The Week MHI dailybriefing ;

10 things you need to know today !

1. Terrorist charged in Christchurch shooting Brenton Tarrant, a 28-year-old Australian citizen, was charged with murder on Saturday following mass shootings at two mosques that killed 49 and left dozens more seriously wounded in Christchurch, New Zealand on Friday. Although three people were initially taken into custody, New Zealand Commissioner of Police Mike Bush said that at this stage there is no evidence that suggests there was more than one person involved in the shootings. Tarrant claimed responsibility for the attacks and posted links to a white-nationalist, anti-immigrant manifesto on social media, identifying himself as a racist. A list of names of the deceased has yet to be released, but many of the victims were reportedly migrants and refugees. Bush said that Tarrant possibly purchased his weapons legally, prompting New Zealand Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern to announce that New Zealand’s gun laws “will change.” In addition to those who died, Christchurch Hospital chief of surgery Greg Robertson said 39 people remained in hospital and seven patients admitted yesterday had now been discharged. Suspect Brenton Tarrant appeared in court on a single murder charge. “The others included a 4-year-old girl who has been transferred to the Starship Hospital in Auckland in a critical condition. Four patients died on their way in to the hospital yesterday. Those injured ranged in ages from the very young to quite elderly patients.” It was very unusual for local surgeons to deal with gunshot wounds, and certainly on this scale, he said. “As you would expect the wounds from gunshots are often quite significant. We have had patients with injuries to most parts of the body that range from superficial soft tissue injuries to more complex injuries involving the chest, the abdomen, the pelvis, the long bones and the head.” Canterbury District Health Board chief executive David Meates said the people who had been killed were yet to be formally identified but that would get underway this afternoon when the chief coroner arrived in Christchurch. He recognised the pressures and challenges for the families as according to Islamic tradition a body should be buried as soon as possible after a death. It is believed that Tarrant was living in Dunedin from at least August 2017 and travelled through the Middle East and Afghanistan last year. Cordons were still in place and armed officers were standing guard at the house where the gunman was believed to live on Somerville St in Anderson Bay. Tarrant entered no plea to the single charge of murder laid against him. He did not seek bail and was remanded in custody till his first High Court appearance on 5 April. Retired doctor gave 15 people refuge Irfan Yunianto escaped the Al Moor mosque and took refuge in a retired ophthalmologists house. An Indonesian student has told the BBC how he escaped the Al Noor mosque in Christchurch as a gunman began an attack on worshipers. Irfan Yunianto was in a small room performing Friday prayers and listening to the sermon when he heard a loud noise. “Seconds later I heard rapid gunfire,” he said. He ran out of an emergency exit door beside him and into a car park behind the mosque, where people were attempting to climb the gate to escape. Yunianto said a friend helped him climb the gate and he hid in a retired doctor’s house with “at least 15 people, two of them were injured”. “He was so kind, offering us beverages and a place to rest,” he said. “We didn’t dare to go outside as we were afraid of being shot or even worse, meet with the perpetrator.” The group were evacuated by police about five hours after the attack. [RNZ National, BBC News] 2. Trump vetoes resolution to block his national emergency declaration President Trump on Friday issued the first veto of his tenure, overruling Congress’ vote to block his declaration of a national emergency on the U.S.-Mexico border. Trump declared an emergency in an effort to access further border wall funding that congressional lawmakers did not grant him after a month-long government shutdown. The Senate approved a resolution to block the move 59-41 on Thursday; the House voted in favor of the termination, 245-182, last month. The vote was widely seen as an embarrassing rebuke on Trump, since lawmakers expected Trump to veto the resolution. Following the veto, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) said the House will vote March 26 to see if it can get the two-thirds majority it needs to override Trump. [Reuters, CNN] 3. Trump says white nationalism not a rising threat President Trump was asked on Friday about whether, in his view, white nationalism “is a rising threat around the world,” in light of the deadly shootings in New Zealand that targeted mosques. “I don’t really,” said Trump, saying “it’s a small group of people” committing these crimes. “But it is a terrible thing,” he continued. The alleged shooter in Christchurch, New Zealand, posted links to a white-nationalist, anti-immigrant manifesto on social media and identified himself as a racist. Advocacy groups have said hate group activity has been rising in the U.S. for the past few years. Defending his national emergency declaration, Trump called crimes “coming through our southern border” an “invasion;” the alleged gunman also referred to “an invasion” in his manifesto. [BuzzFeed News, The Washington Post] 4. Boeing software patch update expected within the coming weeks Boeing will reportedly upgrade the stall prevention software on its 737 MAX 8 planes within “the coming weeks,” a Boeing spokesperson told AFP on Friday. The updating process began after a 737 MAX 8 flown by Lion Air crashed just minutes after takeoff in Indonesia in October. But it has been expedited following the crash of a second 737 MAX 8 plane in Ethiopia shortly after takeoff last Sunday, which killed all 157 people on board. Why Investigators Fear the Two Boeing 737s Crashed for Similar Reasons The planes flew in similar erratic patterns, suggesting to experts that an automated system might have malfunctioned on both flights. New evidence found at the crash site in Ethiopia points to connections between the two incidents, suggesting that both aircrafts potentially struggled with the newly installed automated system intended to prevent a stall. Why the 737 That Crashed Is Boeing’s Best-Selling Plane Ever Jumbo jets are being replaced by planes like the Boeing 737: smaller, fuel-efficient aircraft capable of traveling greater distances. [AFP, The New York Times] 5. Dangerous flooding threatens Midwest Several states in the Midwest declared emergencies on Friday as a result of severe weather and heavy rain. A “bomb cyclone” storm slammed the Midwest earlier this week, and the snow melt, combined with rain, has pushed waterways in the region beyond their limits, hitting record levels in Nebraska, South Dakota, Iowa, and Minnesota. The flooding forced some residents to evacuate their homes and shut down a major highway. At least one in person in Nebraska was killed by the floodwaters. Some locations experienced their worst flooding in decades. The situation is expected to improve swiftly in several places, though for others, such as eastern Nebraska, it remains a real concern. [The Weather Channel, The Associated Press] 6. Sanders campaign staff unionizes The presidential campaign for Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) announced on Friday that its staffers will become the first ever major U.S. presidential campaign unit to have a unionized workforce. The United Food and Commercial Workers Local 400 will represent the staffers. Anyone below the rank of deputy directory will be able to join the bargaining unit. Sanders, who is well-known as a pro-union candidate, tweeted that he was “proud” of his staff’s unionization. “We cannot just support unions with words,” he wrote. “We must back it up with actions.” Contract negotiations will begin soon and the bargaining unit could ultimately reach 1,000 members. The move will put other Democratic presidential campaigns, especially the ones competing for progressive voters, under pressure to follow suit and at least remain neutral if their staffers decide to organize. Former Housing and Urban Development Secretary Julián Castro’s campaign has signaled it would back a similar move. On the campaign trail, Sanders has repeatedly vowed in speeches — as he did in 2016 — to make it easier for workers to unionize, often tying it to his push for a rise in the minimum wage to at least $15 an hour. This time around, following reports of sexual harassment and pay disparities on Sanders’ last presidential campaign, there will also be added pressure to fortify safeguards against similar mistreatment. “We expect (unionizing) will mean pay parity and transparency on the campaign, with no gender bias or harassment, and equal treatment for every worker,” United Food and Commercial Workers Local 400 President Mark P. Federici said in a statement on Friday, “whether they’re in Washington, D.C., Iowa, New Hampshire or anywhere else.” In the aftermath of 2016, Sanders implemented what he described in January as a robust new reporting structure during his 2018 Senate re-election bid — independent from the campaign — for allegations of sexual harassment and “training for all employees on this issue.” While Sanders’ is the first large-scale presidential campaign to unionize, the move comes in the wake of a growing wave of organization within political operations — for candidates and causes — that have for decades been effectively accepted as difficult and occasionally dangerous working environments. Campaign workers for Rep. Pramila Jayapal of Washington state were represented by the Campaign Workers Guild during the fall midterm elections, making her the first incumbent member of Congress with a unionized campaign staff. The campaign staff of Cynthia Nixon, who ran as a progressive outsider in New York’s Democratic gubernatorial primary, was among the handful of others to take similar steps. [CNN, Politico] 7. U.S. will deny ICC investigators’ visas Secretary of State Mike Pompeo announced on Friday that the United States will deny or revoke visas for International Criminal Court staff who are involved in an investigation into alleged war crimes and crimes against humanity perpetrated by U.S. troops in Afghanistan that launched in 2017. “The ICC is attacking America’s rule of law,” Pompeo told reporters. The secretary also said that the U.S. is prepared to take further action against the ICC, including imposing economic sanctions. The ICC responded to Pompeo’s comments and said it will continue the investigation regardless. Pompeo said the U.S. has never joined the ICC “because of its broad unaccountable prosecutorial powers.” “The first and highest obligation of our government is to protect its citizens and this administration will carry out that duty,” Pompeo said Friday. The secretary of state also warned that “these visa restrictions may also be used to deter ICC efforts to pursed allied personnel including Israelis without allies’ consent.” The Palestinians have asked the ICC to investigate Israel for alleged human rights abuses. Friday’s actions by the State Department followed a September 2018 threat from National Security Adviser John Bolton that the US would “use any means necessary to protect our citizens and those of our allies from unjust prosecution by this illegitimate court.” [CNN, The Guardian] 8. Students around the globe protest climate change Coordinated student-led climate demonstrations took place in more than 100 countries and territories around the world on Friday. As part of a growing global movement demanding tough action on climate change from their governments, tens of thousands of students walked out of school to join the protests, including in nearly every U.S. state. The movement began last year when a 16-year-old Swedish activist, Greta Thunberg, began holding solitary demonstrations in front of the Swedish parliament in Stockholm. Friday’s “strikes” provided one of the largest turnouts so far. Students mobilized via word of mouth and social media. [NPR, The Associated Press] 9. Supreme Court questions constitutionality of census citizenship question The U.S. Supreme Court announced on Friday that it has agreed to decide whether the Trump Administration’s decision to add a citizenship question to the 2020 census violated the Constitution. The court had already agreed to decide on whether the question violated federal administrative law, but after a California judged ruled in March that the question violated the Constitution’s Enumeration Clause — thus preventing the government from recording an accurate count of every person living in the U.S. — the Supreme Court expanded the scope of the review. Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross, whose agency oversees the census, defended the question during a congressional hearing on Friday. He said the question was added to aid in enforcing the Voting Rights Act,which protects eligible voters from discrimination. Only U.S. citizens can vote in federal elections. Democrats call the citizenship question part of a broader Republican effort at the federal and state level, also including voter-suppression measures and redrawing of electoral districts, to diminish the voting power of areas and groups that typically back Democratic candidates, including immigrants, Latinos and African-Americans. Republicans reject the accusation. [NBC News, Reuters] 10. Disney rehires James Gunn to direct Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3 Disney has rehired James Gunn to direct Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3, Gunn revealed on Friday. The director was removed from the Marvel sequel in July 2018 when offensive jokes he made on Twitter years earlier resurfaced; Disney CEO Bob Iger said in September that he never “second-guessed” the choice to boot Gunn. However, the decision to bring Gunn back was reportedly made “months ago,” and Disney apparently never hunted for a replacement. Walt Disney Studios Chairman Alan Horn reportedly met with Gunn several times and was “persuaded” by his apology; Gunn had said that his old tweets were “totally failed and unfortunate efforts to be provocative” and that he has “regretted them for many years since.” [Deadline, The Hollywood Reporter] The Week MHI

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Give the Border Patrol a Break “A new report from the U.S. Border Patrol proves that only the willfully ignorant can doubt that we’re dealing with an immigration crisis,” Dr. Ed Feulner writes in The Washington Times. “Border Patrol agents apprehended more than 66,000 migrants at the U.S.-Mexican border in February. That’s the highest total for a single month in almost a decade.” “The entire system right now is at full capacity,” agent Manuel Padilla said. “Actually, it’s overwhelmed.”Border Patrol agents apprehended more than 66,000 migrants at the U.S.-Mexican border in February. That’s the highest total for a single month in almost a decade. The makeup of the migrant population has changed as well. It used to consist primarily of single men from Mexico. Now it’s more likely to be families and children, arriving by the busload from Guatemala. In February 2017, families and unaccompanied children made up 27 percent of those arrested or deemed inadmissible at the southern border. Two years later, it’s 62 percent. Why the change? According to immigration expert David Inserra, loopholes in U.S. immigration law are the culprit. Combined with a weak asylum process, they “are creating incentives for adults to use children as pawns to get into the U.S.,” he writes in The Wall Street Journal. Consider the unintended consequence of the Trafficking Victim Protection Reauthorization Act of 2008. It requires the Border Patrol to treat unaccompanied alien children from countries other than Mexico differently. Border Patrol turns them over to the Department of Health and Human Services and lets them enter the U.S. pending an immigration-court hearing — one that may be years in the future. “Many alien children are reunited with their families, who are often in the country illegally as well, and never heard from again,” Mr. Inserra writes. It took time for word of this provision to spread to prospective migrants. The number of unaccompanied children crossing the border rose gradually for several years, then spiked in 2014. Yet even after President Obama called this an “urgent humanitarian situation,” Congress didn’t act. Another loophole is more recent: a 2016 court case that requires the Department of Homeland Security to release all children, including those accompanied by parents, from custody. Detaining the entire family is, by law, off the table. So when a family is arrested crossing the southern border, officials have two choices. One is to release the child while detaining the parents as their request for asylum is processed. But this so-called family separation is naturally unpopular, which leads to the second choice: Release the entire family and hope they show up at an immigration court hearing. They aren’t the only ones who fail to show up when and where they’re supposed to. U.S. law ensures that aliens who enter illegally aren’t promptly removed — they’re entitled to get a ruling on their asylum claims first. So there’s been a spike in asylum claims by those who say they face a “credible fear” of prosecution. It’s not hard for most of them to pass their initial hearing, but the immigration-court system that is supposed to give them a final ruling has a backup that averages two years. What happens in the meantime? “Most then simply disappear into the U.S.,” writes Mr. Inserra. “Some become victims of human trafficking or gangs. Few are ever removed from the country.” Now you can see why proponents of a border wall often stress the need for “immigration reform.” Because while a border wall is a necessary component — one that will certainly help control the tide of illegal immigration — it’s actually part of a larger solution. It doesn’t make much sense to build a wall while we continue to leave untouched laws that are drawing huge numbers here in the first place. So as we pursue a better physical barrier, let’s also change the law to reduce these unhelpful incentives — and give the Border Patrol a much-needed break.

Why I support the president’s national emergency “On Thursday, the Senate will take up the House resolution to disapprove of the president’s emergency declaration. The question is simple: Do you believe, as President Trump does, that we have a crisis on the southern border that must be addressed to protect American families?”I do — and I will be voting to support the president this week, because the case for the emergency declaration is clear, Sen. James Inhofe (R-OK) writes in The Washington Post. “The refusal of Democrats to give our Border Patrol agents and our immigration enforcement officials the resources they need to secure the border puts all Americans at risk. They left the president with no choice but to declare a national emergency, and he is on sound legal footing.”Border security is national security. Illegal immigration continues to escalate, and the situation on our border is not improving, even as Democrats try to deny it. It is a legitimate crisis, and we must respond by providing the necessary resources to protect our citizens.

THE FENTANYL FAILURE “In May 2016, a group of national health experts issued an urgent plea in a private letter to high-level officials in the Obama administration,” Scott Higham, Sari Horwitz, and Katie Zezima report for The Washington Post. “Thousands of people were dying from overdoses of fentanyl — the deadliest drug to ever hit U.S. streets.” Yet “despite mounting deaths and warnings, the Obama administration did not take extraordinary measures to confront an extraordinary crisis, experts say.” Between 2013 and 2017, more than 67,000 people died of synthetic-opioid-related overdoses — exceeding the number of U.S. military personnel killed during the Vietnam, Iraq and Afghanistan wars combined. The number of deaths, the vast majority from fentanyl, has risen sharply each year. In 2017, synthetic opioids were to blame for 28,869 out of the overall 47,600 opioid overdoses, a 46.4 percent increase over the previous year, when fentanyl became the leading cause of overdose deaths in America for the first time. “This is a massive institutional failure, and I don’t think people have come to grips with it,” said John P. Walters, chief of the White House Office of National Drug Control Policy between 2001 and 2009. “This is like an absurd bad dream and we don’t know how to intervene or how to save lives.” Federal officials saw fentanyl as an appendage to the overall opioid crisis rather than a unique threat that required its own targeted strategy. As law enforcement began cracking down in 2005 on prescription opioids such as OxyContin and Vicodin, addicts turned to heroin, which was cheaper and more available. Then, in 2013, fentanyl arrived, and overdoses and deaths soared. “Fentanyl was killing people like we’d never seen before,” said Derek Maltz, the former agent in charge of the Drug Enforcement Administration’s Special Operations Division in Washington. “A red light was going off, ding, ding, ding. This is something brand new. What the hell is going on? We needed a serious sense of urgency.” But for years, Congress didn’t provide significant funding to combat fentanyl or the larger opioid epidemic. U.S. Customs and Border Protection didn’t have enough officers, properly trained dogs or sophisticated equipment to curb illegal fentanyl shipments entering the country from China and Mexico. The U.S. Postal Service didn’t require electronic monitoring of international packages, making it difficult to detect parcels containing fentanyl ordered over the Internet from China. CDC data documenting fentanyl overdoses lagged events on the ground by as much as a year, obscuring the real-time picture of what was happening. Facing hotly contested midterm elections in 2018, Congress finally passed legislation aimed at addressing the increasingly politicized opioid crisis, including a measure to force the Postal Service to start tracking international packages. “How many people had to die before Congress stood up and did the right thing with regard to telling our own Post Office you have to provide better screening?” Sen. Rob Portman (R-Ohio), sponsor of the legislation, asked on the Senate floor last fall. Local and state leaders in hard-hit communities say the federal government wasted too much time at a cost of far too many lives. “Everybody was slow to recognize the severity of the problem, even though a lot of the warning signs were there,” said Gov. Chris Sununu (R) of New Hampshire, which has one of the highest fentanyl overdose rates in the United States. “In the city of Manchester, we saw 20 overdoses to 80 overdoses a month. We were like, ‘What the heck is happening with these overdoses?’ ” said Manchester Fire Chief Dan Goonan. He said politicians and policymakers held numerous roundtable discussions to talk about solutions, but there was little action. “I said, ‘If I had to go to another roundtable, I’m going to jump out the window myself because we’re going nowhere with these roundtables,’ ” he said.

National Guard’s border deployment led to 23,034 arrests, 35,000 pounds of drugs seized “National Guard troops helped with the arrest of 23,034 illegal immigrants and the seizure of more than 35,000 pounds of drugs in the roughly six months they were deployed to the border in fiscal 2018, according to U.S. Customs and Border Protection,” Anna Giaritelli reports in the Washington Examiner. The more than 23,000 people arrested were “deportable” noncitizens, DHS said. The operation, dubbed “Guardian Support,” also led federal law enforcement to more than 6,100 people who were later turned back, the data said. Because guardsmen are military personnel and not law enforcement officers, they cannot apprehend people. CBP officers and Border Patrol agents apprehended thousands as a result of guardsmen who were monitoring cameras, flying helicopters, and piloting planes. Troops are providing support from the air, surveillance backup, and assistance with infrastructure projects such as vegetation clearing and road maintenance, not including border wall construction. Guardsmen can also be used to free up agents to leave their desks and get back out to the field. The troops monitoring remote video surveillance systems have then been able to report sightings to a greater field of agents, and thus the number of apprehensions has increased, officials have said. Marijuana accounted for the vast majority of the drugs seized with the aid of National Guard troops, more than 34,600 pounds. But they also helped seize 526 pounds of methamphetamine, 47 pounds of heroin, and 18 pounds of cocaine. President Trump authorized the deployment last April following the emergence of a caravan of Central American migrants headed to the southern border. A little more than 2,100 remain deployed, but that number has already started to drop and will continue to drop in the coming weeks as blue states pull out from the mission, according to Pentagon officials. The mission was renewed through Sept. 30, the end of fiscal 2019. Previous administrations, including the George W. Bush and Barack Obama White Houses, have ordered the National Guard to the southern border to improve border security.

BIDEN KNOCKS TRUMP ON MEDICARE CUTS, FORGETS HE PROPOSED THE SAME Former Vice President Joe Biden “criticized President Donald Trump’s proposed 2020 budget for doing what his own administration asked for in their time at the White House. Biden decried the budget, saying, ‘Did you see the budget that was just introduced?’” Saagar Enjeti writes in The Daily Caller. “The proposed reductions to Medicare exactly mirror the same mechanism proposed by the Obama administration. ”Biden decried the budget, saying, “Did you see the budget that was just introduced? . . . Almost a trillion dollar cut in Medicare.” “Why?” he continued. “Because of a tax cut for the super wealthy that created a deficit of $1.9 trillion, and now they gotta go make somebody pay for it.” A White House source argued to The Daily Caller that “either Biden never read his own administration budgets, he’s losing his memory, or he’s already bailing on Obama to appeal to the new socialists in his party.” The staffer noted that the proposed reductions to Medicare exactly mirror the same mechanism proposed by the Obama administration.The reductions are baked-in expectations of Medicare payment savings based on reduced payments to hospitals and in expected reductions for the price of prescription drugs. “What we are doing is putting forward reforms that lower drug prices, that because Medicare pays a very large share of drug prices in this country, it has the impact of finding savings,” Acting Office of Management and Budget Director Russ Vought said at a Monday press briefing. Vought added, “We’re also finding waste, fraud, and abuse. But Medicare spending will go up every single year by healthy margins, and there are no structural changes for Medicare beneficiaries.” Peter Sullivan of the Hill noted based on a Center for Responsible Federal Budget analysis that “the vast majority of the Medicare cuts in Trump’s budget, released on Monday, are to payments to hospitals and doctors, not cuts to benefits for seniors on the program,” adding that the reductions “closely resemble or build upon proposals made in President Obama’s budgets.”

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