levels.

The fresh data aligns with the Federal Reserve’s effort to slow the economy and slash prices while averting a recession.

The Fed last week escalated an aggressive series of interest rate increases with a quarter-point hike as it aims to slash inflation by slowing the economy.

The move came days after the seizure and forced sale of First Republic Bank, the latest spasm of banking unrest that has arisen in part from the Fed’s rate hikes.

Consumer prices rose 5% in March compared to a year ago, recording inflation well below a summer peak, but leaving it more than double the target rate of 2%.

Economists expect year-over-year inflation to have stood flat at 5% in April, halting the progress in inflation reduction and placing pressure on the Fed to further hike its benchmark interest rate even as it risks deepening the financial unrest and plunging the economy into a recession.

Data released earlier this month showed that economic growth slowed at the outset of this year, suggesting the rate hikes have helped put the brakes on business activity.

U.S. gross domestic product grew by a 1.1% annualized rate over the three months ending in March, according to government data.

A better-than-expected jobs report on Friday, however, defied fears that rate hikes have substantially weakened the economy.

Instead, the U.S. added 253,000 jobs in April, marking a slight decline from an average of 290,000 over the previous six months. The unemployment rate fell to 3.4%, matching a 54-year low, government data showed.

Meanwhile, U.S. retail sales have fallen moderately but remained solid over the course of this year, suggesting that households still retain some pandemic-era savings.

While resilient economic measures offer policymakers some leeway as they weigh further rate hikes and invite a deeper slowdown, an extension of the Fed’s series of rate increases could worsen banking distress.

As the Fed aggressively hiked interest rates over the past year, the value of long-term Treasury and mortgage bonds dropped, punching a hole in the balance sheets at some banks.

Three of the nation’s 30-largest banks have failed since March. While high interest rates contributed to the collapses, each of the banks also retained a sizable portion of uninsured depositors, who tend to panic without a government backstop for their funds.

Last week, in response to a question about additional rate hikes, Fed Chair Jerome Powell noted the removal of a sentence that appeared in the Fed’s previous rate hike announcement in March that said “some additional policy increases might be appropriate.”

Powell described the omission in the announcement on Wednesday as “meaningful,” saying a decision about any additional rate hikes would be “data dependent.”

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