Thursday, June 19, 2025
Avoiding the Third World Wars
by Francis P. Sempa
The United States is involved to varying degrees in four regional conflicts that have the potential to evolve into a global conflagration. Wars are currently raging in Eastern Europe and the Middle East, India and Pakistan recently clashed, while tensions continue to rise in the Indo-Pacific. The Eurasian landmass is a tinderbox, and it will take prudent statesmanship to avoid setting more of it on fire. Fortunately, the United States has a president whose instincts are to dampen conflicts and mediate geopolitical disputes before they get out of control.
In his brilliant analysis of the Second World War, Victor Davis Hanson showed “how fighting different enemies, alongside disparate allies, in greatly different ways across the globe coalesced into one war.”
The Second World War emerged from a variety of regional conflicts beginning with Japan’s invasion of Manchuria in 1931 and eastern China in 1937; a proxy war between Germany and Soviet Russia in Spain beginning in 1936; Germany’s conquest of Czechoslovakia in 1938; Germany and the Soviet Union’s attack on Poland in September 1939; Britain and France versus Germany in 1939-40; Japan versus the Soviet Union in 1939; the Soviet Union’s war with Finland in 1940, and its occupation of the Baltic states in 1940; Germany’s attack on the Soviet Union in 1941; Japan’s attack upon the United States in December 1941, followed by Britain’s declaration of war against Japan and Germany’s declaration of war against the United States.
“[B]y the end of 1941,” Hanson writes, “something quite cataclysmic followed: all the smaller conflicts compounded unexpectedly into a total, global war.”
The result of the coalescence of the regional wars into a global war between 1931 and 1945 was some 60 million dead; the firebombing of cities; mass starvation; and widespread disease. The global war ended with the dropping of two atomic bombs on Japanese cities, ushering in the nuclear age. No one foresaw this in 1931, and very few appreciated the oncoming catastrophe even as late as 1939. Thucydides noted long ago that war is caused by fear, honor, and interest. Wars tend to get out of hand. As Hanson writes and history confirms, “Starting wars is far easier than ending them.”
In the late 19th century, Germany’s Chancellor Otto von Bismarck once expressed the fear that the next great war would result from some damned foolish thing in the Balkans. He proved to be quite prescient.
The First World War, like the Second World War, started as a series of regional wars in the Balkans, culminating in a war between Austria-Hungary and Serbia in July 1914. The rigid alliance system (and Germany’s war plans) brought Germany into the war on the side of Austria-Hungary, Russia on the side of Serbia, and France on the side of Russia. The prolific British historian Niall Ferguson in The Pity of War wrote that Great Britain was not committed to joining the war by any formal alliance, but its statesmen were drawn in by a misreading of German war aims. Britain’s entry into the war, however, guaranteed that the war would globalize because of Britain’s far-flung empire.
The Russia–Ukraine War is more than three years old, and the casualties are piling up with no end in sight. The U.S. and NATO involvement on the side of Ukraine has enabled Ukraine to continue fighting (including its recent long-range drone strike that destroyed more than 40 Russian strategic bombers), but also threatens to widen the war should Russia strike a NATO country.
Meanwhile, China, Iran, and North Korea have assisted Russia in its war effort, while America’s key Middle East ally, Israel, has gone to war with Iran, whose leaders have threatened to strike U.S. interests in the region. India, a U.S. ally, and Pakistan, a Chinese ally, have recently renewed their geopolitical conflict over Kashmir. And tensions between the U.S. (and its regional allies Japan, South Korea, the Philippines, Australia) and China continue to rise in the western Pacific as China pledges to reunify Taiwan with the mainland peacefully or by force if necessary.
In the lead-up to the First and Second World Wars, statesmen made decisions based on the Thucydidean calculus of fear, honor, and interest, and hurled the world into global cataclysms. A third such cataclysm would involve perhaps many, if not most, of the world’s nine nuclear powers, who have a combined arsenal of approximately 12,000 nuclear warheads. President Trump’s top foreign policy priority at the moment is to prevent the ongoing regional conflicts from metastasizing across the globe.
'Northeastern Governors and Canadian Premiers Unite Against Trump'
Canada knows the drill. Prime Minister Mark Carney worked hard to stage-manage President Trump’s whirlwind G7 appearance. It went sideways anyway, as the president sidetracked a press briefing into lobbying for Russia, absent from the proceedings since the invasion of Crimea. Then came the predictable mendacities about former prime minister Justin Trudeau, and diatribes about blue cities, undocumented immigrants, and for some reason, Gov. J.B. Pritzker of Illinois, “probably the worst governor in the country.”
After seven long minutes of the president’s freestyling, the prime minister all but performed a body block between Trump and reporters to shut down questions. The American president hurried off soon after to his Iran-Israel decision-making back in Washington, leaving Carney with another trade deadline to navigate and a second collapsed Canadian summit. Trump did a similar early disappearing act in 2018, with Trudeau as host.
Almost a continent away, governors from New England and New York and the premiers and surrogates from Ontario, Quebec, and the Atlantic provinces held their own meeting in Boston, concurrent with the G7 talks. Trump wasn’t in the room and only barely mentioned by name, but he dominated a public session alternating between defiance and resignation.
The Northeastern border-state governors have some of the strongest ties to their Canadian peers, and like them, they are trying to deal with the hand that the 2024 election dealt. Several times, Susan Holt, the premier of New Brunswick, mentioned wanting to “see us through the other side of this, when we get back to normal.”
Amid the volatility of Trump’s international relations, the prospects of a permanent or even semipermanent accord on tariffs eluded the “G6 +1”: Canada, France, Italy, Germany, Great Britain, and Japan. Whether North American premiers and governors can hang together and power past the “+1,” Trump, in the next three and a half years is the open question that they gamely tried to answer.
The Northeastern governors and Eastern premiers began meeting in 1973, two years before the finance ministers of the West’s economic powerhouses began holding summits on global economic and national-security affairs. Gov. Maura Healey (D-MA) insisted throughout the public session that states and provinces had no choice but to double down to preserve generations’ worth of diplomatic, cultural, and economic ties. Gov. Kathy Hochul (D-NY) was blunt. “These are relationships that have now been damaged because of rhetoric out of Washington as well as tariffs,” she said. “A tariff on Canada is nothing more than a tax on Americans.”
Disrupted supply chains marred by 50 percent tariffs on steel and aluminum imposed by the United States weighed heavily on the group. Doug Ford, the Ontario premier, said that those tariffs prompted the province to begin reshoring products like metal cans, which he stressed will only produce job losses for thousands of Americans.
A brain drain and its threats to Massachusetts’s powerful and prestigious “eds and meds” sector preoccupied Healey. She commented that Canada is actively recruiting talented medical researchers, and students—from undergraduates to postdoctoral candidates—are making different choices about where to study. “There is a war for talent,” admitted Holt, the New Brunswick premier, “and the opportunity to attract the brightest and best.”
The governors were also quick to underline their heavy dependence on Canadian energy—hydro electricity, natural gas, and oil—and the threats that that dependence and any possible interruptions pose not only for residents but for artificial-intelligence development and other energy-intensive sectors. Ford pointed out that data hubs, for example, “suck more energy than anything on Earth.” Ontario, he added, is a more reliable source of the rare earth mineral exports that the U.S. needs and that China has cut off (one of the reasons for Trump’s threats to Canadian sovereignty).
“We have to safeguard our energy future, acting as independent actors in this space, regardless of what happens in D.C., and think of ourselves—because clearly Washington is not,” Hochul stressed.
In the U.S., travel and tourism were the first sectors to show almost immediate significant downturns. Noting that Maine travel had declined 26 percent from February through April, Gov. Janet Mills (D-ME) has planned a goodwill trip to New Brunswick and Nova Scotia. Healey reeled off other statistics. Massachusetts and New Hampshire saw 20 percent drops. Vermont hotel reservations are down 45 percent, and credit card spending has dropped 36 percent.
In New York City, Canadian bookings have dropped 45 percent. School trips are way down, said Healey, who recalled her own eighth-grade trip to Toronto.
Canadians have also been inundated with reports of fellow citizens and Europeans who have been detained by American border authorities. In addition to warnings about crime (including petty theft, gun violence, home break-ins, and robberies), Canadian travel advisories now include information about avoiding demonstrations and adhering to curfews.
Asked about whether they’d promote travel to the U.S., the answer from the Canadian provinces was basically no. Holt suggested visits to neighboring Nova Scotia and spending some time at home. Ford encouraged travel to Ontario.
Americans probably don’t understand that “a generational shift” is under way, says Alasdair Roberts, a professor of public policy at University of Massachusetts Amherst. “There is a profound sense of betrayal by the United States and being burned,” he adds. “That’s burned into Canadian political culture and it’s going to persist for decades.”
Premiers treat governors as useful intermediaries with Washington, regardless of who is in the White House, which prompted Gov. Daniel McKee (D-RI) to underline that “Governors do matter.” Democrats hold down New York and most of the New England posts with a couple of exceptions: Vermont, where voters returned Republican Gov. Phil Scott, “America’s most popular governor,” to Montpelier, and New Hampshire, where Gov. Kelly Ayotte (R-NH) moved into the governor’s mansion after one term as a senator.
Despite their regional and cross-border influence, it’s going to be a colossal challenge for any of them to navigate the national Republican hostility and the relentless stream of policies that will damage the region. The Democratic women have already directly taken on Trump or other administration officials—Hochul on New York City congestion pricing, Mills over Maine’s laws on transgender athletes, and Healey on ICE detentions in the Bay State—prompting closer scrutiny of their states from the administration.
“It’s not just a question of ‘Oh, Trump is hard to deal with.’ There’s a widespread understanding that politics in the United States has become unstable and potentially dangerous for Canada,” says Roberts, an Ontario native. “My own view is that there is no going back to normal even after President Trump.”
“Part of the difficulty is the polarization and instability of American politics,” he explains. “Even if Trump does not do a third term, we don’t know that there won’t be some Trump-like politician in the future or might be simply an alternation between Democratic and Republican presidents who just have profoundly different views about international engagement and international economic cooperation—in which case it means any deal you strike with the American government is good for four years at most.”
Demonstrating that there’s fight in the regional American leaders may not be enough to win Canadians back. Beyond the affected states and local communities along the northern border, unfortunately, many Americans don’t appear to fully understand—or care—about the broadening rifts between two countries that have long had some of the most peaceful and mutually beneficial ties on the planet.
https://prospect.org/world/2025-06-19-northeastern-governors-canadian-premiers-unite-against-trump/
8 Killer Quotes From Justice Alito’s Latest Sit-Down Interview
While the Supreme Court’s 2024-2025 term is winding down, Associate Justice Samuel Alito is not.
On June 6, the George W. Bush appointee participated in a sit-down interview with the Hoover Institution’s Peter Robinson. Released on Wednesday, the roughly hour-long exchange covered a variety of issues relevant America’s ongoing political discourse.
From the importance of maintaining free speech in society to the weaponization of nationwide injunctions, here are the most insightful remarks from one of the Supreme Court’s most senior justices.
History of Originalism
After alluding to the activist nature of the Supreme Court under former Chief Justice Earl Warren, Alito provided a brief overview of the originalist movement that sprung up in the years following. He specifically highlighted the views of intellectual thought leaders such as former Justice Antonin Scalia, former Supreme Court nominee Robert Bork, and Reagan Attorney General Ed Meese — all of whom he credited as being the movement’s “three pioneers.”
“What they argued is basically that the Constitution is a text and it should be read basically the way other texts are read. We read the words, they’re understandable. The English language hasn’t changed that much since the late 18th century. We can figure out what it means, where it refers to legal concepts, established legal principles. We can explore what they were understood to mean at the time, and that’s the way it should be interpreted,” Alito said. “So, it was an effort to provide a structured, disciplined, and restrained way of reading the Constitution.”
Need for a ‘Colorblind’ Constitution
During a conversation on past SCOTUS decisions related to race, Robinson referenced the high court’s prior rulings upholding the use of affirmative action in college admissions and how the majority in those cases effectively contended that the Constitution was not colorblind. After discussing these prior decisions, Alito noted how the Court later “corrected” itself in 2023 by deeming affirmative action policies unconstitutional, and that America’s founding document does not, in fact, treat individuals differently based on race.
“I think that our Constitution is colorblind … How are we gonna hold together if we don’t regard each other simply as fellow human beings, as fellow Americans, and judge people based on their individual characteristics?” Alito said.
Robinson probed further, asking the justice if it “is unconstitutional for us to draw distinctions among our fellow citizens on the basis of race, full stop.”
Alito replied, “Yes, absolutely. I think that’s the core principle with the equal protection clause on the 14th Amendment. And I think it’s essential for the well-being of our country.”
In Defense of Religious Liberty
When the conversation shifted to the subject of religious liberty, Alito expressed disappointment that support for such freedoms “has cratered in the last 20-25 years.” He contrasted the wide bipartisan support within Congress for legislation passed and signed into in the mid-1990s to “provide more protection” for religious liberty and the nationwide hostility Indiana faced for trying to pass similar legislation in 2015.
Alito emphasized that while public support for it has declined, the “protection of religious liberty is required by our Constitution.”
“And it’s, again, like equality; it is essential for the well-being of the country,” Alito said.
Doing What’s Right
Following up on their conversation about religious liberty, Robinson asked Alito how the Supreme Court grapples with ruling on cases related to the subject if public support for it is “cratering.” The justice said that it’s important for the high court to “stand up for the Constitution,” adding that, “There’s a reason why we’re not elected.”
“We are not supposed to do what is popular, we’re supposed to do what is right. We’re supposed to interpret the Constitution and figure out what it means and then apply the Constitution,” Alito said. “We’re basically a democratic country, but the framers want to put some restraint on things that people might do during a particular area because they’re caught up in the emotions that are triggered by the events of the day. So, we have to stand firm on this, and I think we have done a pretty good job on it, but we have to keep it up because challenges will … continue to come.”
Free Speech and Government Censorship
Robinson’s discussion with the Bush appointee turned to the subject of free speech. After reading prior statements by Alito defending such a right, Robinson asked the justice “what kind of work needs to take place in the law schools, in the legal journals, and among scholars who know each other” to support pro-speech justices on the Court. Alito remarked that they “need all the support that [they] can get,” and expressed concerns about the lack of free speech protections on U.S. college campuses.
“What is going on there should ring some alarm bells,” Alito said. “A lot of speakers who say unpopular things are disrupted. When I talk to recent law graduates, law students … if they’re conservatives, they say, ‘I didn’t feel free to speak out when I was in law school. I had to watch everything that I said. I was afraid that I was gonna be harassed or intimidated.'”
The Bush appointee went on to discuss the collusion between social media companies and the Biden administration to censor Americans’ speech online.
He specifically referenced a case decided by SCOTUS last year called Murthy v. Missouri, in which a majority of justices dismissed a lawsuit brought by several medical professionals alleging this government-Big Tech censorship alliance violated their First Amendment rights. In that case, Alito said, “the Court missed the boat.”
Biden administration officials “put a lot of pressure on Facebook not to depart from the position that the government wanted to promote. That’s very dangerous,” Alito said. “Interestingly, Mark Zuckerberg later has said that he regrets that they gave in to the government pressure as much as they did. So, that’s something that we have to be concerned with going forward — manipulation of social media.”
The Flaws of Bostock
Robinson asked Alito about the Supreme Court’s 2019 Bostock v. Clayton County case, in which Chief Justice John Roberts and Associate Justice Neil Gorsuch joined the Democrat appointees in shoehorning so-called “gender identity” into the Civil Rights Act’s Title VII protections. In reference to Gorsuch and Alito’s diverging opinions in the case, Robinson pressed, “How can it be that originalism, fidelity to the meaning of the text, can produce two such different results?”
Alito said that “reasonable minds don’t always agree” and praised Gorsuch as a “great justice,” but noted that they “disagreed very strongly in that case.”
“I would say that the majority read those words [in the Civil Rights Act] mechanically and did not take into account the context which requires … us to ask, ‘What did Congress mean when it adopted that in 1964?'” Alito said. “And I think once you consider that, it’s perfectly plain that discrimination on the basis of sex at that time was understood by members of Congress and would be understood by the general public … to say this prohibits discriminating against women or discriminating against men.”
Robinson interjected, saying, “For the simple reason that transgenderism had never entered anybody’s head before.”
Alito replied, “Transgenderism, no, was not even a thing, really. It was not well established at all in 1964.”
Nationwide Injunctions
Toward the end of his interview with the justice, Robinson asked Alito about the issue of lower court judges issuing nationwide injunctions unilaterally blocking presidents from enacting executive policies — an apparent reference to leftists’ ongoing judicial coup against the Trump administration. While the Hoover policy fellow acknowledged that the executive can’t rule “unquestioned by executive order, simply by issuing fiats,” he noted how “it likewise cannot be the case that each” of the country’s more than 670 federal district court judges “is permitted on his or her own to thwart the policy of a democratically elected chief executive.”
“So, what do you do? How does one think this through? This is not easy,” said Robinson, to which Alito replied, “It is not easy. That is a problem that we have confronted, increasingly over the past six, seven, eight years, and that continues.”
The Bush appointee opined that what’s “sparked” the issue is “the great difficulty of getting legislation enacted by Congress.” He noted how the “Constitution deliberately sets up a law-making procedure that is time consuming and laborious,” and that “as the difficulty of getting legislation passed has increased, the presidents have increasingly looked to see what they can do on their own.”
Alito referenced 2014 remarks by then-President Barack Obama, in which the Illinois Democrat said he was prepared to use his “phone” and “pen” to address public policy issues should Congress fail to act on them. The justice detailed how this expansive use of executive power “increased” under President Joe Biden, citing “a number of cases” that came before SCOTUS “involving the unilateral exercise of executive power by the Biden administration.”
Alito contrasted the number of emergency applications made to the Supreme Court during Biden’s entire presidency to the first few months of the second Trump administration. “By my count,” he said, “we had 14 emergency applications filed by the solicitor general during the Biden years. And now, during the first [five] months of the Trump administration … the graph keeps going up and up.”
“A district judge [will say], ‘This is unlawful. I order you to stop, and I order you not only not to do this to the parties who [are] before me, I order you not to do this at all anywhere in the country — a universal injunction,” Alito said. This “preliminary injunction, it will be in place through the entire duration of the litigation, which may take two or three years before it could come up to us.”
Executive Power
Robinson pressed Alito on presidents’ power and the notion of “independent agencies.” That is, that there are federal departments outside of the president’s purview.
While the justice didn’t go into details about any specific case, he argued that “the general rule is the president is given the executive power.”
“I think there’s general agreement the vast majority of the executive branch is under the president’s control, and the president can appoint the cabinet officers and other political appointees,” Alito said. “There’s the issue of whether these independent agencies have a different status.”
https://thefederalist.com/2025/06/19/here-are-8-killer-quotes-from-justice-alitos-latest-sit-down-interview/
Makary talks DOGE cuts, new voucher program, why FDA still 'on track' to meet all PDUFA dates
All the figurative FDA trains are running on time, according to the agency’s leader Marty Makary, M.D.
“I'm proud to report that we're on track to meet all the PDUFA targets and that morale is good and improving at the agency,” Makary said June 17 at this year’s BIO, an international convention that has attracted 23,000 attendees.
During a fireside chat with the FDA commissioner, BIO CEO John Crowley didn’t ask Makary about the recent agency delay to KalVista Pharmaceuticals’ investigational drug approval decision. The biotech claimed it was informed last Friday that the FDA would miss the June 17 PDUFA date due to “heavy workload and limited resources.”
But Makary told a different story about the state of the organization.
“The agency is strong, and my job is to make sure that every scientist and inspector and law enforcement official at the FDA has all the resources they need to do their job well,” Makary said.
Nominated for the position by President Donald Trump, Makary has been in office for about 10 weeks, taking the helm of the federal drug agency amid a massive overhaul that included laying off more than 3,000 FDA workers.
The terminations were said to align with Trump's executive order titled “Implementing the President’s ‘Department of Government Efficiency’ Workforce Optimization Initiative.”
When asked about DOGE-related cuts, Makary said he has “reinstated people at the FDA” and that the agency is currently “hiring scientific reviewers.”
“I do think, however, that some of the consolidation—in fact, most of it—has been good,” he continued. “We did not need nearly 2,000 HR procurement and budget staff at the agency.”
“When there are tremendous redundancies in IT or communications or legislative affairs or in the 12 travel offices or in the HR staff, those are opportunities for us to create more efficiencies and ultimately improve morale,” he explained, describing the previous culture at the FDA as a “fiefdom” of many autonomous centers within one agency.
The layoffs didn’t impact scientific reviewers or inspectors, according to the FDA leader, who added that he is making sure “core staff” have the required resources to keep “all the trains running on time.”
In fact, Makary wants the trains to arrive even earlier. The leader just announced a pilot program designed to speed up drug reviews for biopharmas that align with “national priorities.”
The nontransferable priority review vouchers can be tied to a specific investigational drug or can carry an “undesignated” status and be used for the biopharma’s novel drug of choice.
During the BIO fireside chat, Makary said the point of the program is to utilize “a lot of dead time.”
“Why does it take over 10 years for a new drug to come to market? What systems at the FDA should be reevaluated? Where is the wasted time in the system?” he asked. “I'm not talking about cutting corners on a scientific review. We're talking about unnecessary steps—avoidable delays.”
To qualify, sponsors must submit chemistry, manufacturing and controls and draft labeling information at least 60 days before submitting a final application.
The process means final clinical trial results will be submitted “essentially as an addendum” or a second part of the final application, Makary explained at BIO. In total, the new program aims to shorten the review process from 10 to 12 months down to one or two months.
“We're going to have to work some things out, but we have to try new things,” he said. “We are seeing an increasingly competitive landscape internationally. We are seeing the prolonged time and wasted steps result in a loss of investment.”
Makary, a pancreatic surgeon, highlighted the urgency of drug development in the context of patients waiting for treatment.
“So we're going to continue to look at everything we can do to try to challenge the deeply held assumption that it does take 10 years for a new drug to come to market,” Makary said.
“We have to be able to ask big questions we've never asked before ... because I want to see American drug developers thrive,” the agency head said. “I want to see companies that do business in the United States thrive, and our job at the FDA is to be able to provide an expeditious review of data submitted to make determinations about what's safe and effective when it comes to medical products.”
'UAE, China strengthen their financial partnership'
An agreement between the Central Bank of the United Arab Emirates and a Chinese cross-border payment system illustrates a shared desire for growth in both markets.
The Central Bank of the United Arab Emirates (CBUAE) has signed a major agreement with the Chinese payment system CIPS to streamline financial exchanges between the countries. This strategic collaboration comes at a time when trade relations between the Emirates and China are growing rapidly.
In concrete terms, this agreement will allow Emirati and Chinese banks to make payments in local currencies without going through third currencies, such as the dollar. The result: faster transactions, lower costs, and greater flexibility for companies operating between these two markets.
Mr. Saif Al Dhaheri, Deputy Governor of the CBUAE, said that this partnership "will help reduce costs, develop innovative financial solutions, and stimulate economic growth." Meanwhile, Mr. Xiangyang Wu, Vice President of the Cross-Border Interbank Payment System (CIPS), hailed the initiative "an opening towards many opportunities to strengthen relations between the two countries (...) and support the continued prosperity of both our economies."
Beyond bilateral issues, this agreement is part of a broader desire to further connect the Middle East/North Africa region to China and strengthen the position of their currencies, the dirham and the yuan, on the global stage. It is another step towards a more modern, independent, and efficient financial system.
In short, this alliance marks a shared desire to adapt financial exchanges to contemporary challenges by combining speed, security, and sovereignty.
Trump administration puts new limits on Congress visits to immigration centers
The Department of Homeland Security this week issued updated guidance around members of Congress visiting Immigration and Customs Enforcement facilities. It follows a series of high-profile and at times physical incidents in recent weeks involving lawmakers, the Trump administration and immigration officers.
An updated memo from ICE on visit and engagement protocol for members of Congress and their staff dated June 2025 adds a section that does not appear to be included in guidance on the same topic dated as recently as February and posted by DHS as recently as last month, titled “Request Process.”
The section in the new guidance outlines the department’s request for members of Congress to inform ICE that they wish to visit a facility at least 72 hours in advance. Staff of lawmakers are required to give 24 hours' notice of their intent to visit, although this was also outlined in the February memo.
The annual appropriations act passed by Congress affords members the ability to enter DHS facilities where immigrants are held, and the 72-hour notice for lawmakers is specifically listed as a request rather than a requirement.
Nonetheless, the top Democrat on the House Homeland Security Committee, Rep. Bennie Thompson, D-Miss., blasted the new request from ICE, calling it an “affront to the Constitution and Federal law.”
“This unlawful policy is a smokescreen to deny Member visits to ICE offices across the country, which are holding migrants — and sometimes even U.S. citizens — for days at a time,” Thompson wrote in a statement. “They are therefore detention facilities and are subject to oversight and inspection at any time. DHS pretending otherwise is simply their latest lie.”
The Consolidated Appropriations Act states that “None of the funds appropriated or otherwise made available to the Department of Homeland Security by this Act may be used to prevent any of the following persons from entering, for the purpose of conducting oversight, any facility operated by or for the Department of Homeland Security used to detain or otherwise house aliens ... .”
The guidance issued in February specifically states ICE will “comply with the law and accommodate Members seeking to visit/tour an ICE detention facility for the purpose of conducting oversight.”
The new guidance, on the other hand, says ICE will “make every effort to comply with the law,” going on to say that “exigent circumstances may impact the time of entry into the facility.”
The new memo also seeks to establish a difference between ICE detention facilities and field offices, saying the latter are not subject to the law, preventing members of Congress from being blocked from visiting.
It comes after three members of Congress and the mayor of Newark, New Jersey, were involved in a scuffle with federal agents at an ICE facility last month. One, Rep. LaMonica McIver, D-N.J., has been indicted over the situation.
Other recent incidents involving elected officials and immigration officers include one with Sen. Alex Padilla, D-Calif., at Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem’s news conference in Los Angeles last week and another with New York City Comptroller Brad Lander, a mayoral candidate, at immigration court in Lower Manhattan.
Deadly listeria outbreak linked to chicken alfredo fettucine sold at Kroger and Walmart
A listeria food poisoning outbreak that has killed three people and led to one pregnancy loss is linked to newly recalled heat-and-eat chicken fettucine alfredo products sold at Kroger and Walmart stores, federal health officials said late Tuesday.
The outbreak, which includes at least 17 people in 13 states, began last July, officials said. At least 16 people have been hospitalized.
FreshRealm, a large food producer with sites in California, Georgia and Indiana, is recalling products made before June 17. The recall includes these products, which were sold in the refrigerated sections of retail stores:
— 32.8-ounce trays of Marketside Grilled Chicken Alfredo with Fettucine Tender Pasta with Creamy Alfredo Sauce, White Meat Chicken and Shaved Parmesan Cheese with best-by dates of June 27 or earlier.
— 12.3-ounce trays of Marketside Grilled Chicken Alfredo with Fettucine Tender Pasta with Creamy Alfredo Sauce, White Meat Chicken, Broccoli and Shaved Parmesan Cheese with best-by dates of June 26 or earlier.
— 12.5-ounce trays of Home Chef Heat & Eat Chicken Fettucine Alfredo with Pasta, Grilled White Meat Chicken and Parmesan Cheese, with best-by dates of June 19 or earlier.
The strain of listeria bacteria that made people sick was found in a sample of chicken fettucine alfredo during a routine inspection in March, US Agriculture Department officials said. That product was destroyed and never sent to stores.
Officials said they have not identified the specific source of the contamination. Cases have been identified through retail shopper records and interviews with sick people.
The listeria strain tied to the outbreak has been detected in people who fell ill between July 24 and May 10, the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reported.
The deaths were in Illinois, Michigan and Texas. Cases have been reported in Florida, Illinois, Indiana, Louisiana, Michigan, Minnesota, Missouri, North Carolina, Nevada, Ohio, South Carolina, Texas and Virginia.
The number of sick people is likely higher than now known and cases may be detected in additional states. Officials are continuing to receive reports of illnesses linked to the product and “are concerned that contamination is still occurring,” the CDC said.
Consumers shouldn’t eat the products, which may be in their refrigerators or freezers. They should be thrown away or returned to the place of purchase.
Listeria infections can cause serious illness, particularly in older adults, people with weakened immune systems and those who are pregnant or their newborns.
Symptoms include fever, muscle aches, headache, stiff neck, confusion, loss of balance and convulsions.
About 1,600 people get sick each year from listeria infections and about 260 die, the CDC said. Federal officials in December said they were revamping protocols to prevent listeria infections after several high-profile outbreaks, including one linked to Boar’s Head deli meats that led to 10 deaths and more than 60 illnesses last year.
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