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Unknown Speaker
Foreign.
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Heather Cox Richardson
Members of the House of Representatives are back in their districts for August, and on Monday, Republican Mike Flood of Nebraska held a town hall in Lincoln. A woman asked what she called a fiscal question. She said, with 450 million FEMA dollars being reallocated to open Alligator Alcatraz and 600 million taxpayer FEMA dollars being used to now open more concentration camps and ice burning through $8.4 million a day to illegally detain people, how much does it cost for fascism? How much do the taxpayers have to pay for a fascist country? The crowd cheered wildly. Nicholas Wu, Cassandra Dumumay and Mia McCarthy of Politico reported today that by the end of Floodstown, chants of Vote him out threatened to drown out his closing comments. The Politico reporters also said that Republicans maintain they aren't worried about their angry constituents and dismissed the town hall pushback as astroturfed and not reflective of real voter sentiment. Maybe, but with the political tide running strong against the administration, that position sounds like posturing. Trump's firing of the head of the Bureau of Labor Statistics on the same day that numbers from that bureau showed a dramatic slowdown in the economy seems to have awakened business people who were willing to back Trump to the reality that he's pulling down the economy. Today, Federal Reserve Governor Lisa Cook expressed concern about the jobs numbers, suggesting that the big revisions in them are somewhat typical of turning points in the economy. At the same time, the administration's immigration policies are deeply unpopular and unlikely to improve as Americans learn more about them. Today, a report by Hatsy Vela of NBC South Florida went national as a former corrections officer for a private contractor who worked at the detention center in the Florida Everglades, dubbed Alligator Alcatraz by supporters, said the detainees have no sunlight. There's no clock in there. They don't even know what time of the day it is. They have no access to showers. They shower every other day or every four days. The bathrooms are backed up because you got so many people using them. Florida is running the Everglades Detention Facility in expectation of reimbursement by the federal government. Immigration advocate Aaron Raichlen Melnick pointed out that unlike the federal government, the the state of Florida can be sued for civil rights violations and punished with monetary damages. Also today, the Geo Group, a private prison and services provider, reported a better than expected second quarter, thanks in part to two ICE contracts that together it expects will produce $145 million annually. The company announced a $300 million stock buyback a a process that increases the value of the stock held by remaining shareholders. The Department of Homeland Security continues to echo the language of Nazis posting today, serve your country, defend your culture. It does not appear that people are rushing to sign up. The administration has worked hard to recruit new agents, offering a signing bonus of up to $50,000 and help repaying student loans. Today it eased requirements for new recruits, removing age limits and posting no undergraduate degree required. David Dyen of the American Prospect noted today that probationary employees of the Federal Emergency Management Agency, or fema, have been ordered to report to ICE within seven days or lose their jobs. As concerns grow about the economy and immigration policy, we which were Trump's strongest suits? Trump's open attempt to steal the 2026 election by a rare mid decade redistricting in Texas to carve out five more Republican seats in Congress has given Democrats a platform to call attention to maga's attempt to stay in power regardless of the will of the voters. And they have seized the opportunity, calling the Republicans out in interviews and on social media. At least 50 Democrats have left the state to deny the Republicans a quorum, the minimum number of people necessary to hold a vote that would let them jam through a new voting map. Yesterday, Texas governor Greg Abbott asked the Texas Supreme Court to let him expel the leader of the House Democrats, Representative Jean Woo, from the Legislature, saying Wu had abandoned his office, according to Eleanor Klibanoff of the Texas Tribune. Legal experts disagree. She quotes Charles Rhodes, an expert on constitutional law at the University of Missouri Law School. I am aware of absolutely no authority that says breaking quorum is the same as the intent to abandon a seat, he said. That would require the courts extending the premise to the breaking point. It's inconsistent with the very text of the Texas Constitution. Yesterday, Republican Senator John Cornyn of Texas asked the FBI to find and arrest the Democratic legislators, a wild overreach of federal power, and Trump told reporters the FBI might have to get involved. David Pettish of Shaw Local, a paper in Illinois, reported that a bomb threat early this morning at the hotel where the Texas lawmakers are staying in in Illinois forced them to evacuate. After the threat was cleared, the Democrats said, we are safe, we are secure and we are undeterred. We are grateful for Illinois Governor J.B. pritzker, local and state law enforcement for their quick action to ensure our safety. On social media, one lawmaker blamed Texas Republicans for the threat. This is what happens when Republican state leaders publicly call for us to be hunted down, representative John Busey III said. He added, Texas Democrats won't be intimidated. Nicole Lafond of Talking Points Memo reported today that the administration is now turning to a plan to redistrict Indiana, sending Vice President J.D. vance to meet with Republican lawmakers there. But as Lafon notes, Republicans already hold seven of the state's nine congressional seats. Indiana State Representative Matt Pierce, a Democrat, told the Indy Star that the attention to redistricting Indiana shows that the White House is worried about 2026. Those concerns are unlikely to be relieved by the news today that Secretary of Health and Human Services Robert F. Kennedy Jr. Is canceling at least $500 million worth of awards and contracts to develop MRNA vaccines. These vaccines include those that addressed Covid and were being explored for protection against HIV transmission and cancer. And then there are the Epstein files, Trump's appearance in them, and the administration's attempts to change the subject. Yesterday, Democrats on the House Oversight Committee used a legislative maneuver to force its chair, James Comer, a Republican of Kentucky, to issue subpoenas for the Department of Justice records on the Epstein investigation, along with subpoenas for former government officials connected to the case. Representative Jasmine Crockett, a Democrat of Texas, posted that the DOJ now has two weeks to release the files to the committee. She wrote, it's time to find out who's been protected, who thought they were above the law, and who's been hiding behind power. On Tuesday, Trump defended the fact that Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche, his former lawyer, had met with a lawyer representing Ghislaine Maxwell, the convicted sex trafficker who obtained victims for Jeffrey Epstein as well as with Maxwell herself. Whatever he asks would be totally appropriate, trump told reporters. And I think he probably wants to make sure that, you know, people that should not be involved or aren't involved are not hurt by something that would be very, very unfortunate, very unfair to a lot of people. Meanwhile, outlets reported today the top administration officials, including Vance, Blanche, White House Chief of Staff Susie Wiles, Attorney General Pam Bondi and FBI Director Kash Patel, were scheduled to meet at the vice president's residence Wednesday to coordinate the administration's Epstein strategy. Notably, they appear to be meeting without President Trump. The family of Virginia Giuffre, one of Epstein's victims, issued a statement saying, we understand that Vice President J.D. vance will hold a strategy session this evening at his residence with administration officials Missing from this group is, of course, any survivor of the vicious crimes of convicted perjurer and sex trafficker Ghislaine Maxwell and Jeffrey Epstein. Their voices must be heard. Above all, we also call upon the House subcommittee to invite survivors to testify. After news of the meeting leaked. A source told Mandita Bose of Reuters that the meeting had been canceled. Today, reporters noticed that the online United States Constitution maintained by the Library of Congress was missing parts of Article 1, the part of the Constitution that lays out the rights and duties of Congress. Parts of section 8 and all of sections 9 and 10 were gone. Those include Congress's control over the District of Columbia, Congress's power to make the laws, the promise that habeas corpus would not be suspended, the stipulation that no money can be used by the government unless Congress has appropriated it, the requirement that no president can accept gifts from foreign countries and the specification that only Congress can levy tariffs. Officials said the deletions were due to a coding error and by the end of today the missing sections were restored.
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Letters from an American was written and read by Heather Cox Richardson. It was produced at Soundscape Productions, Dedham, MA. Recorded with music composed by Michael Moss.