State Department Layoffs and Civic Engagement

President Donald Trump’s new spending and tax law is set to balloon the budget for immigration and detention enforcement. With an extra $170 billion over the next four years, the government is hoping to hire 10 thousand new Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents, build new detention facilities, and otherwise ramp up every aspect of arrests and removals. In fact, under the new spending plan, ICE will become the most well-funded law enforcement agency in the federal government. Garrett Graff is a historian and longtime politics and national security reporter who currently writes the ‘Doomsday Scenario’ newsletter. He joins us to talk about why dramatically expanding the federal immigration enforcement budget so quickly is a bad idea.

And in headlines: President Trump threatened new tariffs on Mexico and the European Union, Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem pushed back on critical reports of her handling of the response to the deadly Texas floods, and the State Department laid off more than 1,000 staffers.

Show Notes:

• Check out Garrett's work – https://tinyurl.com/33p63f8v
• Long Shadow: The Lingering Questions of 9/11 –https://tinyurl.com/32bdmpny
• Call Congress – 202-224-3121
• Subscribe to the What A Day Newsletter – https://tinyurl.com/3kk4nyz8
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• For a transcript of this episode, please visit crooked.com/whataday