Lawmakers visit ‘Alligator Alcatraz.' Here's what they saw.
DeSantis has looked to match President Donald Trump's hard line on immigration, painting his state as an eager partner in the president's plan to detain and deport potentially millions of immigrants.
At least five members of Congress and roughly 20 state legislators toured the detention center over the weekend, the first inspection by elected officials of the area since it opened about a week ago. Trump visited the site ahead of detainees arriving earlier this month, accompanied by DeSantis and Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem, and since then news accounts of dire living conditions have emerged.
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While Republicans insisted that the facility was appropriate and clean, and staffed similar to any detention facility, Democratic lawmakers raised concerns about food quantity, drinking water and high temperatures, with Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz calling the facility an 'internment camp.'
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Miami Herald
17 minutes ago
- Miami Herald
Were Texas flood deaths avoidable? Here's what Americans said in a new poll
Many Americans believe the deaths caused by recent floods in Texas could have been prevented, and most think that the government's response was imperfect, according to new polling. The YouGov/Economist survey — conducted July 11-14 — comes after central Texas was pummeled by flash floods beginning on July 4, when the Guadalupe River surged over its banks, sweeping away homes and leaving at least 134 dead and about 100 missing, ABC News reported. Among the worst affected areas was Camp Mystic, a Christian camp in Kerr County, where NBC News reported 27 campers and counselors lost their lives. President Donald Trump traveled to Texas on July 11 and met with the families of victims. He said he wished to express 'the love and support and the anguish of our entire nation,' CBS News reported. 'I've never seen anything like it,' he added, 'a little narrow river that becomes a monster…' In the aftermath of the devastating disaster, multiple organizations and individuals have faced scrutiny over their preparedness. Among them were Kerr County officials, who did not install a comprehensive flood warning system despite being aware of its necessity, according to the Texas Tribune. The Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) has also faced criticism over its response, and the New York Times reported that it failed to answer thousands of calls from Texas flood survivors Here is a breakdown of the findings. Were deaths avoidable? In the survey — which sampled 1,680 U.S. adults — 52% of respondents said that most of the deaths could have been prevented if the government had been more adequately prepared. Twenty-nine percent said the deaths were unavoidable, and 19% said they didn't know. On this question, there was a sizable partisan divide. Most Democrats and independents — 74% and 53%, respectively — called the deaths avoidable, while just 28% of Republicans said the same. Government response The poll — which has a margin of error of 3.4 percentage points — also asked respondents to judge the government response to the flooding. A plurality, 38%, labeled the overall government response as poor, while smaller shares described it as fair (14%), good (19%) or excellent (14%). Individual officials received somewhat similar marks. When asked about Trump's response, 42% said it was poor, while fewer said it was fair (11%), good (15%), and excellent (21%). Meanwhile, 36% said Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem's response was poor. Eight percent said it was fair; 14% said it was good and 13% said it was excellent. Presidents visiting disaster sites Additionally, respondents were asked about presidents visiting disaster sites (the survey began on the day Trump traveled to Texas). A majority, 64%, said presidents should visit locations of disasters because it demonstrates their solidarity. Just 17% said they should not do this 'because it takes resources away from the disaster response.' The results broke along similar lines when respondents were asked specifically about Trump. Sixty-five percent said they believed Trump 'should travel to Texas to survey the damage and meet with people affected by recent flooding.' Meanwhile, 20% said he should not do this, and 15% said they were not sure.
Yahoo
17 minutes ago
- Yahoo
Why consumer surveys vs. hard data show 2 versions of the economy
Boston Consulting Group chief economist, managing director, and partner Philipp Carlsson-Szlezak joins Market Domination Overtime host Josh Lipton to discuss the state of the US economy as consumer sentiment raises red flags while economic data shows resilience. To watch more expert insights and analysis on the latest market action, check out more Market Domination Overtime here. As investors, Phillip, obviously we're always looking for lines of sight into the consumer and how how they're holding up. You say here, consumers are not to be trusted on the economy. What do you mean by that, Phillip? Well, so consumer sentiment has delivered a number of false alarms the last few years. Remember the inevitable recession that never arrived? A lot a lot of times it was pinned on consumer sentiment, which was was very low. But in the end, consumers are pretty good at judging their own finances. So if you ask them how they're feeling about their own finances, 75% say pretty good or even even good. But if you ask them to judge the economy, suddenly they say only 25% say the economy's doing well. What why is that, Phillip? Well, I think a lot of it has to do with observability of facts. You know what's on your payslip, you know what's going in and out of your bank account. But why would the average person in the street know much about how the economy's doing? So they're substituting observability with pessimism, right? So pessimism, where does that come from? Well, it comes from media, social media, discomfit, TikTok. Oh, always the media. It always comes out to media, Phillip, I get it. But that really that is interesting. Also, and I want to get your take on this when we talk about sentiment readings, you also often hear people say there is a political element to it, correct? I think that's fair. So if you look at um consumer sentiment by party affiliation, it's very clear that it's really a political proxy, like which party do you vote for? I mean, just an example, um inflation expectations. So Republicans this year uh consistently said inflation would be as low as 1%. At some point they even thought it was negative. It would prices would be falling. And Democrats thought, well, and continue to say inflation will be as high as 10 or 11%. Well, neither of these numbers is remotely credible, right? And unfortunately, it's not like you can just add them up and divide them by two, get an average, right? You can't get a bipartisan reading by averaging them out. If you add 1 and 10%, it's 11 by 2, 5.5. So, 5.5% inflation is too high. It's outside the range of what's plausibly playing out this year. As we saw this morning, yeah. So so what do you let me ask you this. What do you do with these sentiment indicators? Do I ignore them? What How How should I approach them? So I've been telling clients for the last few years, uh don't listen to what consumers say, watch what they're doing with their money. Right? You can look at consumer spending. So, just focus on what they're actually doing. What they're actually doing. And if you look at household spending, if you look at retail, I mean, household consumption's been a straight line up since, you know, the first COVID dip and the bounce back, it's just been a straight line higher, all the way through, little wiggles here and there, but basically a straight line up, totally flying in the face of what consumer sentiment surveys said all through those two, three years that we've gone through. Sign in to access your portfolio
Yahoo
17 minutes ago
- Yahoo
Trump tariff inflation has hit the data: A closer look at June CPI
Yahoo Finance Senior Columnist Rick Newman joins Market Domination Overtime host Josh Lipton to discuss the June Consumer Price Index (CPI) data, highlighting the key categories that saw the strongest inflationary effects from President Trump's tariffs. To watch more expert insights and analysis on the latest market action, check out more Market Domination Overtime here. Fresh economic data coming in on Tuesday with June's consumer price index and tariff opponents may have some explaining to do when it comes to the uptick in inflation. Joining me now is Yahoo Finance senior columnist, Rick Newman. Rick? Hey Josh. Uh well Trump talked to reporters outside the White House today. He said inflation is very low. Ah I guess, uh uh your guest we were just had um, you know I I buy what he said 2.7%. That's nothing to freak out about, but it's going in the wrong direction and economists who have been scouring this data looking for signs that Trump's tariffs are finally pushing prices up are now finding evidence that the tariffs are pushing prices up. And you can see that if you look at specific product categories that are dominated by imports such as appliances, such as sporting goods, such as toys. Much of that comes from uh China or other countries in Asia and um we did see big month to month um jumps in those categories. Uh you can see some of the charts there. I mean it might be a little bit hard to read. Uh but in other categories such as um uh clothing and furniture and footwear, uh we did see the trend of prior months, which was basically no inflation. Now we're starting to get some inflation there. And that is basically exactly what economists say what normally happen when you are start raising the tax on imports. So if this continues for a few more months I think it's going to be very clear we do have tariff inflation. Given all that um economists think that the Trump tariffs as they stand now that might raise inflation from uh 2.7% now to, let's say 3.5%, maybe 4%. So that's a lot lower than the 9% we had in uh 2022, but will voters notice? I think the answer is some will and some won't and um Trump is going to have to persuade them that even though inflation is going up it's not a problem. It was interesting Rick because because some economists were kind of focusing on the goods categories, and I saw other economists they were making a beeline for the services, you know, and the disinflation they saw there. They were pointing at airline fares and auto insurance premiums and shelter costs. You mentioned the politics of this Rick, just elaborate on that this a little bit for us. What are how do you see that shaking out for the Trump White House? Well Democrats are sounding hysterical um frankly. So every time there's like a one-tenth of a uh increase in the price of anything, they they shout that Trump is um is driving inflation up and nobody can afford anything. I mean that's not true. I mean inflation is not that bad, but on the other hand um we got as low, so just to go through the recent history here. Everybody hated 9% inflation in 2022. Almost everybody saw that whether it was food at the grocery store, gasoline, um almost, you know, most things people buy. We got we got that down to 2.3%. That was the low point earlier this year. And the Federal Reserve of course wants to see it around 2%. So we almost got to 2%, and now we're not. Now we're going the wrong direction so, uh you know Trump keeps screaming at Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell to cut interest rates, but it is Trump's own tariffs that are preventing uh Powell from cutting rates. So, um this is all a blame game. Trump is preparing, he wants to have a villain ready to finger if the economy does turn south. Um Democrats are already uh, you know, they've been screaming almost since the day Trump got into office that he's ruining everything in the economy he touches. Um nobody's exactly right and I I think the it really depends on where does the pain really fall. Um but it will fall more heavily on working and lower income Americans. Working class, I should say, than anybody else because that's what always happens and of course that's a big part of Trump's base. So I think he knows he's going to have to tread carefully here. Rick, thank you my friend. Appreciate it. You got it. Error in retrieving data Sign in to access your portfolio Error in retrieving data Error in retrieving data Error in retrieving data Error in retrieving data
