We applaud the Supreme Court’s decision Monday to halt the expiration of Title 42, and we hope the pressure Republican states are putting on the court with an emergency application keeps the statute upheld — for public-health reasons, not political ones.
Title 42 of the Public Health Service Act authorizes the director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention to suspend entry of individuals into the United States to protect public health. When I (Redfield) as CDC director invoked it in early 2020 because of the emerging COVID pandemic and influenza transmission at the border, I didn’t know it would block more than 2 million border crossings in the time since. What I did know was the border-detention structures, called by some reporters “cages,” put in place during the Obama years were designed for limited occupants — about 20 — at best, not the extensive overcrowding with people jammed in together witnessed by early 2020.
Seeing this, I made the decision myself. I did not have the backing of many at the CDC or bipartisan support throughout the federal government. But my pure motivation was to protect public health, the health of the migrants, the health of the government employees at the border and the citizens of our country, from contagious disease. I believe this move was successful and saved many thousands of lives.
Flash forward to now, after a DC federal appeals court rejected a bid by several Republican-led states to keep Title 42 in place and the Supreme Court intervened to keep it at least temporarily in effect. The problem remains one of public health and therefore national security.
Keep in mind that sending illegal migrants around the country to other cities is certainly not a fix for the Obama-era “cage” policy. Nor is simply hiring more Customs and Border Protection agents to add to the swamped and beleaguered group working now. --->READ MORE HERE
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There are at least 82 municipalities across 29 states now engaged in guaranteed income experiments, including more than 70 with pilot programs created within the past year, according to a coalition of more than 100 American mayors promoting the concept.
Mayors for Guaranteed Income, and proponents among municipal officials nationwide, are encouraging local governments to seed pilot programs with federal pandemic assistance from a $350 billion fund for state and local governments within the $1.9 trillion American Rescue Plan Act (ARPA), adopted in March 2021.
The mayoral group was established by Michael Tubbs, the former mayor of Stockton, Calif., in June 2020 after the city launched, and later extended, an experiment where 125 residents received $500 monthly in a program financed by the Economic Security Project, a nonprofit that supports guaranteed income experiments.
During a Dec. 15 virtual roundtable discussion, several municipal officials said there is growing public support for basic income models and accelerating momentum to expand these programs through a mix of federal, state, local, and private money.
In fact, much to the chagrin of conservatives and budget hawks, the ARPA state and local recovery fund is being used “as a seed for long-term policy change,” said DePaul University’s Dr. Amanda Kass, who studies how states, cities, and counties spend federal pandemic assistance. --->READ MORE HEREFollow links below to relevant/related stories and resources:
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