Vaccination recommendations have been a long-standing debate, and the chatter has only escalated since former presidential candidate and lawyer Robert F. Kennedy Jr. was sworn in as U.S. Secretary of Health and Human Services.
Now, the conversation is spiking again after the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention abruptly changed the childhood immunization schedule, effectively reducing the number of recommended shots for children from 17 shots to just 11.
“President Trump directed us to examine how other developed nations protect their children and to take action if they are doing better,” explained the Secretary. Certain “peer nations,” such as Denmark, recommend less vaccines, and the U.S. is following suit to “strengthen transparency and informed consent.”
The new schedule no longer recommends vaccines for rotavirus, hepatitis A and hepatitis B, meningitis, RSV (respiratory syncytial virus), COVID, and the flu for every child. Ultimately, state governments will decide which vaccines are required for school entry, but the federal gov still yields significant influence over policy and access.
“No family will lose access,” Administrator for the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services and television personality Dr. Oz said. “This framework empowers parents and physicians to make individualized decisions based on risk while maintaining strong protection against serious disease.”
Regardless of where your trust in the department stands, the American Medical Association still suggests chatting with your physician to decide what is the best course of action for you and your child.
WEB EXCLUSIVE Last night in DC, after President Trump addressed his supporters at the Ellipse and pledged to “never concede” to the 2020 election, a large group of rioters stormed the U.S. Capitol building. Police barricades were broken, violence and assault ensued, monuments were defaced, and many Trump supporters were able to break into the Capitol building, armed with various weapons. Four people died and over 50 protestors were arrested last night and this morning. The events were unprecented and horrifying, to say the least.
Here’s a look at what our North Carolina senators and representatives had to say about last night’s events through tweets and interviews with other news outlets.
Senator Thom Tillis
I proudly back the blue and support law and order, which is why I condemned the violence that took place in cities across the nation this summer. It’s a national disgrace to have a mob attacking Capitol Police and engaging in anarchy. This is not what America stands for.
According to an article by WSPA, Burr said that President Trump “bears responsibility for [yesterday’s] events” and has fueled events as such by promoting “unfounded conspiracy theories.” Burr was also quoted saying, “It is past time to accept the will of the American voters and to allow our nation to move forward.”
Representative G.K. Butterfield
Butterfield retweeted the following tweet from Nancy Pelosi last night during the events.
Today’s shameful assault on our democracy — anointed at the highest level of government — must not deter us from our responsibility to the Constitution. Tonight, we will move forward with the certification of President-elect Joe Biden’s election.
Ross tweeted about the election and included a statement concerning last night’s events at the Capitol.
The peaceful transition of power is a core tenet of our democracy and one that we, the people, have always respected. Today’s dangerous events, incited by hate and misinformation from the highest levels, are heartbreaking and wrong. They have no place in our political discourse.
Foxx tweeted “The People’s House will not bend to mob rule and we will not abdicate our Constitutional duties” and released a full statement on her website.
Representative Kathy Manning
CBS 17 reported the following quote from Manning and called for President Trump to be removed from office immediately.
“President Trump invited violent rioters to the U.S. Capitol and encouraged the mob to breach the Capitol building and attempt a coup,” Manning said. “This seditious act comes just days after he was caught on tape soliciting election fraud in the state of Georgia. He must be removed from office immediately.”
Representative David Rouzer
2/2 This is not who we are as a nation. A vigorous debate and differences of opinion should never — ever — be an excuse for lawlessness and violence. Praying for our Capitol Police, other law enforcement personnel and those injured today.
Hudson sent out the following tweet with a link to his full statement on last night’s events.
We cannot move forward if we accept violence we witnessed this summer in cities & today in the Capitol as the new normal for resolving differences. We must come together, condemn violence of any kind, and heal this nation. Full statement on today’s events:https://t.co/SfnveEJp5v
Bishop did not have anything to say about the riots at the Capitol, but did send out this tweet concerning the election.
Democrats’ attack on our elections was not minor or sporadic. It was coordinated & widespread.
The burden of proof is on the Democrats in Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, Michigan & Georgia. I will be not be voting to affirm Presidential election results in those states.
Immigration has always been a hot button issue but over the last year it’s reached a new level of interest mainly driven by President Donald Trump’s vow to “build a wall.” Many statements made news headlines as both democrats and republicans highlighted statistics that supported their varied viewpoints while discounting those that did not. It’s enough to make anyone scratch their head with confusion? To make sense of it all and how it affects North Carolina, we approached both sides of the aisle to address the most commonly made assertions in an effort to separate fact from fiction.
Statement #1: They’re taking our jobs through cheap labor.
John Pearce bristles at the words cheap labor.
“There’s nothing cheap about it,” he says.
Pearce is the owner of Logan Cattle Company, a small farm in Louisburg, and what he’s talking about is the H2A visa, a temporary work program that allows agricultural businesses to hire seasonal employees if they anticipate shortages of domestic workers. About 150,000 guest or migrant workers come to North Carolina each season through this program, and according to ncjustice.org, the state has more H2A workers than any other.
For every hire, Pearce must pay $1,000 at the outset for the worker’s visa and transportation. He then pays $11.20/hour (N.C. minimum wage is $7.25) plus provides housing and utilities.
“It ends up being more than $15 to $16 per hour,” he says.
Though the labor may not be cheap, both sides of the political aisle seem to have a problem with the guest worker program.
“We have always advocated for lower levels of guest workers,” says David Ray, Communications Director of the Federation for American Immigration Reform (FAIR), an organization that supports securing the borders and reducing illegal immigration. “If you have a constant supply of cheap labor it prevents farmers from mechanizing. It’s modern day indentured servitude.”
At the other end of the political spectrum, supporters of immigration and amnesty point to a system that may promote opportunities for abuse. A high-profile lawsuit last August involving a farm owned by Senator Brent Jackson put a spotlight on the program and alleged mistreatments.
Agricultural businesses invest a substantial amount of money in the program to bring guest workers to the U.S. so they don’t want them leaving for another farm. However, if workers aren’t happy in their situations their choices are often to return home or go undocumented.
“There are flaws in every system and I think it’s isolated not widespread,” says Pearce, who has been participating in the program for five years and has only had one worker leave early. The rest? “They give me a copy of a bus ticket, and they go home the right way at the end of the season.”
But he emphasizes that he doesn’t choose the program over hiring domestically. He’s tried to hire locals to work at the farm at the same rates, well over minimum wage jobs, but hasn’t had much success: “The Government’s thought process was that once the wages got high enough locals would want to do the work. They don’t want to do the work; they’re not inspired to pick cucumbers.”
Statement #2: Sanctuary cities help keep criminals on the street.
Currently, several members of the U.S. Congress and Senate are trying to pass legislation known as Kate’s Law. This law is named after Kate Steinle, a 32-year-old woman who died after being shot by an undocumented Mexican immigrant, Juan Francisco Lopez-Sanchez, on San Francisco’s Embarcadero. Though Steinle was not his target and was inadvertently shot, Lopez-Sanchez was a convicted felon.
“When interviewed after the shooting, he said he came back to San Francisco because he knew it was a sanctuary city,” says Ray. “By doing so [the city] is unwittingly endangering the lives of local citizens because they don’t know who they are harboring.”
However, statistics suggest that even as immigration has increased, violent crimes have decreased. And in Wake County, there are no recent records of crimes committed by undocumented immigrants.
In 2015, then-Governor Pat McCrory signed into legislation House Bill 318, essentially a measure to prohibit North Carolina counties from establishing sanctuary cities that might restrict law enforcement’s cooperation with immigration officials and expanded the use of E-verify to check legal status.Organizations such as the North Carolina Justice Center expressed their disappointment in the law saying it “undermines how local governments address their own needs when it comes to immigrant communities and makes North Carolina appear to be a hostile place for newcomers of all identities.” While Sarah Preston, acting Executive Director of the ACLU of North Carolina, said that by making it harder for people to indentify themselves to law enforcement it would discourage the reporting of crimes.
Though anti-sanctuary legislation exists there are no enforcement measures to ensure compliance. N.C. Representative George Cleveland tried to pass House Bill 100 this past summer in an effort to put “teeth” into the legislation but the measure did not get enough votes. He does plan to introduce new legislation again early this year.
“It is my intention to introduce new legislation in the coming session.At this point I have nothing definite, however, I think it will be along to lines of giving citizens the ability to take local governments to court if they pursue sanctuary policies,” says Representative Cleveland.
It’s commonly believed that Governor Roy Cooper will not support such legislation, though “Cooper has been a proponent of sanctuary cities,” says Summerlin-Long.
Statement #3: North Carolina’s unauthorized immigration population is growing.
Between 1990 and 2000 and even going into 2007, the number of foreign born and undocumented immigrants in North Carolina increased almost exponentially. Then the recession hit.
“The basic consensus is that nationally and in North Carolina, the years immediately after the recession, more people were leaving the country than coming in,” says Jeff Summerlin-Long, who teaches U.S. immigration policy at UNC-Chapel Hill. “It appears that in the last two years, once the economy started picking back up, the numbers started to increase.”
Though the number of unauthorized immigrants in the U.S. is still well below pre-recession figures—the current estimate is 5.8 million to a high of 6.9 million in 2007—North Carolina one of only six states that has seen and increase between 2009 and 2014.
One reason the state has seen more growth than others is what Summerlin-Long calls chain migration or network-based migration, where immigrants basically call home and tell relatives and friends about local job opportunities.
“About 94 to 95 percent of farm workers are undocumented, especially on the coast in the crabbing industry, fishing industries, and chicken processing plants,” he says. However, Summerlin-Long is quick to note that there is little to no evidence that undocumented workers are taking jobs away from locals. Many of these industries have a hard time finding laborers to do the job, he says.
Though only 3.6 percent of the state’s population is comprised of undocumented immigrants, the proportion when compared to total immigrants is higher than in many other states. Meaning that of all immigrants in the state (including documented), about 47 percent are undocumented.
“The biggest change we’ve seen is how long [undocumented immigrants] are staying,” says Summerlin-Long. “It used to be a cyclical pattern–six months to a year–now the average length of stay is 10 years.”
Statement #4: They are costing taxpayers billions of dollars.
The debate continues to rage as to whether undocumented immigrants contribute more economically than what they cost. “It’s a version of statistical warfare based on their beliefs,” says Summerlin-Long. “All the research says there’s no question that immigrants are a contributor to the economy but when you look at undocumented kids who were served through ESL, health care—it starts to looklike the cost outweighs benefits.”
It costs North Carolina roughly $253 million to educate the children of unauthorized immigrants and according to estimates the state receives in turn $253 million in state and local taxes. On the page it looks like taxpayers end up covering the difference; however, there’s more to the picture. The economic benefits generated by immigrants are hard to trace and take longer to show up, and it appears that the trickle down effect is broader than the numbers show. For example, immigration can boost housing values and, according to the American Immigration Council, if all unauthorized immigrants were removed from North Carolina, the state would lose $14.5 billion in economic activity.
“The reality is that folks are coming to the United States for better economic opportunities, escaping persecution, and trying to better themselves,” says Raul Pinto, Staff Attorney at the North Carolina Justice Center. “They pay taxes and have become a fabric of their communities, and so it’s very important to highlight their contributions.”
Statement #5: They need to get in line like everyone else.
Currently, U.S. immigration policies favor college-educated individuals with highly skilled jobs. However, for many undocumented immigrants there are few paths to entering the country legally beyond guest worker visas that offer non-immigration avenues, meaning you cannot legally take steps toward citizenship. Individuals can ask for legal asylum but then the onus lies on them to prove persecution.
“Bottom line, the U.S. is the most generous country in the world when it comes to giving people permanent residency and citizenship,” says Summerlin-Long.“We give out on average of about 1,000,000 immigrant visas, roughly 700,000 go to family members, and we do have five different categories of employment based visas, almost entirely for skilled workers. [However] the priorities we have adopted are not set up to meet labor needs, and when you share a border with a developing country, you are going to get a huge undocumented worker population.”
Ultimately, he explains, you can’t get into a line if there isn’t one available to you.
Estimated unauthorized immigrant population, by state, 2014
Source: Pew Research Center estimates for 2014 based on augmented American Community Survey data from Integrated Public Use Microdata Series (IPUMS).
Donald Trump, long the brunt of hair jokes and birther backlash, is the one laughing now. He leads the Republican pack with numbers in the mid-30s, despite a penchant for inflammatory comments and a lack of governmental experience. So what, exactly, is his appeal and how long will it last?
He’s a political outsider
Trump’s slogan, “Make America Great Again,” hints at a growing discontent with the political establishment. It conjures up a nostalgic vision of a Rockwellian America that many believe is slipping further and further from their grasp.
“The polling data clearly shows that Americans aren’t particularly happy at the moment,” says Andrew Taylor, professor of Political Science at North Carolina State University. “They dislike politicians. They believe the country is going off on the wrong track.”
Trump’s message is that “established politicians, ones with experience in governmental politics haven’t been able to solve our problems; in fact, they’ve created a bigger mess, and who the country needs at its helm is someone who’s from somewhere else, who’s not from the world of politics,” says Taylor.
He tells his base what they want to hear
Although he has some crossover appeal, Trump supporters are mostly conservative, non-college-educated white males.
“Obviously some of the arguments he’s made with regard to immigration, policies that the United States needs—to stem immigration, to deal with potential terrorist threats—that have kind of racial and religious overtones, is one way that he’s connecting with them,” says Taylor.
Trump is speaking to his base’s anxiety that America is changing, and in some ways it is. According to U.S. Census projections, by 2044, more than half of Americans will belong to a minority group, and by 2060, one in five residents will have been born in another country. This is a real concern to a group of people who believe that this country will be harmed by an influx of foreigners.
He has no filter
However, Taylor believes Trump’s appeal lies more in the way he speaks than what he actually says. Other candidates seem rehearsed, polished; there’s a sense that they have run every word through a focus-group filter. Trump’s speeches, on the other hand, seem free of artifice and all traces of political correctness. To Trump’s supporters, this signals honesty. They believe him because he appears to say what he means without regard to how a particular statement will affect his poll numbers.
“Much of his support is obviously based on his style, his combativeness, his portrayal of strength and commentary on what’s going on in the country, rather than substantive policy matters,” says Taylor.
National government distrust is high
And opinion of politicians is low. According to the Pew Research Center, only 29 percent of Americans believe that elected leaders are honest, and a majority of 74 percent believe that politicians put their own interests ahead of the nation’s. More than half the population believes that ordinary Americans would do a better job solving the nation’s problems than our elected leaders.
Can Trump win the republic nomination?
How far will this style-over-substance approach take him? Taylor believes we have already hit peak Trump.
“Will he be the nominee? I don’t think so. I probably put his chances sort of one in four, for a number of reasons. The major one being that his negatives are so high, even within the Republican party. And you have to remember, the race for the Republican nomination won’t have this dynamic for too much longer,” says Taylor.
The field will shrink as the race continues, and support will coalesce around the remaining candidates. However, Taylor doesn’t think this will be a boon to Trump.
“My sense is that the dynamics of the race are going to be difficult for him to get the nomination, because the anti-Trump, or the ‘We can’t afford to have Trump because he’ll sink the party’ sentiment is going to be galvanized behind one alternative,” he says.
And who might that alternative be? It’s too early to call, but Taylor says the end game might be a matchup between cultural conservative Ted Cruz and establishment candidate Marco Rubio.
