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Good morning. It's Tuesday, December 23rd. I'm Gideon Resnick in for Shamita Basu. This is Apple News today. On today's show, a closer look at children in ICE custody. While you might see a surprise tariff fee on some of your holiday gift orders and a few helpful tips to keep that TSA line moving this week. But first, Congress left for the holidays last week, winding down a year that has been among the least productive in modern history. That's according to a tally of enacted legislation. The longest government shutdown we've ever seen did not yield a resolution on expiring health care subsidies. With millions of Americans poised to face higher premiums next year, and a record number of lawmakers are deciding not to run for reelection, including 11 senators and 44 members of the House, NPR recently examined the factors that led Congress to this point.
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We have an environment that's increasingly partisan, which is frustrating on a personal level, but also on a legislative front. There's a steady increase of death threats and threats of political violence against members and their families and their staff. That takes a toll. And people feeling like they can't just get stuff done.
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Barbara Sprunt covers Congress for npr.
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And so I think that all of those things combined has made it just a place where people feel fed up and frustrated. And not to mention, you can make a heck of a lot more in the private sector than you can as a member of Congress.
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She spoke with more than a dozen former House members representing both parties about how the legislative branch has, in their words, forsaken core responsibilities like the power of the purse, declaring war and oversight of the executive branch. One former member, Democrat Jim Cooper, put it pretty bluntly to NPR by saying that, quote, congress is in a coma. The people that Sprunt spoke to also painted a picture of an institution that has had trouble for years. And there are structural things at play that have made an impact. For example, back when Newt Gingrich became the Republican speaker of the house in 1985, very deeply grateful to my good friend Dick Gephardt, he instituted shorter congressional work weeks so that members could spend more time at home in their districts, in part to fundraise more, Sprunt told us that has contributed to a cultural change on the Hill that has transformed.
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The way in which members have related to each other. Families were much less likely to live in D.C. so you didn't get to know people's families or get together for basketball or barbecues on the weekend. And so it has just led, I think, steadily over time to increased partisanship, less time that people can spend with one another. And it affects people, I think, on both a practical level and on a personal level.
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Some former members also told her that there is a consolidation of power in party leadership that makes some of the job of legislating on committees a lot less enticing.
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Typically, committees have held a lot of power. You sit on the Transportation Committee or the Energy Committee, you build a level of expertise there, there's healthy debate, and the committee sort of takes charge in writing legislation on that issue. Well, one member that I spoke with had just gotten back from talking to current members on the Hill about some of their concerns. And they basically described to him that they these days, it's essentially the speaker's office just tells the committee chair, this is what we want in the bill, this is what we don't want it. And that degrades the level of agency that members feel in terms of what.
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They can do in the face of all this. Some former members told Sprunt that they advised potential candidates to run for state office. Yet others said it's critical to have more people who are serious about making positive change run for national office.
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I think someone put it to me this way, if you don't have a good Congress and good people leave Congress because they're fed up with one or more of the things that we describe that trickles down to all of us in the country. You know, as much as we like to think about Capitol Hill being this totally isolated place, the people that get sent there from us to do this work, they do impact all of our lives.
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There are some practical things that have been suggested, like reexamining the legislative calendar and boosting the importance of of committees. But Sprunt said that those potential changes could take a while to institute. Let's turn now to immigration. Another story that has defined the year as the White House has pushed for higher deportation rates, ICE agents have arrested more and more families. Children are not meant to be held in custody for more than 20 days, thanks to a legal settlement dating back nearly 30 years. Courts have blocked multiple attempts by the Trump administration in this term and his first to abolish those protections. But new reporting from the Marshall Project, a non profit newsroom focused on criminal justice reform, suggests that more than 1,300 children have been held for longer than they should have. And that represents about a third of children they have found to have been taken into ICE custody.
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ICE detention is not a good place for anybody, adults included, but definitely for a five year old, a child it's absolutely no place for a child on.
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A Flag is a senior data reporter who told us about a woman identified as NGC in court documents and her child.
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This is a mother and a five year old daughter who were at a Chicago laundromat when they were picked up by 20 armed officers in full riot gear and arrested. They did not have access to showers, phones or they could not brush their teeth. They did not have edible food.
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They were transferred from a Chicago airport to an immigration processing center in Dilley, Texas. NGC described Dilley as a living hell.
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Lawyers for the families that are being held in these ICE detention facilities have talked about lack of water, lack of food, lack of educational resources or things to do, lack of proper medical care.
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The Department of Homeland Security has previously told CNN that all detainees receive clean water and three meals a day, and the company running the center told Flag it complies with all policies, procedures and detention standards. A former Biden era ICE official told Flagg that he believed the federal government is holding families for longer to increase the chance of deporting them straight from detention.
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So normally it's part of ICE's directive when dealing with families and children to process children as quickly as possible and get them out of detention as quickly as possible. And that is what they say that they're doing. But if you actually look at the data that has been released about these detentions and you look at the lengths of stay that these children are serving, you see that there's kind of this big spike right around the 20 day limit.
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The thought behind reaching that limit is that it's challenging to mount responses to deportation cases with limited resources in custody and that the living conditions could incentivize someone to want to leave. The Marshall Project reports that in court filings this month, ICE acknowledged that extended custody of children was a challenge, but said that transportation delays, medical needs and legal processing had slowed releases. ICE did not respond to the publication when asked about the data. As we approach the end of the year, it still unclear exactly how President Trump's tariffs are going to play out as the Supreme Court considers their legality. As of now, the administration says it's collected around $200 billion in tariff revenue and there's one new fee that you might have noticed as you scrambled to get last minute shopping done.
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This is affecting pretty much everything that you're ordering from abroad. Rugs, computers, vitamins, all those things and so much more that you're trying to order from abroad could get hit with these tariffs and fees.
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Kayla Steinberg is with NBC News business and economy team. She reports that those who've ordered products from abroad might be hit with a surprise tariff bill. That's after the administration removed an exemption that's known as de minimis, meaning something that's too small to be considered. It excluded packages worth less than $800 from being hit with import taxes. The administration says that loophole facilitated drug smuggling and led to below market products that harm American businesses. Steinberg told us that getting rid of the loophole so abruptly has put a big burden on shipping companies.
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When the de minimis exemption ended in August, it put companies like UPS in a really hard spot where now they're having to do customs clearance on so many more packages, whether it's a water bottle or a rug or a computer. Now all of a sudden it has to go through all this additional processing and determination of different fees.
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And as a result, those tariff costs trickled down to the consumer. Steinberg told us about Bonnie Hardy Compagno, who'd ordered a package from Belgium that she assumed would come with a nominal tariff fee of just 15%.
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She ordered $431 worth of skin care at the end of August. But when the UPS delivery driver showed up with her package in September, she was told that it was going to be $657 worth of fees.
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Hardy Compagno was surprised to learn that the skincare package she ordered triggered a 200% tariff because it contained aluminum from Russia or an unknown country in addition to a 50% steel tariff. She refused the package from UPS and tried to get more clarity and has since received an additional $65 late fee from UPS. Many retailers have raised prices as a result of higher import costs, and some international companies have stopped shipping to the US Completely. Companies like Costco and Revlon have also filed lawsuits against the White House. Now, if you're looking to avoid these fees, Steinberg gave us a couple of tips. First is checking to see if the product is available from a retailer in the States.
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If the item only can come from some other country, make sure you're reading the fine print on the item page. And at checkout, look out for a label called Delivery Duty Paid, or ddp. That typically means that the shipping costs have been included in the final price of the item and you won't wind up having to pay them later.
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Also, make sure to read the fine print on a company's site and use a credit card to pay. You're more likely to get a favorable outcome in a dispute with your creditor than with a debit card. And finally, a few other stories were following. The Trump administration is recalling more than two dozen diplomats from embassies around the world. That's according to multiple outlets, citing administration officials. The move is to better align the State Department with the president's agenda, these officials say. The diplomats all assumed their posts during the Biden administration but were told their jobs are ending in January. The State Department did not specify how many people were affected, but called the dismissals a standard process in any administration. Africa will be the most affected continent, with at least 13ambassador removals, according to the Wall Street Journal. The moves angered some State Department personnel, who said that there would be critical vacancies at some key embassies. This comes after President Trump appointed Louisiana governor Jeff Landry as a special envoy to Greenland, renewing anger from the leaders of Denmark and Greenland over the U.S. s attempt to claim the territory. If you happen to be traveling today for the holidays, there are a couple of things you might want to prepare for as you head out. First, the weather. On the west coast, an atmospheric river is set to hit California. Meteorologists say a fire hose of rain will fall the next few days into Christmas for much of the state, posing significant risks for mudslides, flooding, washouts and other dangerous conditions. Los Angeles could get as much as 8 inches of rain. Meanwhile, in the Northeast, a series of winter storms are bringing ice, snow and their own set of problems for travelers on roads or at airports. For much of the middle of the country, a bubble of air will create some of the warmest Christmas weather on record. That includes states from the Rockies to the Appalachians, much of the Plains states and parts of the Midwest. And finally, if your travel does include going to the airport, you might be carrying some things for the holidays that you typically wouldn't. And they might get you stopped in the TSA line. The Washington Post has a few helpful reminders here. If, for example, you were bringing a dear relative, a beloved food item that might get a second look from tsa. Peanut butter specifically, is a common one that gets intercepted. If you're traveling with gifts, play doh. And snow globes are frequently pulled aside, as are candles. And one other small tip, maybe save wrapping gifts for once you're through security. If TSA wants to take a second look at something, they might have to undo your beautiful handiwork. And if you happen to show up to your loved ones empty handed, I suppose any of this could be used as an excuse. You can find all these stories and more in the Apple News app. And if you're already listening to the news app right now. We've got a narrated article coming up next. Esquire has the story of Bob Brutan, part of the close fellowship of Macy's Santa Clauses in New York, and how he battled failure and heartbreak but persevered with some Christmas magic. If you're listening in the podcast app, you can follow Apple News narrative to find that story and a quick programming note for our listeners. Apple News Today will be taking a break and back with a new episode January 5th. We hope you have a wonderful holiday season and we'll talk to you in the new year.