Journalist live-streamed his arrest by ICE during protest
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Yahoo
28 minutes ago
- Yahoo
This Democrat Thinks Voters Seeking Order Will Make or Break Elections
FALL RIVER, Mass.—Democrats' bruising loss to Donald Trump in last November's election could be explained in a single word: inflation. It should be the last thing a Democrat would want to raise with voters now. Yet it is the first thing that Rep. Jake Auchincloss of Massachusetts brings up with them. 'Prices are going up. We've all felt that,' he declares to a group of seniors at a cookout outside this former mill town 50 miles south of Boston. Meta Freezes AI Hiring After Blockbuster Spending Spree McDonald's to Cut Combo-Meal Prices After Convincing Franchisees From $24,000 to $147,000: How Much Daycare Costs Across America Trump Turns Up the Heat. Fed Chair Jerome Powell Tries to Keep His Cool. Child Care in America Is Broken. Here Are Five Ideas for How to Fix It. Then comes a mini economics tutorial. Prices for some things usually stay the same or fall, like electronics, he says. Others rise, year after year, like housing, utilities and healthcare. These sectors have what he calls 'cost disease,' which, like any disease, requires intervention. 'Policymakers need to start treating cost disease.' That, he says, means going after local-government red tape that holds down the supply of housing, and health insurers who are 'price gouging simply because they have a monopolistic position.' The Democratic Party, shut out of power and mired at its lowest approval in over 35 years, is in crisis. On culture and quality of life, voters see it as out of touch. On economics, its populist positions on trade and entitlements have been co-opted by Trump. Auchincloss thinks he knows the way out of the wilderness. A cerebral former Marine who looks younger than his 37 years, Auchincloss is a fan of social psychologist and author Jonathan Haidt's theory that the public associates morality with care, fairness, authority and loyalty. Auchincloss sums them up as 'social order.' Democrats lost, he says, because 'we were not perceived as upholding social order.' The cost disease, he argues, is one of the forces eating away at Americans' sense of social order. The late economist William Baumol coined the term to describe how prices rise most where productivity grows most slowly, such as health, education and housing. Historically, Democrats didn't give priority to costs, but rather creating jobs and expanding government benefits. That strategy backfired spectacularly on former President Joe Biden when inflation soared and his popularity plummeted. Biden is gone, but cost anxiety isn't. Some polls find Trump's approval on inflation as low as Biden's. A recent poll by NORC, sponsored by The Wall Street Journal, suggests costs are eating away at the American dream: 56% of respondents weren't confident they could buy a home, and 47% felt that way about a car, compared with 42% who weren't confident about finding a good job. The son of physician-scientists, Auchincloss studied government and economics at Harvard and business at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, joined the Marines out of college, and served in Afghanistan and Panama. Having spent 2014 helping to elect moderate Republican Charlie Baker as governor of Massachusetts, Auchincloss calls himself an 'Obama-Baker Democrat.' While he eschews the labels 'moderate' or 'centrist,' his impatience with his party's progressive wing is palpable. His formative political experience came when he ran for Congress in 2020. Despite public-health experts recommending schools reopen, Democratic-run cities and states kept them closed. They were 'too focused on process, not enough on outcomes that mattered, which was getting kids back in schools. And there was a condescending attitude to parents who were rightfully frustrated watching kids atrophy at home.' Auchincloss's district is reliably Democratic thanks to affluent liberal voters in Boston's suburbs. But its largest city is Fall River, a blue-collar city once dominated by textile mills whose residents voted last fall for the Republican presidential candidate, Trump, for the first time in a century. Here is where Auchincloss is fine-tuning his message on costs and social disorder. At a municipal services fair in a local park, a police officer relates how a railroad track converted to a recreational trail soon attracted a homeless encampment. 'You should be able to clear these open air encampments,' Auchincloss responds. Democrats, he says later, haven't been 'muscular' enough on issues like homelessness and crime. Auchincloss argues Trump and Republicans also contribute to cost disease through their closeness to corporations. At a meeting with independent pharmacist Tom Pasternak who complains about low insurance-reimbursement rates, Auchincloss blames pharmacy-benefit managers for steering patients away from cheap generics and toward their captive drugstore chains. He notes a bill to regulate such companies had wide bipartisan House support last year, but was excluded from a funding bill 'at the behest of Elon Musk and has yet to get another hearing on the floor,' which he blames on lobbying by health insurers. Auchincloss has singled out Brad Smith, who served on Musk's Department of Government Efficiency at the Department of Health and Human Services, which oversees Medicare. Auchincloss said that raised conflict of interest concerns since Smith's company, rural health provider Main Street Health, is backed by health insurers that provide Medicare Advantage plans and are regulated by or transact with the department. A spokesman for Smith said that while at DOGE, he wasn't involved in any issues related to the setting of Medicare insurance rates and that any suggestion to the contrary is false. Auchincloss has also targeted social-media companies for delivering 'digital dopamine' to children. Here, too, Haidt was an influence. Last year, Auchincloss invited Haidt, who had just published the bestseller 'The Anxious Generation: How the Great Rewiring of Childhood Is Causing an Epidemic of Mental Illness,' to address about eight to 10 members from both parties of the Congressional Dads Caucus. 'Jake is emerging as a major policy thinker among the Democrats,' said Haidt, noting the congressman's authorship of a bill to raise the minimum age for certain social-media protections to 16 from 13. Auchincloss might have a coherent message. Whether it can win elections outside deep blue Massachusetts is another matter. In this purple part of his district, reaction to his cost-disease remarks fell along party lines. Tony Branco, a Democrat, congratulated him: 'When you correct the smaller things, it tends to help with the larger things.' Judy Reese, a Republican, was dismissive. 'President Trump is trying to work on [costs] if people would just work with him.' Somewhere in between was Republican Dale Herbert: 'He was honest. He was open to anyone that had their opinions.' Write to Greg Ip at Target Shares Tumble After Retailer Names a Lifer to Steer Its Turnaround Google Is Beating Apple on Smartphone AI Fed Minutes Reveal Broad Support for Holding Rates Steady Last Month Smartmatic Case Documents Show Some Fox News Hosts' Drive to Help Trump UnitedHealth Group Names Lead Independent Director Sign in to access your portfolio
Yahoo
28 minutes ago
- Yahoo
‘Broken' immgration system spilling over into tensions in NI, DUP minister says
The UK's 'broken' immigration system is spilling over into tensions in communities in Northern Ireland, a Stormont minister has said. Education Minister Paul Givan made the comments as unionist politicians have asked for further investigations into the legal planning status of hotels in the region housing asylum seekers. Earlier this week Antrim and Newtownabbey Council said an enforcement investigation has begun into the legal planning status of the Chimney Corner Hotel in Co Antrim being used to house asylum seekers. It comes after Epping Forest District Council was granted a temporary injunction by the High Court on Tuesday which blocks asylum seekers from being housed at the Bell Hotel in the Essex town. Unionist politicians have further raised concerns about the status of hotels within the Causeway Coast and Glens and Ards and North Down Borough Council areas. DUP MLA Mr Givan said the UK Government had 'failed Northern Ireland' over immigration. He said: 'The immigration system in the United Kingdom is broken, it has been a complete failure of the UK Government to protect the integrity of our borders. 'That is creating tensions within our communities. 'I think when people are in the country it is important that the rule of law is followed, we allow statutory authorities to deal with any issues. 'But when it comes to the actual immigration process, the UK Government is failing Northern Ireland, it is failing the United Kingdom as a whole. 'That does create tension, it creates pressures on our public services, within our housing system. 'The way in which the UK Home Office have been arranging having people in hotels and often buying up properties in working class communities, that creates tension.' Mr Givan added: 'I have constituents who have grown up in these areas and they are not able to get houses. 'We have young people who can't get on the property ladder because of a failed immigration process. 'The challenge is for the UK Government to get its house in order and stop allowing the system that currently is being exploited to take place. 'We have to then deal with the outworkings of that. 'We need to do that in a way that minimises tensions, but it would be foolish of people to think there isn't an issue being created through the failure of the immigration system.' The DUP MLA said anyone who was in the country illegally should be deported 'as quickly as possible'. He added: 'But we don't have a proper process for timely removal of people who are here illegally. 'If people are here and they are seeking asylum then that process needs to be followed through as quickly as possible. 'If that asylum is turned down, again they need to be removed from the United Kingdom as well. 'Our system is broken, that is creating tensions in our public services which is spilling out into the wider community. 'The UK Government have failed, my party will absolutely champion the people of Northern Ireland when it comes to what they need around housing and the pressures they are facing.' SDLP leader Claire Hanna said some politicians had been 'bandwagon jumping' since the Epping Forest court ruling. She told the BBC: 'Of course hotels aren't suitable accommodation in anything more than short term, it's not ideal for the person whether that's an asylum seeker or somebody who has been living here for a long time who is in emergency accommodation, because they are used for that purpose as well. 'The solution to me would appear to efficiently and speedily process people's applications, that they're not languishing in the system for years and years, and also it feeds into our wider and chronic lack of available social housing.'
Fox News
29 minutes ago
- Fox News
'Maniacs': Protesters scream at Vance, Hesgesth in DC
'Fox & Friends' co-hosts react to Vice President Vance and Sec. Hegseth's confrontation with protesters in Washington, D.C. during a visit with National Guard.
