Chapter 1: What is the main topic discussed in this episode?
Good morning. It's Tuesday, December 23rd. I'm Gideon Resnick in for Shamita Basu. This is Apple News Today. On today's show, a closer look at children in ICE custody, why you might see a surprise tariff fee on some of your holiday gift orders, and a few helpful tips to keep that TSA line moving this week.
But first, Congress left for the holidays last week, winding down a year that has been among the least productive in modern history. That's according to a tally of enacted legislation. The longest government shutdown we've ever seen did not yield a resolution on expiring health care subsidies, with millions of Americans poised to face higher premiums next year.
And a record number of lawmakers are deciding not to run for reelection, including 11 senators and 44 members of the House. NPR recently examined the factors that led Congress to this point.
We have an environment that's increasingly partisan, which is frustrating on a personal level, but also on a legislative front.
Chapter 2: What impact do Trump's tariffs have on holiday shopping?
There's a steady increase of death threats and threats of political violence against members and their families and their staff. That takes a toll. And people feeling like they can't just get stuff done.
Barbara Sprunt covers Congress for NPR.
And so I think that all of those things combined has made it just a place where people feel fed up and frustrated. And not to mention, you can make a heck of a lot more in the private sector than you can as a member of Congress.
She spoke with more than a dozen former House members representing both parties about how the legislative branch has, in their words, forsaken core responsibilities like the power of the purse, declaring war, and oversight of the executive branch. One former member, Democrat Jim Cooper, put it pretty bluntly to NPR by saying that, quote, Congress is in a coma.
The people that Sprunt spoke to also painted a picture of an institution that has had trouble for years. And there are structural things at play that have made an impact. For example, back when Newt Gingrich became the Republican Speaker of the House in 1985, he instituted shorter congressional work weeks so that members could spend more time at home in their districts, in part to fundraise more.
Sprunt told us that has contributed to a cultural change on the Hill.
That has transformed the way in which members have related to each other. Families were much less likely to live in D.C., so you didn't get to know people's families or get together for basketball or barbecues on the weekend. And so it has just led, I think, steadily over time to increased partisanship, less time that people can spend with one another.
And it affects people, I think, on both a practical level and on a personal level.
Some former members also told her that there is a consolidation of power in party leadership that makes some of the job of legislating on committees a lot less enticing.
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Chapter 3: Why is Congress considered one of the least productive in modern history?
In the face of all this, some former members told Sprunt that they advise potential candidates to run for state office. Yet others said it's critical to have more people who are serious about making positive change run for national office.
I think someone put it to me this way. If you don't have a good Congress and good people leave Congress because they're fed up with one or more of the things that we describe, that trickles down to all of us in the country.
You know, as much as we like to think about Capitol Hill being this totally isolated place, the people that get sent there from us to do this work, they do impact all of our lives.
There are some practical things that have been suggested, like reexamining the legislative calendar and boosting the importance of committees. But Sprunt said that those potential changes could take a while to institute. Let's turn now to immigration, another story that has defined the year.
As the White House has pushed for higher deportation rates, ICE agents have arrested more and more families. Children are not meant to be held in custody for more than 20 days, thanks to a legal settlement dating back nearly 30 years. Courts have blocked multiple attempts by the Trump administration in this term and his first to abolish those protections.
But new reporting from The Marshall Project, a nonprofit newsroom focused on criminal justice reform, suggests that more than 1,300 children have been held for longer than they should have. And that represents about a third of children they have found to have been taken into ICE custody.
ICE detention is not a good place for anybody, adults included, but definitely for a five-year-old, a child, it's absolutely no place for a child.
On a flag is a senior data reporter who told us about a woman identified as NGC in court documents and her child.
This is a mother and a five-year-old daughter who were at a Chicago laundromat when they were picked up by 20 armed officers in full riot gear and arrested. They did not have access to showers, phones, or they could not brush their teeth. They did not have edible food.
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