Mornings on the Mall 02.21.17

Joe diGenova, Ami Horowitz, Rashad Young, Larry Kudlow and new co-host Mary Walter joined WMAL on Tuesday!

Mornings on the Mall

Tuesday, February 21, 2017

Hosts: Brian Wilson and Mary Walter

Executive Producer: Heather Hunter

 

5am – A/B/C   Americans are optimistic about the economy.  Why?  Has your personal economy changed for the better? At the same time, Americans are reaching record debt. A strong majority of Americans say the U.S. economy is running strong, and most believe the upward trend will continue under President Trump, according to a Harvard-Harris poll provided exclusively to The Hill. The survey found that 61 percent view the economy as strong, against 39 percent who say it is weak. A plurality, 42 percent, said they believe the economy is on the right track, versus 39 percent who said it is on the wrong track. Trump and congressional Republicans have claimed credit for the turnaround, noting numerous polls in 2016 that showed that many Americans wanted change in the nation’s capital. Democrats counter that former President Obama handed a healthy economy to Trump and point out that the unemployment rate has dropped under 5 percent. At a press conference on Thursday, Trump said he inherited “a mess.” Among Republicans surveyed in the Harvard-Harris poll, 60 percent are satisfied with the economic trajectory, versus 23 percent who are dissatisfied. Only 33 percent of Democrats said the economy is on the right track, while 48 percent said it is headed in the wrong direction. At 65 percent, Trump voters are the likeliest to say the economy is headed in the right direction.

5am – D         Immigration News:

• ICE: Nearly 1 million illegal immigrants with “removal orders” are still free. ICE: 950,000 illegals with ‘removal orders’ free, raids get just a sliver. (Washington Examiner) — Despite media reports of a massive crackdown by President Trump on illegal immigrants, just a tiny percentage of the nearly 1 million on the government’s deportation list have been arrested, according to statistics provided to Congress. The 680 seized in recent sweeps by U.S. Customs and Immigration Enforcement agents represent just .07 percent of the 950,062 with deportation orders as of May 21, 2016. Responses to questions from the Senate Judiciary Committee, provided by Thomas D. Homan, currently the acting ICE director, revealed the struggle the agency faces as it moves to deport illegals, many with criminal records and slapped with “final orders of removal” after exhausting their court appeals. He said that ICE has custody of just 11,006, or 1 percent, of the 950,062 ordered deported.
• Day Without Immigrants: ‘More than 100 workers’ fired over strike. More than 100 workers in the US have lost their jobs after taking part in last week’s Day Without Immigrants protest, US media say. Dozens of people, including construction workers and restaurant staff, reported being fired after staying at home on Thursday. The protest aimed to highlight the contribution of immigrants in the US. One employer told CNN his staff would have to “pay the price” of standing up for what they believed in. Jim Serowski, of JVS Masonry in Commerce City, Colorado, said he had no regrets after sacking about 30 bricklayers.
• Trump’s new immigration ban targets same 7 countries: report. President Trump is expected to unveil a new immigration executive order — and it will target the same Muslim-majority countries as the first. According to Fox News, the new order will apply to travelers from Iran, Iraq, Syria, Somalia, Yemen, Sudan and Libya. But this time, travelers who have a visa to travel the United States, as well as green-card holders and dual citizens will be exempted. The order is expected to be unveiled sometime this week, a senior White House official said. The official added that the new order will no longer direct U.S. authorities to single out and possibly reject Syrian refugees when processing new visa applications.
• Nearly Half Of Prime Working Age High School Dropouts Are Immigrants. (Daily Caller) — The amount of immigrant high school dropouts is rapidly increasing. Nearly half of American resident dropouts ages 25-54, known as prime working age, were immigrants in 2014, an analysis of the 2015 American Community Survey published by The American Conservative Monday reveals. Immigrants made up less than five percent of this demographic in 1970. The Center for Immigration Studies recently found that low-skilled immigrants are replacing their low-skilled American counterparts. The study found that native-born prime-age Americans without a high school degree worked an average of 34.8 weeks a year between 2003 and 2015, while immigrant prime-age high school dropouts worked an average 48.9 weeks a year in that same time frame. Jason Richwine, the author of the September study, wrote, “Among natives without a high school degree, the fraction who were neither working nor looking for work rose from 26 percent in 1994 to 35 percent in 2015.” Richwine also found that this gap of weeks worked between high-skilled immigrant and native-born American workers is much less pronounced.
• Refugees Will Cost Taxpayers an Estimated $4.1 Billion in FY 2017. (Breitbart) — American taxpayers will spend more than $4.1 billion in the 2017 budget to support the 519,018 refugees who have been resettled by the federal government in the United States since October 2009, according to a cost estimate by Breitbart News. To put that very large number in context, $4.1 billion can buy 10,677 new homes for $384,000 each, which is the average price of a new home sold in the United States in December 2016. Or it could buy 170,124 new autos for $24,100 each, which is the manufacturer’s suggested retail price for a 2017 Chevrolet Malibu. Even if the Trump administration were to entirely shut down the flow of refugees into the United States in FY 2018 and beyond, the refugees who have already arrived in the country will cost at least another $3.5 billion in 2018, and about $2 billion to $3 billion annually thereafter until FY 2022 and beyond. The annual $4.1 billion cost of these refugees is about eight percent of “the total annual fiscal impact of first generation [immigrants to the United States] and their dependents, averaged across 2011-2013,” which the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine, in September 2016, estimated “is a cost of $57.4 billion.”

5am – E         Critter News:

• Bao Bao the panda to leave DC Tuesday. (ABC News) — Thousands of well-wishers are heading to the Smithsonian National Zoo and tuning in online to say “Bye-bye, Bao Bao.” The beloved giant panda departs Washington, D.C., Tuesday for her new home in China. “Everyone here at the zoo, the millions of people at the zoo and the millions more on the webcams around the world are all going to miss her tremendously,” Associate Director of Animal Care Sciences Brandie Smith told ABC News. In the days before her departure, the zoo has hosted a number of activities and educational livestreams, including a dumpling ceremony and an ice cake party. Crowds of visitors lined up at the panda house, some waiting upwards of an hour, to wish the bear bon voyage.
• Angelina Jolie Ate a Tarantula With Her Kids. Actress and director appears on BBC World News while filming a movie in Cambodia. Angelina Jolie is taking the celebrity diet to a new level. Jolie appeared on BBC World News from Cambodia while filming her latest directorial effort, the documentary “First They Killed My Father.” The actress and director discussed her high-profile split from Brad Pitt with journalist Yalda Hakim, but one of the more memorable moments came when Jolie ate scorpions and tarantulas with her kids. “Crickets — you start with crickets. Crickets and a beer, and then you kind of move up to tarantulas,” Jolie says in the clip (below) while removing the tarantulas’ fangs with her fingers, preparing them for cooking.

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6am – A/B     The Pope wants everyone to put down the phones at the dinner table.  Do you allow cell phone use during dinner? Pope says texting at the dinner table could lead to war. Pope Francis wants youngsters to BRB from their cellphones at the dinner table, warning that the lack of face-to-face communication with adults could result in “war.” “When we’re at the table, when we are speaking to others on our telephones, it’s the start of war because there is no dialogue,” the 80-year-old pontiff told students last week at Roma Tre in Rome. The pope also chided today’s youths for their lack of manners, saying that instead of a friendly “good morning,” they opt for an “anonymous ‘ciao, ciao.’” “We need to lower the tone a bit, speak less and listen more,” he said. Francis added that “dialogue which brings hearts closer together” is “a medicine against violence.” On Sunday, while speaking to children during a papal visit to a Rome parish, Francis admitted that cardinals don’t always pick the smartest person as their holiness.

6am – C         President Trump picks Lt. Gen. H.R. McMaster as his new national security adviser.  (CNN) President Donald Trump announced Monday that Lt. Gen. H.R. McMaster will serve as his next national security adviser, filling the void left last week by the sudden dismissal of Michael Flynn. McMaster, the head of the Army Capabilities Integration Center, will become one of Trump’s top national security and foreign policy advisers, taking the helm of the White House’s National Security Council, which was left rudderless after Flynn was forced to resign after just 24 days on the job.

6am – D/E     Grammar is now “racist”…. College Writing Center Declares American Grammar A ‘Racist,’ ‘Unjust Language Structure’ (Daily Caller) — An “antiracist” poster in a college writing center insists American grammar is “racist” and an “unjust language structure,” promising to prioritize rhetoric over “grammatical ‘correctness.’” The poster, written by the director, staff, and tutors of the University of Washington, Tacoma’s Writing Center, states “racism is the normal condition of things,” declaring that it permeates rules, systems, expectations, in courses, school and society. “Linguistic and writing research has shown clearly for many decades that there is no inherent ‘standard’ of English,” proclaims the writing center’s statement. “Language is constantly changing. These two facts make it very difficult to justify placing people in hierarchies or restricting opportunities and privileges because of the way people communicate in particular versions of English.”

6am – F         DC Traffic Congestion Ranks Sixth Worst in US, 15th Worst in World. (NBC Washington) — Commuters in the Washington, D.C., area experience traffic woes practically every work day, and a new study confirmed what those commuters likely know. D.C. traffic is among the worst in the country. INRIX ranked 204 cities in the United States and more than 1,000 around the world in the largest study of traffic congestion. Based on the findings, the D.C. area ranks sixth overall for most congested urban areas in the U.S. According to the study, D.C.-area drivers spend more than 11 percent of their trip in congestion, costing them $1,694 per driver in 2016. The study said congestion costs the city nearly $3 billion from direct and indirect costs in 2016. Los Angeles, which also ranked the worst city in the world, New York, San Francisco, Atlanta and Miami ranked higher than Washington on the most congested ranking for U.S. cities. Dallas, Boston, Chicago and Seattle were ranked below D.C. in the top 10. Globally, Washington ranked 15th in the world in 2016, just behind Mexico City. In the 2015 study, D.C. was ranked 40th in the world.

7am – A         INTERVIEW – JOE DIGENOVA – legal analyst and former U.S. Attorney to the District of Columbia

• Trump’s new immigration ban targets same 7 countries: report. President Trump is expected to unveil a new immigration executive order — and it will target the same Muslim-majority countries as the first. According to Fox News, the new order will apply to travelers from Iran, Iraq, Syria, Somalia, Yemen, Sudan and Libya. But this time, travelers who have a visa to travel the United States, as well as green-card holders and dual citizens will be exempted.
• ICE: Nearly 1 million illegal immigrants with “removal orders” are still free.
• Democrats want to invoke the 25th Amendment and subject Trump to a mental health exam: WASHINGTON, D.C. — Democratic lawmakers are openly questioning President Donald Trump’s mental health, and a growing number of them are invoking the 25th Amendment as a springboard to introduce legislation that would allow former presidents and vice presidents to determine if Trump is mentally unfit for office.

7am – B         A Md Congressman has proposed drug-consumption facilities in the state, allowing illegal drug use in certain spaces. ANNAPOLIS, Md. (AP) — Illegal-drug users in Maryland could partake in recreational use under a bill that would create legal, sanitary illicit-drug use facilities in the state. The bill, proposed by Delegate Dan Morhaim, D-Baltimore County, would create an overdose-prevention and safer drug-consumption program allowing drug users to legally ingest their narcotics under supervision of trained professionals and staff, in clean facilities. “Let me be real clear, I’m not for substance abuse. It’s a bad thing,” said Morhaim, a board-certified physician with years working in emergency care. “I’ve seen the ravages, but we’ve been doing this for 50 years, and tried all these things. And after 50 years, there’s not one data point that is better.” In fact, opioid-related fatalities are on the rise, with more than 1,000 deaths in 2015 alone in Maryland, according to a Department of Health and Mental Hygiene report on drug- and alcohol-related deaths. In contrast, in the roughly two decades that safe consumption rooms have been in use in other countries, there have been no fatal overdoses in any of them, according to Jamie Bridge from the International Drug Policy Consortium, headquartered in London.

7am – C         Kids are celebrating the death of Michelle Obama’s lunch rules:

HARRISON CITY, Pa. – Lunch is a drastically different experience now that Penn-Trafford High School is no longer bound by federal food regulations. District officials removed the high school from the National School Lunch Program after years of struggling to comply with federal regulations that drove down student lunch participation and cafeteria revenues, the Tribune-Review reports. The freedom from the strict restrictions on calories, fat, sugar, salt and other elements, came at the expense of federal funding to help cover free- and reduced-priced lunches for some students, but district business manager Brett Lago said the decision is already paying off in year one. “We’ve lost, to date, about $40,000 worth of reimbursement, but our sales are up about $50,000 over last year,” he said. “Participation has gone from about 25 percent to 45 percent, and we’re still providing free lunches to all those students who would have been eligible under the school lunch program.”

7am – D         INTERVIEW – AMI HOROWITZ – journalist and documentary filmmaker

• Ami Horowitz‘s film documents Sweden’s open door policy where refugees are concerned, as well as the unprecedented rise in crime seemingly as a result. He goes on to detail that the Swedish government is, by and large, trying to cover up the insurgence in crime.
• “You look at what’s happening in Germany, you look at what’s happening last night in Sweden. Sweden, who would believe this. Sweden,” Trump said this weekend. “They took in large numbers. They’re having problems like they never thought possible.”
• Trump was talking about an interview segment that appeared on Friday’s Tucker Carlson Show which covered the increase in sexual assaults in Sweden because of the large wave of Muslim refugees into the country. Carlson’s interview was with Ami Horowitz who directed a documentary about Sweden’s migrant-related increase in violent crime. On Sunday #Swedenattack was the number one trending hashtag on twitter. Trump tweet on Sweden:  Donald J. Trump ‏@realDonaldTrump: My statement as to what’s happening in Sweden was in reference to a story that was broadcast on @FoxNews concerning immigrants & Sweden.

7am – E         Immigration News:

• ICE: Nearly 1 million illegal immigrants with “removal orders” are still free.
• Day Without Immigrants: ‘More than 100 workers’ fired over strike.
• Trump’s new immigration ban targets same 7 countries: report.
• Nearly Half Of Prime Working Age High School Dropouts Are Immigrants.
• Refugees Will Cost Taxpayers an Estimated $4.1 Billion in FY 2017.

8am – A         INTERVIEW – D.C. City Administrator RASHAD YOUNG 

• TOPIC: Administrator Young will talk about how the administration is preparing in case we lose funding from the federal government, and the importance of participating during the budget engagement forums.
• DC Could Lose at Least $1 Billion Under Trump Sanctuary City Crackdown. President Donald Trump’s executive order on sanctuary cities that protect immigrants could cut federal funding for Washington, D.C. public schools and the city departments that serve homeless people, domestic violence victims and people with HIV. At least $1 billion in federal grants that D.C. receives is vulnerable under the executive order Trump signed Wednesday to punish locales that “willfully violate federal law in an attempt to shield aliens from removal from the United States.” There’s no question that D.C. is a sanctuary city. The District issues provisional driver’s licenses to illegal residents, police do not ask about residency status, and earlier this month Mayor Muriel Bowser announced the creation of a legal defense fund to help immigrants. D.C. is reliant upon the federal government for a total of $3.5 billion in federal grants in financial year 2017.

8am – B         MILO CONTROVERSY:

• Milo Yiannopoulos Disinvited From CPAC, Simon & Schuster Cancels Book Publication. The Conservative Political Action Conference has rescinded its invitation to Breitbart editor Milo Yiannopoulos after he appeared to defend pedophilia in video clips that emerged on social media Sunday. “Due to the revelation of an offensive video in the past 24 hours condoning pedophilia, the American Conservative Union has decided to rescind the invitation of Milo Yiannopoulos to speak at the Conservative Political Action Conference,” chairman Matt Schlapp said in a statement. In the video clips that surfaced Sunday, the alt-right figure defended relationships between young boys and men.

• Milo Announces Press Conference in New York City Tuesday at 3 PM
• Milo Yiannopoulos responds after being disinvited from CPAC: Yiannopoulos defended himself on Facebook, blaming the controversy on “sloppy phrasing” or “deceptive editing.” “I do not support pedophilia. Period. It is a vile and disgusting crime, perhaps the very worst,” he wrote. “There are selectively edited videos doing the rounds, as part of a co-ordinated effort to discredit me from establishment Republicans, that suggest I am soft on the subject.” He claims his sexually explicit comments about the priest was “an edgy” response to his own sexual abuse as a teenager. “I *did* joke about giving better head as a result of clerical sexual abuse committed against me when I was a teen,” he wrote. “If I choose to deal in an edgy way on an internet livestream with a crime I was the victim of that’s my prerogative. It’s no different to gallows humor from AIDS sufferers.”

8am – C         McAuliffe vetoes legislation on concealed handgun permits, switchblades, ‘Tebow bill.’ RICHMOND, Va. — Virginia Governor Terry McAuliffe had a busy Monday as he vetoed three pieces of legislation that made its way through the General Assembly this year. McAuliffe vetoed legislation that would allow members of the military to apply for and receive concealed handgun permits at age 18. House Bill 1582 would have allowed active-duty members of the military and those with honorable discharges between the ages of 18 and 21 to receive concealed handgun permits, provided they have completed basic training. Under current Virginia law, no one under the age of 21 is eligible for a permit. While it is illegal for anyone under the age of 21 to purchase a handgun from a licensed firearm dealer, Virginians between the ages of 18 and 21 can legally buy a handgun in a private sale or receive one as a gift. McAuliffe said after consultation with military leadership, he decided to veto the bill.

8am – D         INTERVIEW —  LARRY KUDLOW – CNBC Senior Contributor and host of The Larry Kudlow Show on WMAL Saturdays at 7 pm and author of “JFK and the Reagan Revolution: A Secret History of American Prosperity”

• House to unveil Obamacare bill after next week. Republican lawmakers plan to introduce their legislation to repeal and replace Obamacare after they return from next week’s break, U.S. House of Representatives Speaker Paul Ryan told reporters on Thursday. Ryan did not give a specific date and added that lawmakers are waiting to see how congressional analysts “score” their proposal to reverse former Democratic President Barack Obama’s health care law. The House is scheduled to return Feb. 27.
• Sen. Rand Paul “The House leadership, I think, is pushing ‘ObamaCare Lite’ and I think what we need is complete repeal.”
• Americans are optimistic about the economy.  Why?  Has your personal economy changed for the better? At the same time, Americans are reaching record debt

8am – E         Trump And Mar A Lago:

• Washington Post: Trump’s first month travel expenses cost taxpayers just less than what Obama spent in a year. On Monday, President Trump returns to Washington DC from his private Mar-a-Lago club in Florida, where he’s spent the last three weekends. The Washington Post reports that those three trips “probably cost the federal treasury about $10 million, based on figures used in an October government report analyzing White House travel, including money for Coast Guard units to patrol the exposed shoreline and other military, security and staffing expenses associated with moving the apparatus of the presidency.” So far, the highlight of Trump’s Mar-a-Lago trips has been he and his aides struggling to deal with an international crisis in full view of diners and staff during the evening of February 11.
• Washington Post: Mar-a-Lago 3, Camp David 0. With Trump as president, is the rustic Md. retreat doomed? THURMONT, Md. — Dwayne Snurr, a janitor and lifelong resident of this rural, working-class town 60 miles from the White House, was eating chicken wings in a cafe off Main Street last week when he began  chewing over a locally important subject: President Trump’s taste in vacations. “I guess he’s got that place down in Florida,” Snurr said, referring to Mar-a-Lago, Trump’s Palm Beach resort. “When you have a place like that, I have to assume you prefer the beach and nice weather.” Trump’s Florida compound and his other gold-laden properties have been top of mind lately in Thurmont, where just a few miles up a winding mountain road presidents have vacationed and cajoled world leaders at Camp David — deep in the woods, in cozy cabins, a total anathema to Trump. “Camp David is very rustic, it’s nice, you’d like it,” Trump said in an interview with a European journalist just before taking office. “You know how long you’d like it? For about 30 minutes.” White House officials have not said whether Trump plans to use Camp David or, if not, whether he would close the Navy-run facility, which in recent years has cost taxpayers about $8 million a year to operate. Although local officials hope he will visit, they have been given no signals he will, raising concern about the financial and symbolic costs of the president’s getaway tastes.